Why “calorie fail” anyway?

Well, we all feel one of the biggest culprits for getting fat is making a horrible decision about what to eat. So we call these calorie fails. Some great examples would be putting a creamy, fatty, calorie laden dressing on an otherwise healthy salad or sandwich (in some cases TRIPLING the calories), eating 800+ calories in chips & salsa (the salsa is not the bad part!) BEFORE your meal even arrives, getting french fries or onion rings with your meal and then dipping them in ranch (holy calorie fail Fatman!), etc.

The biggest calorie fails are the ones that could “fairly” easily be avoided at any given meal. Using the examples above you could put just oil & vinegar on the salad, or just mustard on the sandwich. Skip the chips and salsa, appetizers you eat after you order your meal are a great way to over-eat (you eat your entire entrée even though you filled up on chips/bread/etc). Get a side salad instead of fries, again with a vinegar based dressing, if you don’t like salad at all get a fruit cup, or steamed veggies, or cottage cheese. Most places have several alternatives to deep fried and dipped in fat (ranch) sides.

Another good example of a calorie fail is when you could have, without really giving anything up, eaten a lot less calories. In fact, I did this quite regularly before I started considering everything I eat. I would be at a restaurant trying to decide between the gorgonzola NY strip with cheesy garlic mashed potatoes and creamed spinach or the seared ahi tuna filet with wild rice and steamed asparagus. I happen to love both of those items; I could easily have gone either way so would often just decide at the last minute based on price or whim. Now, of course, I pick the tuna because that meal is about 600 calories, where the other one is about 1400, and that’s not even taking nutritional value into consideration.
So that is a calorie fail, avoid them at all costs! =P

Ryan's Guide to Weight Loss - Step 3

Assuming you have completed step 2…. Congratulations! You just went a week without eating the really bad crap that most of America subsists on. You should notice a difference in the way you feel. I know I felt way better both physically and mentally after giving up all the trash food. So, what is next?

Now it is time to start cutting back. You can go into your calorie goals and set the drop down to “Lose 2 pounds a week”. You can start with 1.5 or even just 1 if you aren’t feeling terribly ambitious but I think losing 2 a week is relatively easy when you are as fat, or fatter, than I was.

How many calories you can eat per day to lose your desired amount will be completely variable so I will stay away from specifics and just talk about what I did to help keep my calories at or under that limit. The first big thing to watch out for is hunger. Hunger is your enemy. In fact, hunger is likely why you are fat right now (surprise, surprise, I know).  A big part of this is not only managing your calorie intake but managing your hunger. I am not suggesting you try some mind-over-matter BS or something; I am talking about eating to quell hunger. Easy right? Well, “sorta”.

The problem with hunger is that when it gets too strong it makes it very difficult to maintain self control when it comes to what and how much you eat. I am convinced that a strong feeling of hunger affects your ability to reason. I bet I could find a study somewhere on the affects of hunger on the brain that would back that up. All I know is that the days when I got super hungry from having to skip meals I was far more likely to commit a “calorie fail”.

So, to fight hunger you just need to eat. If you spread your calorie limit out over the day you will not get unbearably hungry and you will be less likely to cheat or over-eat. In my case my target was ~1600 calories a day. So I started eating at roughly this schedule:

7:00am – Breakfast (~250C)

9:30am – Snack (~150C)

11:30am – Lunch (<= 450C)

3:00pm – Snack (~150C)

6:00pm – Dinner (<= 600C)

On top of this eating schedule I would do a couple other things:

·         Drink 12-16oz of water or iced tea with each meal/snack.  If you must have soda you can do diet, but I am personally a little afraid of artificial sweeteners.

·         Drink 2 - 3 cups of hot green tea throughout the day, it’s not only good for you but helps fill you up and some studies have suggested it boosts metabolism.

·         Eat as much raw celery and carrots as I wanted. I decided to not count these calories since a large carrot is about 15C and a celery stalk is 10C. Some have argued you burn more calories digesting them and I am going to willfully choose to believe that (but I won’t put money on it) :P

·         At dinner I would eat a TON of veggies. LOTS of veggies. It would fill me up and make me a lot less likely to finish my wife’s steak or reach for a calorie fail dessert after.

There it is. That is your goal and the end of the calorie counting/consumption part of my steps. Really, it is all you need. What was that big, magic, secret rule again? Oh right, consume less than you burn. That’s it. You should start noticing the pounds coming off within a week, and you should also notice that you feel better overall. PLUS, perhaps the biggest bonus, is that when you start watching the fat drop off it motivates you (or at least it did me) to keep going and lose more.

