3 simple things

I have lost most of my extra body fat (my stored food) doing simple things (note, I didn't say EASY things, just simple things).

Three simple things:

1. I don't eat all the time

2. I don't drink my calories

3. I don't eat foods that can be quickly converted to simple sugars.

Lets have a quick chat about each point.

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1. I don't eat all the time

Not eating all the time simply means that I don't graze anymore. Reflecting back, my most significant period of weight gain came during one of my previous full-time jobs at a software company that had a fully stocked kitchen. After having a breakfast at home, I found I would often grab a small snack between meetings (and as a Manager I sat in ALOT of meetings). A small bowl of yogurt covered peanuts, maybe a handful of chips. Then my co-worker and I often would head out to a restaurant lunch and then headed back into the office to sit in more meetings or working in front of my computer. Then I would come home and have some dinner and after dinner maybe have a drink and some salty/sweet snack. So, the normal life that many of us experience allowed me to store approximately 30 pounds of spare energy in my body as fat.

Now, to keep it real for me, 30 extra pounds of body fat (13.5 kilograms) meant that I had enough food stored on my body so that if I didn't eat at all, for like 42 days, I would just be getting into the zone for a healthy body weight. (quick math = 3500 calories per pound * 30 pounds = 105,000 stored calories then divided by 2500 calories a day means that I could have not eaten for 42 days and I would just be getting into the normal weight range of 136-172 pounds for my height ).

Intermittent (occurring at irregular intervals; not continuous or steady.) Fasting simply means don't eat all the time. Now, I mostly eat from noon to 8 pm. I don't eat Breakfast. I have a lunch that is satisfying (egg-cheese-meat Omlette). As a rule I don't snack, but if I feel I must, it is on a Costco protein bar (to me they are like candy bars - 1 or 2 a week). For dinner I either eat what my family is eating (especially if I didn't eat lunch) or I make another protein dense (low carb) meal. You can call this way of eating, "two meals a day", or "OMAD - one meal a day" or "intermittent fasting", but to me the important part of the experiment was to learn how to feel hunger again and then to feed that hunger with what the body needs.

2. I don't drink my calories

One thing that helped me to lose weight was to stop drinking Alcohol for a while. I did a 1 month experiment to not drink any booze to see how it affected my weight-loss and mood. After that month, when I decided to drink again I discovered something interesting. My previous cravings for a drink (or two) of alcohol (beer, wine, scotch) were mostly gone and still remain gone nearly eight months later making it easier to not drink (and store) my calories.

I also stopped drinking my daily coffee(s) with any kind of sugar and/or cream products. I used to be a frequent visitor to Starbucks. My favorite large Whole milk latte has almost the same calorie count (200 calories per tall) as a KitKat bar. As well as saving $5 dollars a day, I am not drinking something that does little to stop my hunger anyways (and didn't give me that much pleasure).

3. I don't eat foods that will be quickly broken down by the body into simple sugars (and then rapidly into body fat).

When I decided to lose weight, I looked at all the different approaches that have worked for others. There are many strategies/methods that one can use to reduce the amount of food they are eating (diet changes) or to increase the amount of food they are using (exercise).

One thing that I had not really considered before was how the food I was consuming was actually being converted by the body into useful fuel (and excess fuel stored in fat cells). I knew that if I ate too much food, my body conveniently stored it for later but not the mechanism. Learning about those mechanisms, I finally began to understand how different types of foods (and drinks) affected how (and the rate at which) my body was processing the foods that I was eating.

This is when I generally stopped eating foods with added sugars and reduced my intake of simple carbohydrates like breads, grains, rice, and cereals (and alcohol).

As a result of those two changes, I have lost much of the excess weight that I was storing.

Now, I still like eating (and drinking). The difference seems to be that I am the one making the choices (and not the foods compelling me to eat them). If I am going to go out to a restaurant with friends I can still eat whatever I want. I might just choose to do OMAD (one meal that day) and have all my calories for the day in that one meal. The beauty of eating lower carbohydrate meals is that I don't have the hunger cravings that would have made the decision to not eat difficult.

So, in summary, those are three simple (not easy) things that I have done to improve my life.