Diet, Exercise and Discipline Part One: Diet

            Before I decided it was time to quit kidding myself, I really COULDN'T felx my gut into a visible six pack no matter how hard I tried, my diet was admittedly HORRIBLE. And yeah, I knew that. I knew I drank too much beer, I consumed too much sugar, and BOY do I love me some FAT.              We all know our diet stinks, but when we decide to "Watch what we eat," and make some positive changes, I dont' think most of us realize how godawful our diets are, or what it is we need to do to fix them.That's why Meal plans like NutriSystem are so popular... you don't have to think about them, you eat what you're given, and boom, you lose weight.
      Of course, what happens when you finish, and go back to eating regular food? I believe any diet based on things you can't sustain if in larger doses when you meet your goals are a surefire path to rebound. When start dieting, and give something up, the question has to be, "is it possible or likely that I will be giving this up for the rest of my life. And if so, what am I going to replace it with?
    I'll give a good example of what I mean. I take my coffee light and sweet, 2 scoops of sugar per cup, so on a large double cup, that's 4 scoops of sugar. BOOM, 60 Calories, 12.8 grams of carbs devoid of any other nutritional value right there, and let's face it...one cup? NO. But I NEED my coffee...and I HATE the taste of every artificial sweetener I'd ever tried up till now. The only solution for the diet would have been black coffee, and I had to face facts, when the diet was done, I would start using sugar again. So I started trying to find something to replace it with long term. Smaller doses of sucralose at first, but then I tried Stevia, and found something that tasted fine that I could use for the rest of my life, and not have to go back to 4 scoops of sugar in what?4 large cups of coffee a day? 240 Calories? That's almost a MEAL with no other nutrition. It's the suitable long term replacement that was the key. If I hadn't found the replacement, I would have had to keep using sugar during my diet, had less cups of coffee and given up other things, or accepted a longer wait to meet my goals.
              I think that last line is important. No. I didnt' give up butter in my diet. I hate margarine. I made better decisions about what to put butter ON and what not to, but knowing that I wasnt' going to give up butter long term, I had to keep using it on things that needed it's creamy goodness, like my baked potatoes.
              So as you start logging what you're eating and as you plan how you're going to take in less while you burn more so that you lose weight, I recommend staying away from any "Diet" that targets a particular area and says "None of that!" Carbs are the biggest example. Yeah, Knocking out Carbs is a great way to lose weight, but are you really going to go super low carb for the rest of your life? No. And seriously...You NEED carbs. Carbs are not the devil...Excess is.
             So what do you knock out? The answer is what everyone KNOWS it is, but our love of shortcuts makes us try to find quicker ways. The answer is Calories. Based on your current weight, and your loss goals, you set a Maximum Net Calorie budget and you don't' exceed it. For me, that Max was 1650 Net, Meaning that if I burned 350 Calories from Exercise, I could take in 2000 calories a day and expect to steadily lose weight.
           Don't forget the minimum. You need to take in a minimum of 1200 calories a day. That's pure intake, not net, so if you take in 1200 and burn 1300, that's fine, it's just that if you take in less than 1200 calories regularly, your body begins to starve, and your metabolism compensates by slowing down which, when you go back to eating again means an immediate rebound.
           Now I said don't target one thing and knock it out. But this IS the time to start learning and getting into the habit of a healthy balance. Low Fat, Low Sugar, Low Sodium, High Protein and High Fiber. Notice I said low SUGAR, not low Carbs. A diet where 50% of the calories come from carbs 30% come from fat and only 20% come from protein is still a healthy diet. Nothing wrong with getting a little less from Fat, and a little less from carbs and a little more from protein, but don't' overdo it. FIBER. How are you going to get enough fiber if all you eat is fat free meat?
                   A good App like MyFitnessPal can help you keep track of it, watch your intake and from there, it's easy. Stay under the Calorie, Fat, Sugar and Sodium targets, Stay over the Vitamin, Mineral, Fiber and Protein Targets, and as you continue to watch it, track it and follow it, what you learn isn't' what's healthy to eat, come on, we're not idiots, we KNOW what's healthy and what's not...What you learn is how to eat healthy while eating what you like to eat. THERE is your sustainability. I'm not a big fan of Chicken Breast, but it's a lot lower calorie than Chicken Thighs...But did you know Pork Tenderloin has less calories than chicken breast? I didn't. I LOVE pork Tenderloin. Now you might hate it. but my point isn't "Eat Pork Ternderloin." My point is ignore anyone who in the process of giving you diet advice says "Eat this. or Dont' Eat that" Learn what a healthy diet consists of, Track what you're eating, and find the things that you love to eat that fit in those budgets. Then, when you meet your goal, and you're ready to start taking in 2000 net Calories a day rather than 1600, You aren't going back to habits that got you fat in the first place...You're just loosening the restrictions on quantities you were consuming while you were working so hard to lose.

