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Saturday, May 6, 2017

How I Stopped Being Tubby

You're just husky. You're big boned. It's your genetics. You're not overweight.

These were the lies that people told me and lies that I told myself. It's important to know the truth in order to be able to act on something, because acting on false information produces corrupt results.

When I graduated high school and went to college, I was 315lbs. I wasn't husky. It wasn't 315lbs of muscle and bones. I wasn't genetically forced into it. I was overweight. I was obese. I was unhealthy.

On the other side of that problem, people use words like chunky, fatty, tubby, lard, huge, humongous, enormous, and otherwise derogatory terms to speak about and define a group of people that in our modern world is one of the fastest growing demographics of people. 

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity

There is a middle zone that people are forgetting but before I get into my process, let's get a few things straight first:

1. If you notice someone else who is overweight it is NOT your job to point that out if you are not their family or friends. 

If you don't know this person, you are completely wrong to speak to that portion of their life. You don't know them, you don't have any influence in their life, and as a consequence your words not only mean nothing to them but you are likely making things worse.

2. Fat shaming is just as bad as fat encouraging. The truth is somewhere in between. 

When you talk trash about someone who has weight to lose - let me tell you something. You aren't helping them. They aren't going to suddenly have motivation to change from your insults. For most of them you are provoking the actual issue and they will likely go eat more to cover up the feelings that you are causing them to feel - this is the kind of thing I did. At the same time, by making excuses and saying that they don't have a problem you are helping them do anything better for themselves either. So what is the solution? Don't give your opinion unless asked about it or if you are their family/friends - and then be honest without being cruel. It would have been helpful back then for someone to have told me that the volume I was consuming was terrible - but nobody did. That's a sad fact for most of us who were overweight. People aren't willing to give you the actual advice that you should hear. They either enable or shame you. Don't do that.

3. Just because you are "skinny" that doesn't automatically make you healthy either

As I will discuss later, you may have a fast metabolism that causes your body not to store a lot of fat, however that doesn't make your body altogether healthy alone. There is a very real thing called "skinny fat"

http://www.mensfitness.com/training/pro-tips/skinny-fat-epidemic
https://legionathletics.com/skinny-fat/

Before you run off talking smack about that person who has a few extra pounds or maybe someone who has had kids or so on - how about you just worry about your own situation first? Your slender figure diesn't automatically mean that you are healthy either. 

________________________________________________________________________

Alright, so on to the meat. How did I go from 315lbs to 190lbs as of this morning? How did I lose 90lbs of that in the last 10 1/2 months?

I'm going to break this down into sections because this was a very concentrated and concerted effort to me that I laid out in a process. I tried losing the weight a few years back and I went hard at it, but ultimately I was doing it in a way that wasn't healthy and I was doing it for the wrong reasons. Because of that I shot back up to 280 as of last late June/early July.

So let's start with some of the basics.

BASIC IDEA #1: LOSING WEIGHT IS ABOUT CONSUMPTION VS. PRODUCTION
So to start here I needed to understand what the idea behind losing weight really meant. The logical ends of that become incredibly simple. Food is meant as an energy source for your body. What happens with food is that your body takes it to your stomach, where the starches and other components are turned into a sugar called "glucose" which is then sent to your blood to get energy to your other body parts. This glucose in regular amounts keeps your body functioning, but when it gets high your body will begin to store the extra sugars as fat on your body. At the same time, your body produces insulin to fight the higher blood sugar, but as a consequence of constantly barraging that system, your body also can come to a point where the insulin production is not happening sufficiently. This is called diabetes and sometimes it's genetic but more and more commonly it is not. 


So we know that if we eat too much that our body will store it as fat and it will mess with our insulin production - which is meant to get rid of the sugar in our blood and balance the system. Additionally you can use the sugar from those areas via doing work - working out, walking, using the energy that is stored in the blood sugar that you have from consuming. Let's get a little more tactile here and evaluate what units of food we are looking at then. 

