Weight Loss: How I Went From 340 to 199 Pounds!

I spent two years losing over 140 pounds the old fashioned way: proper diet and exercise. No fads. No pills. No surgery. No crazy machines. I was 30 years old and 340 pounds. With a history of heart disease and obesity in my family, I decided it was time to shed the pounds.

Almost every day I get people I haven't seen in years coming up to me saying "Wow! You look great!" and then the next question... "What have you been doing?" That's why I wrote this article.


Disclaimer

Now, of course, as a general disclaimer, I have to say that the tips I'm sharing with you here are just from my own personal experience. I'm not a professional health expert - although over the past couple of years I've read dozens of books, and hundreds of articles on nutrition, exercise, and weight lifting. I'm not a doctor. You should, of course, seek your own doctor's advice before starting any kind of a weight-loss or exercise plan. I firmly believe that with the right diet and proper exercise, almost anyone should be able to lose weight and get fit safely.


Tip 1. It’s All About Calories

First, the bad news. Weight gain and loss is directly tied to the amount of calories you eat versus the calories you expend through exercise. What’s a calorie?

A calorie is a unit of heat energy. Specifically, it's the amount of heat energy required to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. How this relates to your body is that when you eat food, the food molecules are broken down chemically and that energy is either used by your body to perform work (like building muscle, or constructing new cells) or is stored (as fat). If you take in more calories than you burn, you will start to get fat.

Now, in the world of calories, it takes 3500 calories to equal one pound of body weight. So, if you take in an extra 3500 calories in your diet this week without exercising, congratulations... you've just gained one pound (probably all body fat). The good news is that you can lose one pound of fat by either removing 3500 calories from your diet, or adding 3500 calories of exercise to your weekly schedule, or a combination of the two.

What's 3500 calories? It's actually not much if you're eating the wrong kinds of food. You can consume 3500 calories in one meal if you eat two Double Whoppers (1010 calories each), a King Size order of french fries (590), a King Size onion rings (600), and a chocolate shake (440). Don't laugh... this is what I used to eat for dinner if my family went to Burger King... or something similarly outrageous.

So the bottom line here is that if you want to lose weight, you have to create a calorie deficit. That means you have to burn off more calories than you eat. You had to eat more calories than you burned to get fat... now you have to reduce the calories to get lean. It's that simple. In order to know how many calories you're taking in and burning off, you need to write them down.


Tip 2. Eat Frequently Throughout the Day

Think of your body as a furnace. You want your furnace to burn fuel as efficiently as possible. In order for that to happen, you need to let it burn hot and steady throughout the day.

You need to stoke your fire often to keep it burning. Keep your metabolism running all day long by eating every 3 to 4 hours. My personal tip: I eat on hours evenly divisible by 3. That means breakfast at 9am (if I'm up that early), lunch at noon, a snack at 3pm, dinner at 6pm, a snack at 9pm, and if I'm still up another snack at midnight.

Now, I personally work late (I usually get most of my "real work" done between the hours of 10pm and 2am) but if you need to eat at different hours, that's fine... Just take the total number of calories you're going to eat throughout the day and divvy them up into 3-hour intervals. Keep that fire stoked! If you can't take a break at work to eat every 3 hours, bring a protein bar with you.

If you skip breakfast, then you’re extremely hungry by the time lunch comes around. Skip lunch, and you’re more likely to gorge yourself at dinner. Why? Your body is saying, "Hey! I need food badly!" If you feed yourself often, throughout the day, your body doesn’t go into shock, and you won’t get those wild cravings and hunger pangs when it’s time to eat.

People are amazed at the frequency with which I eat meals. Just the other day I took a friend out for lunch around noon. We came back to my office and talked for a few hours... at around 3pm I pulled out some yogurt and celery. He was like, "didn't we just eat lunch?" To which I replied, "yes, but it's time to stoke my fire again!" Of course, he had the double-bacon-cheeseburger and fries and I had the grilled chicken salad. So while he just finished consuming 1000 calories and a ton of fat, I just consumed 350 calories and was ready for another small meal. That's the key to weight loss! Frequent, smaller meals!


Tip 3. Start a Food & Exercise Journal

Don’t just dismiss this section. I did! The first couple of times I read about doing this in fitness and weight-loss books, I said to myself, "I don’t have the time to do this." But you know what - it really works!

I cannot stress how important it is to write everything down that you eat. All you need is a little notebook. Make four columns: what you ate, how much of it you ate, how many calories were in it, and what time of the day you ate it. It's that simple. Also write down any exercise or other activities that are more strenuous than just sitting around.