Keeping Track of Things The Easy Way

        Following this blog is like being beaten about the head and shoulders with "Diet" "Exercise" "Discipline" over and over again. IT's a simple message, but why do so many people have trouble with it in practice?
            I think the biggest problem most people have is the question of how tightly they need to control their diet, and how much exercise is enough?
          So we start to "watch what we eat" and "be more active" but hey, I took the skin off my chicken, what's another handful of pretzels? And..I walked around the block...I can have another beer, right? But you dont' KNOW. The trick is Knowing. The nice thing is we don't live 20 years ago when the only way to KNOW was to write everything in a ledger and do the math. Yeah, that's not going to fly. And this is the healthy Miser's blog, so you KNOW I'm not sending you to Weight Watcher's to pay money to do something you can do for free.
            Here's the problem. Logging is work. The more of a pain it is, the less likely you are to do it properly, and it's really important. When people say "Diet and Exercise" what they MEAN is "Calories in, Calories out." Think of it like a budget. You have a certain amount to spend, and you can work harder to put more in your account so you can spend more. But if you don't pay attention to what you're spending and earning, you are on the road to bouncing a bunch of checks and ruining your credit score. So Are you type of guy that will write everything in a ledger and keep the math up to date? Yeah, I'm not. Thank GOD for smartphones!
             I did some serious looking around trying to figure this out, bounced around message boards, consumer research sites, rating and review sites looking for the best Apps, and through some trial and error , I came to the conclusion that there really is only one App I can recommend for this, and that's My Fitness Pal. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ Or just look for MyFitnessPal on I-Tunes or in the Play Store.
        So first of all, let's deal with the major focus of this Blog...It's Free. Completely Free. No "Trial Version" or "Premium Features" It's just free. Next, Let's deal with our basic laziness. It's EASY. This is a GOOD app for logging everything you need to. First, you Log in with Facebook, so easy to sign up, Then you set some profile Information in, current weight, What your goals are (It has settings even if your goal is to gain weight) It will help you keep track on Weight, Waist size, Neck size, Hips..whatever you want to set.
      Based on what you want to accomplish, it puts you on a net calorie budget, Basically, Ok, If you want to lose that much per week, here's how much you can take in every day.
      Now you start logging your Food. Here's where it gets good. It's got a freaking BAR CODE SCANNER. So for most things, you just scan the bar code, and it finds all the nutrition information about it on the internet, and Yes, ALL the information, so Not just calories, but Fat, Sodium, Sugar, Fiber, Vitamins, Minerals, Protein...Everything. No Barcode? No Problem. It has a search feature that lets you find almost anything you're about to eat, and everything you've eaten recently is always right there. We're all creatures of habit, so it makes sense,
          Now we get to the features for the truly lazy, like me. It lets you save whole meals...so The Handful of Vitamins, the Banana, the Yogurt, Egg Whites and even my coffee the way I make it all the same way every morning? Yeah. One button. YES.
       Exercise it similar, Search for an exercise you just did, and it pulls information on how many calories it burned. But Have I mentioned I'm Lazy? My Fitness Pal can automatically sync with other things you're using to track your fitness...I use Fitbit, For Example...My Fitness Pal automatically syncs with my Fitbit, so I don't' even have to log my exercise most days. I log everything I have to eat, most of it from previous days, and towards the end of the day, I know if I can cheat a little or not. EASY.
             So here's what you start to get a clue on QUICK when you really start logging. You really start to see what that handful of pretzels costs you. You start to see the correlation between the days you dont' see loss and the fact that you had WAY too much sodium yesterday. You start to really get a sense of what you can and cant' do if you want to lose. It gives you certainty. You KNOW when you are likely to see a good loss on the scale...and that starts to get you motivated to go a little closer to the minimums rather than the maximums. You you start to REALLY see the NET intake rather than just the total of what you took in...and  if you burned more than you took in, you KNOW you've got a loss coming in the morning. So it motivates you to do that again. and again.
        Then comes the day you hit the goal...What happens then? Afraid you'll rebound? I was. So I kept logging. And I used the logging (Still am, in fact) to pay attention to my diet as I learn what it's going to take to maintain, and to make sure I stay in the shape I'm in.
        This I think is the real difference... KNOWING....not just...FEELING. If I FEEL Like I'm doing more or eating less...It's just not going to work. KNOW.

