The most important change I made was the way I eat. In June 2015, I purchased the 21 Day Fix from Team Beachbody. It came with a diet plan and some food containers designed to help you understand portion sizes. I tried to use those for a week, but found them a little tedious to work with. Instead, I kept the food plan, but bought a food scale and started using MyFitnessPal to track everything I eat.
I started by setting my goals in MyFitnessPal – final weight 200 lbs losing 1 to 2 lbs per week – it told me my target calories per day, based on my weight and my goals, was 1850 calories per day. Using a food scale, I began to measure out food and recorded everything I ate.
The 21 Day Fix diet plan included a list of acceptable foods to focus on – essentially a “clean eating” diet which avoids processed food (no white flour, processed sugar, etc) – this list is where 90% of my food intake came from for the first 6 months. This was actually easier to follow than I thought it would be.
Eating Schedule
I have a semi-regular schedule for eating 5 meals/snacks a day (weekends vary but not much):
- 7:30a – Breakfast
- Noon – Lunch
- 2:00p – Snack
- 6:00p – Dinner
- 9:00p – Snack
Breakfast
Breakfast typically consists of either:
- Workday: 1 egg scrambled, 1 whole grain english muffin and 2 strips turkey bacon – approx 300 calories
- Any day: 2/3 cup oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, tumeric, fruit (blueberries, rasberries or a banana – approx 350 calories
- Weekend: 3 eggs scrambled with a stir-fry of broccoli, mushrooms, peppers, kalamata olives – approx 350 calories
Lunch
Lunch during the work week was one of the biggest changes – no more going to Subway – in the fridge at work I now keep two tupperware containers with salad fixings. On Sundays, I go to Wegmans and grab the following:
- lettuce (baby spinach is only 20 calories for half the bag)
- mushrooms
- peppers
- broccoli
- kalamata olives
- grapes
- oranges
- strawberries
- cucumbers
- shredded carrots
- a roasted chicken
- some low sodium tuna or salmon packets
Every day for lunch I make a salad from those fixings. Some days I will bring in leftover proteins from the previous night’s dinner (salmon, pork tenderloin, etc) and have that in a salad. My one concession to clean eating was the salad dressing I had been using – a Fat Free Apple Cider Vinagrette that included some sugar and 140 calories per serving. Lately, I have been using a balsamic vinegar dressing instead that is only 20 calories. Following this plan, lunch is normally around 400 calories.
Olive on Brooklea – Sicilian Lemon Balsamic Vinegar and Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar – not cheap but delicious salad dressings for only 10 calories per tbsp – also wonderful olive oils: butter infused, blood orange and tuscan herb
Mid-Afternoon Snack
Mid-day snack sometimes consists of carrots and hummus (120 Calories), an apple (80 calories) but most days I have a protein bar – MuscleTech Mission 1 Bar (200 calories). The protein bar is helpful because I get home around 3:15p and usually do some kind of workout at that time, so the protein bar helps to fuel that workout.
Following an afternoon snack, I have usually eaten 900-1000 calories – roughly half of my daily caloric allotment
Dinner
Dinner usually consists of a protein (steak, fish, pork, chicken), a roasted or stir-fried vegetable and either another vegetable or a starch (potatoes or sweet potatoes normally). I eat out very little any more, dinner is cooked at home 95% of the time. Everything is cooked in olive oil (no more butter) – and pretty liberally spiced. Spices are essentially free of calories and provide a ton of flavor. Dinner normally comes in around 500 calories. I tend to have salmon alot as I really like salmon. Every so often, I will stir fry vegetables with chicken and make 1 serving of wheat pasta with a little red sauce. I also have found that spaghetti squash is a very tasty pasta supplement with only a fraction of the calories. Essentially, I can fill up with vegetables for dinner, with 4-5 oz of a protein and be very happy without the high calorie cost.
For example, for dinner tonight I had wild caught swordfish baked in the oven (6 oz prepared with tuscan herb olive oil and roasted garlic and herb spice), 1.5 cups of roasted zucchini (garlic olive oil and tomato basil spices) and 1.5 cups of roasted purple potatoes (mesquite olive oil with smokehouse maple spices) – 450 calories and quite tasty.
Night Snack
Last snack of the day usually is a fruit – honey crisp, red delicious or jonagold apple – and a flavored greek yogurt. This is the other place I “cheat” – I do not like the taste of plain yogurt – I prefer flavored, but flavored greek yogurt includes some non-natural sugar – I have found that the Chobani Simply 100 and Dannon Lite and Fit each only include 7g of sugar and 100 calories / 80 calories respectively. Nighttime snack normally around 200 calories.
This plan brings me in around 1650-1850 calories a day and I feel like I ate well for the day…
Beverages
Beverages are another place I needed to make a major change – I started drinking water exclusively (and I am not a fan of water so this has been the most difficult change for me). I still do not drink as much water as I need to – I may drink 4-5 cups a day when I should be closer to 10 cups. To get around the blandness of water, I will add frozen fruit or a lemon slice to my water bottle. The frozen fruit helps to keep it cold while the flavor seeps in as it thaws – strawberries are excellent for this. The only other thing I drink is coffee – two cups in the morning, using 2 little creamers and 2 packets of sweet ‘n’ low – 30 calories total per day.
Travelling
Travelling for my daughter’s tournaments required a large adjustment as well – my wife got me a cooler bag for Christmas – 6 Pack Fitness Innovator 300 Stealth Black – that allows me to bring a day’s worth of food to a tournament. When we travel now I bring raw veggies, hummus packs, fruit, almonds and pistachios, protein bars, oatmeal and the makings for salads (the tuna and salmon in the pouch are excellent for this). Every morning before leaving for the games I prepare a salad with a packet of 50 calorie honey dijon dressing, fill two containers with fruit and vegetables (orange slices, grapes, broccoli and carrots usually) with a packet of hummus. For breakfast in the hotels I have oatmeal with fruit. Dinner we usually eat out and I try to stay to healthier options (I tend to eat alot of salmon on the road). This is a lot more work but it is worth it as I can control what I eat and do not have to dine on the hot dogs, hamburgers and junk food served at most tournaments.
Habits Are Formed
This approach required some concessions to not eat foods I like – white bread, white pasta, pizza and ice cream were some of my staples before changing – but I understand what I am trying to do and why, so I am more than satisfied to go without and have found some suitable replacements. After 30 days, this plan became natural and now requires no effort to follow.
I have followed the above plan for the last 11 months months as described and lost over 100 lbs.
After the first 30-40 lbs came off, I felt I was able to start exercising more…