- Chicken Breast, 6 oz, 180 calories, 2pm
- Wheat Bread, 2 slices, 90 calories, 2pm
- Total for Lunch: 270 calories
- Walked for 30 minutes: -150 calories, 3pm

Taking the time to recognize what you're eating is the first step to losing weight. A lot of people truly don't realize how much crap they're eating. When I first started doing this - and writing down everything I was eating - it really opened my eyes to the volumes of junk food I was eating before. I was a slave to cookies, chocolate, chicken wings, and pizza. When I first took the time to look up the fact that a chicken wing has 150 calories in it (yes, one wing), I was astounded. I used to eat 20 wings and 2 or 3 slices of pizza for dinner.

Now you can get yourself one of those little calorie counter booklets from your favorite book store. Sometimes you'll even see them in the grocery store. They're invaluable. Once you get to know the foods you eat on a regular basis, keeping track of what you eat is really quite simple. You will gain a better appreciation for what you're putting in your body.

So please, please, please, take my advice and journal everything you eat. You do NOT have to do this for the rest of your life... just until you hit your goal weight. By that time, you'll be able to keep a good mental track of what you're eating, and you'll be more aware of what you should eat, and how much exercise you should be getting every week.

Also, you do not have to obsess over every little calorie! Counting your calories can be as detailed as you like. If you want to track every last celery stick, by all means do so. However, you can just round your calories off to the nearest 10, or 20. Don't worry whether or not something contains 24 or 26 calories. In the end, it doesn't make that much of a difference... but whether something has 100 or 200 calories does.

The important thing... and I cannot stress this enough... is write everything down!


Tip 4. Eat The Right Amount of Calories

We're not going to starve ourselves! In fact, proper weight loss is best accomplished by eating more frequently than you're probably used to! Let me say that again: you're going to eat more food than you are right now. You're going to eat better food, more often, but at a lower calorie intake. If you're like I used to be, you're probably skipping breakfast. This means that when lunchtime comes around, you're starving, so you probably overeat the wrong kinds of food (like pizza, wings, Chinese, etc.) for lunch - and I'll bet it's fast food or takeout. Then, you don't eat anything again for six to eight hours, and pack in a monster dinner.

Now here's what happens: your body isn't getting any food first thing in the morning, so your metabolism isn't getting started. Your "calorie-burning fire" doesn't get started in the morning, so you're not really burning as many calories as you should be. Also, your body is saying, "uh, oh - I'm not getting any food. I better hold on to whatever body fat I can because we're starving!" This is bad. If you don't eat enough food, often enough, your body will basically go into starvation mode and hang on to whatever body fat it can.

The key to unlocking your stored fat is to feed yourself enough good food so that your body doesn't need to store any additional fat, while at the same time getting plenty of exercise and strength training to burn whatever fat you currently have and build muscle.

There are a bunch of factors that go into calculating metabolic rates and all that jazz, but you can use this chart as a basic measurement of how many calories you should be eating as part of your weight-loss diet. Notice it's based on your current weight and your gender. Women need fewer calories then do men. Also, if you're a smaller person, you need less energy than a larger person. Use this chart to determine how many calories you should be eating on a daily basis.

WOMEN
Under 130: 1000 Calories
130-150: 1200 Calories
151-200: 1400 Calories
201-250: 1600 Calories
251-300: 1800 Calories
301-350: 2000 Calories
351-400: 2200 Calories

MEN
Under 130: 1200 Calories
130-150: 1400 Calories
151-200: 1600 Calories
201-250: 1800 Calories
251-300: 2000 Calories
301-350: 2200 Calories
351-400: 2400 Calories

Now here's something that's vitally important... you want to make sure you get enough calories every day, otherwise your body will go into "starvation" mode. You want to make sure that you eat your meals at least four times a day to keep your metabolism running. If you don't eat, your body will go into starvation mode. It will realize that it's not getting enough food, and will hold on to body fat. It's important to get enough calories spaced throughout the day to keep your fire stoked. Don't think that by starving yourself you're going to lose weight. It will be the wrong kind of weight. Remember, your body will eat it's own muscle tissue first before burning fat if it doesn't have enough protein.

I would say that the minimum calories you should be eating is about 20% less than your recommended amount. So, if the chart about says you should be on an 1800-calorie diet, you should make sure you're getting at least 1440 calories a day.


Tip 5. Send Yourself to Boot Camp

Now, if you want to jump start your body on its way to fast weight loss, here's what you're going to do. Ignore the charts above, and drop yourself right down to a 1000-calorie-per-day diet immediately. In addition, make sure you get at least 15 minutes of walking (or some other easy, basic, extra exercise) in every day as well.

You will do this for exactly two weeks... no more... no less. Then, you will go back to eating the normal amount of calories as indicated on the chart above.