Coming up next I will talk about what I ate (my “usuals”), and tips and tricks to cut calories in everything you eat. After that I will talk about my experiences and success with exercise.

Let the insanity BEGIN.

So, remember when I posted a while back about having lost the motivation to improve? Well, I think all I needed was a swift kick in the butt. And I think I've found it in the certifiably insane P90X home fitness program you've probably seen in a late-night infomercial. The wife and I are doing it together, and two days in (out of 90, hence the name), I'm very impressed.

The program emphasizes muscle confusion, constantly switching up the exercise routines and increasing intensity over time. The workouts are about an hour a day, 6 days a week. Yesterday was chest and back (basically an hour of alternating between a dozen forms of push-ups and pull-ups) with an additional 15 minute ab workout. Today's DVD featured some plyometric nonsense that will undoubtedly render me unable to walk in the morning. Tomorrow is shoulders and arms, followed by yoga on Tuesday (there are 12 routines in all, some of which we won't even do until 30 days from now). If I am able to stick with it, I can already tell that 3 months from now my body will be utterly unrecognizable.

A strict diet is also prescribed. The first 30 days call for obtaining 50% of one's calories from protein, 30% from carbohydrates, and 20% from fat. It's Atkins without the fat, and it's very tough. The program dictates that I should eat about 2700 calories a day (the workouts burn 600 a day, they say, and I believe it), but I'm finding it difficult to jam down that many calories when half of it comes from protein, so 2400 is about all I can handle so far. If half can come from chocolate chip cookies, count me in. :) After the first thirty days, the protein is reduced and the carbs increased, making life a little easier, with another step towards normalcy for the final 30 days. I'm pretty determined to make it work, so hopefully I'll be able to keep it up.

So here are the "before" stats and pictures (warning - shirtless Dave pictures below):

Weight: 185 lbs.
Chest: 39"
Waist: 39"
Hips: 40"
Thighs: 19.75" right, 18.75" left
Biceps: 14" right, 13.5" left



I will attempt to post an update about once a week, or as often as I feel there is progress to be shown. You can follow my progress here, as well as on my profile at The Daily Plate.

I have done a six week program with a trainer before, but never a three month one entirely at home. I'm sure it will be tough, but I hope it will be rewarding as well. We shall see!

About Me (Jeff)

I grew up in Illinois and was always reasonably active. I played baseball as a kid, joined football and track in high school, then got into weights and martial arts when I got to college. I fluxuated between 170 and 195 throughout college. After college I started working at a bar and decided I enjoyed beer more than I enjoyed exercise. The pounds started piling on over the next couple years. I crept up to 210,220...and by the time I moved to California in 1995, I was at 225.

In CA, I started hitting the gym thinking "This will be the answer.". My roomie and I enjoyed living in Venice Beach and being into the gym scene there. We both put on a lot of mass but neither of us really lost the fat we wanted to lose. I was jogging on the beach and lifting weights so I didn't understand why I wasn't slimming down. I was now up to around 235-240 with the added muscle weight. Looking back now, I can see that I was missing a vital component...I needed to stop eating like a horse or a pig or whatever other farmyard animal you would like to visualize in this scenario. We would walk down the boardwalk and each pick up a few cheap slices of pizza or hit the A&W rootbeer stand and have a triple burger with fries for dinner. Maybe we would head out to the local burrito stand and grab a variety of tasty tortilla-rolled treats. No matter where it was we thought about eating, nutrition and/or calories were never part of the decision making process.

In 2000, I moved to Phoenix, AZ. I was up to 245 now. I started jogging more frequently...but, naturally, I didn't modify my diet and saw minimal gains. Eventually, I had to stop jogging when I injured my knee since it just wasn't prepared for the physics involved in 245lbs of man meat pounding it repeatedly into the asphalt below.

In 2007, I got married....at a whopping 285lbs. I knew my wife from back in my days of 210lbs but she never complained about my weight (However, please don't get the impression that she doesn't generally complain.). I also worked with a lady who had some success being on a medically supervised diet plan and gave me her doctor's number. I had my reservations but could see that it was working for her so I looked into it. I went to an introductory meeting that laid out the fees and the basics of what would be involved.

