Over about four months in the summer of 2001 I lost 35 pounds (I'm 5'10" and went from 185 pounds to 150 pounds). This web page is an explanation of how I did this, in the hopes that helps others who are interested in losing weight. Now, I am not a doctor (I'm a computer programmer) so what I'm saying could be complete garbage. Use this info at your own risk.
The first real key is willpower. I know, I know, you thought it was going to be easy. You have to decide that losing weight is more important to you than feeling hungry every so often. I don't think there are any miracle diets or secret formulas, just simple healthy living.
One of the first things I did was cut out drinking Coke. I used to drink at least 2-3 Cokes a day, possibly more. Each regular Coke is about 150 calories. Now when you consider that a pound is equal to about 3500 calories, you realize that a case of 24 Cokes is equal to a pound. If you just skipped buying a case of Coke and drank water instead, then you'd be a pound lighter, all other things being equal. When you also consider that the typical fruit juice, such as orange juice or grapefruit juice is about 150 calories as well, you can really start to see how things add up. Sure, orange juice is "good for you" because it has vitamins in it, but it is still calories. This leads me to one of my major recommendations: TRY TO GET ZERO CALORIES A DAY FROM DRINKS. This may sound a bit draconian but it's a very easy way to reduce your calorie intake. Just drink water, diet soda (if you can stand it, personally I hate the taste of the stuff and never drink it), decaf coffee and that's about it.
On the topic of coffee, it's probably pretty bad for you, all things considered. First of all it's a diuretic, which means that it messes up the way your body processes water. Second of all caffeine is pretty addictive and if you're like I was, you get headaches when you stop drinking it. I know you need your caffeine buzz when you get into work in the morning just stay awake, but try going without it for a week. You'll probably find you're a lot clearer-headed and that you don't need it as much as you thought you did (Note to self, sell SBUX shares ;) ). The big picture here though, is your body needs water in order to metabolize food optimally. Caffeine messes this up. Therefore you want to drink a lot of water every day. Try for 8 glasses a day. This is my next major recommendation: DRINK LOTS OF WATER.
Now on to the topic of food. I had gotten into a cycle of eating unhealthy food. At university I drank pretty much exclusively coffee and Coke, and ate the usual hamburgers, fries, pizza, poutine, etc. This pattern pretty much carried over, as I started work in the "real world". When I started my diet, I decided to simply stop going to all the fast food chains, such as McDonald's, KFC, Harvey's, Burger King, Dairy Queen, etc. As a matter of fact I haven't been to any of these in 7 months, as I write this. I admit, I craved them a little at first, but once you build up some momentum, it encourages you to keep your streak alive. This is my next recommendation: NO FAST FOOD. If you stop by Subway once every so often, you probably won't fall off the diet wagon, but no chips, cookies, or pop while you're there.
Eating out in restaurants is pretty hard when you're on a diet. First of all, it always looks cheap ordering water, but do it anyway. Don't get an appetizer, and don't even think about dessert. I usually just go with a sandwich and a house salad. The idea here is to limit the damage, since it often seems that everything at restaurants is calorie-laden. The most important thing of all, however, is NO FRENCH FRIES. I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that french fries are the number one cause of people being overweight in North America. Fast food fries are probably 500 calories, and I wouldn't be too surprised if the average large plate of fries at a restaurant is at least 3 times that.
The next point probably seems self-contradictory, but bear with me. BE AWARE OF "POINTS"/CALORIES BUT DON'T COUNT THEM. A lot of weight loss programs have point systems or calorie limits that you are not supposed to exceed on a given day. These are all well and good, except to my mind, they are simply too much of a hassle to follow. If you go to a restaurant, how do you know how many calories are in a baked octopus leg with parsley, anyway? I know there are lots of web sites with calorie values and nutritional information, but I did not want to become obsessed with counting, because I think it promotes feeling like a failure if you don't keep to your totals on a given day. It's more important to change your basic eating habits, rather than to be worried about if you're over your total for the day.
Still on the topic of changing your basic eating habits, you will probably have to CHANGE YOUR DEFAULT MEALS. If you're overweight, it's very likely that you will have one or more regular meals that is very high in calories. By "default meal", I mean a meal that you find yourself eating 5 days a week. Are you eating bacon and fried eggs every day? Do you have a burger and fries 3 times a week? Do you buy a bag of potato chips a week? These are the kinds of things you are going to have to modify. Try going for a salad or a pita at lunch, or just going with cereal or toast for breakfast.
It's hard to think of things this way when you're dieting sometimes, but FOOD IS NOT GOOD OR BAD. It's just something that you need to give you energy every day. Don't think of ice cream as a reward, or salad as a punishment. It just isn't like that. Do not give yourself a "reward" for following a diet for a week. You need to be changing the way you think about food in general, and seeing high-calorie food as a reward is definitely part of the problem.
I realize for people who are very overweight, exercise can be difficult. That being said, GET SOME EXERCISE! I think lowering food intake is definitely more important than getting exercise, but it's still important to get some activity every so often. Even going for a long walk three times a week has benefits. Try doing a search on the Internet for calories burned while exercising. You will find that a lot of the numbers seem really low. "I ran three straight 9-minute miles and I only burned 393 calories???" I know, it doesn't exactly seem fair. Just remember that you burn around 2000 calories a day just living (this is your "Basal Metabolic Rate" -- try a search on the web for more information on this concept, or to calculate your own BMR). If you are serious about exercising, you might want to try using a stationary bike. These are low-impact (unlike running) and you can watch TV and burn off a few hundred calories a day.
Snacking is a definite no-no for dieters. You can easily go through a quarter to a third of your usual daily food intake by eating chips or a chocolate bar. The simplest, although admittedly not the easiest technique is just to not allow yourself any snacks, on principle. Stick to three meals a day, plus lots of water. Let me summarize: NO SNACKS.
It's important to WEIGH YOURSELF ONCE A WEEK ONLY, because one's weight fluctuates a lot. If you're drinking 8 glasses of water a day, that's 6 pounds of water flowing through your system daily, so "gaining" a pound or two may just be water. If you only weigh yourself once a week, at a regular time (say Monday morning) you'll have a more reliable weight for purposes of comparison. This is more of a psychological thing than anything, but I think it's a good strategy.
Well, that's about it. Good luck. If you do follow this guide, you might lose about 2 pounds a week. It doesn't seem like much, but it is sustainable and losing weight too quickly can be dangerous. The real keys are to change the way you think about food, and make a definite commitment to yourself to actually lose weight.
If you want to let me know what you think about any of this, or if you tried some of this advice and it worked for you too, feel free to email me at mark [at] jeays [dot] net.
Last modified: December 28, 2001
Copyright © 2001 Mark Jeays. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.