It's not going to be easy. You won't be able to eat any junk food for these first two weeks. You can, however, eat plenty of good foods - chicken, salads, whole grain breads, etc. It won't be easy, but once you get through it, you'll be able to add lots of calories back in to your diet, and feel more normal again... in fact, after eating only 1000 calories for two weeks, you'll probably have a hard time bringing yourself back up to 2000 calories (or whatever you should be at).

Now, you're not going to eat the same thing every day. You can mix it up a little. Notice how I spread my food out throughout the day - eating every 3 hours (or as close to it as you can). Eat often and you won't need to eat as much.

Here's why this works: dropping your calorie intake down to 1000 calories will shock your body into new eating habits. You will cleanse your body of toxins (like those monster grease burgers you've been eating) and get some good, healthy food in you. You will notice weight loss after the first couple of days, but you'll be keeping your energy up by eating good foods at regular intervals. You can stop any cravings you're having with water, or add some extra veggies in there - you can eat just about as much green vegetables as you want.


Tip 6. Don’t Think "Fat Free" Means "Calorie Free"

Everywhere you look, it seems that "low fat" foods abound. While there are certain low-fat or no-fat foods that we are going to eat, you don't want to restrict yourself to a totally no-fat diet. There are certain fats that are good fats, and other that are bad fats. We're going to want to eat good fats because they are necessary for proper health. Bad fats, however, will make you fat.

There are tons of fad "no-fat" diets out there that have promoted the whole "low-fat" mentality. What's happened? People are still continuing to get fat eating "fat-free" foods. They eat fat-free cookies, fat-free chips, and fat-free dairy products, yet they keep getting fatter. Why? Many fat-free foods have nearly as many calories as their full-fat versions.

Just look at something simple like regular milk. Whole milk (full milk fat) has 150 calories per cup. 2% "low fat" milk has 121. If you drink 4 cups of 2% milk per day, that's still 484 calories. Yes, it's better than the 600 calories from the full-fat milk, but you're still consuming a good number of calories. Remember: calories in - calories out = weight gain or loss.

Now, you start eating "fat free" potato chips thinking to yourself that you can splurge... hey, why not? They're "fat free." Well, you still load on the calories with fat-free potato chips. It's the calories that make you fat. In fact, when food manufacturers remove fat from their products, often times they replace the fat with sugar to improve the taste. Guess what... by adding sugar, they're bringing the calorie count almost back up to where the full-fat product was.

We need fat. Fat forms lining of the cell membranes in almost every cell of our bodies. Your brain is composed primarily of fat. If you don't eat enough of the right kinds of fat, your brain will not get the proper nutrition to function. Eating too little fat can also reduce your testosterone levels (equally important for women as for men).


Tip 7. Know Your Fats

What we think of as "fat" is actually a substance made up of smaller fatty acids. Some of these acids are good for you, and some are bad. Some promote heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke. Some prevent these problems. Some are more likely to be stored immediately as body fat, others are likely to be readily burned as fuel. Unfortunately, the typical American diet is loaded with the wrong kinds of fat. Now, these fats are broken up into a few groups. Essentially you have saturated and unsaturated fats.

Saturated Fats are bad for you. They are found mostly in beef, milk, cheese, deli meats, butter, and some tropical oils. Saturated fats increase your risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes, and obesity. Avoid or minimize saturated fat intake. Try to eat low-fat meats like chicken and turkey without the skin, and reduced-fat dairy products. If you're eating red mean, get the lowest-fat, leanest meat you can.

Trans Fats are saturated fats that are extremely bad for you. You should completely eliminate all foods with trans fats in them from your diet. These types of unnatural fats are created during food manufacturing processes such as the hydrogenation of vegetable oil. They are usually found in pastries, buns, chips, doughnuts, shortening, and other such foods. If the label says "trans fat" put that product back on the shelf. If the ingredients of any product say "partially hydrogenated" anywhere on it - put it back. One example: margarine! It's evil. It's loaded with trans-fatty acids. Avoid it at all costs. Also avoid vegetable shortening, commercial pasties, deep-fried food, and most prepared snacks, mixes, and convenience foods.

Studies have shown that saturated and trans fats are actually addictive and make you want to eat more. They have also been linked to all kinds of health problems from cancer and heart disease to diabetes.

Unsaturated Fats, on the other hand, are generally good for you. These types of fats are usually found in nuts, seeds, fish, and grains. Mono-unsaturated fats, such as the types found in olive and canola oil, will actually protect your cardiovascular system from disease. These are the types of fats we're going to load into our diet.

- Good fats: almonds, avocado, cashews, flax oil, olive oil, olives, peanut butter, peanuts, fresh fish (salmon, mackerel, tuna)

- Bad fats: butter, coconut, corn oil, cream cheese, half-and-half, lard, mayonnaise, shortening, sour cream


Keep in mind that you need fats in your diet, but even the good fats listed above have a good amount of calories in them - so take it easy! A tablespoon of olive oil, for example, as 100 calories. Almonds (which I love to snack on) have 6 calories a piece. Nuts are a great, healthy-fat snack - but just make sure to take a small handful not the whole bag!


