Loosing Weight Eric's Way

June 6, 2003 Update September 15, 2005 Update

I Lost 75 Pounds!

Picture this (well, you don't have to picture it - just look at the pictures below!): I went from 190 when I graduated from high school to 250 while I was working at Nextel. Just check out this chart:

Year	Height	Weight	Comment
1990	69"	180	Junior Year of High School
1991	71"	190	Graduated High School
1995	71.5"	207	5th Year of College and met my wife to be
1996	71.5"	211	Graduated College and moved to Texas
1997	71.5"	215	Moved back to Ohio and got married
1998	71.5"	220	Another year
1999	71.5"	230	Another year
2000	71.5"	240	Another year
2001	71.5"	250	Another year
2002	71.5"	250	Another year

NOTE: Move the mouse over the image for an after image. This will be completed after I loose weight again. The picture of me at the beach works, however!


August 1990. This picture was taken as I exited from a cold water reserve in the Alps during my 3 week long Project Bold / Outward Bound experience. 180 lbs	Fall 1992. Taken in Iowa by my Grandpa's boat. 195 lbs.	Spring 1996. I just threw my dog in a lake and was waiting for him to stop shaking all the water off of him. 210 lbs.

Fall 1998. I'm talking on my cordless phone with a headset. 220 lbs.	Summer of 2000. On the beach in Hawaii on my honeymoon 3 years late. 240 lbs.	Summer 2001. Walking down the street in Colonial Williamsburg 250 lbs.

As you can see, I didn't grow much taller, but I grew much wider! Since 1995, I constantly tried various diets to loose weight including some strange diet from the American Heart Association (the second best diet I ever had - dropping from 250 to 236 only to gain it back within 4 weeks). Most of the attempts were diets I created myself through research, but I never succeeded. I know it wasn't from lack of knowledge because part of each diet was to research nutrition and weight loss at least 1 hour per week while on each diet.

In December of 2002, I remember 2 comments that I heard two days apart. One was an interview with Al Roker in which he spoke of his motivation to loose weight. He mentioned that he was morbidly obese and did nothing to fix his weight problem while he ran around telling people it was not healthy to smoke and drink alcohol excessively. Hmmm... that sounds like me, I thought. How can I tell people that smoking and drinking isn't health when I'm 70 pounds overweight?

The second comment I heard was from my wife when she was reading one of those tabloid style magazines. She poised an interesting question to me that was printed in there: What would you do if you knew you would never fail? My response was that I wouldn't change a thing. I've never failed at anything I have ever tried. Sometimes it takes me 4 or 5 shots, but I never fail. Maybe it's about time I get weight loss right so I can honestly say I have never failed at anything I thought.

So the next day (December 9th) I started my weight loss attempt. As you can see - IT WORKED! After 5 months, I have lost 75 pounds and dropped from a 42" pants to a 34" pants! Plus, I'm no longer known as the fat brother (that distinction has been given to Mike!).

How I Did It!

It all comes down to the following simple items:
1. Find the right motivation that creates your will power to continue
2. Find goals that work for you and a good way to track your progress
3. Eat foods that you like in smaller portions that help you loose weight
4. Do a little research to understand why your diet works and how to keep the weight off

Here are my thoughts for the diet that worked for me. I'm not saying this will work for you or that this is the best way to go - I'm simply saying that this works for me (29 year old male who is very active).

Motivation
First, you need to find your motivation to loose weight. Through all of my attempts that did not work, my motivation to loose weight was because I did not like the way I looked or I was trying to loose weight just because I knew it was the "right" thing to do. It wasn't until I found a thought that really hit home before I started loosing weight. (See my motivation comments above in red.)

Will Power
Ha - that is a joke. I never had will power on any of my previous attempts. This time around, though, I found my will power to stick to my diet. The 3 driving factors to my will power was my motivational thoughts, not wanting to get behind on my schedule, and not gaining any weight that I lost.

