How I Lost Weight Without Ozempic or Wegovy and How I Kept it Off (Part I)
I decided a few years ago that I was going to get my body fat percentage below 10%. I gave myself a deadline one year out and I decided that my approach would be to effectively pretend that I was preparing myself for a bodybuilding contest and that my scheduled deadline would be the night I was going to step on stage for the first time. In retrospect, I think I just had too much time on my hands.
Prior to making this decision, I had just completed a “dirty bulk,” which, for the uninitiated, was my effort to gain as much muscle as possible by lifting heavy weights in the gym and eating as many calories as I could stomach, regardless of the quality of the foods consumed. In other words, I ate badly and I lifted weights that were probably unsafe for me to lift. But, in the end, I did gain muscle mass. However, I also packed onto my frame an ungodly amount of fat. I had ballooned to 236 lbs. By year’s end, I had cut my weight down to 168 lbs.
I adhered to 10 principles to achieve this.
- I Measured Everything
I used the first week of my weight loss journey to simply measure and to catalogue everything – how much I weighed and every calorie I consumed. I made no changes to my diet nor did I change my exercise regimen in any way. I wanted to use the first week just to gain a baseline understanding of where I was in terms of my caloric intake and to see if my weight fluctuated at all during the week in order to estimate my daily caloric maintenance level.
I weighed myself at the same time every morning after using the restroom. I also counted and catalogued every calorie I consumed throughout the day – drinks, condiments, meals, vitamins and other supplements, even gum. I used a food scale for my meals to determine exactly how many calories I was consuming. I logged the information in a notebook and I assessed my starting point at the end of the week.
At the end of the week, I noticed that my weight did not fluctuate all that dramatically and based on the average number of calories I consumed on a daily basis I estimated my maintenance calories at approximately 3,600 calories per day. In other words, by eating roughly 3,600 calories a day, while maintaining the same weightlifting schedule, I was able to keep my weight steady.
In the past, I had made the mistake of listening to various “experts” in the field of weight loss who intimated to me and to others that the types of food one ate was all that mattered in the realm of weight loss. Fat was bad. Carbohydrates were worse. Protein was good. I, therefore, adhered to a protein heavy diet for a time without losing any weight and this frustrated me endlessly and stripped me of the motivation to continue.
The reality I found, and science bears me out on this, is that calories are the only things that matter in terms of weight loss.
Calories IN (# of calories I consume) versus Calories OUT (# of calories I burn).
If I am in a caloric deficit (Calories IN < Calories OUT), then I will lose weight.
If I am in a caloric surplus (Calories IN > Calories OUT), then I will gain weight.
If I am in neither (Calories IN = Calories OUT), then my weight will remain stable.
Mark Haub, a professor of nutrition from Kansas State University, lost 27 lbs. in 10 weeks with two-thirds of his food intake consisting of Twinkies, Little Debbie Snacks, Doritos, Sugary Cereals and Oreos. The other one-third of his food intake consisted of some vegetables, protein shakes, and a multi-vitamin. Professor Haub limited his caloric intake to 1,800 calories per day and, because he was in a caloric deficit, he actually lost weight in spite of what he was eating.
In order to know precisely how many calories would put me in a caloric deficit, I had to know what my baseline caloric maintenance level was. The first week allowed me to determine that. By consuming 3,600 calories a day while maintaining the same exercise schedule I would maintain my weight. Time to cut.
- I Cut out 500 Calories per Day
I eliminated 500 calories per day (daily caloric intake ~ 3,100 calories). By doing this, I was on track to lose approximately one pound of fat per week (7 days x 500 calories = 3,500 calories or 1 lb. of fat). But, how I did this turned out to be the most important factor in my weight loss success.
In the past, when motivated to lose weight, I went about the process rather haphazardly and without much thought. Consequently, my results were a reflection of this - both inconsistent and short-lived. My initial motivation caused me to bolt out of the gate with undisciplined passion and a badly misplaced enthusiasm, failing to realize that lifestyle changes are necessary for long-term, sustainable weight loss and that requires a mindset geared towards a marathon and not a sprint. In my passion for life change, I used to sprint out of the gate eating boiled chicken and broccoli three meals a day after running a mile - rain or shine. The problem with this approach of course is that no one can sprint forever and the greatest achievements never come whole instantaneously, they always come in increments over time. In virtually every endeavor worth pursuing, the initial passion eventually turns into a grind, but sustainable results rarely come when a person grinds from the jump. Unless a person is a masochist or abnormally disciplined, long-term success requires a gradual approach that makes the grind enjoyable at best, manageable at worst.
