Weight Loss
You know, for some reason I had it in my head that I wasn't going to be another of those Americans that struggled with weight loss and try five million diets on and off again. But, unfortunately, I became that person in the last five years.
What diets have I tried? Lets take a look.
The High School Diet
This diet/lifestyle of eating/exercise involved gym class every other day, being involved in sports during the school year and running around outside, riding bicycles, swimming, etc during the summer. I ate mostly healthy food homecooked by Dad but ate cookies, candies, chocolates, chips, and whatever else I wanted without consequence. I weighed myself once in a while but for the most part didn't care. The highest I weighed was 165 after gaining 10lb from joining cross country, a healthy weight for my height and frame. This diet ended once I started college.
The College Diet
This diet/lifestyle consisted of eating worse than I ever did with lots of pizza, greasy chinese food, pints of ice cream, cookie dough, and many other forms of junk food. Sometimes I would eat something healthy from the cafeteria or my own sparse cooking. My exercise pretty much consisted of all the walking I did around campus getting to classes and walking bath and forth from my apartment or dorm, although I would infrequently visit the gym.
The Slim Fast Diet
Yep, I tried this one. The college diet made me gain 40lb over four years and when I hit 205 in Spring 2004 I decided it was time to do something. Slim fast was basically a starvation diet. You were supposed to drink a 180 calorie drink for breakfast, lunch, have a healthy dinner and a couple healthy snacks. I don't remember doing much exercise. I did lose weight on this diet (for the month or two I was on it), but only for a while, and I was starving all the time.
The Personal Trainer & Eat Healthy Diet
In May, I had lost like 8lbs and decided to join a gym, and when I did, got talked in getting a personal trainer(PT). It wasn't a bad thing. The first thing he had me do was get off the Slim Fast diet and go to more of a eat healthy diet - more grains, vegetables, fruits, etc, no white carbs. I actually gained a couple pounds before going back down because my metabolism had slowed down so much from my body going into starvation mode on the Slim Fast diet. Exercise wise, I started working out 5-6 days a week for an hour or more per day, with two of those days being PT sessions. Oh, PT was painful. I learned all about lunges, squats, bicep curls, triceps kickbacks and on and on. I also learned all about body fat percentage and using that as a goal instead of weight. It was a good experience that lasted for five weeks. I started a Weight Loss Journal around this time.
The Eat More Weigh Less Diet
I started this one after I stopped training with my PT. It was based off a book I read about how the body only really needed 10% of calories from fat, not the typical 20-30%. Between this and continuing to work out six days a week, I lost more weight - but the recipes tasted like crap and involved me cooking more frequently. This diet did not last long.
The 50-60% Carbs/20-30% Protein/20% Fat Diet
This started after the last diet. I think I was probably only working out 3-5 days a week or less at this point. I believe I got the original idea from this diet from this body sculpting book and its also similar to The Zone diet. Between this diet and more or less consistant exercise, I went down to weighing 180 or so in the Fall of 2004. I tried sticking to this one, but it was hard to find the time to exercise for 6 hours a week and keep to an extremely restriced diet where I counted every calorie while also balancing my boyfriend at the time, all my schoolwork, and two part-time jobs.
Post-college Diet
After college ended, I gained about 10lb in one or two months from sitting on my ass all day, rarely going to the gym, eating whatever and not having the walking to class exercise anymore. I would occasionally go to the gym for a week or two, then drop off again. I would try to eat the 50-60/20-30/20 diet, but it was too hard to keep up and I started to hate the time it took to count calories. In the three years since college I went back up from around 185 when I graduated to 232 a few weeks ago, with numerous attempts to start back again.
Some of the important things I've learned
Recommitted to weight loss
With all that said, about a month ago I decided to get back on the weight loss bandwagon again, in a serious way, taking into account what I had done before, things I learned were good, and things I learned were bad. I started out very slowly. I asked myself to try and work out on days after work when I was home and didn't do anything else. I could do 30mins on the elliptical, 1 hour walking on the treadmill, or an hour with one of my now plentiful exercise DVDs. The first week I did two days. The second week I did one day. The third week I three days. The most important thing to me was that I was trying, and I was doing something, and that just because one week I only did one day was not reason to give up.