Diet, Exercise and Discipline

     It's sort of comical the looks I get when I respond to the question "How'd you do it?" I get the question all the time when Someone notices how much I've lost or sees a Facebook post with my face looking half the size it was a few months ago.
     My response is always the same: "Diet and Exercise, man." The looks are comical, because although every time you hear anyone who knows talk about what really works where fitness is concerned, the answer is "diet and exercise" that's not what anyone wants to hear. Since I lost so quickly and efficiently and haven't' shown any signs of a rebound, obviously, it must be some super diet, right? I must have done some magic Cayenne Pepper and Lemon Juice Cleanse, taken a bunch of expensive supplements designed to improve my liver function, completely cut out anything purple from my diet and gotten 12 shots of magic hormone replacement juice a day, right?
            The most comical thing from my perspective is the dejected reaction when I didn't' say something that someone can BELIEVE is a quick easy solution...but how is exhibiting 2-3 months of discipline on both the diet and the exercise side of the house any less of a "Quick and easy" solution than any other fad diet?
         As I was approaching my initial goal and looking to transition into a "maintain" mode, I went to visit my doctor to talk about how to make sure I didn't' rebound. When he saw my weight which was 45 lbs less then the last time he had seen me 3 months earlier, I heard the familiar question: 'How's you do it?" He followed up with a quick.."is this something you just did, or is this a lifestyle change?" I told him" Diet and Exercise" and he laughed for 5 minutes and asked if I wanted to tell some of his other patients that.
          The question about lifestyle change was a good point, I thought,. Part of my diet plan was to ensure that while I was taking everything in what was very small doses for me, I wasn't' cutting OUT anything that I was going back to eating eventually, if in higher doses. I was also managing exercise in a way I could grow and sustain, and keep doing long term. What I hadn't' realized is that I was thinking in terms of "Can I sustain this" I was thinking about "can I make this a lifestyle change."
        So there's the Big Secret of how I did it:

1. I looked at my diet, in terms of calories in, set a minimum calorie target of 1200, which is what you need at least to keep from going into starvation mode and slowing your metabolism down, then went LOW (Not NO) fat, sugar and sodium, and high protein and fiber. I set a maximum Calorie target of 1600, but actually for the purpose of quick weight loss I went as close to 1200 a day as I possibly could. 
2. I looked at my exercise plan, and decided that I needed to do SOMETHING every single day, because if I skipped, skipping would lead to more skipped days, and it was easier to hold myself accountable to everyday, even if at the beginning it was just a walk. I started with things that challenged me based on the shape I was in, and altered day by day, things I could measure and increase over time, but also varied day by day, living room routine off YouTube (Early on) one day, Half hour on the elliptical in my apartment complex exercise room the next day, a half hour or so walk a third day. It was amazing how fast "Basic" Living room Workouts turned to more advanced, difficult things, One mile walks turned to 3, and I was able to challenge myself more and more. One workout a day turned into one workout and a 3 mile walk after dinner. Which led to one 6 mile walk a week,, and days with 2 workouts built in. But mostly feeling able to do more and more and not feeling like I was on my last breath because I'd been active for half an hour. 
3. I needed to track. So here's my first recommendation, it's a free app (As you can see from the blog's title, I like free) My Fitness Pal. www.myfitnesspal.com My Fitness Pal is available for I-Phone and Android. It syncs with a lot of other fitness apps and basically lets you input everything you eat, and all your exercise, calories in, calories out, and helps you see where you are against net calorie goals for the day based on how much you're trying to lose. More on this later, but Check it out, this App is the best I've found for managing your nutrition and exercise goals together. You put in your weigh-ins, hook up with your Facebook friends, post your successes to Facebook or Twitter, I found it incredibly valuable in managing everything. 
4. I needed to adjust. What I was doing the first week doesn't even come close to what I was doing by the 8th. As I went, as I lost, I paid attention to what seemed to help, what seemed to hurt, adjusted accordingly. Now I'm adjusting even more, as I'm trying to slide into a daily lifestyle that will help me keep up this level of activity, maintain this weight, and keep feeling as good as I do. 

