I Lost Weight with No Crazy Diets, Pills, Supplements, or Massive Workout Plans

I didn't go on a crazy diet, and I didn't work out every day of the week. I was working at fast food restaurants and building a pc repair business on the side. In short I was eating bad food with no time for exercise. To top it off we where hit with a hurricane and I developed a taste for military MRE's. I was eating close to 2 or 3 thousand calories a day. I went from size 32 pants up to 38's. When I started splitting size 38's I thought maybe it was time to do something.

My first breakthrough in weight loss came in the form of a root canal. I loved soda. I drank soda all day. I suffered some nasty cavities because of it. I made the decision to quit soda cold turkey. I switched to unsweetened iced tea, no sugar coffee, and plain water.

I stopped gaining weight but didn't lose very much. I decided to turn to the Internet and see what I could do.

At first I found a lot of junk. There is an immeasurable amount of garbage on the INTERNET. Advertisements for all the latest pills, patches, and gadgets abound everywhere you look. I did find a few nuggets along the way though. I was looking up nutrition info for a certain food and found fitday.com.

I liked the website and signed up (free). I started tracking my calories and the first day topped out at 3000 calories. I saw what I was doing.

I started watching what I ate. I didn't go to some extreme diet of eating lettuce carrots for meals but I just recorded what I ate. I found that I didn't want to record some things (too high in calories or had to manually add them to the database) so I stopped eating those things. After about a month at fitday I lost around 15 lbs.

I ran into caloriecount a couple of times and liked the depth of their food database and the over all look and feel of their site so I switched to them after a month. I signed up for a new account and went through their diet profile. It suggested some changes and I made them. I started eating around 1700 calories a day. I started loosing more weight.

My size 38 pants were baggy by now and I had to buy new pants (thank God for goodwill). I started doing Tae Boe and noticed some rather pleasing side effects. I could run. Before I was puffing before I got very far. Now I could sprint almost a block and not die. My body started changing, my arms didn't5 keep waving after I stopped. My thighs were gaining strange bumps and dimpled spots. I was gaining muscle.

I started adding protein to my diet in the form of shakes, and noticed an immediate improvement. I'm not sure why but adding a protein shake seems to help with shedding weight. Around the time 8 had lost about 30 lbs and my size 34 s were loose as well. Me and my wife were walking together and ever so slowly the weight has been peeling off.

Currently I fluctuate around in the low 170's. I started out at 223 and have dropped over 50 lbs. My BMI is in the upper end of the healthy range and I have been wavering on the decision of whether or not to lose more. I think if anything I would like to continue to work out and firm up. I know what it takes to get 6 pack abs and I am not interested. It takes a cycle of bulking and cutting to get washboard abs.

-You need to eat voraciously and life weights for several weeks.
-You will bulk up quickly, then you slash your calories and do cardio for several weeks.
-After several cycles of this you will get down to the 6% body fat range.
-This is when your ab muscles show themselves. I'm interested in being healthy not that!

If I had a secret to weight loss it would be summed up as follows.
-Drink 0 calorie drinks. Tea, water, and such things are 0 calorie. The caffeine in tea and coffee will boost your metabolism before a workout but it can also cause your body to push to hard and you will get into anaerobic exercise, which can lead to excess stress on your heart.

-Watch what you eat. Take your food for a given day and punch it in a place like fitday, caloriecount, or sparkle people. Then use one of their burn meters to calculate how many calories you burn on a given day. If you burn more than you eat you will lose weight. If you eat more than you burn you will gain weight. Except if you don't eat enough. If you try to starve yourself your body will hold onto ever single calorie it can.
This has frustrated many an anorexic and bulimic. It's part of why they can't seem to lose enough.
They get to a point where their body is holding onto every calorie it can as well as cannibalizing their muscles as well.

Muscle burns more calories than fat.
Weight is a small part of fitness. Take two men. Both weigh 170 lbs. One has a 32 inch waist, the other has a 34 or 36 inch waist. Which would you rather be? The one with the better measurements! Measuring yourself along with weighing weekly will go along way towards giving you a better picture of your overall health.

Swap out high cal foods for low cal foods.
We switched from ground beef to low fat (93/7) turkey meat. It's 40 cals per ounce and is incredibly low fat. With the right seasoning it's hard to taste the difference between the two.
Sugar free Jello is 10 calories per little cup and is delicious for an extra tasty boost add nonfat whipped cream on top!

Use protein and fiber to your advantage.
It takes longer to digest protein and fiber than other stuff. If you east a meal like tuna and something with a lot of fiber you will feel full for a long time. You could eat an entire ca of tuna and only consume 200 calories.
There are some other really great websites that offer diet and exercise advice.

http://www.Trainwithmeonline.com Awesome site that lets you build exercise routines around what kinds of equipment you have.

http://caloriecount.about.com Another great site and is where I currently calculate my calories burned and eaten. Has an extensive library of articles on weight loss and a huge community of people to help you.
http://www.fitday.com is where I got my original start on calorie counting. They have a nice set of features available for the beginner.

Their are others available and you can find tons of workout regimens on youtube as well. Expert village on youtube has lots of exercises and regimens for all kinds of equipment available. Their are also tons of Jack Lalanne videos on youtube and he is definitely worth listening too. If you don't know who he is, he is a 90 something year old man who still lifts weights, does push ups, and can probably out work many college students.