Picking a diet
After the third week of making progress with exercise, I saw a Weight Watchers(TM) commercial on TV. I knew the other key component to weight loss was going to be diet and it was time to figure that out. So I checked them out. I decided WW wasn't for me - the accountability part was good, but I would be paying around $12 a week just for someone to weigh me and have a meeting? At least for my gym membership I could use machines! And that plan didn't include any food. I knew I hated counting calories and I didn't want to do that. I knew that I rarely cook - about twice a month at that point. I knew I wasn't going to do a starvation diet like Slimfast again. I remembered a commercial for eDiets.com and checked them out. I was excited to find out they had meals for about $17 a day. I did some research online and found this article on epicurious.com that recommended it as tasty enough and less expensive than other options.
The cost was worth it for me so I went for it. I might even be saving money by not ordering take-out all the time and eating in nice restaurants. I'm on my second week of diet food, and so far its not bad. Most of the food is a bit bland, but I can deal with that. I give myself one day a week to go crazy on the delicious food I can't have, then back to the diet. For example, Sunday I had a big meal at IHOP, got ice cream at Ritas and a small bag of potato chips - tasty.
eDiets Forums & Challenges
Getting the food on eDiets also let me access their website, including forums and such. Some of the forums have challenges where you join a team and try to beat the other teams. This is great for my competitive spirit, so I joined a team called SWAT (Strong Women Achieving goals Together) in an Ultimate challenge. Basically, you set goals to exercise at least 450 minutes in 3 weeks and lose 3 or more pounds in three weeks. The team that best acheives the goals gets bragging rights, etc, although apparently they used to get actual free membership time types of rewards. I was too late in the 3-4 week challenge to join officially, but I've been checking in and chatting with everyone that past couple of weeks. It's very motivating.
Progress so far
In the past two weeks I lost 4lbs exercising five-six days a week (with two weight training sessions) for only 30-45min in the comfort of my home and sticking to my delivered, easy diet food. The most important thing is that it's not hard and doesn't require me to to sacrifice a lot of time. Even my exercising - like on the treadmill at home - can be done while watching TV or reading a book. I used to plan all my strength training exercises out in extreme detail, but not I'm just following along to a couple of of strength training DVDs. The workout is not as good, but it's so much easier and will keep me from giving up from it being too hard. The food is delivered to my backdoor and I unpack it and arrange in my refrigerator, after which there is nothing to be done but heat it up in the microwave for 2 minutes. I did also go shopping for the "supplemental" food of fruits and dairies, which was not hard now that I have a car, and I'm going to stop by traders joes on my way home today for a few more fruits. Again, not taking up much time.
If I lose two pounds a week, I will be at my goal body fat percentage of %15 (272lb) in 28 weeks - around December. That will feel really good, and then it's time for a dream trip to somewhere tropical in a bikini. :)
What diets have I tried? Lets take a look.
The High School Diet
This diet/lifestyle of eating/exercise involved gym class every other day, being involved in sports during the school year and running around outside, riding bicycles, swimming, etc during the summer. I ate mostly healthy food homecooked by Dad but ate cookies, candies, chocolates, chips, and whatever else I wanted without consequence. I weighed myself once in a while but for the most part didn't care. The highest I weighed was 165 after gaining 10lb from joining cross country, a healthy weight for my height and frame. This diet ended once I started college.
The College Diet
This diet/lifestyle consisted of eating worse than I ever did with lots of pizza, greasy chinese food, pints of ice cream, cookie dough, and many other forms of junk food. Sometimes I would eat something healthy from the cafeteria or my own sparse cooking. My exercise pretty much consisted of all the walking I did around campus getting to classes and walking bath and forth from my apartment or dorm, although I would infrequently visit the gym.
The Slim Fast Diet
Yep, I tried this one. The college diet made me gain 40lb over four years and when I hit 205 in Spring 2004 I decided it was time to do something. Slim fast was basically a starvation diet. You were supposed to drink a 180 calorie drink for breakfast, lunch, have a healthy dinner and a couple healthy snacks. I don't remember doing much exercise. I did lose weight on this diet (for the month or two I was on it), but only for a while, and I was starving all the time.
