Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. And I'm happy to see all the progress everyone is making. I haven't posted in awhile and wanted to check in and give you my thoughts and insights about NS and maintenance and their similarities and differences.

This has been such an incredible journey for me. I've achieved things I didn't think possible and even surpassed my wildest dreams. I am in better shape than I've ever been, even in my teens. I wear smaller clothing sizes than before college. I can play with my kids without even breaking a sweat now. My wife loves how I look. My kids "miss" my old belly. I can only hope that everyone on this journey can find health and happiness too.

So as you may or may not know, I'm 43, and a 5'6" male, I used to weigh 200 lbs (BMI 31+), and was able to achieve my goal weight of 145 lbs last month. I lost 50 of those pounds over 8 months with the help of NS. I've been slowly (very slowly) increasing my calories, because of my fear of gaining the weight back. So I've actually still lost 4 more pounds since then. I was on the 1500 cal per day NS plan, and according to most sources, my maintenance calories average somewhere between 2000-2400 calories per day. Which sounds awesome, but I decided to take my time getting there, just in case it's less. I'm up to about 1700-1800 cal per day on average, and yet I'm still losing. I still use NS foods for now, while I try and discover what my true maintenance daily calories will be. Then I will try and wean myself off. But my additional calories are non-NS foods.

Anyway... the things I loved about NS which really worked for me, and I still do:

1. Log my food: This, for me, is the single most important thing I've learned from NS. And I know it's not for everyone, but for me helps to educate me in what things are worth. Instead of using the word "calories" I use the word "dollars". So I have a $1700 budget for the day, and each food costs X dollars. Logging lets me know if I'm near my calorie limit for the day/week. With MFP it gets even easier, because it remembers what we entered... and in the end we really only eat a limited number of different foods for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks/desserts.
As an example, I went away on vacation last week with the family. I wanted to try an experiment. I logged all my foods, and I ate whatever I felt like up to 2500 calories per day, just to see what would happen. I wanted to be able to eat out with my family. My vacation foods included Golden Corral buffet, Chinese buffet, Indian buffet, Korean BBQ, pizza, ice cream, cake, cookies, chocolate. BUT I also made sure to get in my veggies, fish, chicken, fruits and water... plenty of water! I also was active the entire time (volleyball, kayaking, walking around the amusement park, swimming). For the first 4 days I averaged about 2300 calories and the next 3 days about 1600 calories (still averaged 2220 cal/day). When I got back home, I found I only gained 2.5 lbs of water weight. How do I know it was water weight? Because after 2 days, I weighed one pound less than before I left! Awesome!
Being able to eat all those different foods, and keeping under a goal of 2500 calories a day... this is the power of logging for me.

3. Weigh myself regularly: For me it's daily, but at least weekly works just as well. This really helps me to know if something I did over the past few days is working or not working and I can adjust right away.

3. Drink plenty of water: I drink 16 cups or more most days. I discovered that water really helps to flush out sodium. So on those days that I splurge, or even on days with really heavy sodium NS foods, it ironically helps minimize or even prevent water weight gain over the next few days. Try it! It works!

4. Eat six times per day: This has really helped me stay on track because I know my next meal is only less than 3 hours away. In truth, I've discovered that it really doesn't matter how often or in what order our foods are. If I want to eat all my food at once for the day, it's fine. If I want to eat all my power fuels at once and all my smart carbs later at once, it doesn't matter. If I want to eat breakfast for dinner, and lunch for breakfast or whatever, it's all the same thing. What matters most is how many calories you have in a day... or even more accurately, in a week.

5. Eat 4 servings of veggies per day: This really helps me feel full... and it's unlimited! I've actually expanded my veggie choices over the past 9 months. It used to only be salad lettuce, broccoli and mushrooms. I literally HATED everything else. Then one by one, I started experimenting, and with the help of salad dressings and hot sauce, I now also enjoy: onions, tomatoes, peppers of all kinds, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, green beans, cucumbers, eggplant, squash and others I'm sure I'm forgetting right now, but you get the point. I actually look forward to my daily salad now.
And I also never have limited my dressing choices. I just stay mindful of taking 1-2 teaspoons of the higher calorie dressings, and I always log it. I don't log my veggies.

