Tell him about the Twinkie. What about the Twinkie? - My unfunny thoughts on weight loss.

Okay. Don't worry I'm not turning this into a fitness blog.  I will still have plenty of tasteless jokes. Personally, I like reading about fitness as much as I like listening to a post in interview of an NFL high school dropout lineman (my view is that I tune in to watch him play, not talk). As I'm beginning P90X3, however, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring of fitness commentary with a blessedly short post. 

Over the past eight years I have lost nearly 45 pounds and have kept it mostly off (actually I lost 55 pounds and added 10 pounds back on). Before (after I had already lost 10 lbs) and after.  And while I do not proclaim to be a fitness expert, I do have some friends were trying to lose weight. So I will share so my two simple steps.

One, stop eating so much.  I dropped my goal to eat a zillion M&M's in my lifetime.  Even more simply, I just watched the number of calories I consumed. You have to burn about 3500 calories to lose 1 pound.  So the math is pretty simple. For a person my size to maintain my weight I should consume about 2500 cal per day.  So if I only eat roughly 2000 cal a day, I will lose a pound a week. It seems pretty simple and it typically is (holding out the exception for the few people who have heard of who cannot seem to lose weight no matter what. I am skeptical that this is truly the case, but I don't want to judge).   When you burn more calories than you consume, pretty much regardless of what you eat, you will lose weight.  A Kansas State University professor even proved this by losing 20 pounds while eating primarily Twinkies, Doritos, and Oreo's, just keeping the total to under 1800 cal per day. His cholesterol even improved. It is simple math. For me, I stuck to Slim Fast shakes (200 cal) for breakfast and Marie Calendar frozen dinners for lunch (400 cal).  This would leave me a pretty large dinner of roughly 1400 cal without requiring any exercise.

Second, I started exercising.  It fits right into the calories per day equation. If I did a workout that burned 500 cal, I can either eat a little extra at dinner or I would double my weight loss for the day (in my experience is not a day to day thing, but you have to keep the calorie deficiency up for several days in a row). And as you exercise, you add more muscle which allows you to burn more calories when you exercise. So your weight loss is more efficient. I lost the most weight doing the P90X workout three times in a row (for a total of six months).  I have to agree that mixing up your workout, as you do in P90X, is far superior than running or doing anything the same way over and over each day. From my experience, you gain muscle memory pretty quickly and repeating same kind of work out each day becomes less and less effective in burning calories. That is why I like the video routines. I've completed Slim-in-6, P90X, and Insanity (all Beachbody Products). It is pretty automatic that if you stick with the program and watch your diet you will lose weight. The key though is to push yourself. If it's easy, you're not doing it right.

When I was pushing 230 pounds I thought I could never lose weight. I even use my elliptical so much that I broke it, but hadn't changed my diet yet.  I even reasoned that since my dad had a belly, I was genetically predisposed to being chubby.  I figured I was stuck that way. I was wrong. I just had to try. I used to watch my father jog 5 miles a day, but never really loses belly. Genetics, right?  The funny thing is when my father was diagnosed with type II diabetes and began watching his diet in combination with aggressive exercising, he lost 60 pounds.

I am a fan of the band Fall Out Boy.  I was watching a recent music video and couldn't figure out who they had singing the songs, because Patrick Stump had been the chubby front man for years. Come to find out, that he did the same thing I did after realizing that being overweight and unhealthy was for the birds.When asked by a reporter about his weight loss, this is what he said:

“It’s a lot of hard work. I was reading something about 'things that elicit bad advice' and one of them was weight loss. If you’re looking to lose weight or if you’ve lost a little bit of weight, everyone has some sort of remedy or whatever. I had tried them all... It all comes down to mass and exercise. And that’s it! It’s a sentence long: diet and exercise. I mean, it’s three words! There’s this whole industry around it, but it’s no more complicated than that. People have taken on this insidious thing about it, like maybe it’s the drugs or weight loss pills or surgery.”

Here are a before and after photo:

Not too bad with just diet and exercise.  

So as I go to spend my next 90 days of Tony Horton and P90X3 in my basement, I may or may not update this fitness blog with my progress, but I will be busting my butt and I will report when I am done. Hopefully it can drop my last 15 pounds, add some bulk, and head over the hills (I turn 40 next month) being in some of the best shape of my life.


UPDATE:

So I am three weeks in and P90X-3 has been a great workout.  I love being done in roughly 30 minutes and I find that it is much easier to fit into gaps in my schedule.  Much better than going to a gym.  I have lost 6 lbs and the definition is coming fast.