You have to be scared about something to lose weight !!
My Diet Story - I was scared to death….
My Diet Story - I was scared to death….
It was April 2013, I was over 55 years old weighed 259 pounds - I was Obese Class I - fat, I itched all of the time, blood pressure was high - I was not healthy. And as an overworked, busy executive way too busy to do anything about it. I went to grocery store one day and looked around - saw where I was headed everywhere - that moment scared me. Saw a fat fellow sitting on a bench with oxygen hose and cane. Could see he was doomed, he is overweight, and in his condition could never get that weight off, he is headed to an early grave.
Plus:
1. My clothes did not fit I was always uncomfortable
2. I had high blood pressure was usually 90/147
3. I did not sleep well, and felt stressed.
4. I itched everywhere constantly.
5. My heart rate was 90 most of the time.
6. I ate like a horse, a 6-8 oz ribeye steak, baked potato 3-4 times per week
7. I had a fear of hunger, fear of salads and fruits, fear would run out of food.
8. Blood tests were scary, high PSA, glucose and lipids.
Realized it was now or I would never get my weight down in this lifetime. And I was running a high tech company as CEO - very intense high stress job for anyone. Just too busy to take care of myself.
I knew had to change and eat much less - I decided, dam if I am going to eat less I am going to eat very well - it will be healthy gourmet cuisine. I quickly learned three things, I could not just buy healthy gourmet cuisine; most of the gourmet cuisine recipes, cook books do not worry much about caloric content; finally it was near impossible to figure out calories consumed with packaged food or most of the recipes anyway, so had to cook on own using simple "ingredients" that have established clear caloric profiles, without any agenda.
I learned that because so many overweight Americans want to lose weight, and over 66% of the US population are overweigh, diet plans and medication have become desperate promotional gimmicks; a target for snake oil sales. Their are dozens of gimmick diets, pills, homeopathic treatments, diet consultants, diet supplements, magic potions, drugs all offering easy plans and false hope with magic solutions.
But when you read the scientific literature, (I did my own in-depth survey) and objective academic reviews of the commercial and non-commercial diet literature, one quickly concludes that only one thing works, eat less than you burn -- that has become the 1st Carnot Rule.
Diet 1 and Diet 2 - Portion Control Meal Plans Diet.
The left graph shows my weight when I started thinking about weight management and Carnot from 2009 to 2014.
My first attempt to lose weight was in May of 2010. I did that by purchasing Sous Vide frozen meals from a company called Home Bistro. The meals came frozen in bags, were portion controlled (about 500 calories per meal) and most meals actually tasted good. Meals had some variety, with vegetable, meat or fish, mashed potatoes and sauces and you heated them up in a steamer or in boiling water. The really good meals were expensive $13-$16 dollars, and no one else liked them. However, I discovered that if I ate a low calorie microwaved frozen diet meal from the grocery store (300 calories) for lunch and watched everything else I ate, plus a Sous Vide 500 calorie meal with 3 glasses of wine, I could lose 0.25 lbs per day. I lost 15 lbs over the course of 60 days, and was convinced I could lose much more (Diet 1 on graph).
I figured if Home Bistro could make these 500 calorie Sous Vide meals so could I and that launched my cooking carrier. As you can see over the course of the next year and half I gained all lost weight back. Tried again in October 2011 but got discouraged,
I hit my peak weight and peak depression in Feb 2013 of 259 lbs -- that was when I got scared and became serious - I had to figure this diet thing out and I had to figure out how to cook …
The left graph shows my weight when I started thinking about weight management and Carnot from 2009 to 2014.
My first attempt to lose weight was in May of 2010. I did that by purchasing Sous Vide frozen meals from a company called Home Bistro. The meals came frozen in bags, were portion controlled (about 500 calories per meal) and most meals actually tasted good. Meals had some variety, with vegetable, meat or fish, mashed potatoes and sauces and you heated them up in a steamer or in boiling water. The really good meals were expensive $13-$16 dollars, and no one else liked them. However, I discovered that if I ate a low calorie microwaved frozen diet meal from the grocery store (300 calories) for lunch and watched everything else I ate, plus a Sous Vide 500 calorie meal with 3 glasses of wine, I could lose 0.25 lbs per day. I lost 15 lbs over the course of 60 days, and was convinced I could lose much more (Diet 1 on graph).
