How I lost weight

About 4 months ago, I started a solo practice. I had never really been fat by American standards, but I wasn't anything to behold with my shirt off. I'm about 5'7" and weighed in the high 160s. Starting the business left me really tired everyday, and I knew that I needed more energy. Also, I met a very cute girl whose attention I was trying to get.

I started off by doing crunches and pushups at home. The only piece of equipment that I had was the perfect pushup bars. I did both fanatically every night until I reached a plateau in their effectiveness, which took me about a month. A friend advised me to do some cardio to help develop my abs so I bought a jump rope and started doing that for about 30 minutes to an hour everyday. Soon after that I started noticing much better definition in my abs.

After working out everyday for a little over a month, I started to gradually change my eating habits. I started eating smaller meals and I didn't put fixed times on when I would eat. I eat when I'm hungry now, but I never eat until I'm full. I just try to maintain a happy stomach all the time.

After 2 months, I started hitting the gym with my friends. I use their guest passes or end up just paying the fee for a guess pass. It's so much better when you can work out with someone. I hate going to the gym alone and find much more motivation to push myself beyond my limits when with someone.

Over these last 4 months, I've lost 20+ pounds and downsized from a 34 to 32 waist. Before this time period, I hadn't worked out in a decade. I feel much more confident in my appearance and in general. For me, the key was making some form of exercise a part of my daily routine, and you just keep building from there.

I've wondered about WW as well. I have a friend who does the nutri system diet and he really likes it. I was thinking about trying that.

Wish I could say loosing weigt is easy. I have a really hard time loosing weight.

Losing weight isn't rocket science. Eat meats/fish and vegetables and very little bread and grain. Cut out alcohol, soft drinks and other sugary treats while you try to lose weight.

I don't buy into the carbs are evil stuff - but breads and rice (etc.) are high-calorie for a given amount. A cup of broccoli is like 50 calories, a cup of white rice is over 250 I think.

That's all it is. Stick to vegetables and proteins and you'll lose weight. That's why paleo diets work well (IMO) - you'd make yourself sick on broccoli and spinach before you could overeat (calorie-wise).

I went from
150 sophmore year high school
200 senior year high school
220 Junior Year College
155 Senior Year College
210 Graduated College
195 Right now

It has been all portion control. I am dropping weight pretty quickly right now. Also, finding fun stuff to exersize doing is great. For me, it is tennis, soccer, and disc golf. I played disc golf almost every day after work. Tennis 3 times a week. I joined an adult soccer league. Pound shed off me. The 15 lb drop has been mostly due to portion control - I havent started exersizing yet...

Originally Posted by ayesha

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you must have discipline....

Wrong.

The only thing I must have is chocolate!

Not surprisingly, within two months of cutting out booze from my life - completely ... dropped about 14 pounds of body fat

I even went to a few AA meetings in the beginning, but I figured out that "I wasn't powerless over alcohol" as they required you to state, and figured out it was just a matter of my personal willpower.

Short of going to a meeting, I found reading what they call their "Big Book" was pretty interesting.
(Found a (legal) free copy online here: http://sobermd.blogspot.com/2009/07/...anonymous.html )

Avoid the entire middle section of the supermarket - where the pretzels, goldfish, cookies, ice cream, pizza, tv dinners, pasta, etc are. Eat the stuff you find in the periphery - fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy. And drink plain water.

It's awesome hearing people's stories. It pumps me up and helps keep ME motivated. Thanks for the props too everyone.

Originally Posted by BP348

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I've wondered about WW as well. I have a friend who does the nutri system diet and he really likes it. I was thinking about trying that.

Wish I could say loosing weigt is easy. I have a really hard time loosing weight.

If you're wondering about WW, give it a try. It's not expensive and it's super easy. I like that I can do it all online and I don't have to go to meetings, but maybe that'd help light a fire for you? IMO losing weight, like these guys said, is not hard. They're right. Eat right, excercise and it'll happen. Getting the motivation and desire to do these things, not so easy. For me, not wanting to be a fat dad was enough. Find some reason, be it women, clothes, health, etc, to get in shape and think about that whenever you start to slip. Keep the stories coming guys!