Fees:
Starting the program = $400
Every other week you must have a blood test that is only covered by medical insurance if your primary care doctor writes a script for you = $0-50
Every other week you must come into her office for a weight-in/review of blood test = $55

The basic concept of the diet resembles a hardcore version of Atkins. There are as close to no carbs on this diet as one can imagine. There is also a list of pills (around 6) that are taken daily...various OTC vitamins/minerals and one prescription strength supplement. She claimed that men would lose .8lbs/day and women .5lbs/day. I thought it all sounded too good to be true but what did I have to lose other than $500 and a few dinners chock full of pizza and beer.

I started this diet in July 2007 at 285lbs and by the end of December 2007 I was 186lbs. Yes, 99lbs in under 6 months. Crazy. There are plenty of people who said, "Oh, I don't know if you should be doing that...that isn't good for you." (Many of those people were morbidly obese too by the way.) I will concede that while it may not be considered the "healthiest" or the "most ideal" way...it is the way that worked for me. I am now off blood pressure medications and I no longer have the strain on my joints, lungs, heart, etc. If anyone feels that I am less healthy for having taken this path, then I will gladly live with that.

After the diet phase ended, the maintenance phase kicked in. It was time to learn about food all over again. Balanced meals and portion sizes were stressed for the next few months. The doctor recommended a variety of food tracking websites to make sure I didn't fall back into old habits. My favorite was TheDailyPlate.com which has since combined with LiveStrong.com.

My weight shot up to 195 right after going off the diet which concerned me, but I have been maintaining well for the last year and half since. It can be a struggle to make the right choices when there always seems to be a vacation or special occasion to tempt one down the path of least resistance. I eat much healthier foods now than I had in the past, and when I feel the need to indulge myself, I try to do so in moderation. This experience taught me a great lesson about calories in/calories out and what the body actually needs in order to function. I am at 200lbs today and hope to be back under 195 when my birthday rolls around next month.

Ryan's Guide to Weight Loss - Step 2

So, if you are following the steps you should now have a pretty good idea about your eating habits. If you are on this site it is likely that you found out you are consuming too many calories.  Don’t feel bad, most of America does. I am hoping that as you were tracking you were a little shocked by the amount of calories and fat in some of the food/drink you consumed. Luckily, now you know, and as GI Joe taught us, that’s half the battle. 

What’s next? Well, now you need to start cutting out the crap. Take a good hard look at your week of tracked food and look for the big calorie fails. This includes, but is not limited to:  

• Any regular soda
  
• Juices with lots of sugar
  
• Beer, wine, mixed drinks (I know, that sucks)
  
• Candy of most sorts
  
• Baked goods like muffins, cookies, pastries, cakes, bagels,  donuts, etc
  
• Fast food
  
• Lattes/Mochas/Cappuccinos with fatty milk and sugar
  

Heavy sauces and dressings, like BBQ, Mayo, Creamy anything (go ahead and look up creamy Caesar dressing on the daily plate)

There are obviously many more fail items out there, but these are some common ones that we as Americans tend to enjoy in large quantities.

So the next step, which is by far the hardest, is to give these up. Yes, you need to give them up, and give them up for the rest of your life. Now I am not talking about skipping desserts for the rest of your life or during the holidays or special events. These items just cannot be a regular part of your diet, period. When I say “give them up”, I mean that these items should be RARE occurrences on your daily plate log. If you look back over your week of tracking and see 2 or more of these items that is a big fat FAIL. If you see 2 or less then you are already ahead of the game.

To start with I would strongly encourage you to not have them at all until you are down a few pounds and have a feel for what it will be like. Once you start losing weight it will be a lot easier to get motivated. 

So, your next homework assignment is to cut all that crap out of your diet for a week. And keep tracking your food, all of it. Do your absolute best not to add in additional calories to make up for the fluff (desserts, sodas, etc). Then take a look at your calorie count. You will be surprised how much it has gone down. Congratulations you are officially on your way. Once this week is over you should have a real good idea of what you will be dealing with on the weight loss road ahead.

About Me (Dave)

Howdy, fellow strugglers - I am Dave. I am 28 years old, and in August 2007 I weighed 255 pounds. I also will not delve into a personal history, but suffice it to say I am a software developer who sits at a desk all day, and prior to August 2007 I had not been in decent physical shape since the 9th grade. I love food of all kinds, and I love to feel full, which is my ultimate challenge with respect to my weight. I weighed 200 lbs. at my high school graduation when I was 17 years old, I was 220 lbs. when I was married at age 20, and I hit 250 lbs. at 27 - slow and steady weight gain caused by a horrible diet and very little physical activity.