I figured if Home Bistro could make these 500 calorie Sous Vide meals so could I and that launched my cooking carrier. As you can see over the course of the next year and half I gained all lost weight back. Tried again in October 2011 but got discouraged,
I hit my peak weight and peak depression in Feb 2013 of 259 lbs -- that was when I got scared and became serious - I had to figure this diet thing out and I had to figure out how to cook …
Why did the portion controlled Sous Vide meals work ?
Over the next few months I took the time to understand the diet and food nutrition literature. I got the USDA nutritional database with 7,900 food items and data mined it using advanced analytic tools.
The reason gimmick or special purchased food diets may work, ( BistroMD, Neutrisystem, Medifast, Jenny Craig, The Zone, Weight Watchers, eDiets, Diet-To-Go, Slimming World) but you gain it all back within a year is simple. If you eat special foods to get pounds off, and go back to your old food, of course you will go right back up to old weight. The scientific literature shows that about 80% of dieters gain back all weight within five years. You have to develop a new life style, to keep all that weight off forever, and all you have to do to lose weight is eat less than you burn, and you have to become Calorie Calibrated - that means you know what your eating at all times.
I listened to dozens of cooking and diet audio books and read what I could on my own to help me get over the my fear of cooking and diet - A few of my favorites The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, Kathleen Finn; Meals in Minutes, Jamie Oliver; Cooked, Michael Pollian; Consider The Fork, Bee Wilson; Paleofantasy, Marlene Zuk; Volumetrics, Barbara Rolls; and many more reviewed in the Books Tab. I also started to read the 100's of papers from the original scientific literature on diet, the science of weight loss, nutrition.
I took the time to understand how my own metabolism works, and how it burns food, produces energy, and waste, and how my body eats fat. Everything I ate was an experiment and my body was the analytical laboratory. I measured everything that could be measured, glucose, weight of everything, hunger pangs, my daily activity using a Fitbit (and other similar devices), and kept track of everything with a detailed model in a spreadsheet.
Again, was convinced that the only one way to lose weight: eat less than you burn. You have also to become your own gourmet chef, and cook simple healthy meals as good as anything you will eat in best four star restaurant so your in charge of calories and portion control.
So I hear you all saying I do not have time for all of that… nether did I, however once you become a Carnot Ninja, the Carnot Plan cooking takes no time, and eating right on the road becomes natural.
None of this is difficult, and Carnot has no gimmicks, carb limits, fat limits, special green bean, magic pills, just a few simple rules and simple ways of preparing meals. Most critical you can do this if your busy and at work. Just have to be good at measuring calories in (most important) and also be good at measuring calories out and Joule, google spreadsheet.
This is all easy and actually fun -- if I can lose 80 lbs you can also hit your target.
For last two years (now Feb 2016), I have gone to weight management mode. I just want to maintain a weight of 185-188 lbs, I still use Joule and log everything everyday. It's a 2 min/day habit that I will never give up.
It looks quite good on this graph, however to get what you see I had to either remove 75 activity calories each day, or reduce activity calories by 20%. I would have guessed my activity levels were much higher over what I recorded but that appears to not be true. Over the course of the next 2-3 months I will use my body to calibrate the model again, but most critical my own In/Out caloric reporting accuracy.
My caloric intake has gone up and my daily average Cal-Index has gone up (from 0.67 to 0.83) in management mode. That is because I am eating more meat, nuts and other high Cal-Index foods that worried me during weight loss mode. However, my average food intake has gone from 2,357g/day down to 1,890g/day - thats right down not up. You can see that as you level off and allow the average Cal-Index to go up you get to eat fewer grams of food per day.
One major lesson learned, is that weight management mode may let me eat more big Cal-Index foods, and worry less, however I need ability to go into weight loss mode after a bad food day or undisciplined eating during travel. Those peaks you see on graph were business trips where I may have had a 1,200 calorie lunch and a 1,300 calorie dinner just to see what happened. I had my travel scales (see Carnot Gear tab) and responded next day back to Carnot weight loss mode.