One Year Can Change Your Life (pic heavy)

Hi, I'm Naomi. ("Hiii, Naomi...") Today is my birthday. Last year on this day I promised myself that I would give myself my best body by this day, and unlike all those New Year's Resolutions I'd made in the past, it actually happened. If you're dedicated and refuse to quit, one year can change everything. So here's the TL:DR story of how I lost 30 pounds and found my passion. If you just want to know my "secrets," skip to the end where I linked to the details in a few blog posts. Here's the short version: be smart; listen to advice; there are no shortcuts; never quit.

I was always thin. Growing up, I participated in soccer and competed in gymnastics for years, never really worrying about what I ate. Because I never had to think about it, I ended up taking it for granted that I could always eat whatever I felt like eating and never concern myself with a negative results.

After I finished college and got my first desk job, things started to change. Eating and drinking out were social events and I consumed far more than I needed to. Looking back, I am surprised it took so long to show on my body. I thought nothing of having two high-calorie Starbucks drinks a day, then having a 1500-calorie fast food lunch, wine with dinner, and whiskey afterward, with maybe a late-night snack of some popcorn or chips. I was not working out at all. Sedentary days eating over 3000 calories were the norm. I started to gain weight and feel badly about my body, but I didn’t care enough to make a real change.

Here and there, I “tried” to lose weight. Trying is what most people do, and it’s “trying” because they really don’t know how to do it or understand how it works. I tried a three-day cleanse. I tried Hoodia to suppress my appetite. I tried eating “clean,” not snacking, eliminating sugar and cafefine, carbs and alcohol. I did two weeks on the dangerous VLCD Master Cleanse of cayenne pepper-syrup-lemonade to “cleanse” my “toxins.” That was dumb.

Unfortunately, the diet gimmick industry causes people to have completely false expectations of what weight loss should be. I envisioned easily losing 3-4 lbs per week and dropping my 30 lbs in a flash. None of it worked. I would lose weight and then gain it back as soon as I came off of the diet. All the gimmicks failed because of they were unenjoyable and unsustainable. I didn’t want to live my whole life without wine or coffee or sugar, and dammit, I LIKED carbs! But the biggest myth I believed was that to be effective, weight loss had to be painful and restrictive.

Last summer I reached my heighest weight of 164 lbs. At 5’5”, it wasn’t very fat compared to plenty of people, but I sure was fat for what I was used to. When I realized I was 2.7 points from an obese BMI, I was shocked.


This is “the picture.” The one that made me realize I really needed to make a change. Looking at it now I don’t think it is as shocking as it was when I first saw it, but this is the one that showed me I wasn’t slender anymore, I was definitely chubby.
The week that I saw “the picture,” I made a change. I started with 30-60 minutes on the elliptical at the apartment gym last July. I wasn’t tracking my calories or anything, but I knew I needed to do something. One year ago this week, I joined MFP and began tracking calories and doing the Beachbody program “Insanity.” This is me the first day I started Insanity.


Somehow I lucked out in the friends department and found smart, successful people right off the bat, who believed in moderation, slow, lasting progress, and science over scare tactics. I started doing my own research. I found out that losing weight is so simple it was hard to believe. Wait, the time you eat doesn’t matter? Diet sodas aren’t going to make me fat? No specific food will make you lose weight or gain weight? I was pretty much wrong about everything.

I began to understand the science of weight loss, the pounds began to come off. I found myself enjoying gelato and wine and spaghetti 3-4 evenings a week and fitting it into my macros and still losing weight. It was incredible. My family started making comments about how much I was eating and how I would never lose weight eating so much, and yet I continued to get smaller. Hah, family! Weight loss was never so enjoyable.

Let's be realistic. Nobody is totally consistent with diet. In the last year, I have taken several 1-2 month breaks, not logging, gaining 5-7 lbs, and then buckling down again. The only thing that matters is that I didn't get discouraged. I gave myself a talking to and settled back in. If I had been consistent, I probably would have lost the weight faster, but if I had gotten discouraged because life happens, I would still be the same weight I was last September.

