27.2 pounds gone in 6 weeks, how I did it!

I started my weight lose journey about 5 ½ weeks ago. So far I have lost 27.2 pounds. I’ve seen a lot of questions in the forums about what diet, and what exercises, and how long does it take to lose x amount of weight. I thought I’d share how I’ve done it so far.

I started out at 318 pounds 6 ½ weeks ago, my wife was 292. I was not serious about losing weight. I thought and talked with my wife. We decided to start just eating better. The big thing I did that week was my switch to water. I gave up everything else, and have only drunk water since then. I am probably most proud of that one achievement so far. In fact I am drinking water as I type this. I drink about 100-150 ounces of water per day. The week of us just eating better lead to us deciding to workout a little. We hit Wal-Mart and picked a DVD for walking at home. I kind of laughed being a guy, “This is silly walking at home, to easy”. Uh, no! I was wore out after the first day. I plowed through the rest of the week with eagerness because I finally realized I was in horrible shape. I thought, “I can’t even walk without my heart jumping through me chest!” Scary! I walked for 6 days. During that week I ordered the Power 90 Program. Somewhere around the end of that week my wife found Myfitnesspal.com, the iPhone app, and we’ve been on it ever since.

We stay under our calorie goal every single day. We follow the Power 90 workouts exactly. We work out 6 days per week. 3 days of strength, 3 days of cardio, alternating days as we go. We take a Vitapak supplement program from GNC every morning. I’m on the Men’s Mega Man Sport, and my wife is on the Women’s Ultra Mega Energy and Metabolism. We drink the GNC Wheybolic extreme 60 recovery drink, one scoop for our AM snack, one scoop for our PM snack.

Now on to our “diet”. I have tried every fad diet, Atkins, South Beach, Soup, blah, blah, blah. They don’t work. I’m sorry to say it but the only thing yo-yo dieting got me was my gallbladder removed when I was 30. Yo-yo dieting is a main cause of gallstones. I put the word diet in quotes because what we are doing is eating right. I eat sugar, I eat carbs, I eat fat. I eat these things in healthy percentages and amounts that Myfitnesspal.com helps me track. I think I pay more attention to the nutrition portion of my iPhone app then I do the calorie count. My food diary should be open to everyone to look at. We decided to really help our weight lose by drinking a meal replacement shake from Shakeology at night. This really is as much a convenience factor as it is a diet issue. You see we don’t work out until about 6:00PM every night. We want to have our last calorie intake of the day by 7:00PM. So cooking was a hassle, then clean up, then our whole night became about the eating and diet. We did it for three weeks, but the shakes are quick and filling.

So the other factor that helps us is getting our metabolism going and staying burning through the day. We eat! We wake up, we have a cup of water each, take our Vitapak, and eat breakfast within the first hour of waking up. You must eat breakfast! Your system doesn’t “wake-up” and burn calories until you eat. We then have our AM snack (our recovery shake and maybe a Nutrigrain bar or nuts) in about 2-3 hours after breakfast. We then eat lunch, then our afternoon snack (Recovery shake and fruit or trail mix, maybe even something a bit larger depending on calories at lunch). We go home workout on a mostly empty stomach so we are burning stored energy (a.k.a Fat) as we workout. We do our dinner Shakeology, and that is it. We try to time our dinner shake about 3 hours before bed. Our goal is to go to bed just a little hungry feeling. This means our body is burning stored energy (a.k.a. Fat) all night.

We weigh daily, track it versus calories consumed. We measure weekly stomach, chest, thighs, arms, hips, and neck. I’ve lost 4 inches off my hips, 3 from my waste, and my pants are getting ready to fall off of me now! We track daily because for about a week I wasn’t really seeing much lose. I actual had to bump up my calories to see the weight start to come back off. Weight lose slowed again at the end of last week, I’m now easing up on the calorie intake again. The differences are only about 400-500 calories a day, not a lot, and I think the variation keeps my body guessing and it seems to not be able to settle into a lower metabolism that way. That is what works for me.

I’m not saying I have the keys to weight lose for everyone. But I will say the fact of take in less, but better foods, exercise more, and eat several small meals throughout the day, and don’t go to bed on a full stomach. The psychological part is the hardest. I still crave cheese burgers, but my motivation to really change is real this time. I currently weigh 290.8, and my wife is at 270.