Phil's Excellent Weight Loss Adventure

I'm on a little adventure to permanently lose something like 30% of my body weight. As I started down this path, I repeatedly ran into nuggets of information and wisdom that I have found useful. And, I also have a few people that are interested in my progress. So, it seemed reasonable to create a simple blog.

Right Now...
Wednesday, February 25 - Well, the fast weight is gone and I have been in the 336-338 range for the last couple of weeks... 336 today though, and with some opportunity to get out and, yes, move more snow. I had a pig-out day on Sunday, pizza, extra cheese, and lots of it. Probably put me back a pound, and while it's not something to beat myself up about, it is worth thought.
Note: There was no entry for last week, too busy!

Past 'Right Now...' articles, click here

Introduction, Background, General Thought
See Your Doctor First
    What Made Me Start the Diet?
    How Fat am I?
    Salt, Water, and Weight (coming soon)

Tactics

Tip #1 - Are You Ready to Lose Weight?
Tip #2 - Sustainable Changes Only
Tip #3 - Don't Skip Meals

This is intended to be a chronicle of my weight loss. I offer tips and ideas that worked for me, but they may not work for you. You should definitely discuss any advice or weight loss program with your doctor.

What Made Me Start the Diet?

If you know me, you know that over-eating is not the first habit I have had to break. And, people usually experience some semi-dramatic event to get serious about a change. In my case, there was no single moment that made up my mind. It was something I wanted and had been meaning to do (like I was about quitting smoking).

I can say this: I was putting on more weight after I quit smoking. At the worst, I was up about 20 pounds from a year ago. For this, I have no rational explanation. It may be that smoking was doing something with my metabolism, I have no idea. I did coincidently change from a service job to a desk job, but my service job was not that active by comparison.

If there was a single trigger, though, it was that a mild sleep apnea recently turned more serious. I was waking up gasping for breath and afraid to go back to sleep. So, I guess that might be what motivated me.

How Fat am I?

At my peak weight, right around the start of the year, I was 360 pounds. That's a size 50 waist, and 3XL is a fair fit but a little snug. I will be adding a weight log shortly, but as of Jan 21, when I started this blog, I was down to 343. Pictures? No, not just yet. I do have 'before' pictures taken of the great mass, but I'm waiting for a good 'after' moment before I reveal all.

Salt, Water, and Weight
The body is designed to regulate the percentage of salt or salinity in the human body. There are many reasons we need a specific salinity (I will leave it to the reader to explore these reasons) but, the point is, the body is going to do it's very best to keep it steady. One very obvious thing it does is to make us thirsty if we have too much salt. Likewise, we get cravings for salty food if the salt gets too low.

The body's systems seem to be optimized for a world where salt is scarce. The kidneys have a unique osmosis mechanism that actually removes fluid from the bloodstream but leaves the salt. Unfortunately, we now have salt everywhere; it is used universally as a flavor enhancer and as a preservative. So we always have plenty of salt in our bodies. But, what happens if we get too much salt? We crave water. We must maintain the salt balance and if we have too much salt, we then must add extra water to balance it. This leads to retained water in tissues, and the bloodstream and ultimately, high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is a serious condition, and should be attended to. But, it is not the topic of this article; This article is about salt and bodily weight.

Tip #1 - Are You Ready to Lose Weight?

Most people, myself especially, are not very successful at something unless we are passionate and absolute about accomplishing it. And, it often (but not always) requires some major trigger to get things rolling.

The trigger for me, as I said above, was when the sleep apnea got scary. I experienced hundreds of other triggers and I cannot say why this one actually took. It was certainly something that I experienced rather than heard from a doctor or loved one, so that made it bigger. And it was scary rather than annoying.

There is also a commitment involved, and sacrifice. In order to pull this off, you will occasionally feel hungry. You will need to learn to ignore that feeling. I am not on a starvation diet, but it is a diet of reduced calories, fat and primarily, food volume. If you eat less than you usually do, you will feel hungry between meals, and you have to get over that. The good news is that the hunger pangs don't last that long and I assure you, you can distract yourself out of them. Not long into my diet, I began associating hunger cravings in a positive way. If I am feeling hungry, I am losing weight! To be clear, this is not a starvation diet. Starvation diets are BAD. I'm just talking about a diet that meets the standard daily values for human nutrition (2,000 calorie/day, correct servings for the food groups).

Tip #2 - Sustainable Changes Only
Chances are you have been through a few diets already. You have probably lost weight in the past only to put it right back on. Why does that happen? It happens because we try and use temporary actions and products to produce a permanent change, and things just don't work that way.

For example: If I were to eat a 'nutrition' bar that supposedly kept you from getting hungry, great! Well, so long as you are willing to eat the nutrition bar, and so long as it worked, and so long as you wanted to spend the premium on such a product. At some point, we inevitably would stop eating the nutrition bar and the hunger would come back, and eventually, the weight. (This may be a bad example, I don't know if those bars even do anything!)

On the other hand, you might find that you change that is almost transparent. I drink Cherry Kool-Aid, and switched from the sugar based formula to the sugar free formula, basically eliminating any calories. To me, it tastes the same, and this is something I can easily live with for the rest of my life!

The most important example I can think of is this: We are over-portioned in America. We are served more food, simply by volume, than we should eat. A very simple first step of a diet is to eat a little less. Eat a little more slowly. If you have an issue with leaving food on your plate, then that is something you will need to get past. We are generally served more food than is healthy for us. Can you eat 10% less? Of course you can. You can do it for the rest of your life.

Tip #3 - Don't Skip Meals
This is a strange one. I used to skip breakfast all the time. Then, a couple of years ago, decided to start eating breakfast again. I set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier and I started eating a bowl of cereal. Nothing else changed. I did the same sort of work during the day, I ate the same kind and amounts of food for lunch and dinner, same snacks. Everything was the same except I ate breakfast. Doing so, I lost 15 pounds over 2 months. I leveled off there and for some reason, ended up skipping breakfast again. I put the 15 pounds right back on. Do you know why this is? I don't. For the moment, I am guessing that there is something about getting digestion started in the morning and maybe something about glucose. Completely guessing. If you know, please tell me!