Avert your eyes!



I was spurred to action when someone I love was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I realized I was very much on the same path and needed to change before my hand was forced. I had a lovely wife and two small children (three now) who needed me to be around in 30 years, and I was effectively risking our collective life and well-being through self-neglect.

So I started eating a little better, and made one important change - I stopped drinking sugary beverages like soda. I didn't understand why then, but that decision was absolutely key for me. I'll get into that specific topic later, but with a little exercise and a little attention to the food I stuffed in my face, I dropped about 20 pounds over the next several months, reaching 236 by the end of 2007. I was proud of that accomplishment, but I knew that 236 was still a very unhealthy weight for someone of my height (6'1"). So I set out to lose 36 pounds by the end of 2008 to reach 200 pounds for the first time since high school. 3 pounds a month seems relatively reasonable, no? I thought so.

Before I go on, I must point out that I have weak ankles. And by "weak", I mean roughly equivalent to the strength of a 90-year-old man's bladder. I tore three ligaments planting my right ankle while performing a crossover dribble on a basketball court as a 19-year-old with nobody touching me, which resulted in ligament repair surgery and 3 months in a cast. So imagine my delight when I landed on a friend's foot (you guessed it - playing basketball) and did the exact same thing to my left ankle just as I hit 236 pounds. So I stalled at 236 for months while I rehabbed my ankle and felt sorry for myself. Good times.

Then I had the fortune of meeting Ryan, whom you have already met. He was a consultant for a company called Statera, whom I brought in to develop a content management system for my (now former) company's website. He and I quickly became friends, and we started going to the gym together most days over lunch. He introduced me to The Daily Plate, and after a couple months of waffling on the idea of tracking everything I put down my throat, I gave in and decided to commit to it.

(In the meantime, I quit my job and joined Statera .... and started consulting back at my old company ... with Ryan.)

So on April 8, 2008, I weighed 236 pounds, and on July 15, 2008, I weighed 200. I could hardly believe it, and most of all, I could hardly believe how easy it was. For me, all it took was a little commitment and a little accountability. The commitment was pretty easy once I had the incentive, and the accountability was pretty easy once I had The Daily Plate.

Here is me at 200:



Since then, I have dropped down to 174 pounds and even hiked the Grand Canyon (down to the river and out in one day - not easy). I have hovered between 175 and 185 ever since.

At about 180:



And somehow, despite all of my success, I have once again lost most of my motivation to improve. I have improved my eating habits immensely, but I find I am still highly capable of throwing down a box of Double Stuf Oreos when the opportunity presents itself. And maybe that's okay. But I still struggle, and I still need to resist that temptation more often than I do. I hope that in this blog I find another point of accountability that will keep me moving onward and, well, downward. :)

Ryan's Guide to Weight Loss - Step 1

I have decided to layout my opinion on the best way to change to a "thinner" lifestyle. This is 100% purely my personal opinion on the steps "I" would recommend to a friend trying to lose weight. This is in no way even remotely to be considered a professional guide. 

I personally believe that changing my lifestyle was a far greater goal than just losing the weight. I have seen many friends yo-yo with different diets because they drop a bunch of weight doing something that would be impossible to realistically maintain. So my goal was to completely change my lifestyle to habits and activities that would just naturally lead to being thinner. A lot of that had to do with just understanding what I was doing wrong. 

So, what follows is my own little step by step guide to changing to a "thinner" lifestyle. While it is also certainly "healthier" I am neither a doctor or a nutritionist so I am not going to pretend to be an expert on health. I also don't pretend to know what is best for everyone. However, lots and lots of friends, family and co-workers have asked how I lost weight, or what I would recommend they do to lose weight. And this is it:

STEP 1

The very first thing you should do if you want to start losing weight is get a firm understanding of what exactly you are eating. I am convinced ignorance is the biggest contributor to being overweight, with lazy a step behind. So, all you need to do is track your food for a week. Don’t worry about starting a diet or exercising for the time being (unless you really want to of course). The key is to understand exactly what your current eating habits are and see firsthand exactly how it is making you fat.

So, how do you track it? I know, it sounds like a massive pain in the ass but I think you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it really is. The answer is The Daily Plate. It is linked on the right side of our blog for a reason. It worked wonders for all 3 of us. I have to pause to give big props to Jeff on this one because he got me into it, and I got Dave into it. So click on the link (or find a different calorie counter if you like, there’s many) and go register and then come right back. Don’t worry; it is 100% free for everything you need. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

Still waiting... take your time...

