Started off with changing how I ate

”Started off with changing how I ate, I used the Noom weight loss app to just try and track how much and what types of food I ate. Only used the app for a couple months till I got to the point I could just look and see based on size what I should be having. I also stopped going to buffets I was hitting those 2 sometimes three times a week. Before I had changed what I was eating I tracked I was putting down 4500+ calories a day easily. I slowly eased in to changing the quantities of what I was eating to get that down to 2200/2400 calories on the norm ( im 6’3”) . I had read somewhere about a Zig Zag diet where you change your calorie intake, 1600 one day 2300 the next two days with low cals, one with high, and so on. Always changing the amounts to stop your body from getting comfortable at a specific amount of calories and becoming too efficient at using that amount, which slows the weight loss.

Which I guess I should touch on that a bit I would still pretty much eat what I wanted but for me it was quantities that I watched, that’s right calorie counting. I would still try to avoid the known bad foods ( fried) but I’d still have them now and then and if I did it wasn’t making a meal out of them but maybe having a little on the side or a very small snack so I could just get the taste to enjoy it. My typical go to dinner meals where chicken, (lots of chicken) Pork tenderloin, which is actually leaner than chicken, and tuna which I usually made into a patty of some sort with egg and alittle bit of bread crumbs. I’d have those proteins and salad or just some steamed veggies, those microwavable steam pouches are my friend haha. I’d have starches, rice and potatoes but they were smaller portions than the rest. Again I’d still have cheat days where I’d eat pizza, or go out and have chipotle or fish and chips, or anything else you know is not healthy .

If I was going to a restaurant I now cut the buffets out completely no one needs ALL YOU CAN EAT. So I would check out new restaurants, I now like trying the small non chain places just to see what is all out there. When I ordered before it was look at the menu and see what was the biggest portioned item at the cheapest cost (oh yea im cheap ) Now its what is something I haven’t tried before, still look at the price but not as much of a factor as it was. I never eat to full, just satisfied, oh I’ll try to finish whats on my plate (my momma’s influence) but I have no problem getting the rest in a togo container.

As for my breakfasts I usually start of each morning with a greek yogurt or a instant breakfast drink, two to three hours later I will have a mid-morning meal which would be fruit or some oatmeal. Portion wise on these meals I look for about a handful, or what is listed on the packaging as a single portion. For lunch I would usually bring a sandwich or a wrap and some veggies/fruit, if I was going out id stick to no more than 400 cals (eyeballing it at this point I can see the size of something and guesstimate what it would be in cals). Then a midafternoon snack which was usually some cheese sticks, or pretzels, pita chips, this one varied with what I had in the cupboard. Then my dinners I explained above, for a dessert id have a some frozen yogurt, or fruit just had to have something sweet. Before bed Id try to always have some cottage cheese, cottage cheese has casein protein which is a slow digesting protein that helps your body stay satisfied longer which acts to help your body actually keep burning calories as you sleep rather than going into I’m starving mode and start storing calories a few hours after you fall asleep.

So after about 1-2 months of just getting the diet under control I added some exercise to my regiment( I had 25ish-30lbs on the diet change alone). I started off by buying an bike of craigslist (cause if I wasn’t gonna stick with it I didn’t want to spend a fortune) and started riding, at first only a mile or two, but after the first month of riding a bit nightly I was able to do ten miles (flat land hills still killed me ) I had started this all later in the summer so at around the time I was getting somewhere with the bike, the nights got shorter and we started getting snow, so I joined a gym.
I joined a local gym called better bodies, cause it was only 10 bucks a month, which at that cost was kind like the mentality behind my cheap bike purchase. I started there doing pure cardio, reclined bikes was my goto for a while. After a while I started on some of the other cardio machines, ellipticals, and striders , still avoided the treadmills and stair steppers, cause my knees were still pretty weak. I also started messing with the weight machines to try and strengthen those knees, along with trying help shape my blobish shape haha. I was at about 40lbs down at this point and this is where the weight loss stated to slow numbers wise, but this is where the inches lost started to pickup. I was going to the gym four times a week mon-thurs and tried to at least go walk or get outside one of the days on the weekend. My regular workout would be 20-30 min moderate cardio 30-45 min of weight training of some sort, and a 10 min cool down on cardio again.

Now I will say I was far from religious on my always going to the gym I would miss a week or two at a time sometimes but I would always go back and never just gave up on it. In a way I think the week off here and there actually helped a bit. I would plateau and would seem I wasn’t loosing anything, during that week off I’d still stick to the diet I had set myself. When I went back to the gym after the time off it seemed that I would start to lose again past where I had plateau’d maybe it was a mental thing I don’t know but it worked to keep me at it. I now am at a point where if I skip the gym I feel down on myself cause I know I’m just being lazy which Is what got me where I was before. For me the hardest part was just getting off my butt to go to the gym (I’d stop at home first after work) once I was at the gym I had no problem putting in my all, so I started just taking my gear with me and going directly after work.

I had reached a point around last November (little over a year in, lost about 60-70lbs) that someone invited me to try out a 5k next spring. I was still not running at all, I was an elliptical god though rocking it at level 9 for thirty minutes and not even having a problem getting winded. So I decided to try out giving running a try, they have an indoor track so I gave it a try talk about a disheartening experience I was dieing after the first quarter mile, pain in the sides, shins killing me, and I think I was even wheezing a bit. But, I was determined that I was going to do that 5k and I knew that everything that I tried for the first time though the whole journey was hard when I first started, so I let myself rest the next day (went back to my friend the elliptical) but that next day after I tried running again. I was able to get to that quarter mile mark a little easier, and had did some research online and found that if I took longer more controlled breaths I wouldn’t have the pain in the side which it worked. So I kept with the day on running, day off on other cardio machines, till the point I did it I hit the one mile mark.

This was a big thing to me I had never ran a full mile in my life, I was a fat kid back in school so when mile day came I was jog for half a lap the walk the other 3.5 laps. Being I was running a mile at 29 was a huge thing for me and a great booster in making myself push in me into keeping on the running. By the time of the 5k I think it was in April I was able to run the 3.1 miles and keep from being too winded, which felt great. So I started doing more 5ks I did 5 of them so far and I can run 5 miles at this point, I plan on trying a half marathon at some point but I’ll get there when I get there.

Recently I have started focusing on lifting weights and shaping my body. I had gotten down to 212 (108 lost), but have actually risen back up to 226 in muscle gains. I can do several pull ups (something I could never do before ) and I have only a small layer of fat around the mid-section which within the next few months should start to be actual visible abs at my current rate. You can look at my FB profile I think I have all my weight loss pics set to public so anyone can see kinda where I came from. My biggest regret with this all, would be that I don’t have enough before pictures, really wish I had a shirtless before picture so when im rocking 6 pack I could have the side by side, oh well. Oh and the fact that I had had to buy full new wardrobes twice now ( like I said im cheap ) LOL. Thanks for reading my rambling explanation” – Jay