Phase two of my transformation

Just to recap, this is a story of how I went from a star athlete to lazy fat-ass and how I came back from that through certain steps and some changes in my own life. None of them are terribly extreme by my standards but in my timeline i went from about 75kg in my 20's and early 30's, gradually achieving fat-ass-dom by my late 30's where I hit 106kg. I am now around 80 kg.

When I was young I had a monstrous metabolism and it was extremely common for me to be getting cardiovascular exercise for 2 to 3 hours a day. Therefore I just ate whatever I wanted. Later on when the sports were no longer a part of my life because of jobs and day-to-day life, the eating whatever I wanted stayed, but the exercise was no longer part of my daily routine.

Funnily enough, it was the dreaded Facebook that was able to smack me in the face about how much bigger I had become because they remind you of pictures that happened several years ago

_{there's a lot of reasons why this picture of me is bad, but mostly I just notice how fat I am}

Today I am going to focus on the most important part of any training program: Diet

Weight Loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise

Most trainers will agree to something similar to that statement. It does seem a bit obvious if you think about it. The programs tell you to do obvious things like eat more vegetables and avoid all processed sugar but for most people, this is something they might stick to for a week or so, but eventually they will revert. I knew I had to have food that I enjoy and had somewhat easy access to. I remembered that friends and family had gained nice weight loss through the Atkins diet and since I like meat, i figured I'd give that a go.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a nutritionist, nor to I claim to know what will work for everyone. I expect some vegans will call the following diet horrible and I'm willing to take on that criticism. I'm merely explaining what worked for me.

Basically, my diet consisted of eating almost entirely protein which was mostly meat. Good tasting meat.

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Here is an example of a daily menu for me.

Breakfast: 4 eggs cooked in a variety of ways. 6 strips of bacon or more, a glass of whole milk and a bunch of coffee. **No bread, potatoes, and especially no fruit juice.

Lunch: BLT's without the bread. Basically I would cook a bunch of bacon, and make a lettuce wrap filled with bacon and diced tomatoes mixed with mayo. If that sounds messy, that's because it was. Normally I would have a glass of milk

Dinner: A steak prepared a number of ways, mostly fried and this is how I discovered that you can cook a steak extremely fast if you have the right kind of pan.

Snacks: I kept a bunch of chopped vegetables around and would dip them in Ranch dressing. I would also eat sliced cheese and put it on cucumbers with a bit of Tabasco

I would also have at least 6 bottles a beer a day, but only drank low-carb beers which at the time was San Miguel Light (3g of carbs per bottle.)

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I tracked everything using MyFitnessPal app which i found to be absolutely invaluable in making real changes in your life.

If you have repetitive meals (and you should, if you are trying to diet) the app saves your "frequently used foods" and this makes it even more convenient and easy to use.

The app will warn you that you are consuming too much fat and protein and not enough carbohydrates, but this was something I was prepared for and expected. I ignored this warning. I was aware that there were a number of vitamins that I might be missing so I took a multi-vitamin each day as well.

What's more important than what I WAS eating was what i was NOT eating.

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• No fruit or fruit juice because these things (especially the juice) are actually loaded with sugar although the natural sugars are not necessarily bad for you. Most boxed juices are from concentrate and have a tremendous amount of added sugar, you may as well just drink Dr. Pepper.
• No processed sugar: No candy, no sugar in coffee etc. Just no sugar
• No bread, no rice, no potato chips
• Absolutely no cans of Heinz (or any other) baked beans
• booze has to be low carb

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What I found within just a few days of doing a diet change like this was that I stayed full a lot longer. I will admit that I really missed bread most of all, and at times I was actually getting sick of bacon which is a sensation I never thought I would encounter.

Keep in mind that I realize there are many health drawbacks to eating this diet. Therefore, at the recommendation of a friend who actually IS a nutritionist I had already decided that this diet should not be strictly adhered to for more than a couple of months. However, for me it was a fantastic way to "shock my system." After a week I had lost a couple of kilos.

I hadn't yet incorporated any exercise changes into my life - but that would be the next step