Eat Less Fat Ass!

Note: the Fat Ass the title references is myself.

This is the first of a few posts in which I’ll discuss my plan for losing weight. I started off with the intention that I’d cover everything in a single post, but just getting through the dietary changes has taken more than I expected. My next post will cover the exercise changes I’ve made in order to lose weight.

At 39 I’m a fairly self aware person, if you don’t know yourself by this point in life then you have some issues. I know why I gained weight, sheer laziness and overindulgence. Looking at my Mom’s brothers, I think I’m also fighting against genes as they’re all large framed.

When I left the service 10 years ago I weighed in between 225 and 230 as best I can remember. That was overweight for the Army and I’ve been fighting a losing battle ever since. Over the next 5 years I gained another 20 pounds primarily due to a lack of exercise and sedentary work in a cubicle. A poor diet which included a lot of fast food didn’t help.

In 2006 I went to work at Dell with 2 of my best friends from college. This newfound work social life brought an increase in lunches at restaurants, which increases daily caloric intake if you’re not vigilant (which I wasn’t). Combine this with a lack of consistent exercise and a slowing metabolism; the results were another 20 pounds.

So what has this taught me? That I got fat because I ate too much and sat on my ass too much. It’s that simple.

Unfortunately I’m not one of those people who can lose weight at will. I’ve made various attempts at weight loss over the last decade, some more half hearted than others. I had a good experience with Weight Watchers, but am not interested in the group dynamic now. I tried Body For Life years ago, and was seeing success before it was derailed by a lot of business travel. At this point it seems a little over complicated, but I might revisit it when I hit the inevitable weight loss plateau.

I’ve decided to start my weight loss journey the old fashion way: eat less, exercise more, and measure, track & record everything along the way. My “plan” isn’t for everyone, which is ok since it’s about me and not them.

After increasing my exercise level exponentially this summer, I noticed that I had shed a pound or two but not a lot compared to the increase in my activity. I had previously been attempting to maintain a specific caloric deficit every day, the formula was eat 500 calories less than you burn per day to lose a pound per week and 1000 less per day to lose 2 pounds a week. I kept close watch on my numbers and didn’t really experience the results I was looking for,  in fact I didn’t really see any results except for maintaining my weight.

In late September I decided to ignore deficit target method since it wasn’t working. Instead I started using the daily calorie goal on livestrong.com (previously thedailyplate.com) as my goal, but without inputting my daily exercise for more of a simple calorie reduction. The first few weeks had daily calorie goals of 1800 (+/- a few).  I immediately started seeing results. The weight loss chart didn’t look like a cliff, but the decline I was looking for was starting to become apparent. In 2 weeks I went from 283 to 279.8 (10/7). The next 2 weeks didn’t see the same results; I was at 277.6 on 10/21. That was frustrating, but not necessarily unexpected.

After a weekend of not paying close attention to my diet (more on that in a minute) my weight was back up to 279 on 10/26. That doesn’t sound like a lot if you’re not trying to lose weight, but for me that was like a week of effort was washed down the drain. I decided to tweak my daily diet again, this time I addressed the WHAT and not the HOW MUCH. I’ve left my daily target at the Livestrong computed target amount, currently 2,125 calories per day but have decided to cut back on carbohydrates. It seems my body is VERY efficient at storing the energy in carbs, lucky me. My personal goal is 100g of carbs per day. I didn’t read any scientific studies to come up with this number; it just seemed like a good place to start. I’ve already seen a difference as I’ve lost nearly 6 pounds in four days. Holy cow! I don’t expect my weight loss to continue at this pace, but it’s hard to argue with the short term results.

Summarizing my diet “plan” is pretty straightforward: eat for a target consumption of calories that is less than I was previously eating daily, and limit my intake of carbohydrates or simply “Eat Less Fat Ass”.