When I finished Insanity, I was down 13 lbs and looking for a new challenge, so I started training for Tough Mudder, a 10-12 mile mud run/obstacle course over hills and trails. I discovered the joys of trail running and conquered 11-mile mountain runs. Here's me at the summit of my mountain, and then doing the Tough Mudder I was training for on those mountains.


I discovered tabata and my mile time on the track fell to under 8 minutes. I started to regain flexibility and do all the things that I used to be able to do as a gymnast.


All this time, I had continued to learn from the smart people on MFP. I had heard about women lifting heavy weights and I was really resistant to the idea. Not because I thought I would get bulky—I already knew women don’t have the testosterone to gain bulk like men on steroids, especially at a caloric deficit—but because I didn’t think I would enjoy it.

Mountain running was fun. Especially the downhill portions, where I could really let go, trust my trail shoes, and fly past hikers picking their way over rocks. That was a RUSH! How boring it would be to stand in the lunk section of the gym and pick up a barbell. I was never going to do that.

Except that the more I learned, the more I realized that to take my body to the next level, I would have to do it. Had debilitating gym anxiety, but I decided to suck it up and try. After the first few nerve-wracking times, to my surprise, I fell in love with lifting in a way that I had never thought I could love something fitness-related. There were things I enjoyed, sure, but no real passion. Lifting became a passion, and finally discovered the magic of body recomposition. I started to enjoy being the only girl in the free weights section.


These photos show the change my body went through from last September up all the way up through my first month of lifting.



In the first three photos my body looks the same shape, just smaller. Between the last two photos, there is a one month difference of only one pound. During that time, I did zero cardio. I just lifted 3-4 days per week and kept my calories in check. That’s it. After a couple months of lifting my abs started to pop! I’d never had visible abs before. Here I am in April at 143 lbs and 20% body fat (hydrostatic weighing).


On July 13, I sliced my foot open on the bottom of a metal bedframe and cut a tendon, sidelining myself. As I write this in September, I am still 90% on crutches. Over eight weeks have passed since my last workout, and yet my comprehension of weight loss gave me total confidence that I could go on bed rest, eat like I ate when I was working out, and yet continue to lose weight—six pounds so far, in fact. The continuing body fat reduction has just exposed the underlying muscle. Here’s a photo of my stomach flexed, after over a month of not working out, proving that abs really are made in the kitchen. I'm 136 lbs in this photo, and about 18% body fat.



In the past year I’ve lost the confusion about dieting, the shame about my body, and the nagging feeling that I might gain weight again. I’ve gained education, a love for fitness, a realistic perspective of health that will serve me my whole life, and friends who I honestly adore. Thanks to all of them who were willing to tell it like it is and taught me what I needed to know to completely change my life, and cheers to all of you who will listen to them in the future, and do your research, and make yourself the person you never thought you could be.




If you have questions about my food or fitness, you should find all the details here. If you have other questions, feel free to PM me
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/fivethreeone/view/how-did-i-workout-570888 and here
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/fivethreeone/view/how-did-i-eat-the-basics-tdee-calories-macros-570878

You didn't look bad to begin with (plump, as you say), but now you look amazing!

the time you eat doesn’t matter?

Yes, it does.
Eating a large breakfast & small dinner helps lose more weight than the usual Americal eating pattern, as well as improving other markers related to health.

This study compared eating a small breakfast, medium lunch, and large dinner, [200, 500, 700 cal]
with eating a large breakfast, medium lunch, and small dinner [700, 500, 200 cal].
"The [large breakfast] group showed greater weight loss and waist circumference reduction ... fasting glucose, insulin [&] triglycerides ... decreased significantly to a greater extent in the [large breakfast] group."
In addition, hunger was less and satiety was greater.
Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23512957
Full text:
http://genetics.doctorsonly.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Jakubowicz-at-al-Obesity-2013-oby20460.pdf

"subjects assigned to high caloric intake during breakfast lost significantly more weight than those assigned to high caloric intake during the dinner"
Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24467926
Full text: http://www.tradewindsports.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Nutrient-Timing-and-Obesity-2014.pdf

"data suggest that a low-calorie Mediterranean diet with a higher amount of calories in the first part of the day could establish a greater reduction in fat mass and improved insulin sensitivity than a typical daily diet."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24809437