Tip 8. Add Omega 3 Fatty Acids to Your Diet

Omega fats are unsaturated fats that are not only good for you, but they're essential for your health. Your body cannot create these fats, so you must get them totally from your diet. Omega fats are helpful for many reasons, plus they are necessary for normal cell growth and development.

First, Omega fats are an excellent appetite suppressant. Part of the reason why people binge on "fat-free" foods is because fat is what makes your stomach "feel full." If you aren't eating any fat in your meal, your stomach never tells your brain that you're full. Add a little good fat to your meal, and you'll feel full with less food.

Eating Omega fats helps your body to unlock stored fat so that you can use it for energy. Omega fat balances your body's ratio of insulin to glucagon. When you eat sugary foods, your body releases insulin to remove the excess sugar from your system. If you do this too often, the insulin will block the hormone glucagon - which is another hormone that functions to help your body burn fat. Too much sugar = too much insulin = not enough glucagon = little fat burning. Plus, you are at risk for diabetes. Omega fats help to balance this ratio.

Omega fats help to boost your body's metabolic rate. This also helps you to burn more calories. Omega fats are the building blocks of your cells. Your cell membranes consist of Omega fats. Since they cannot be created by the body, you must get them from your diet.

A specific fat, Omega 3 Fatty Acid, is obtained from flax seeds or flax seed oil. This will be the primary fat that we'll add to our meals. You can use it on salads and in breads, add it to soups and yogurt. Don't cook with it, however, as the heat will change it's chemical properties. You will also find good doses of Omega 3 in most seafood, green leavy vegetables, fatty fish (salmon, tuna, trout, mackerel), walnuts, olive, and canola oil.

Have fish for dinner at least twice a week - and I don’t mean your beer-battered, fried haddock that the local pub serves on Fridays. Pick a fish like salmon, tuna, or mackerel. Bake or grill them - don’t fry them. They have very high concentrations of Omega 3 fatty acids in them. Add flax oil to your salads instead of fatty dressings. Snack on walnuts or almonds instead of cookies and chocolate. You will feel full sooner, and you’ll be adding essential fatty acids to your diet to help burn calories!


Tip 9. Get Plenty of Protein

Proteins are the building blocks for your body. You need to eat lots of protein for your body to build, repair, and maintain your muscle and other lean tissues. If you don't eat enough protein, your body will break down muscle tissue, which is bad, to maintain itself. As a result, your metabolism will slow, and you won't burn body fat. Unlike fat or glucose, there's nowhere in our bodies to store protein (aside from building muscle tissue) so you have to get a lot from your diet.

Eat a plentiful supply of protein, however don't go overboard. Some of the popular fad diets make you eat tons and tons of protein. Too much protein doesn't help you. Once your body uses all of the protein it can for the day, it will burn the excess as fuel, but protein has lots of nitrogen in it, which can toxify your blood, kidneys, and tissues. Your body then has to expend lots of water to flush the nitrogen out, which makes you lose water weight - not an accurate form of weight loss.

How much protein should you eat? Most people should eat about 0.4 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Therefore, if you weigh 200 pounds, you should be eating between 80 and 160 grams of protein per day. This isn't hard to do. Eat two eggs for breakfast, and an 8-ounce serving of chicken for dinner, and you're at 60 grams of protein right there.

What kinds of protein should you eat? I like fish, chicken (white meat), turkey (white meat), soy products, beans, legumes, and eggs (whites only - yokes have a lot of fat). Soy products are a great source of protein... once you get used to the taste. I have totally switched from regular milk to soy milk. It has all the calcium, much less of the saturated fat, and none of the cholesterol of normal milk (even skim milk!)

Eat fish twice a week, chicken twice a week, turkey once a week, a vegetarian meal once a week, and then on that seventh day, go ahead and splurge with the pork or beef... just take it easy. Just make sure you choose lean sirloin cuts. Trim off any fat. Beef has a lot of saturated fat in it (it's marbled throughout the meat so you can't just cut it off). Beef is the worst meat for you - as compared to the other popular meats.

- Good protein: beans (any kind), eggs (preferably whites - yolks have a lot of fat), chicken (white meat, no skin), turkey (white meat, no skin), salmon (preferably not farmed), tuna (packed in water, not oil), mahi mahi, any shellfish, any soy products.

- Bad protein: bacon, ham, hot dogs, beef, pork, lamb, veal.


Tip 10. Eat The Right Kinds of Carbs

Carbs get a bad rap these days. Everyone is always "cutting the carbs." Truth is, your body needs carbs. In fact, carbs play an important role in weight loss! You just need to know which carbs to eat and which to avoid.