BASIC IDEA #2: FOR WEIGHT LOSS, THE QUANTITY OF FOOD > QUALITY OF FOOD
One of the basic concepts that you will need to understand is that this doesn't mean a count of ITEMS of your food - it's referring to the QUANTITY of your food. Quantity food is typically measured in calories. In science, a calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. It's important to know this because it doesn't change as it relates to food and your body. It's a direct measurement of how much energy it is going to give your body as it relates to the blood sugar that we mentioned.

http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/calorie.html

For this reason, it's important to note that your quantity of food is measured in calories and that the measure of calories that you consume will determine how much energy you have. Absolutely it will matter the content of what you eat for practical purposes and for the overall health of your body - you should not discount that, but at the same time as it strictly relates to losing weight the calories are the real factor.

BASIC IDEA #3: WEIGHT LOSS IS A MATH PROPOSITION MOST OF THE TIME
Just like we know how much energy a given volume of food is going to give you, we also know that that energy will convert into a given amount of fat/weight if you do not use it. This is where some of the ideas get a little more complicated because it's a constantly evolving equation in your body. 

Your body has a metabolism, but it's not a static volume of consumption. There are many ways to calculate this, but what I prefer is the resting metabolic rate (RMR) versus active metabolic rate (AMR) method. I like this because even though it changes over time it gives a general idea of how many calories your body can burn naturally without doing any work and, let's be honest, we all want to do this with the least amount of work as possible. Here is a link with some more information about RMR and a calculator.

https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calrmr.htm (My number is currently about 1875 calories)

I generally don't worry as much about my AMR, because if I keep my consumption under what I burn naturally then I will by default be losing for any workout the calories burned by that. Coincidentally, it takes 3500 calories to gain or lose a pound. 

This is where it becomes a little easier to understand. Mathematically speaking I have just configured 2 numbers - how many calories it takes to lose a pound (3500) and how many I burn at rest on a daily basis (1875). From there it's a simple measure. If I divide that 3500 calories I need to lose 1 pound into 7 days that makes 500 calories a day deficit to lose a pound a week. Since I burn that 1875 naturally, then I would have to eat 1375 calories per day in order to lose that pound. Now when I started losing weight, this number was damn near 4500 calories that I was eating and my RMR was a lot closer to 3700 to maintain that weight - so naturally I lost weight faster when I decided to cut that down to 1500 calories per day. The deficit then was closer to 2k per day which means about a pound every two days but that result will eventually wean down because your RMR will be changing as you lose pounds.

BASIC IDEA #4: INCREASING MUSCLE WILL HELP YOU LOSE FAT
This seems like something that you hear people say all the time, but sometimes you need a little bit more actual information as to what this means. The problem is that everyone assumes that all types of working out will automatically make you lose fat faster. That's generically true, but only if your consumption doesn't increase with it. 

There are those that dote on doing cardiovascular workouts to lose weight. I personally do a good amount of cardio and I will delineate more on that below, but really for me it came back to the basic idea that muscle helps you lose more fat. To be truthful, I'm not sure that I really believed all of this up front even though it seems rational, however objectively when studies were done it showed that 10lbs of muscle can burn about 50 calories in an hour whereas 10lbs in fat can only burn about 20 calories. Objectively building more muscle on to your body make that deficit bigger - and the bigger the deficit the more weight you lose. 

BASIC IDEA #5: YOUR BODY CHANGES IN MANY WAYS WITH WEIGHTLOSS
This idea is one that a ton of people have a really big struggle with also. A lot of times people get really stuck at a certain weight and assume that nothing is happening so they give up. What they don't realize in most of those cases is that something IS changing, just not what they are looking at. 

Your body will be adding muscle at the same time that you lose fat. Muscle objectively also weights more than fat, so even though you may be losing more fat, there's a chance that the two of those nearly offset and then you are in a situation where the number on the scale isn't really changing. To make things worse, because of digestive fluids, metabolism, and other factors your actual body weight can change anywhere around three pounds over the span of the day. Then there is also water weight that you carry at varying percentages at any given time. 