The Personal Trainer & Eat Healthy Diet
In May, I had lost like 8lbs and decided to join a gym, and when I did, got talked in getting a personal trainer(PT). It wasn't a bad thing. The first thing he had me do was get off the Slim Fast diet and go to more of a eat healthy diet - more grains, vegetables, fruits, etc, no white carbs. I actually gained a couple pounds before going back down because my metabolism had slowed down so much from my body going into starvation mode on the Slim Fast diet. Exercise wise, I started working out 5-6 days a week for an hour or more per day, with two of those days being PT sessions. Oh, PT was painful. I learned all about lunges, squats, bicep curls, triceps kickbacks and on and on. I also learned all about body fat percentage and using that as a goal instead of weight. It was a good experience that lasted for five weeks. I started a Weight Loss Journal around this time.
The Eat More Weigh Less Diet
I started this one after I stopped training with my PT. It was based off a book I read about how the body only really needed 10% of calories from fat, not the typical 20-30%. Between this and continuing to work out six days a week, I lost more weight - but the recipes tasted like crap and involved me cooking more frequently. This diet did not last long.
The 50-60% Carbs/20-30% Protein/20% Fat Diet
This started after the last diet. I think I was probably only working out 3-5 days a week or less at this point. I believe I got the original idea from this diet from this body sculpting book and its also similar to The Zone diet. Between this diet and more or less consistant exercise, I went down to weighing 180 or so in the Fall of 2004. I tried sticking to this one, but it was hard to find the time to exercise for 6 hours a week and keep to an extremely restriced diet where I counted every calorie while also balancing my boyfriend at the time, all my schoolwork, and two part-time jobs.
Post-college Diet
After college ended, I gained about 10lb in one or two months from sitting on my ass all day, rarely going to the gym, eating whatever and not having the walking to class exercise anymore. I would occasionally go to the gym for a week or two, then drop off again. I would try to eat the 50-60/20-30/20 diet, but it was too hard to keep up and I started to hate the time it took to count calories. In the three years since college I went back up from around 185 when I graduated to 232 a few weeks ago, with numerous attempts to start back again.
Some of the important things I've learned
- Strict diets are no good. Counting every single calorie and trying to specifically do a percentage of carbs/protein/fat is no good. If I were at 15% bodyfat and trying to lose to get 14% bodyfat for some strange reason, it might be appropriate, but for general weight loss its overkill and ultimately leads to failure when it causes you to fall off the diet bandwagon altogether.
- Strength training is a good and necessary part of weight loss. A pound of muscle is smaller than a pound of fat, so you can look smaller and fit into smaller jeans at the same weight. A pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat - so the more muscles you have, the higher your metabolism, the faster/easier you lose weight. I also know that I will not turn into a hulking bodybuilder with weight training unless I'm specifically trying to do that and designing workouts for that. Weight training simply helps tone and trim.
- BMI is a bad way to determine what your weight should be, and even the weight on a scale is not the best thing to measure yourself to. Instead you should focus on what your bodyfat fat percentage is. Women should never go below 12% bodyfat as menstruation stops at that point, and a good/healthy bodyfat percentage to have is 15%-20%. My current goal of 15% bodyfat puts me around 172lb, even though the BMI for my height says I should be a max of 169lb.
- Being good on your diet 100% of the time does not work. If you don't allow yourself to ever have some of your favorite vices, you are very likely to fall off the diet bandwagon all together when you finally can't stop yourself anymore from inhaling the brownie. For me personally, I prefer a full day where I can eat whatever I want while sticking to a diet the rest of the week rather than letting myself have small portions of bad things more frequently. Its too easy for me to lose track when I just let myself have a little bit here and there - it turns into a lot. Also, having one day of a lot of calories also helps reset your body a bit - lets it know that just because you've reduced your general calorie intake does not mean you're starving and there is no need to start storing more fat in retaliation. You should never go below 1200 calories for women and 1500 calories for men; those are starvation diets.
- Committing to 6+ hours a week of exercise for an hour or more a session was too much of a committment for me. I tend to keep myself very busy with a multitude of projects and interests at any given time, and for most of the time weight loss didn't make it high enough on my list of priorities to sacrifice time on other things to it.
- Along the same lines, I know that I hate working out in a gym. It takes extra time to commute to the gym, get changed in a locker room feeling uncomfortable with my body, wait in line for a treadmill, elliptical, the row machine, the biceps machine, etc, again feeling self-conscious. The gyms I belonged to contained people that were mostly already in shape and I felt out of place. So for me, a home gym works better even though it is more costly to get some of the same equipment you'll find in a gym.
- Options are important, both for food and exercise. If I eat one kind of thing, and do just one kind of exercise, I'm more likely to get bored and lose interest.