What makes this even more difficult in the realm of weight loss, is that God has manufactured within the human body an otherworldly ability to adapt metabolically to whatever we happen to throw at it. The human body is a survival machine. It always strives for equilibrium and it will not abide a caloric deficit for very long. As a result, what ended up happening with me in times past was that I would kill myself out of the gate to lose weight and, in truth, for the first few weeks I would, but eventually my body adapted metabolically (slowed my metabolism down to burn only the calories I was feeding it) and the weight loss progress stopped. But, at that point, I had no more levers to pull to work my way through these metabolic plateaus. I was already eating boiled chicken and broccoli and I was getting sick of it. I was already running a mile every day and I didn’t have the time or the stomach for more. So I would inevitably quit in frustration. And I would gain back all of the weight I had worked so hard to lose.
What I learned from my past experiences is that weight loss is a long-term endeavor and levers need to be pulled gradually and judiciously, only when metabolic plateaus need to be shattered. Therefore, for the 500 calories per day that I was seeking to cut during that second week, I grasped for the lowest hanging fruit first. I looked through my food diaries to discover where I could cut calories without necessarily feeling it.
The first thing I did was to eliminate snacking when I was not hungry. Every single day, I ate snacks that were lying around my house or in the office - a donut (250 calories), a muffin (425 calories), a bag of chips (250 calories), a cookie (80 calories) - without really giving my consumption of these snacks a second thought. By just being mindful of my daily eating habits, I was able to eliminate the snacking without much effort and the impact of banishing these foods from my diet was something I barely felt.
The second thing I did was to eliminate the abnormally large quantities of cream and sugar I was pouring into my coffee. By substituting a sugar free coffee creamer and switching to Splenda I was able to easily knock out approximately 100 calories from my daily caloric intake without feeling it. I also switched to a cooking spray instead of using olive oil every time I cooked a meal. This alone eliminated hundreds of calories. Not cooking with olive oil was not a deprivation. I barely noticed the difference.
I eliminated the easy calories first, continued to log my weight and my daily caloric intake and I only eliminated another 500 calories from my daily diet when my weight loss plateaued.
- I Prioritized Food over Cardio
I hate cardio. Everybody does. The ones who claim they love cardio are freaking liars and can’t be trusted. For several months at the beginning of my weight cut, I did no cardio. I continued to lose weight by eliminating calories from my diet and this made adherence to my new lifestyle infinitely more manageable.
The mistake I had made in the past was to sprint out of the gate, literally. And, because I hated running with the fury of a thousand suns, I would often quit when my weight loss plateaued thinking that the only solution was more running.
I can consume an In-N-Out Double-Double in five minutes flat without breaking a sweat. To burn off the 590 calories in an In-N-Out Double-Double I would have to run for an hour. Make no mistake about this, we are playing a game here that is fundamentally and absurdly asymmetrical. In light of this, I learned that it’s just easier to keep my mouth shut.
Again, the Almighty has created the human body to be a survival machine. It stores calories as if you’re never going to feed it again and it burns calories as if you’re never going to feed it again. It is infinitely easier to deprive the human body of calories then to rip it from its Kung Fu grip once it has them.
- Intermittent Fasting Changed My Life for the Better
I realized that by limiting my food intake on a daily basis to one meal, I could eat to satiation and still stay within a caloric deficit. I hate leaving the table still hungry. I don’t know how the Japanese do it. Grazing throughout the day or eating three miserly meals was keeping me in a constant state of low-grade hunger and this made adherence to my diet much more difficult.
There is now a near constant flow of information from the scientific community touting the benefits of intermittent fasting - longevity, cellular health, neurological and other physical benefits, not to mention the benefits towards cancer protection and diabetes prevention. But, the health benefits of intermittent fasting outside of weight loss are beyond the scope of this post and they were never really a part of the calculus when my foray into intermittent fasting began. I was just tired of being hungry all the time. And I found that there was not a huge difference between low-grade hunger and acute hunger – they both made me want to eat and both were equally miserable. But, at least with the acute hunger, I knew it would end which made enduring it much easier. I would look forward to my one meal a day and I knew it would satisfy my hunger.
To my amazement, the acute hunger actually faded over time as my body became accustomed to eating only one meal a day. It has gotten to the point now that I rarely get hungry anymore and there are times when I have to remind myself to eat. And with intermittent fasting, I no longer have to spread my daily caloric budget over several meals that I resent. I can spend my entire allowance on one meal that I enjoy, and this made an enormous difference in my weight loss efforts.
- I Prioritized Strength Training
According to health experts, a person with more muscle mass on their frame burns more calories than a person with less muscle mass at the same body weight, even at rest. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue which means that, not only does the actual strength training itself burn calories, but it creates the salutary physical changes in one’s body composition such that it becomes much more efficient at burning calories.
Strength training is something I enjoy. I always have. The challenge of it motivates me. But, my initial leap into weight training was actually motivated by vanity. I suspect this is true for the vast majority of those who lift weights. The weight loss benefits were secondary. But, it turns out that strength training actually leveraged my vanity to propel me towards greater progress in weight loss.
The more weight I lost, the more pronounced my musculature and the more motivating that became for me to continue to lose weight. During the dog days of weight loss, I was grateful for any motivational morsel I could find and, for me, this was a big one.
(To Be Continued…)