Ok, all signed up? Great! You should be looking at a page with several tabs across the top. The ones you need to worry about right now are “My Plate” and “My Calorie Goals”. Click on “My Calorie Goals” and fill it in (and be honest with yourself!). This is a picture of what mine looks like right now. To start with, just select maintain. This will give you a “rough” estimate of how many calories your body needs a day to maintain your current weight.

Now, let’s click on “My Plate” and start adding! Think about what you had for breakfast this morning. In my case I had a bowl of a new cereal I am trying with some banana and blue berries in it. So I search for “heirloom grains” because I remember it was called something like that. Sure enough it popped up 4 different entries for that cereal. So I added a serving of that to my plate for today. I also then searched for bananas, blue berries and fat free milk. Be sure to be honest with yourself about the serving size you had ;).

So take a look at what you ate and look at the calories and break downs for Carbs/Fats/Proteins. I’m not even going to attempt to tell you what the right percentages are for each group because the last thing I want to start is a carb war. But I myself just tried to keep my carbs around 40% and fat and protein each around 30%. I DO believe the standard American diet has entirely too many carbs and I think you might be surprised what that percentage is for you at the start. However, this is NOT any kind of low carb plan.

OK. So now you have the tools needed to track your food. Do it for a week. Be 100% honest and track EVERYTHING every day. You can stop here and come back in a week, or earlier if you decide you want to jump start and go to Ryan’s Guide to Weight Loss Step 2.

About Me (Ryan)

I'm not going to go into a personal history or anything, but here is a little about my history with weight loss.

While I feel I am currently in the best shape of my adult life, the last time I was in any kind of shape was shortly after completeing Basic Training and AIT in the Army at Fort Jackson, SC. That was almost exactly 10 years ago. At that time I weighed ~180lbs and could jog 2miles in under 14minutes. From that point in time it was a slow slide, or climb rather, up to ~245lbs. 

In November 2007 my daughter was 6 months old and crawling everywhere she could get to, and I was fat and out of shape. I decided I didn't want to be a fat lazy father; so I got my ass to the pool to start swimming laps during my lunch break. I was, and am, lucky that I love to swim. I swam twice a week for 3 months and lost about 8lbs without changing anything else in my diet or activity level.

In mid January '08 I started a new job, where I met Dave (another poster on this blog). The new company paid for gym memberships and I figured I might as well take advantage of that. So I enrolled at LA Fitness and decided to also go ahead and start a new lunch tradition of going to the gym 4 days a week. Obviously, this was a lot easier to do with a major routine change like getting a new job. I didn't know anyone yet so it was easy to set the precedent that I work out at lunch and don't go out to lunch. 

Around this same time, my friend Jeff (another contributor on this blog who had already lost considerable weight at this point in time) sent me a link to The Daily Plate. He told me it was really working for him so I signed up and started tracking my calories. I will go into why this site was such an amazing motivator later, but for right now just know this was a turning point. While working out 4 days a week (2 lifting days, 2 swims) helped, it was this tracking of what I eat that really started to make the pounds come off. 

By May 20th of '08 (my 30th birthday), almost exactly 4 months, I had lost another 37lbs and was hanging out at around 200lbs. That's roughly 2 pounds a week I was losing. Which many doctors will tell you is the ideal speed at which to lose weight.

So, now, about 9 months later I am hanging out at about 190lbs. A total loss of 55lbs from my peak weight of 245. The amazing part is, it never really felt that hard. 

So, that's me, and my weight loss leg to stand on. All further ramblings of mine on this site will be about my philosophies, theories, musing and experiences with weight loss and getting into shape. Cheers!

And so it begins...

Welcome to Calorie Fail! This blog is for anyone who wants to lose weight! And lose it without spending a dime on some fad diet supplement, diet book, or training program. The 3 of us who will be writing for this blog all lost 50+ lbs following some simple "common sense" strategies. 

In fact, I can tell you how to lose weight right now. BURN MORE CALORIES THAN YOU TAKE IN! Yup, that's it. 

Despite that being the one way to lose weight, we will all post more info about exactly what we did, how and when. However, that above rule is the only thing that really matters for weight loss. It isn't the only rule for a HEALTHY diet or life style, but if you obey it, you will lose weight. PERIOD. 

Oh, and no, we aren't selling anything. All of this will be 100% free. It is just for fun because we are all pretty proud of our accomplishment and want to share how "relatively" easy it was. Thanks for joining us and good luck!