6. Exercise regularly: This one is tricky, because I feel a lot of people put too much reliance on exercise to help them lose weight. Now, don't get me wrong, exercise is ESSENTIAL in being healthy, BUT I feel that exercise is only about 10% of weight LOSS. If we don't have our diet locked down, I believe we're just wasting time exercising. I hear lots of people say, "I'll just run a little extra on the treadmill, so I can enjoy myself at that barbecue." Or something similar. Here's an example why this doesn't work:
A slice of pepperoni pizza for lunch at Costco is around 800 calories. Now if you run 6 miles an hour, for one entire hour.... how many calories do you think you burn? It's about 700 calories. Now imagine... you just literally ran... FAST... for 60 minutes STRAIGHT, and didn't even burn off that entire slice of pizza! And we didn't even include the rest of lunch, or breakfast, morning snack, afternoon snack, dinner and dessert!

7. Get plenty of sleep: At least 7-8 hours per day. I know it's not scientific, but it seems I lose the most weight during weeks that I average 8 or more hours of sleep a night.


Things I've modified, that still work for me, but isn't part of NS recommendations:
(I already touched on some of these things above too)

1. I have a splurge day (when not on vacation). Some people can't do this, but it really works for me. I used to use Saturdays as a day where I ate whatever I wanted (to a point), but usually involved non-NS foods, and going out with friends/family on weekends where I didn't have to limit what I ate and could socialize with everyone else. Now I usually limit my calories to around 2500 calories on that day. I save calories on the other days (1400 calories instead of 1500 calories, for example), so I would still average around 1500 calories per day for the week.
This really helps me not feel deprived. So right now, since I am in maintenance, I am slowly increasing my calories, to include a Sunday 2500 calorie day as well, while keeping M-F at 1500 calories. I treat M-F as business like... and plan to enjoy a little more on weekends. So right now, my week looks like this:
M-F: 1500 cal
Sat: 2500 cal
Sun: 2000 (with a goal of 2500) cal
Average: 1714 cal per day
Incredibly, even with this, I'm still losing weight. NS really starts us low I guess. This is a work in progress, so I'll let you know how it goes.

2. I mentioned this above, but I don't necessarily eat specific foods for specific meals. Like, I've permanently switched lunch and dinner.... or I'll eat all my smart carbs and power fuels for the day at one sitting. As long as I eat at least 1400-1500 cal per day, I'm good.

3. I don't always have 6 meals a day.

4. I've discovered something called HIIT (high intensity interval training): I've read that this is better at losing fat than regular cardio.... and you can get an equivalent fat loss with less time. Basically it's something like this: run as fast as you can for 30 seconds, then walk or jog for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and repeat. That's it. I do 30 seconds run, 30 seconds walk, and repeat. I'm slowly building up to 20 minutes, but I've read that this 20 minutes of HIIT can burn more than 6 times more body fat than doing 40 minutes of regular running. Six times more in half the time? Who doesn't like that?

5. Got rid of my fat clothes and bought new clothes: I feel like I used to keep them around "just in case" I fail. But now I feel that by getting rid of them, I'm committing to my new body. And it feels really good to fit into smaller clothing.

6. Pick a dream goal weight, or keep readjusting as you hit your goal. My initial goal was 20 lbs weight loss. My next was 40 lbs, and I thought that was going to be it, but that still put me in the "overweight" BMI. I always had my "never gonna happen, I'm laughing just thinking about it" goal of a 60 lb loss, but never thought I could do it. Yet here I am. And I'm so happy I didn't stop at 40.

So even though I hit my goal WEIGHT, I'm still a work in progress, and I would love to one day have a six pack... I'm starting to see signs. I now have new goals. I want to be more fit. I want to have more endurance when running. I want to lower my body fat percentage. I want to discover my true maintenance calorie limit to know how much I can really eat a day.

So my journey continues....

Anyway, sorry for writing so much. Thanks for reading.

Keep fighting!!