TheAndySan.com

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If you can’t see the video above, click here.

Due to popular demand, I’ve decided to do a 3-part mini-series on how I lost over 20 lbs in 2 months without starving myself to death.

Intro-Don!

Initially, I wasn’t sure if the Navy was for me, even after I told my mom that I was gonna sign up. I was scared of the long commitment that I’d have to go through or else face very serious career-ending consequences. However, I didn’t see any other opportunities for me so I decided to try to lose weight.

When I went to MEPS the first time to do all my paperwork and get weighted in, I was really scared because I got that “this is really happening” feeling when I got on the bus. After I had filled out a ton of paperwork and stuff (including the dreaded “nut grab”), I got weighted in and was at 27% body fat, so I got sent home.

In order to be qualified to join the US Navy, you have to have at most 25% body fat, so needless to say, I was pretty discouraged. After I had gone home and sold all my guitars to make rent for the following month, I told myself that I would take this whole Navy thing seriously and do whatever I could to lose the weight.

So the next time I went in to MEPS a little over a month later, I passed the weigh-in with a 25% body fat. I know that it’s right on the dot, but I was never more proud of myself than when I heard that I passed!

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

My Workout Routine

When I started working out again, it was the dead of winter so I couldn’t do much outside beyond shoveling snow, which definitely helped me lose a couple of pounds. During this time, I stuck to using the treadmill in the basement that had been collecting dust.

Originally, my daily treadmill workout consisted of a 20-30 minute routine where I’d start off at 3 MPH at a 3% incline and then increased the speed every 5-6 minutes and then went back down to 3 MPH when it got to be too much to maintain. I then tried increasing the intervals as well as the overall length of the workout to 30-45 minutes, but I soon realized that simply increasing my workload wouldn’t help me lose more weight. In fact, I happened to be gaining a little bit of weight during that time.

Instead of chalking up my weight gain to muscle gain or some other BS, I decided to change up my routine in order to shock my body into losing the weight.

I then changed my routine to the following: 5 minute warm-up at 3 MPH, 1 minute at 6 MPH, 2 minutes at 3 MPH, 1 minute at 8 MPH (later 9 MPH), 2 minutes at 3 MPH, and so on until I’ve been working out for 20-25 minutes. This kind of routine is commonly known as interval training, and it really kick-started my weight loss and I began to notice that my endurance was increasing as well.

I used to do situps as well, but I found those to be largely ineffective since in order to lose the gut, you’d need to do cardio routines and have an overall good state of health. Even if I did situps until I was blue in the face, nobody would be able to see any changes because even if I had rockin’ ab muscles, they would be covered by fat.

Since the weather’s nice, I’m doing pretty much all of my workouts outside now. I would either run up and down my street for 1.5 miles or go on a long bike ride around town (by long, I mean at least 10 miles round-trip).

I remember back when I left UU around May 2007 and moved to Coldwater, I weighted around 230 lbs. This is definitely the heaviest that I ever been, and the heaviest that I ever will be! Besides blaming myself, I blame my weight mostly on poor eating, late-night eating, and not too much physical activity. Granted, I did go out on walks with my friend Dan and whoever else wanted to come along, as well as solo bike rides and stuff like that, but I was simply eating too many empty calories for it to make much of a difference. Not to mention that I was a pretty depressed guy at the time (just read some of my blog entries from late 2006-mid 2007 to get an idea of what was going on).

Anywho, when I moved from UU to Coldwater, there wasn’t much of anything to do there so I decided to walk around town every day. I then progressed to taking bike rides around town to going to the Wal-Mart in Celina and back every day. As a result, I lose 15 lbs in just a month’s time!

I know that there’s a large group of people who think that running is a more effective means of cardio training than biking, and it is when you compare the calories lost/distance, but I find riding my bike much more enjoyable than running because I can be outside longer and actually enjoy the scenery more than I could while I’m running. Also, biking is much kinder on my back and knees so I don’t feel like crap the next day.

Even though I’m not rockin’ the six-pack yet, I’m still the slimmest I’ve been in years and I couldn’t be happier! For a guy like me who’s 5’10″ (that’s 70 inches total or 175 cm for my international audience), being over 200 lbs is considered heavy. At the time, I didn’t think I was heavy (I knew I wasn’t slim, but I didn’t think I was fat), but now that I lost all that weight, I look back at some of my earlier videos and I can see that I was indeed overweight.

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

My Diet

When I started the diet, I knew I wanted to keep it simple and I didn’t want to count calories or carbs or stuff like that. I knew how super-analytical I could be about this, so I decided to keep things as simple as I could so I wouldn’t drive myself crazy analyzing every little thing I ate.

I did however keep a weight loss document that keeps track of how much I weigh every day as well as how much I’ve gained or lost compared to the previous day, how much I’ve lost overall compared to the first day of losing weight, and my average daily weight loss in ounces that would be calculated every 8 days. I highly recommend recording your weight loss in some fashion so that you can keep track of how much weight you’re losing as well as to keep yourself accountable so that when you gain weight, you see the figures right in front of you. The document needn’t be super fancy, heck I just used WordPad even though Excel would have worked much better in hindsight, but it’s fine as long as you have some means of keeping track of your weight loss and weight gain.

Remember, figures don’t lie, but liers do figure. Don’t try to cheat on it or else it won’t give you that subconscious push you need when you gain weight or that subconscious pat on the back when you lose weight.

Getting back to the actual dieting, I restricted my calories and my carbs by staying away from junk food, not drinking soda (or pop as I call it in my neck of the woods), drinking mostly water, eating healthy when I went out to eat, not eating late at night, and limiting my consumption of bread.

When I would eat something that would normally require bread like a sandwich, I would use either a whole-wheat tortilla (mmm, sloppy joe burritos!) or flaxseed bread, which is this kind of healthy bread that you can find in Wal-Mart and in most health food stores. Since it’s a really dry and stiff bread, I’d eat my sandwiches open-face (meaning with only one slice) so that would reduce my carbs and calories even further.

The majority of my lunches were tuna fish with generic Miracle Whip and some kind of a spicy element like jalapeños, taco sauce, red pepper, or something like that. Even with the Miracle Whip, I kept my calories and carbs in check. The spicy element that I would add also helps with digestion and gives the metabolism a boost too!

For a snack, I would eat an open-face peanut butter sandwich and that would usually be enough to quell my stomach rumblings. I’d also eat trail mix in order to increase my protein intake from the nuts as well as to get my chocolate fix.

When it came to drinks, I mostly stuck to water. Every once in awhile I’d have juice or apple cider to change things up, but 4 out of 5 times I’d be drinking water (in fact, I’m drinking water right now).

Closing Thoughts

In closing, I hope you found this mini-series informative and if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment or send me a message. Peace!

TheAndySan