How I Easily Lost 60 Pounds (photos)

I have lost approximately 60 pounds. I look and feel much better. 50 pounds of that weight was lost easily in less than six months. Oddly, it was not difficult with the Slow Carb Diet I found in the book the Four Hour Body. I’ll explain in more detail:

• Background and results
• Recommended books for motivation and action
• Diet (the most critical portion of weight loss)
• Exercise
• Lessons learned and weight loss tips
• Reference links
• Future topics about the Four Hour Body and my weight loss

Background and Results

Currently, I weigh just under 200 pounds. My peak weight was about 260. That equals to a drop in waist size of 6 inches and dropping from XL shirts to Larges. I had been fat for so long that I thought that I inherently had to wear extra large shirts because I am tall and have fairly broad shoulders. It turns out that was not true; I was just fat.

One morning I had trouble tying my shoes. It hurt because my gut was so big. I like minimalist slip on shoes, but I want to wear them by choice and not because I physically can’t tie shoes. That caused me to also do a quick calculation. I had gained six to seven pounds per year for 10 years. That meant that I was only about 7 years away from weighing 300 pounds. I did not realize it, but that was my “elephant moment.”

So how did I lose the weight? The first ten pounds (from 260 to 250) I lost by simply trying to eat less and healthier lunches. The weight loss stalled at 250 for 12 months, but at least I was not getting any bigger. I dropped the next fifty pounds as fast as I dropped that first ten using the diet information below.

Recommended Books for Motivation and Action

The “elephant moment” comes not from the size I had reached, but from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. The elephant is the driving force that causes people to understand the need for change and causes the person to be motivated to make the change. I read the book Switch late last year after already having lost the first ten pounds. The book was extremely inspiring in its examples of both organizational and personal change. Switch is also very practical in addition to inspirational. (Side bar: I am terribly disappointed that a very high priority work project overruled a conference where I could have met the authors of Switch.)

Shortly after reading Switch, Tim Ferriss published the book The 4-Hour Body. I bought a copy more because of his internet fame than any specific idea about losing weight. The 4-Hour Body ended up being “the rider.” According to Switch, the rider provides the direction to the elephant. Now I had both motivation and path to follow.  This book is six hundred pages, but don’t let that deter you. The author respects your time and in in the first chapter tells you which additional chapters are necessary for weight loss. It is not many pages of the entire book that you need to read. The rest is like a buffet — you can graze at your leisure. I still have not read the majority of the book and it is completely not necessary to lose weight.

The Diet – Slow Carb

The diet I found in the The 4-Hour Body is called Slow Carb. I discovered it at the right time because of having just read Switch which provided some inspiring examples of change. Also, I had signed up for the MS150, so I needed to shed some pounds to make the ride easier.

Basically, the slow carb diet is high protein and no simple carbs. It relies heavily upon the following:

• 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking — two eggs or egg whites is the most common option
• No breads, fruits, potatoes, etc — similar to Atkins
• Lots of beans and leafy vegetables — the beans provide energy and together with the vegetables help fill you up
• If you are hungry, just eat more protein, beans, and greens.
• Cut out sugars and dairy products because they spike your blood sugar. I cut sugar and milk out of my coffee as well.
• One day per week, you can eat anything you want. This allows you to postpone any cravings since cravings are not forbidden, but only allowed one day per week. Usually, people call this day cheat day. It helps you stay on course by preventing you from regularly cheating in small ways.
• Red wine only — no beer (except on cheat day).
• No soda — not even diet soda. Technically, the book says one diet soda per day is acceptable, but I had been drinking 4 to 5 per day, so I just decided to cut them out completely because even the diet sodas cause weight gain. Do not measure food by calories which is how much energy is released when a food is burned. Your body is not a crucible, so you need to measure foods in their impact to your waist line. Diet sodas impact your waist line. Even if I am wrong and you switch to water, it won’t hurt you in anway to have switched to water. That brings me to the next point…
• Drink lots of water.

The Exercise

Many people assume that it is mainly due to the exercise that caused the weight loss, but I don’t believe that. A marathoner and cyclist I know said to me one day — actually specifically it was the day we completed the MS150 together — “What did you do to lose the weight? And don’t say cycling because I know that it was not cycling.” And I think he is right, I saw many fat cyclists on the MS150. Many people simply use the exercise as an excuse to eat more bad foods. In fact, lots of exercise encourages that behavior.

I am not sure if it is the weight loss or the exercise which has made me feel better, but I am certain that there is some interdependence. There is certainly something psychological pleasing about completing the MS150 and a triathlon in personal record pace for each of the three events. It is possible that I physically could have completed either of these events at my original weight. Although possible physically, I probably could not have done it psychologically because it would have been hard to overcome the feeling and mindset of being fat.

Lessons Learned and weight loss tips from Losing 60 Pounds

• I was not simply big, I was fat. It may seem obvious to others, but it is amazing how one can start to rationalize being unnecessarily large.
• Fat is easy to lose with the right diet.
• It does not really take exercise to lose weight. It helps, but only in reasonable doses.
• Losing weight can cause other positive life changes.
• Despite seeing the results, many people are still critics of the diet — I strongly believe that for most people they are simply rationalizing and making excuses to not follow the same weight loss. Ignore them.
• Having a support network helps — I joined an online group for questions and support on the slow carb diet.
• Get your family onboard. My family does not follow the diet, but I got my wife to agree that when she cooks she will make at least a meat dish I can eat. If she wants potatoes on the side, I will open a can of beans and spinach for my side dishes.
• I sleep much better without all the extra weight.  Better sleep makes a huge difference.
• Exercise is much easier when you are not carrying around 50+ unnecessary pounds. In fact, I not only completed the MS150, but also a Triathlon. And I registered for a half marathon. Update: I successfully completed the half marathon.
• Fat loss just like weight gain is contagious. I have several friends who have already been inspired by my weight loss who are also making dramatic health improvements. I am not posting this to brag, but in the hope that one more person will find the direction they need to also lose weight.

Reference Links:

• Losing 20 pounds of fat in 30 days with no exercise — the title of this post matches mine and multiple friends’ experiences.
• Slow carb recipes