Here's the deal: carbs are rated with something called a glycemic index. This is just a fancy way of rating how quickly the carbs turn into glucose (blood sugar). The higher the number, the faster the carb turns into glucose - which is bad. Think of it like logs burning in a fireplace. You don't use lots of small kindling in your fireplace all night - that would burn through a ton of wood quickly. You want big, slow-burning logs... just like you want big, slow-burning complex carbohydrate molecules. They take a long time to burn in your furnace. There are simple carbohydrates that are bad, and complex carbohydrates that are good.

Simple carbohydratess like white bread (highly refined and processed), white rice, and candy break down and convert to glucose fast and easy. That's why you're hungry shortly after eating them. Come on... you know you've eaten tons of rice at a Chinese restaurant and then felt hungry half an hour later. Your fuel burned up quickly because you ate a lot of simple carbs like white rice.

Complex carbohydratess, on the other hand, work differently. Complex carbs like whole wheat bread take a long time to break down into glucose. Your body has to expend a good deal of energy to break them down. They keep you satisfied longer (they keep your blood glucose levels up for a longer period of time). Since complex carbs take longer to break down, the sugar isn't released into your blood as quickly. This allows your body to burn off it's stored body-fat for energy instead of utilizing that rush of glucose that comes from simple carbs.

- Good Carbs: whole grain breads (bagel, English muffin, roll, pita, flour tortilla, waffle), whole grain cereals - unsweetened, brown rice, buckwheat, couscous, low-fat granola, grits, Jasmine rice, wild rice, cornstarch, whole grain flour, whole grain pasta.

- Bad Carbs: Starchy vegetables (corn, green peas, potato, pumpkin, sweet potato, squash), french fries (forget about them!) most crackers (melba toast, oyster crackers, saltines, even whole-wheat crackers!)

Again, you don't have to totally avoid these bad carbs. I love green peas and sweet potatos. Just remember that they're going to unleash a rush of glucose into your blood stream. Plan on working out after your Thanksgiving meal.

You need carbs. Don't go on one of these crazy diets that has you eliminating carbs completely from your diet. Your body needs carbs. Your brain needs carbs to function properly. As with all things, eat a healthy amount of the right kinds of complex carbs, and just keep an eye on your calories.


Tip 11. Load Up on the Veggies!

Yes, vegetables are technically a type of carbohydrate, they belong in a class of their own. The right vegetables are excellent for weight loss because they are mostly water, which means they have no calories and they help flush toxins from your system. Veggies are high in fiber (so they keep you regular) and you can eat high volumes of them to fill your tummy while not adding lots of extra calories to your diet.

Vegetables like lettuce, cucumbers, and celery have almost no fat, very little simple sugars, few calories, and will make up the bulk of our weight-loss diet. Any time you're hungry, just grab some celery and chew away. A whole stalk of celery has 6 calories. A cup of lettuce has just 10 calories. The mistake people make is that they load up on fatty extras with their salads or celery sticks.

Avoid the fatty dressings and condiments that people put on their veggies. Again, once you get used to it, celery tastes great by itself. Here's one of my tricks: wash and chop up some celery sticks and put them in a plastic container in the fridge. First, fill the container about half way with water (to keep the celery fresh) and sprinkle in a teaspoon of Splenda (or your favorite no-calorie sweetener). The celery will absorb the sweetened water and you have a tasty snack - with very few calories. I like to add in some baby carrots and green beans on occasion.

Vegetables also contain tons of vitamins, minerals, and are excellent for your overall health. Vegetables also contain substances called phytochemicals that make up the plant's immune system. These chemicals also help to keep your immune system strong. Eat more veggies and you'll get sick less often.

There are no bad vegetables - but keep in mind that a lot of food items like potatos are not classified as vegetables for the purposes of our weight-loss diet. We've classified starchy vegetables as carbohydrates. Some foods like olives have been classified as fats.

So, for the remaining vegetables, I've classified them into good veggies and free veggies. The good veggies are good for you, but you should still keep an eye on the calories. The free veggies have almost no calories, so you can eat them as often as you'd like - and in pretty large volumes too!

- Good Vegetables: artichoke, asparagus, beets, peppers, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, collard greens, eggplant, green beans, onions, pea pods, pickles, rutabega, sauerkraut, seaweed, peas, string beans, tomato, turnips.

- Free Vegetables: Alfalfa sprouts, cabbage, celery, cucumber, lettuce, mushrooms, radishes, spinach, watercress, zucchini.

Eat as many of the free vegetables as you want. Your tummy will be bulging full before you have to worry about counting those calories. A whole head of lettuce has about 40 calories. Good luck.


