In April, I preached at a conference and at that time I was 232 lbs.  It’s not the most in my life. I’ve been up to 240 before.  230 to me has been a nasty top limit of weight.  I say “nasty” because I shouldn’t be at the top limit.  It is in fact a top limit.  And it shouldn’t even be my top limit.  It’s a top limit that became one when I didn’t stay at other top limits.

I am about 6’3″ tall, so some would say I carry my weight well, and my doctor said I wasn’t fat, even though the chart would say I was.  I lifted weights since I was in high school, nothing in the way of body-building, just a faithful 30 minutes three days a week kind of thing.  About three years ago, I shifted to a maintenance shorter hybrid of a P90x type weight exercise that is about push-ups and few other exercises with dumbbells.  I’ve been faithful to some kind of running all this time too, recently to jogging 2 1/2 miles 3-4 times a week.

I haven’t been a huge eater.  I actually have watched what I ate.  I haven’t snacked a lot. However, what occurred is that slowly I added weight.  It was cumulative.  Inching up.  A second helping of supper.  A donut whenever one was around.  A few cookies here and there.  Chips when the bag was sitting there open.

We bought a single family home, which was a wreck, about a year and a half ago.  The first year I remodeled it.  And at the height of that, I went down to 212 at my lowest from the sheer intensity of it.  20 lbs picked up in a year.  Hmmmm.  Did I say my metabolism was low?

But I digress.  To my diet.

To me, a diet needs to be simple, something not difficult to keep track of.  The diet itself shouldn’t be too much labor.  And I’ve found it doesn’t work for me, if I cheat, so I need to have a clear delineation of what I could eat, and I could eat nothing else besides that.   Anything else was cheating.  I’ve found that if I allow myself to cheat, then I’m not in fact on the diet any more.  At this point, the age of 52, I know that losing weight is 75-80% the diet and 20-25% the exercise. You have to have both, but it is by far mainly the diet.

The first month I did not change my exercising at all, and I lost the most weight.  I didn’t add any exercise to lose the most weight.  I know I lost the most in the first 30 days because the first weight that you lose is the easiest to lose, and especially the first week.  I understand that people say that you need a diet that will allow you to keep the weight off.  Sure.  But I can tell you that I’m not going to continue eating exactly like this when I’m done, but I have a diet to go to when I reach my new top limit.

I said I was 232.  When I started the diet, I was 230, and that was my initial weigh in.  My goal is 200, and I weighed myself today after eating lunch and I was 201.  I’m not worried about reaching the goal, because I have two more weeks.  You may think, ‘Wow, 200, that’s still a big person.’  Right. But 200 on me is skinny.  No gut, not even a paunch.

The first week I lost 7 pounds, and out of all the other weeks, I’ve lost 4, 3 twice, 2 is the most constant number, most weeks 2, and once zero.  Yes, zero one week.  I could not do the diet faithfully that week for several reasons, and I knew it was a potential zero week.  But a zero week is not a weight gain week.  Maintaining is what life looks like after the diet.

I think you want to know what the diet was.  I’ll tell you and I do recommend it, because it worked.  I know it did.  You should know this.  Despite the fact that it worked doesn’t mean that I wasn’t hungry all of the time, and I’m hungry right this moment.  I’m hungry still after I eat. You’ve got to be hungry to lose weight in any conventional way.  Part of losing weight is learning to deal with hunger.

I’m not a doctor, so this comes with that disclaimer.  You are taking your life into your own hands. I started the diet because my doctor said my cholesterol was borderline.  He talked about cholesterol medicine.  I wouldn’t take it anyway.  I didn’t tell him that, but I told him that I didn’t need it because I would lose the weight.  Since getting to around 210, my acid reflux is gone and I stopped snoring.  That’s right, my weight loss stopped my snoring, which probably means I’m getting more oxygen at night.  I know that lots of other things are better, including all my joints.  By the way, my skin is better too, I’ve noticed.

OK, here goes.  I’m serious this time.

Breakfast:  A pear, a banana, and a cup of coffee.
Lunch:  A bowl of oatmeal (two packets of instant oatmeal).
Supper:  Either a salad with some meat in it, or a salad with cottage cheese or a salad with a hot dog.  Yes, it’s better to have good stuff in the salad, like spinach.  I use clear salad dressing, never ranch or something creamy like that.  If not a salad, then a bowl of soup.  The soup is my own idea, which is a bowl of chicken broth with green beans and sometimes peas in it.  I have added a cut up piece of chicken breast in that soup too.
I do have a snack available, a half glass of vegetable juice, like V8 (you can buy generic), in the afternoon.  This is like a donut, really.
About an hour before bed, a hot beverage to sip on.

I did that diet for 2 months.   You really know when you’ve cheated, because it’s so simple.  On Saturday night, our family has a pizza night.  That’s my only break in the week, but I cut down on the number of slices from 6 to 4, and the ones I eat are slimmer.  During this third month, which isn’t over yet, I’ve added some food purposefully.  I want protein, because of the exercise I’ve added, and so when I’m done exercising, I eat two hard boiled eggs immediately and drink a lowfat glass of milk.  That’s quite a bit of protein and it’s like a steak dinner when you are on a diet.  That is all I have added though.

I haven’t had a snack since I started.

OK, during my second month on the diet, I did thirty days of P90x for my exercise.  I used youtube and watched other people do it, and followed along with them.  You don’t have to buy it. To splurge this summer, for this month, I joined a 24 hour fitness, and and on a 6 day regime that includes 55 minutes of cardio (the eliptical or treadmill) and then this schedule:  Mon-Legs, Tues-Core and Abs, Wed-Upper Body, Thurs-Legs, Fri-Core and Abs, Sat-Upper Body.  I’ve enjoyed the gym because of how easy it is to work hard on machines and free weights.  However, I would rather just do the P90x. I did the gym for a month for my wife to help her reach her goals.

Like I said, I just weighed myself after lunch and I was 201. I’ve not been on the scale and have reached my goal of 200, but that will likely be this week, a week and a half or so short of 90 days. Today at 24 hour fitness, I saw a commercial for nutri-system and it was sort of funny because I know it is unnecessary and then more complicated than what I do.   Even though my goal is 200, I’m going to try for 197-198 or so, so that if I gain, it will be up to 200.  My goal for maintaining is changing the top limit, and then going to this very diet for a week at a time, when I need to get it back down.  I will also be more careful, because I don’t want to do this diet. 😀

Let me know if you try my diet and tell me if it is working.  You can comment here when you do.  It works!!