             So, did you hear anything new? Anything fancy? Yeah. Sorry. Maybe it's boring, but the results are not. While I was aggressively working on my weight and trying to lose as quickly as possible, Getting on the scale every morning knowing i would be a LITTLE lighter and looking to see how much was DEFINITELY not boring.  Looking in the mirror and feeling a little bit better every day about how I look isn't boring. And feeling great after a 3 mile run, knowing you still have enough energy to walk the dog isn't boring. I think I need to change the answer to the question thouhg. It's not Just Diet and Exercise. It's definitely "Diet, Exercise and Discipline."

Fit and Healthy on a Budget

         For most of my life, I've been at the very least in decent shape, if not outstanding physical condition. I was a Marine for 10 years, and even after I got out, I kept in good shape, sometimes more than others, usually trusting my activity level to account for the fact that my Diet wasn't' exactly the healthiest in the world. 

        I  do love a good cold dark beer, a nice bacon cheeseburger, and anything fried, but hey, I was blessed with a great metabolism, right? 

         Yeah, well then I hit 40, and middle age disabused me of the notion that my genetic makeup would do anything for me if I wasn't doing anything for myself. Then there was LAZINESS. 40, I was pretty healthy in my habits...41, 42, 43..yeah not so much...and the weight was piling on. 

          I left the Marine Corps at a WAY too skinny for my frame 165, and at 39, I was a very nicely built and toned 195 and was feeling great about myself. so as the weight piled on in my early 40's I was able to justify that hey it still looked good on my frame. Yeah... Hey, if I try REALLY hard I can still flex that gut into some semblance of a 6-pack. Yeah...

         There comes a point where we just have to face the fact that we've gotten fat. I mean FAT. My watershed moment came when I went to a 2 day conference, and packed one pair of black slacks figuring it would be fine, and oops, I packed an old pair of 34's and had to squeeze into them for 2 days straight. NOT fun. I was at a point where I was kidding myself still buying 36's .

         So the time came to do something about it. This was a problem I hadn't' really faced before. In truth, in the past, when I was looking at my fitness, I was usually looking at certain activity goals or the way I looked. I was usually  thinking about gaining a few pounds, not the other way around.  So I was having to look at things in a new light. That's when I decided to try to do it on a budget and see what happened. 

         Now losing on a budget doesn't mean you spend nothing. But it does mean that you take cost into consideration on anything you invest in where your fitness is concerned, and if there are two ways of doing things, and one costs money and the other doesn't, if both are similarly effective, you choose the one that doesn't. But it also means you DO invest in things that will effectively help your cause, and save money in the long run. 

    

That's what this blog is about. In the process of losing 45 Pounds in a little more than 2 months, and on my path to losing 50, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle afterwards,  I  paid attention to what worked and what didn't', I made very specific decisions NOT to invest in things like a personal trainer, gym membership, meal plans, medical assistance of any kind, but definitely TO invest in things that would make it so that those things were unnecessary.  

My apologies to anyone who makes money helping people lose weight or get in shape, but the message of this blog

Is very clearly:

• Diet and exercise WORK when combined with a healthy dose of discipline. 
• You don't' have to spend ANY money to lose weight and get in shape, but some things make sense to invest in.
• Just because everyone's talking about it, just because it's the latest thing, doesn't make it right. 
• Healthy lifestyle begins with habits you can sustain long term. So if a diet calls for completely cutting ANYTHING out, think twice. What happens when you finish and go back to eating Carbs? Or Fat? or Whatever it is the latest Guru said you had to cut completely?

Thanks for reading, and I hope my experiences help a few people accomplish what I have this year...Lose Weight? Sure, but not really that's a means to an end. Save money? No, that's just a side benefit. Feel Better? There's the ticket.