Setting Goals
There are 3 types of goals I set:

small: These are weekly goals. My goal was to loose between 2.5 and 3.5 pounds per week.
medium: These are large steps that meant something to me. My goals on the way down included: 235 pounds (the lightest I ever was on a diet), 219 (a nice round number), 199 (ahh - I'll never be over 200 pounds again in my life!), and 180 (70 pounds lost - 25% of my weight)

long term: Duh - I had to have a final weight I was going for. I set a goal of 185 to 200 as my final goal when I started, but I have revised it a few times before settling on 178 an my final goal. In setting this goal, I learned about a Body Mass Index (BMI) calculation. Basically, that is a figure that takes into account weight and height. A BMI from 18-24.9 is normal, 25.0 to 29.9 is overweight, and 30.0+ is obese. My BMI started out at 36.0 and I set my weight so that my new BMI would be 24.6. A good BMI calculator as well as BMI information is on the US CDC website.

Tracking My Progress
I've always heard that you shouldn't weigh yourself every day, and I've stuck to that in the past. But, since it didn't work in the past, I changed it up a bit. I weighted myself everyday as soon as I got up and wrote it on a calendar at my desk. (I also had written on there goals that I was shooting for).

Changing the Program
I only made changes to my eating habits (eating more or eating less) when 6 days passed without progress towards a weekly goal. If I was ahead of plan and was not loosing weight but was still eating as I had always done, I made no changes to my food.

What I Ate
My diet for most of the time was limited to fruits, veggies, and salads. I did occasionally eat normal food. I also cut out all processed sugar that I could. That meant no cookies, cakes, candy, pop, and sweets. For the most part, here is what I ate:

Meal	Food	Calories	Comment
Breakfast	Usually nothing. Sometimes 1 cup of cereal and milk	240	I really never ate breakfast in the past either
Morning Snack	1 medium banana	100
Lunch	Salad (24 ounces)	550	Iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, sometimes cucumbers, cheese (Feta or Blue cheese, sometimes shredded cheddar or swiss cheese), cherry tomatoes, wheat germ, sometimes carrots, sometimes mushrooms, sometimes a little meat (6 slices of pepperoni, about 6-10 bite sided cubes of steak, or the equivalent amount of fish. Salad dressing
Lunch Part 2	Banana or Apple	100	Just a good snack
Dinner	Salad (24 ounces again)	550	Same as above.
Snack	something small	100	Only occasionally (maybe 2 days a week). This would be 5 pieces of Frosted Wheat cereal (dry), pork rinds, carrot sticks, a very small number of peanuts or a piece of cheese

I made sure I quit eating about 3 hours before bed and quit drinking water about 90 minutes before going to bed. I always used NORMAL salad dressing (instead of low fat) because it tasted better. In putting it on my salad, I used the same size small spoon so I didn't put to much on. I found Honey Mustard dressing was only 70 calories and tasted pretty good. Most others are around 170 calories for the same amount (2 table spoons). Another good hint on dressings is to buy the brand name "Naturally Fresh" at Kroger's. Its not in the normal dressing section, but is over by the tofu and veggies and such. "Naturally Fresh" I don't believe is a "health food", but its kept there because it needs to be kept cold. I believe they only make 4 flavors - Honey Mustard, Ceasar, Blue Cheese, and Blue Cheese with Garlic. All 4 were excellent and better than most any other dressing I have ever tasted. Raisins were also a good addition to the salad as well as part of a hard-boiled egg. In order to make my life simple and to help not miss eating what I was suppose to, I bought a head of Iceberg lettuce and a stalk of Romaine lettuce twice a week and made the salads in 24 ounce sealable containers from Kroger's. Each morning I'd put my desired salad dressing on there as well as some meat. (The purpose of the meat after the dressing was to keep the dressing from sticking to the lid of the container). I'd grab a banana or something and head off to work. At work I'd make sure I drank plenty of water, especially when I started getting hungry.

Why It Worked
I am not a nutritionist, but I understand why this works. A guy my age (29) who is as active as I am (pretty active without any additional exercise) requires 2800-3000 calories per day. I was eating between 1200 and 1500. The difference (about 1500 calories) is taken from the fat in my body. 3500 calories is 1 pound. I was loosing on average about 3.4 pounds per week (which really means I was eating 1700 calories LESS than what my body required). In addition, to avoid the ups and downs in weight due to retaining water or being dehydrated, I drank 1 ounce of water for each 2 pounds I weighed that day. (This is another weight loss trick I learned from someone else trying to loose weight. It was working for him so I figured drinking lots of water as well as eating less would really help).