For this reason, I usually suggest to look at all of the elements at the same time - weight lost, inches of notable areas, body fat percentages, and water weight. I don't like medications as it only seems that they either wean off and you go back or you need more of them to maintain. You should be weighing yourself twice a day - once in the morning before you eat (fasting weight) and one before bed which will likely be a non-fasting weight but also will be closer to static. 

BASIC IDEA #6: WORKING OUT SMARTER IS BETTER THAN WORKING OUT LONGER
A lot of people think that working out for a longer period of time will cause your body to build more muscle. A lot of people also have this idea that lifting bigger amounts of weight will cause more fat loss. Even more people believe that if you weight train a certain area of your body that you will lose more fat from that part of your body. All of those statements are categorically false. It's better to work out with a period of time you can maximize. Bigger amounts of weight lead to more and bigger muscle but not direct fat loss. There is no such thing as "spot training" - you lose fat in reverse order that you put it on. 

The suggested amount of time for resistance training/weight training is about 45 minutes.

https://zenhabits.net/16-tips-to-triple-your-workout-effectiveness/
https://greatist.com/fitness/whats-best-time-work-out

After a longer period of time the peak results for your body building muscle have declined to the point that you are better served with cardiovascular exercise or you could be more effective for your muscles tomorrow. If you want to build bulk muscle then you lift more weight. If you want lean muscle you go medium weight for higher reps.

https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/5-steps-to-gain-mass-lose-fat.htm

As far as spot training - just remember that you are doing cardio also. The cardio will cut the fat from your body more than the weight lifting for the direct exercise and the muscle gain will help you burn more fat at rest. The trick is just to stick with it and measure and watch the results. Don't work out harder for longer times. Work out smarter and manage your time. 

WHAT I DID AND MY SUGGESTIONS
So I'll break this down into a few segments of what to do: Measurement, Diet, Workout, Tips

MEASUREMENT
1. Measure Body Fat, Weight, and Inches bare minimum - you can get a scale that does the first two for about $50-60. 
2. Weigh and measure yourself first thing in the morning and last thing before bed
3. Make sure that you give honest measurements for progress - even if you think they are negative
4. If you miss a morning or already ate - better something than nothing
5. Record all of your stats and numbers in a journal so you can chart progress

DIET
1. Figure out what your RMR is and subtract based on what you want to lose (check with your doctor also)
2. If you are usually hungry, focus on protein as it will help you feel full longer
3. You should eat about 6 meals a day, but they should all be about the size of the palm of your hand
4. ALWAYS stay hydrated. Drink water. Keep drinking water. 
5. I drink coffee as a hunger suppressant and I drink Tea as an antioxidant. 
6. When you plateau - change up the content of the calories that you are eating vs. changing the calorie number

WORKOUT
1. You should be going to the gym or doing some kind of work out a minimum of 3x a week
2. When you workout - do your cardio first. The blood to your muscles increases their effectiveness when you are doing your weight lifting.
3. When you weight lift, decide if you want to bulk or build lean and stick with those workouts.
4. Super stack. Weight lift groups of muscles that do the same work. (Biceps/Back/Shoulders, Triceps/Chest/Shoulders, Abs/Legs/Glutes) Get your bang for your buck. 

TIPS:
If you're having trouble getting the workout part started - just start with measuring what you eat now and get control of that. Find your RMR and work that. If you try to force a lifestyle that you can't adhere to you will end up burning out anyway. Don't force something that you can't make happen. Also, if you struggle a lot with the idea of diet - don't allow things in the house that will wreck you. I don't keep sweets in my house because I'm a sweet tooth. I will derail my progress by keeping sweets and the root of that is HAVING them to eat to start with. 

Lastly, don't be hard on yourself. Take pictures, appreciate where you kill it, and don't make this about anybody but yourself. People will always like/love you for who you are anyway. This needs to be something that you do for yourself. Thanks for reading!
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