Tip 12. Don’t be a Fruit

All your life you've heard that fruits are good for you. Yes, for the most part they are. However, if you're trying to lose weight you want to minimize your fruit intake. Why? Most fruits contain high amounts of simple sugars (fructose) that your body will easily convert to glucose and open the simple carbohydrate flood gates.

Now, fruits also contain a ton of beneficial chemicals, nutrients, and minerals that you need for good health. So, I say have one "serving" of fruit a day. Whether it's a banana before your daily jog, blueberries on your cereal, or an apple with your lunch, that's fine. Just don't go overboard on the fruits. An orange, for example, has 70 calories. Not bad... but you don't want to sit down and eat four of them at once.

Fruit is good for you, but watch the calories. Have one serving of fruit a day. A serving of fruit would be, for example, one banana, one apple, one orange, a half-cup of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, or whatever other "berries" you like. Mix it up a bit... eat a wide variety of fruits, but just keep the calories in check.

The exceptions to the fruit calories rule are lemons and limes. They have very few calories in them. While you might not like to eat lemon or lime, they make great drink enhancers. I love unsweetened iced tea with a squirt of lemon. Or, make your own lemon/lime drink out of some filtered water. Oh, and make sure you WASH the outside of any fruit you eat thoroughly (even those lemons you squeeze into your drinks).


Tip 13. Take it Easy on the Cows

I avoid most dairy products. I'm not lactose intolerant (a problem many adults have where they lack an enzyme to digest dairy products properly). Its just that there are other foods that have all the benefits of dairy without all the bad stuff.

A protein found in dairy called casein is a known allergen that can cause health problems like asthma. It can also irritate your sinuses and your entire immune system. Studies have shown this protein to trigger autoimmune reactions that can destroy insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, leading to diabetes. Bottom line: milk can actually cause health problems. Luckily, I never had any problems with milk growing up, and I used to drink a lot of it, but many people aren't as lucky.

You can get all of the calcium you need from soy products - like soy milk and soy cheese. I switched from regular milk to soy milk and now I love it. Yes, it takes a little while to get used to the taste, but once you do, you'll find it delicious. You can also get calcium from fortified juices (like orange juice). Plants like broccoli and spinach also contain calcium.

Now, again, you don't have to totally eliminate dairy from your diet. I still love eggs and real yogurt. I get fat-free yogurt because it has less calories, and I get plenty of good fat from the rest of my diet. However if you switch from regular milk to soy milk, you'll be getting all of the calcium, less of the bad saturated fat, and none of the cholesterol and allergy-causing casein that real milk has.

It's hard to break dairy down into "good" and "bad" varieties, so my choices here are really more based on saturated fat and calorie content. Consider these more "preferred" and "less preferred" choices:

- Preferred Dairy: soy milk, skim milk, 1% milk, fat-free yogurt, soy yogurt, feta cheese, mozarella cheese, fat-free cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, soy cheeses, fat free frozen yogurt.

- Less Preferred Dairy: 2% milk, whole milk, full-fat yogurt, american cheese, cheddar cheese, full-fat cottage cheese, provolone cheese, ricotta cheese, swiss cheese, iced cream, condensed milk.


Tip 14. No Junk Food for Two Weeks

I have a confession to make. There are two foods that are almost impossible for me to turn down. Hershey's Symphony bars (I love chocolate) and my grandmother's homemade chocolate-chip cookies (my wife makes them pretty good too, but she knows better than to make them for me). My wife's Achilles heel is the almighty potato chip... or french fries.

You're going to want to snack on junk food. For some it's chocolate and chips. For others it's pizza and chicken wings. What do you do? All I can tell you is this: if you want to lose the weight, you're going to have to cut the junk food mostly out of your diet until you get your weight down to where you're happy. Then, when you're where you want to be, you can reintroduce some of the junk food back into your diet, but do it within reason, and keep your exercise up.

For now, during your first two weeks of your weight loss diet, just say goodbye to all those junk food snacks. After your first two weeks, reward yourself with something good. Or, do what I did... set yourself a short-term goal weight and reward yourself when you reach it. When I was on my way down from 300 to 200 pounds, I set a reward of having a steak dinner at Roadhouse with a loaded baked potato, their awesome rolls, and a dessert for every 10 pounds I lost (290, 280, 270, etc.)

I know that a lot of diet specialists tell you not to look at food as a reward, but I really tried extra hard knowing how good that dinner was going to taste when I hit my goal weight - and without any guilt! I planned it in advance. And you know what, if you've been eating right all week long, having one fatty dinner isn't going to kill your diet. Why? Your body simply can't metabolize all of that food in one shot. Quite frankly, most of it will pass right through you. Now, that doesn't mean you should go out each weekend and gorge yourself... what I'm trying to say is that it's OK to indulge in one meal (or other snack) that's outside of your diet parameters once in a while (once a week, for example).