- Long term planning and thinking is key. Lets say you do everything right, you lose that 25lb...then what? You don't just stop exercising and stop eating healthy, because you'll gain it all back faster than you lost it. So weight loss must be about changing your lifestyle permanantly. Going slowly and changing one thing at a time is a better way to go about things. It takes longer in the short run, but it keeps you healthier for a much longer period of time.
- Motivation is very important. Motivation is what puts weight loss at a higher priority over other things in your life. You have to figure out what your reasons are to lose weight, and revisit them on a daily or weekly basis to keep you going. Does your weight keep you from doing things you used to love to do? Do you want to be a good role model for your children? Do you want to look hot in a bikini again and take a once in a lifetime trip to Hawaii to show off your bikini body on the beach? Are you in pain because of too much weight? Is your life expectancy threatened in a very real way to you? Do you want to feel more attractive before dating again? There are so many reasons, but you have to find the most important drivers for yourself to hold onto and keep you going.
Recommitted to weight loss
With all that said, about a month ago I decided to get back on the weight loss bandwagon again, in a serious way, taking into account what I had done before, things I learned were good, and things I learned were bad. I started out very slowly. I asked myself to try and work out on days after work when I was home and didn't do anything else. I could do 30mins on the elliptical, 1 hour walking on the treadmill, or an hour with one of my now plentiful exercise DVDs. The first week I did two days. The second week I did one day. The third week I three days. The most important thing to me was that I was trying, and I was doing something, and that just because one week I only did one day was not reason to give up.
Picking a diet
After the third week of making progress with exercise, I saw a Weight Watchers(TM) commercial on TV. I knew the other key component to weight loss was going to be diet and it was time to figure that out. So I checked them out. I decided WW wasn't for me - the accountability part was good, but I would be paying around $12 a week just for someone to weigh me and have a meeting? At least for my gym membership I could use machines! And that plan didn't include any food. I knew I hated counting calories and I didn't want to do that. I knew that I rarely cook - about twice a month at that point. I knew I wasn't going to do a starvation diet like Slimfast again. I remembered a commercial for eDiets.com and checked them out. I was excited to find out they had meals for about $17 a day. I did some research online and found this article on epicurious.com that recommended it as tasty enough and less expensive than other options.
The cost was worth it for me so I went for it. I might even be saving money by not ordering take-out all the time and eating in nice restaurants. I'm on my second week of diet food, and so far its not bad. Most of the food is a bit bland, but I can deal with that. I give myself one day a week to go crazy on the delicious food I can't have, then back to the diet. For example, Sunday I had a big meal at IHOP, got ice cream at Ritas and a small bag of potato chips - tasty.
eDiets Forums & Challenges
Getting the food on eDiets also let me access their website, including forums and such. Some of the forums have challenges where you join a team and try to beat the other teams. This is great for my competitive spirit, so I joined a team called SWAT (Strong Women Achieving goals Together) in an Ultimate challenge. Basically, you set goals to exercise at least 450 minutes in 3 weeks and lose 3 or more pounds in three weeks. The team that best acheives the goals gets bragging rights, etc, although apparently they used to get actual free membership time types of rewards. I was too late in the 3-4 week challenge to join officially, but I've been checking in and chatting with everyone that past couple of weeks. It's very motivating.
Progress so far
In the past two weeks I lost 4lbs exercising five-six days a week (with two weight training sessions) for only 30-45min in the comfort of my home and sticking to my delivered, easy diet food. The most important thing is that it's not hard and doesn't require me to to sacrifice a lot of time. Even my exercising - like on the treadmill at home - can be done while watching TV or reading a book. I used to plan all my strength training exercises out in extreme detail, but not I'm just following along to a couple of of strength training DVDs. The workout is not as good, but it's so much easier and will keep me from giving up from it being too hard. The food is delivered to my backdoor and I unpack it and arrange in my refrigerator, after which there is nothing to be done but heat it up in the microwave for 2 minutes. I did also go shopping for the "supplemental" food of fruits and dairies, which was not hard now that I have a car, and I'm going to stop by traders joes on my way home today for a few more fruits. Again, not taking up much time.
If I lose two pounds a week, I will be at my goal body fat percentage of %15 (272lb) in 28 weeks - around December. That will feel really good, and then it's time for a dream trip to somewhere tropical in a bikini. :)