Formosa Neijia

I was 81.8 kilos yesterday, a new low. Dipped up just a bit today but it usually stabilizes at the lower weight after a while. I also just got back from the doctor’s office for my monthly check up. My liver function, renal function, blood pressure, cholestrol and uric acid levels were all in the excellent range. So basically I’m in better health right now than I have been since I don’t know when.

How have I done this?

The major changes have been in my exercise routines and diet. I’ll look a little at diet today. Here’s what’s worked for me so far.

1. Eat two regular meals a day and a small dinner. Or cut dinner altogether if you can. I can’t do the six meals a day routine. It just doesn’t fit with me. I tend to have a normal breakfast and lunch (perhaps the biggest meal of my day) and then eat a light dinner of protein and salad. If I can, I skip dinner altogether and have a protein shake. They’re pretty filling if you get a good protein. The protein and milk fills me up and you’ll be burning calories until you eat breakfast. That’s over twelve hours to burn calories. That allows for fast progress on fat burning.
2. Use smaller bowls and plates. This sounds crazy but it worked for me. It allows you to eat what you ate before so you don’t experience cravings. But you’re eating a lot less of it. This allows you to shrink your stomach size gradually without experiencing a feeling of loss. You’ll eventually find that you get full a lot sooner than before.
3. Have three glasses of water after every meal. I haven’t cut carbs out of my diet and I don’t suggest you do either. I don’t want to do anything too extreme. Knock on wood. So I eat some carbs with my meals and then drink three glasses of water so the carbs absorb the water and make me full. I need the water anyway because I sweat so much. This will make you feel full after the smaller meal. Fulling full is an important trick for weight loss. If you still feel hungry you WILL eat more. You don’t want that. Most diets seem to want you to just deal with the hunger pains. That didn’t work with me. Will power is one thing but…
4. Cut out junk food. Just do it! This is hard I know. I substituted orange and grape juice for sweets. They satisfy my sweet tooth but be careful with them. Even 100% juice has a lot of natural sugar. Drink them when you must but try diluting them with water. I also suggest looking for organic, no-fat, no-sugar cookies. Health food has come a long way in recent years. I found some cookies with no fat, no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, etc. that actually taste good. I don’t pig out on them, but I have one with milk every now and then. Also make sure you get snacks wrapped in individual wrappers, i.e. one cookie per wrapper. That way you just grab one and have to unwrap it individually. This makes you think about eating each one. You give guilt a chance to set in. That’s a good thing.
5. Learn to love oatmeal and milk. Both of these make you feel full so use them a lot. At night, I have a snack of a glass of milk and small bowl of oatmeal with just a bit of honey for flavoring. You get lots of fiber and protein and the oatmeal expands in your stomach. The little bit of honey or molasses makes it palatable. The milk (especially whole) is filling, too. I once knew a triathlete that practically lived off whole milk. He drank a gallon a day and was ripped to shreds.
6. Get over the diet hump by realizing your going to feel like CRAP for a day or two. Honestly, this derailed me several times over the years. When I tried changing my diet before, I had a splitting headache, my body felt horrible, etc. Well, it only lasted one day. That was it. One day and I was over it. I’m ashamed to admit that in the past I didn’t even make it past that one day but decided “screw this” and ate some big meal or a snack. The diet ended there and then. Don’t do what I did then. Going through it turned out easier than I thought when I stuck to it.
7. Think of this as a diet first and perhaps as a lifestyle change later. This flies in the face of all the experts. Seeing it as a diet allowed me to stick with it in the short term. Once I saw progress, it was easier to stick with it beyond that and consider it for the long term. Just get a toe-hold first! Seeing these changes as a big, permanent lifestyle change was too daunting. It was like I could never have fettuccine alfredo again and that was mentally too much for me. Diet first, lifestyle later.

My last piece of advice for today is a big one: feel free to ignore the critics. You’re going to find that for anything you do or anything one fitness expert recommends, there’s ten people waiting to tell you that you’ll keel over dead tomorrow if you do it. Feel free to ignore them.

There’s a million ways to do this and a million people with tips out there. The problem is that you and your circumstances are unique. What works for them may not work for you. Feel free to take any advice that works and discard the rest (my advice included). Nothing will work for everyone.

This can become a problem because you DO have to become educated about the different ways to loose weight and then try things until you find what works for you. Make educated guesses based on what you feel might work in your case.

Good luck and stick with it!