Just try to keep your overall calories in mind... remember calories in - calories out... and eat right most of the time.


Tip 15. You Must Get Some Exercise

Let's face it - exercise can be downright boring. There are plenty of exercises that I simply hate doing. A few years ago, I bought a treadmill. I figured I would watch some TV and walk or jog on the treadmill. It worked for a while. But, you know what... I really hate my treadmill. It sits in the corner of my dining room collecting dust.

Now, there are some types of exercise that I really enjoy. I love to ride my bike outdoors. Over the summer, I spent countless hours biking. I hit the roads, the bike trails, you name it. Unfortunately, I live in Western New York, so once November hits, it's really hard to get a lot of outdoor biking in. Yes, I have a stationary bike in my living room - and I use it for a 5- to 10-minute warmup before my workouts - but it's just not the same.

The key is to find exercise that you enjoy. If you don't like doing it, you're probably not going to stick with it. I like to jog, although not as much as I like to bike, but it's a good substitute. I enjoy to swimming laps. I also love to play softball. Find something you love doing, and get moving!

The key is to start slow and progress a little bit each week. Walking is always a great activity. Indoors or outdoors you can always walk. Start by walking 10 or 15 minutes a day for a week. When you can do that, move up to half an hour. Eventually, you can progress to a light jog.

Exercise is important to burn calories, and to build strength, and muscle flexibility. Remember, if you're looking to lose weight, you have to burn off more calories than you eat. While you can reduce your daily calorie intake, your body will eat muscle tissue first (it's a good source of protein). So you need to exercise to keep those muscles healthy.

There are three basic types of exercises: cardiovascular, strength training, and stretching.

Cardio is any exercise that gets your blood pumping, raises your breathing rate, and makes you sweat. We will use cardio exercises to burn calories fast. Examples include walking, jogging, jumping rope, swimming, and cycling. Cardio exercise is important because it is the number-one calorie burner in our weight-loss routine. Cardio is also extremely important for developing a strong heart and lungs.

Strength Training is used to build muscle. Now, building muscle is essential for healthy weight loss. Don't worry, you're not going to turn into Arnold and have huge, bulging muscles (unless that's what you want). Even ladies can benefit tremendously from a moderate amount of strength training. Strength training is important because you need to strengthen more than just your heart and lungs. By strengthening the rest of your body, you will be better at any physical activity. You will feel stronger. You won't be as susceptible to injury - I used to throw my back out at least twice a year before I started back exercises. Plus, most importantly (for weight loss) you will be burning more calories at rest because muscle tissue needs more fuel than fat tissue.

Stretching is used to improve flexibility and overall muscle health. We will incorporate stretching into our exercise routines to keep our muscles limber and prevent soreness. Stretching is important because you need flexible muscles in order to do the other two types of exercises. Without flexibility, you're likely to injure a muscle while running or lifting weights.


Tip 16. Get Out For a Walk

There is no better exercise to begin with if you have not been exercising regularly. Walking is an excellent form of light aerobic workout. It will help to strengthen your legs, lungs, and heart. Walking is also safe for your joints. Don't just start right out by jogging or running if you haven't been exercising. Start off by walking - at least for the first couple of weeks to a month.

Walking at a relatively moderate pace (say, 3 miles per hour) will burn 300 to 400 calories per hour. That means if you take just a 15 minute walk, once a day, you're burning an extra 100 calories per day, or 700 calories a week... that's one-fifth of a pound of body fat lost per week, just from a 15-minute walk every day. Get that up to a 30-minute walk per day, and you'll be shedding a pound every two weeks.

If you find that you're really out of shape and you can't walk for 15 minutes - that's fine. Walk as long as you can and write it down in your Activity Journal. If you walked for 5 minutes today, great! You're putting in the effort. Tomorrow, try for six minutes. Above all else, don't go overboard and try walking too long. You don't want to push yourself too hard and then injure yourself and not be able to walk at all tomorrow. Remember, your knees and ankles might not start swelling up until later that night... at which time it will be too late to do anything except ice them and hope they don't hurt tomorrow.

You can easily incorporate more walking into your daily schedule by parking your car far from stores or by taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Look for any excuse to walk. Me, personally, if I need to go somewhere and I can walk there (or ride my bike in the summer), I will - weather permitting. Of course, I live in Buffalo NY, so the weather is real crappy here most of the year, but even in the winter I will bundle up and walk to the store.


Tip 17. Strength Training is a Must

Strength Training is any exercise that causes you to build lean muscle mass. This can be accomplished best with moderate weight lifting. If you are looking to lose weight, feel healthy, and look better, you absolutely need to incorporate strength training into your weekly exercise routine.

