How I Lost 24 Pounds in Two Months

Over the past two months, I have lost 24 pounds and lowered my cholesterol and glucose (blood sugar) by more than 10% each. I did it without any surgery or pills - just good old fashioned diet and exercise.

Earlier this year, my employer decided to have a 'Get Fit' challenge for the employees to compete against one another in four-person teams. The challenge would last for just two months, with cash prizes being awarded to the top four teams at the end of the two month period.

We were required to take a blood test before and after in order to measure improvement in cholesterol and glucose (blood sugar) levels. Those improvements, combined with total weight lost, would be used to determine our final score.

The winners will be announced next week, and I hope my team has a pretty good shot at placing somewhere in the top four. I know of a few people who have had good individual results, but I'll have to wait until next week to find out who won the overall challenge. I think I have as good a shot as anyone.

How did I do it?

Basically, I started counting calories. Given my size, my body needed in excess of 2,000 calories just to maintain my weight. I won't say how much 'in excess' that amount really was, but it was a lot. Since I wanted to lose weight, then I needed to eat less than that amount. It's fairly simple. I just had to start keeping up with the caloric content of things, but I said from the beginning that I wasn't going to do this and be hungry. The first thing I did was figure out which foods are most filling with the least amount of calories. The answer is vegetables, and lots of them. I started eating lots and lots of salad because it would fill me up without running up my calorie count for the day.

Salads do take some discipline, because most people take a nice healthy salad and cover it with meat and cheeses and fattening dressings so that the salad ends up being as bad for you as a hamburger. I quickly learned to use a very minimal amount of dressing with my salad, and I did so by drizzling a little on top and mixing it all up. I also just put a small sprinkle of shredded cheese, as opposed to a handful, and I quit using bacon bits and croutons. If you order a salad in a restaurant, ask for the dressing on the side to help control the amount you eat.

The next thing I ate was eat lots of soup. I found some really good Healthy Choice brand soups that are loaded full of vegetables and other good stuff, and the calories are very minimal - less than 300 calories for a whole can. A big salad and a giant bowl of vegetable soup made a great lunch that was less than 500 calories. For breakfast, most of the time I ate a packet of 110 calorie low-sugar oatmeal, and they held me until lunch. For a snack, I found some great 100-calorie popcorn that was very filling and tasted good, too.

Water is key here, so drink lots of it. Forget Coke or Pepsi or whatever else you drink, and I recommend not bothering with the Diet stuff, either. I drank a lot of water and coffee with just a little bit of sweetener. I've actually learned to appreciate coffee more now that I taste the actual coffee more than all the junk I used to put into the cup with it. Cutting out soft drinks will put a huge dent in your caloric intake for the day, leaving room for real food instead of that bubbly sugar water. Sweet tea is just as bad, and that was a tough one for me, but I managed.

For dinner, I would eat more salad and then fix some kind of chicken breast or maybe some shrimp or fish filet. The idea was to keep my total calories under 1,500 for the day, and if I was sensible throughout the day, I'd have a good 800 or more that I could use on dinner. I also made sure not to eat anything after 8pm, which is always helpful because I would work out some at night to help burn off some of the calories I had eaten during the day.

Exercise was another thing I worked into my routine, but I really think the diet made the most difference. I often used exercise to burn off excess calories consumed during the day, like when I decided to hit up Starbucks in the morning. When you think about junk food in terms of treadmill time, it really makes you wonder if that little 'treat' is worth all the effort. One Snickers bar would require about an hour on the treadmill to work it off. Screw that.

I have a treadmill and an elliptical machine, and burn about 200 calories in 20 minutes on either one. I made a habit of exercising at least 3-4 nights a week, and I stuck to it. Once you get used to it, 20 minutes on a treadmill is nothing. Sometimes I'd do 30-40 minutes if I felt like the energy was there. I have a guitar chord poster on the wall in front of my treadmill, and I studied it as I walked. The poster helped me focus on something other than the boring repetition of walking in place, and I would use the diagrams to visualize my fingers in position for each chord. I also have a pretty good size yard that I push mow once a week, plus run a Weed Eater, which is a great way to burn off calories when the heat index is 110 degrees outside.

That's pretty much it. Nothing hardcore or extreme. I still ate out a few times. I had two hamburgers and a hot dog on the 4th of July. I cheated quite a bit because I was never too strict with the whole thing. I knew that if I limited myself too much, it would just make me more apt to go back to my old ways after the Get Fit contest was over. I know I could have lost more if I stayed on a strict regimen of diet and exercise, but I just didn't want to put myself through all that.

I am lucky enough not to have any medical issues that may cause me any problems with weight gain or loss, like a thyroid condition. My problem before was simply that I ate too damn much, so I started eating less and burning off the rest and the weight just melted away.*

* Individual results may vary.