My Weight Loss Plan

There is a lot more detail in my book, but here is a condensed look at the science behind my weight loss / lifestyle plan.

The Inspiration For My Plan

It all started when my wife was being considered for the lapband procedure. Once we got a look at their post-surgery lifestyle plan we realized that just following those steps without having the surgery could yield a significant weight loss. Here is what the Lap Band Lifestyle Plan looked like:

•Eat only three small meals a day.
•Do not snack between meals.
•Eat only solid foods at mealtime.
•Eat slowly and chew your food thoroughly, about 15 to 20 times per bite until it reaches a liquid state.
•Stop eating when you feel full.
•Do not drink while you eat. Do not drink 30 to 45 minutes before or after meals.
•Exercise a minimum of 30 minutes per day.

The Foundation For My Plan
I'm not going to dispute the success that many people have experienced with the lapband surgery (though I cover it more in the book). But we realized very quickly that it wasn't so much the surgical implant as it was the post-surgery lifestyle that made the difference in losing weight successfully with the lapband. (By the way, my wife chose not to have the surgery and has lost 50 pounds on her own using the basic points of my plan.) So I adopted most of the items listed above with a few modifications to formulate my weight loss plan.

You Must Burn More Calories Than You Eat!

In order to lose one pound, you have to burn off 3500 calories! So what does that mean and where do you start? How about at the beginning...

Through some basic research, I found that at my original weight of 297 pounds, I burned an average of 2500 calories per day just by being alive, thus I have referred to it as my "being alive" factor in the book. (And sometimes as the couch factor.) But on a meat and potatoes diet it was quite easy to eat a lot more than 2500 calories per day, which means I was going in the wrong (I have added a basic calculator at the bottom of the page to help you figure out your couch factor...)

With that in mind, it appeared that I would either have to starve myself to death by eating nothing at all, or do an incredible amount of exercise in order to burn off a big chunk of calories per day. In reality, it takes a balanced combination of calorie intake control – watching what you eat AND calories burned off – exercise.

Ah-ha – secrets revealed! Exercise is a key, but not necessarily to the extreme. As an M&P (meat and potatoes) guy, I was not terribly athletic, though I didn’t languish on the couch all that much either. Thus, I probably burned more than the 2500 calories per day that went with being alive, but the extra burn was not consistent or excessive. Therefore I needed to do more!

But that would take a lot of motivation, because quite frankly, exercise is boring. More on that in the book! All that aside, I realized that if I could burn off 1000 calories per day in addition to the 2500 couch factor, I would definitely make some headway.

So lets’ take a second to summarize MY numbers (yours could be different):

Eat 2000 calories or less each day.
Consume 2500 calories per day via the “being alive” factor.
Burn-off at least 1000 additional calories per day via exercise
Total Daily Net Calories = (-)1500

Net result: Burn off approximately 1/3 of a pound per day (actually a little bit more) which equals approximately 2 pounds per week.

Sound hard? Not really - the toughest part is getting started and sticking with it.
Just think, if you started a month ago, you conceivably would have already lost 8 pounds...