If you're currently obese (I was when I started) then heavy cardio exercise can be very demanding and painful to your body. Many obese people make the mistake of buying a treadmill or hitting the streets and trying to jog an hour right off the bat. This will only get you injured and sore and cause you to stop exercising.

If you care about the way you look, then you should care about strength training. If you lose weight but don't build muscle, you will look thin and scrawny. To look good, you want firm, lean muscles. Ladies, don't worry about "bulking up." You can't. Most women don't have enough testosterone in their systems to build bulky muscles. Men - you can bulk up if you want to, but keep in mind you're looking at many hours a week in the gym lifting weights. I'm not talking about bulking up here. I'm talking about moderate weight lifting to strengthen and build healthy, lean musle mass. You will look good. Trust me.

The real benefit of strength training is this: lean muscle mass burns more calories than fat body mass does. If you take two people who both weigh 200 pounds, however one person is made up of mostly muscle and the other is obese, the muscular person is burning far more calories while resting than the obese person is. Muscle tissue is very calorie-hungry, and this is a good thing.

Now, if you don't incorporate strength training into your exercise routine, and you decide to try to lose weight, here's what happens: your body will eat your muscle tissue first. Since muscle tissue is a great source of protein, your body will consume muscle tissue first if you're not doing any strength training. So you will be losing weight, but it will be the wrong kind of weight! You'll lose muscle, not fat.

A lot of people who are overweight start off a "diet plan" wrong by starving themselves and then kill themselves with hours of aerobics. What happens is all bad: your body is starving so it hangs on to stored body fat while at the same time consuming muscle tissue for fuel (since you're not strength training). So now you've lost weight, but you've lost muscle tissue. You hurt yourself with all the aerobics you're doing, or you get bored, so you stop working out. Now, you put back on the weight you lost because you're not killing yourself with aerobics any more, but since you have less muscle mass now your metabolism is now lower than it was before (which means you're burning fewer calories at rest). The result: you gain back more fat weight than you had before you started!

The key to fixing this problem: strength training plus a moderate amount of cardio all with a good diet of healthy foods. All you need are a couple of light dumbells (or even just a phone book) and you can get started with strength training today! Strength training doesn’t mean spending hours a day in the gym pumping iron. All you need is 15 to 20 minutes of activity lifting something. You can even strength train without weights - using your own body weight with exercises like abdominal crunches.

You will be amazed at the results!


Tip 18. Beginner Exercise Routine

If you can devote just 30 minutes a day to exercising, and maintain a sensible diet, I guarantee that you will become leaner, stronger, and feel better! You will start to see improvements in your body in just a few weeks. You will lose weight, and have to go out and buy all new clothes in a couple of months (I did).

Just remember - take it easy when you're starting out. Don't go trying to run 10 miles your first day. Start out with light walking an move up from there. See each section (cardio, strength training, stretching) for details on these workouts - but here's how you get started.

Here's what I recommend for the beginner:

- 5 minutes of light cardio: a warmup walk, for example
- 5 minutes of easy stretching. You don't want to stretch cold muscles before warming up
- 15 minutes of strength training
- 5 minutes of stretching to loosen the muscles you just worked out

Perform the above routine 2 or 3 days a week, skipping at least one day between strength training workouts. Do this, for example, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

On your days when you're not strength training, say Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, those are cardio and stretching only days:

- 5 minutes of light cardio (warmup)
- 5 minutes of stretching
- 15 minutes of moderate to heavy cardio (walk a little faster or jog)
- 5 minutes of stretching

You can also give yourself one day a week (say Sunday) where you just stretch. You don't have to do any exercising if you don't want to. Give your muscles a day to rest. In fact, as you progress from beginner to intermediate to advanced, you're actually going to give yourself more rest between strength training workouts - but we'll discuss that later.

It's important to warm up the muscles first, then stretch them, then do your workout, then stretch again. Stretching after your workout is important. Muscles build up lactic acid when you work them. Stretching helps to flush that acid and prevent soreness the following day.

As you progress, add more time to your cardio workout, and more weights to your strength training routines. We'll discuss each in more detail under the specific sections.


Thank You

So that’s it! In a nutshell, you want to keep track of the calories you’re eating, add some healthy fat into your diet while removing the bad fats. Get a healthy amount of protein, carbs, and veggies. Exercise daily. Get some cardio exercise in to burn calories, and some strength training to build up those muscles.

If you’re interested in learning more, we have all kinds of free information about weight loss available on our web site at RicksWeightLoss.com. We have sample meal plans, exercise routines, strength training guidelines, and more. We also have an online database where you can track your weight, your calories, journal your food and exercise, and more. Log on today for more information.

Thank you for taking the time to read this book. I hope it has helped you to learn how to eat healthy and lose weight with safe, effective exercise.

Richard Rost
 

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