My Diet
My diet starts with a recognition that fat has psychological implications. Being fat is a psychosis. It is willingly dying faster, lowering your quality of life in the days we're given, and being incapable of fighting an addiction. Further, this is an appetite. If we want to be truly free from our appetite, we cannot be free to eat as we please. That freedom is instant slavery to food. We cannot stop. To be free from food, we have to be structured beyond belief. We must understand that this is a daily challenge, but not to manage this is to confirm one thing. One critical thing. This is the most important ingredient in our entire "diet." We must understand that our eating demonstrates we do not love ourselves. We do not view ourselves as worthy of care. We do not feel that we deserve to have health and we are condemning ourselves.
Until we decide to love ourselves and make this real, we cannot lose weight durably. We cannot transform to the journey to changing not our diet, but our identity. When you love yourself, you are a healthy person. A healthy person does not overeat. A healthy person loves to work out.
For the religious amongst us, to not love ourselves is to deny God's love for us. Put differently, it is an act of denying God. If we succumb to our appetites, we demonstrate Greed and Sloth which are sins and are ugly in the eyes of God. If we love God, we respect him and do not do these things.
So, why do we fail ourselves? We have two questions to answer and the answers free us from our fat.
1. What is at the root of our psychosis?
2. What is physically going on and how do we change it?
The first takes professional help, expertise found in books, a coach introspection, prayer, a parent, a friend, a wife, a doctor, a tragedy, a co-worker, or a child. In my case it took all of these... and a lot of them.
The second question can be answered in many ways and there are too many theories to get into. However, the basics seem to be:
1. Sugar, Fat & Salt in combination are devastating.
2. Food addictions are worse than heroin as you cannot quit cold turkey or you'll starve to death.
There are an overwhelmingly large number of books, videos, and the like on this subject. For me, there were just a few that created the core of my "diet plan." They are:
1. The End of Overeating: http://www.theendofovereatingbook.com/
2. Sugar the Bitter Truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&ob=av3e
3. Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead: http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/
4. Join the Reboot: http://www.jointhereboot.com/
5. ClackFit: http://www.clackfit.com/
I have tried a few things along the way. I've tried:
1. Atkins
2. Southbeach
3. No Sugar
4. Gluten Free
5. Intermittent Fasting
6. Calorie Counting
7. Exercise calorie balancing
From all of the material + experience, I derived the following:
1. I hate being hungry
2. Sugar sucks
3. You have to hate the system that tried to take your money & your health
4. You have to get used to 4 hour stretches of hunger at least once a day.
5. Apples and Pears are phenomenal snacks. Nuts aren't
6. You have to keep eating cookies, donuts, ice cream, and the like along the way. To not is to create obsessions. You lose to obsessions every time.
7. "One day at a time" helps.
8. Seeing progress is important.
9. Being kind and gentle to yourself regardless of what happens is more important.
10. You'll need help to succeed. This isn't possible to do alone.
My final diet plan that allowed me to lose 24 lbs in 3 months (194 -> 170) and go from 26.8% to 20.49% body fat is:
1. A 2 week Reboot of vegetables and juices
2. A calorie restricted vegan diet during the week. Eat whatever the heck I want on the weekends.
That's it. Now, about that vegan diet during the week. Now, this part is *really* hard.
Breakfast: a protein shake. Mostly mango, milk, and protein powder. Coffee.
Snack: Fruit, Coffee
Lunch: A HUGE salad with lots of veggies that fill. No salad dressing. Only salt, pepper & vinegar. Fruit.
Snack: Fruit, Coffee
Dinner: A 1lb sweet potato or yam. I am now a master at cooking these.
Snack: Fruit, Frozen banana, Frozen Mango, Tea
The massive lunch + 1lb starch yields a very full belly. It works wonderfully well to avoid being hungry, to give plenty of nutrients and protein for even an active person. I can live on it without going insane. The sugar from the fruit becomes awesome. I know I can pig out on the weekend.
The issue? Slow progress. The great news.... not at the beginning. In the beginning the water weight, the easy weight just falls off. You'll lose an amazing amount in the 1st two weeks and more in the first month.
Then.... then you hit a wall. Every pound is hard as you don't need as many calories as a thin person so you're not burning as much, so you can't eat as much.
Another warning: I wasn't eating enough calories. I shut my metabolism down and basically was storing every single calorie I ate on the weekend. I was "averaging out." 3 months into my dieting, I had to take 10 days to reignite my metabolism. I gained 5 pounds quickly. As soon as I finished this 10 days, two water weight pounds fell off. The rest of the weight remains. I am now on track with a slower loss to lose about a pound a week. In 3-4 months I will lose another 15 pounds and will be at a 15% body fat level. This is my target. I'll be done then.
And then the reward. At this point in time, I'll be able to eat 500-600 more calories a day. That's 1 1/2 Snicker's bars!!!! That said, I won't be eating that. No way. I'm not starting that addiction again. Instead, I'll be eating more good foods like a hamburger for lunch, a steak from time to time, potatoes and cheeses, salad dressing, and other fun stuffs. I will have earned them. I won't abuse them. I will be a healthy person forever more. Oh, and yeah, on the weekend, I'm going to eat that Snicker's bar!!!
Cheers,
Matthew