Cheating
I'd lie if I said I never "cheated" on my diet, but really I didn't. How's this possible? Well, I never really specified what I would or wouldn't eat. No more than once a week but usually only 2 or 3 times a month, I'd have a burger from Fuddruckers (MMmmmmm...), cheddar cheese bread from skyline, a beer or two (those hurt me the most), or a normal meal when forced at a party or wedding reception. The worse case I had with this was in March when I went to a dinner party one weekend, then a sporting event where I had a beer, some popcorn, and a hotdog, and the following weekend had a rehearsal dinner AND a wedding reception back to back. During that period I only lost an average of 1.5 pounds a week, but when it was all done and I made sure I concentrated REALLY hard, I lost 8 pounds. Ahhhh, back to my 3.4 pounds per week!

Understanding Why We Gain Weight
This is just a little easier to understand when you consider why we gain weight in the first place. Once again, any excess in the number of calories consumed compared to the number burned ends up as fat. If you consume 100 calories (less than a candy bar!) more than you burn a day, you add 10 pounds of weight a year! To get rid of that, either burn another 100 calories through activity per day, eat 100 calories less per day, or do some combination of those. Where does that 100 extra calories come from? As best as I can tell, I just wasn't eating right. I was eating lots of food but not a variety or the right amounts. Rather than go through the Food Pyramid that has been drilled into our heads, go look at it yourself. While you are on the Federal Citizens Information Center's Webpage, search for other information about Exercise, Weight Loss, and Healthy Eating.

Why Not the Adkins, California, or Cabbage Soup Diet ?
Um, have you not heard? Those are bad for your health. When you eat one item or type of food only, then you neglect receiving certain things that your body needs. By eating salads only, I didn't do that. Or did I. Oh, I guess I did. That must not have been good! Oh well. I guess I didn't go with these other fad diets because I didn't want to spend money or have someone else tell me what I could and couldn't do.

Is This Healthy?
Depends on how you look at it. Being I was not eating a balanced diet, no. The Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration suggest loosing about 1 pound a week (or so). They suggest you do this by eating according to the Food Pyramid but eating fewer portions. My idea was I wanted this over with and I wanted it done quickly (if 5 months is quick!). I also viewed the idea that being 70 pounds overweight and not eating right wasn't any worse than loosing weight and not eating right. So, I decided this wasn't any worse than what I was doing.

Handling Fast Food Restaurants
I did quite a good share of traveling while I was on this diet. I went snowmobiling quite a bit, drove to Iowa (from Ohio), went to Las Vegas, and did a few other trips. Quite often I eat fast food so I can keep moving and don't have to slow down on these trips. I learned to order chicken sandwiches with no mayo, salad shakers, and bottles of water. Also, I would pick up those nutrition supplements and check them out while I ate or sometime during a break in the day so I would learn just how bad (or in some cases, no so bad) the food really is.

What Would I Do Different?
Yep, even with the success I had, I would change one thing. Because I don't believe I was eating enough of all food groups, I am sure I wasn't getting the minerals and vitamins that my body needed. If I did this all over again, I would take a vitamin and mineral supplement each morning.

Next Step: Keeping It Off

So now I'm in the final stages of my weight loss - keeping it off. I don't have much experience at this, but I'll provide my general thoughts. First, some research I did on the Federal Citizens Information Center's Webpage indicated that those who lost significant weight (60 lbs) and kept it off did so by:

Eating Breakfast Every Morning
Limiting Portion Sizes
Frequently Weighing Themselves
Exercise Daily
Eating a Healthy and Varied Diet

Sounds good to me. So what I am going to try to do is follow the Food Pyramid and track my progress using the Interactive Healthy Eating Index website. I am going to exercise daily, but to make it fun I'm going to try to earn certificates from The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. I am going to ask for a take home box to be delivered with my meal at every restaurant that I eat at if I know there will be to much food. And finally, I'm going to weigh myself every day and write it on a calendar to track how I am doing with my goal (to stay between 175 and 185 lbs, and never, ever, ever, never again be above 199 pounds).

I have to remember that to keep my weight off I need to make a lifestyle change. If I go back to what I was doing, my weight will just continue to increase. I am going to measure amounts of food I eat so I can compare it to what I should be doing, and I'm going to be prepared to go back on my salad, fruit, and veggie diet if things get out of hand. (BTW: I made these promises May 5th, 2003. I will try to get back on this site each May 5th and update this page with how I am doing and what is working and what isn't.)