One thing to add to all this advice is to avoid anything processed and white.

No white sugar, use Stevia. No white rice, use brown. No white flour, use whole wheat or Spelt. No corn syrup. No soy products.

The reason that people originally took the bran off of rice and wheat was that they noticed the bugs wouldn't eat the foodstuffs that were stripped of bran. Bugs wouldn't eat them because they're almost devoid of nutrients.

The bran on grains helps to slow down the digestion and release less of the sugars in carbs. When you eat white grains, it has almost same effect as eating table sugar.

Eat lots of raw, unprocessed fruits and vegetables and ocean-caught fish -- and a small amount of free-range, grass-grazing meats and poultry. Avoid any corn-fed animal products.

Keep your portions small and low on the Glycemic Index. Eat smaller, more frequent meals of unprocessed -- ideally raw -- foods and you will lose weight.

Originally Posted by FlaneurNYC

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The reason that people originally took the bran off of rice and wheat was that they noticed the bugs wouldn't eat the foodstuffs that were stripped of bran. Bugs wouldn't eat them because they're almost devoid of nutrients.

They took the bran off because it extends the shelf life. Brown rice is more apt to go rancid because of the oils it contains. Bugs eat plenty of things that are devoid of nutrients other then carbohydrates (i.e. sugar).

Great success stories here! Congrats and keep up the good work.

Originally Posted by Gradstudent78

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They took the bran off because it extends the shelf life. Brown rice is more apt to go rancid because of the oils it contains. Bugs eat plenty of things that are devoid of nutrients other then carbohydrates (i.e. sugar).
Well, that's the story according to Fedon Alexander Lindberg, M.D., author of Eating the Greek Way. I became curious so did a Google search and found this: "Over 100 years ago the germ and bran were first removed from wheat to make white flour. It was discovered that it was much more profitable than that ground from the whole grain. It would not spoil. It could set on the shelf and bugs wouldn’t bother it. However, processing the bran and germ out of the grain was an expensive process at that time. Only the well-to-do could afford to buy white flour and it became a status symbol to eat pure white bread." http://www.thesuntimes.com/homepage/...-it-used-to-be And this from Michael Pollan: "Pollan: Well, what happens is, when you -- there was a key invention around the 1860s, which is we developed these steel rollers and porcelain rollers that could grind wheat and corn and other grains really fine and eliminate the germ and the bran. And the reason we wanted to do that was we loved it as white as possible. It would last longer. The rats had less interest in it, because it had less nutrients in it. And also you get a kind of a real strong hit of glucose. I mean, basically it digests much quicker, as soon as it hits the tongue. I mean, everyone has -- you know, if you've ever tasted Wonder Bread, you know how sweet it is. The reason it's sweet is it's so highly refined that as soon as your saliva hits it, it turns to sugar. Whole grains have a whole lot of other nutrients. You know, it once was possible to live by bread alone, because a whole grain loaf of bread has all sorts of other nutrients. It has omega-3s, it has, you know, lots of B vitamins. And we remove those when we refine grain. And it's kind of odd and maladaptive that refined grain should be so prestigious since it's so unhealthy. But we've always liked it, and one of the reasons is it stores longer." http://www.alternet.org/healthwellne...7/?page=entire It appears to be a little of both.

For those who've lost at least 30 pounds (1 or 2 sizes), are there any side effects? Like loose skin, or whatever?

I'm about 35 lb below my maximum weight (down three or four inches in both chest and waist), with no side effects. Both the gain and the loss were fairly slow (gained over several years, lost over about one year).

No side effects for me, but like the above poster I lost the weight over an extended period of time. I don't know how much difference age makes, but I'm sure being in my twenties doesn't hurt.