How I am 'Losing' my weight.

Male, 35 Years of age, 295 & change at the start of this. I started March 4th 2015.

I am no expert on any of this and am usually quiet, just lurking on the forums. But a few recent posts made me decide to just post my specifics on how I am finally cutting after 15+ years of being obese. With a few thoughts and such along the way. This was originally going to be a response to someones thread but it kinda turned into its own monster and not wanting to derail someones request for help I just decided to post it as its own thing. It's long, sorry.

Everyone is different so I can't personally make a decision on what anyone coming in here is doing wrong, but I can give you an idea of what I did before, what I do now and such.

Firstly before this I would eat whatever I wanted, no counting what so ever. I would eat a whole pizza, down a box of little Debbie or just eat ice cream out of the half galon tub lol..Then when not working I would just sit at home gaming, watching tv etc.

Firstly that food scale is key. Once you truly see what you are intaking for calories and such it makes the process easier to pinpoint. My issues were I always ate because I liked to eat. Even beyond being full. That pizza was so good, hell yeah let me have 2-3 more slices. So my first issue was killing that habit. Now I eat till I am full, but even with doing that I have a solid apatite so just cutting calories will not help me.

With the food scales I also picked up a Semi Recumbent Bike and a set of dumbbells. Using the SRB I just would peddle at a comfortably fast speed for several days a week doing 30-40 minutes at a time. With the dumbbells I started off with this video. After only two weeks of that I had moved beyond that so I did some more googling and came across this workout, made a few modifications and did that for awhile. Maybe after the first week of my second month I began to ramp up and finally started on a 4 day weight training schedule that is more targeted, basically I modified this to my liking. However I don't go to gyms (more on that below) so I needed more equipment so I got myself some resistance bands.

At this point I will point out I did not want to go to a gym. Gyms do not work for me. I do not have the motivation to drive to a gym after work, before work etc. However having all this equipment in my small, yes small 1 kitchen/tvroom, 1 bathroom, 1 bedroom apartment me and my wife live in is great. No getting home from work and not being in the mood. I have less excuses with it all there and it takes up very little space. I work out morning, afternoon, night depending on my mood, schedule etc.

I also would mention originally when I started this I did a variation of intermittent fasting where I only ate between 5pm & 2am (I am a night owl). This definitely helped me shed a few extra pounds, but is not for everyone.

Now at this point I have made alot of changes that really have only positively impacted my life. I mean I can watch tv and game while sitting on my exercise bike for god sakes and my 4 day weight training routine takes up 40-60min on average depending on distractions between sets, I have spent more time trying to find a netflix movie to watch some nights lol...

Now those are all the positive changes, but I also want to point out I am not perfect. I started slowly adding junkfood in small bits back into my diet. Two cookies at night after dinner etc which is fine, you can do that it won't hurt you if you stay withing your calories/nutrition. However I am human and some nights it was back to devouring half a package of the damn things.

This is where I see alot of posts about how they were doing so good but then you broke your diet and then you ate more because you said "What the hell I obviously can't do this." WRONG. You can, we are all going to do this sometimes. Just because you had a bad day and had more junk even alot more junk than you should have is no reason to give up. Do you best to not give into old bad habits, but if you dip into it just pull yourself out and continue. At worst you set yourself back a few days, but giving up completely is alot worse. I am coming off from two weeks of not being as strict diet wise, not hitting my exercise bike as much as I should but again, it happens. Get back on track. Expect your going to have bad days, sometimes several. Don't push yourself towards them but if it happens right yourself and move on.

One final note about bad habits is occasionally I do feel like I am going to just have a day of nightmarish eating and I plan for that. I can usually see it coming after 2-4 weeks of dieting so I plan. A few Fridays again I wanted pizza, I wanted a break and I wanted ALOT of pizza. So I hopped on my exercise bike for an intense as I could get it HIIT session and then a very long 14pm cooldown on the bike. I went until I burned around 1300 calories (not including the extra burn you will get from HIIT training). Then I bought a 5 cheese culinary circle pizza and ate the whole thing, yes the whole thing. Let's face it, most of us can tell when one of these days are coming so just head it off with extra training. Again it may not be the best way to do it, but for me it worked and continues to work.

Now here are a few more specific about everything with my routine that some of you may be able to adapt to your own life.

My Workout Routine

Strength
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday are Strength training days for me. Using ONLY dumbbells & resistance bands and natural body weight. I use a modified version of this workout. I also use some youtube videos by HASFIT, LIVEEXERCISE (Blake's Resisistance Band Videos are amazing) and muscleandstrength.com

Semi Recumbent Bike: 5 minute warmup on tension 4 at 14-15mph, at the 5 min mark I alternate one minute at 20+mph then the next minute at 14-15mph and rinse repeat that until I have gone a total of 25 minutes (15 at 14mpg and 10 at 20+mph). From here I drop down to 14-15mph for another 10-30 minutes depending on mood, energy and soreness from strength training. Note I have had weeks where I only worked out on my bike 2 or 3 days, but I always keep my strength training going.

Food intake & calories deficit
On a day where I hit my bike I try to end my eating period each day with 1,000 to 1,200 calories banked on top of what MFP already subtracks from your profile based on your weight and activity level. On a day where I do not bike I try to have 500 calories banked on top of what MFP already takes out. I try to get around 200 grams of protein everyday.

Meal 1: (between 2pm-5pm) Genererally I eat a sandwich on fiber one honey wheat bread (2 slices of hoffmans chedder & 3-4 ounces of whatever meat I am in the mood for as my first meal of the day, during break time at work.
Meal 2: (between 9:30pm-11:30pm)1 medium to large chicken breast or 2 small/medium porkchops, 100 grams of carrots and 70-100 grams of broccoli.
Meal 3: (between 1am to 230am) Usually repeat of meal 1 with a bit less on the portions as I make enough to have leftovers.
Snacks: Usually fruit, olives, peanuts, pickles sometimes stacy chips or popcorners and usually protein shakes on strength training days.

Equipment
One thing I want to mention is I was able to get a good amount of equipment to fit in a small apartment for what I consider a good deal. Again not a fan of having to get myself to a gym so I needed it to be compact and inexpensive. For under $300 bucks I have everything that I need atm. Here is the exact list of everything I bought for this. However let me point out I realize not everyone wants to drop the money on this stuff as inexpensive as I felt it was or wants to have this all in their home. I implore you to order those resistance bands and an extra ankle strap. That is all you need, that and determination, those things are amazing.

Food Scale, Semi Recumbent Bike, Dumbbells, Resistance Bands and an extra ankle strap

This is what all the equipment looks like all together. Note the bike folds up to around half the size as is is open.

Finally, I have lost 30 pounds in two months (about 3 pant sizes, but I am sticking with my over-sized clothes for now lol), added an unspecified amount of muscle which is showing more and more every week and my energy levels are generally much higher. I have type 2 diabetes and my levels have already dropped to being with a normal range more often than not. This week on my off days for strength training I am looking into a few simple belly burning workouts I can do for 10-20 minutes a day. My stomach has gone down, but that is an area that needs some more targeting.

Again no expert on any of this but more than willing to share more specifics if anyone wants to know as well as a few links to the resistance band resources and weight training resources I have been using. I have too many to post.