Not all foods are what they seem. While some labels are obvious with the addition of words like “flavored” or “imitation,” not all fake foods are such transparent frauds. Sometimes purveyors and manufacturers are actively trying to trick you into spending more for a premium item that’s not even the real thing. Somehow this is completely legal.

Here are some luxury food items that aren’t what they’re purported to be when sold in the United States.

• Cantaloupes are actually muskmelons, which has a reticulated skin like a cantaloupe but a very different flavor.
• Truffle Oil contains no truffles, but instead is composed of some oil (usually olive) and 2–4 dithiapentane, a synthetic compound that’s a component of truffle flavor. Sounds tasty. Anthony Bourdain referred to truffle oil as “the ketchup of the middle class.”
• Wasabi is usually horseradish mixed with colored dyes. You can get actual wasabi in some higher-end sushi restaurants, but it’s not neon-green in color (it’s more of a pale yellow) and usually quite expensive as it has to be imported.
• Kobe Beef is not legal to export from Japan, so unless you’ve eaten it in a fine Japanese steakhouse, what you’ve eaten as a “kobe slider” isn’t actually Kobe beef. It’s probably not even fake Kobe beef, otherwise known as Waygu which is the same breed of cow raised outside of Japan.
• Super White Tuna isn’t tuna. It’s actually escolar, also known as the “snake mackerel,” which can cause diarrhea-like symptoms. It’s illegal to serve in Japan, but just fine according to the FDA in the United States. Consider just getting regular red tuna in your sushi.
• Olive Oil may be “adulterated” with other (cheaper) oils that aren’t as healthy for you. To see which brands of oils are actually 100% olive oil, you can check this list.
• Parmesan Cheese is probably not the real deal. You may expect that from the powered “Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese” variety, but chances are even the expensive wedge you buy and grate yourself at the expensive local market isn’t actually Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese made to centuries-old exacting standards in Italy, but rather a cheaper fake.

So those are some of the more sinister fakers. There are other “foods” that don’t really pretend to be the real thing, but it may surprise you just how fake they are:

• Bacon Bits contain no bacon. I think this one’s not even trying to pretend to be the real thing, but those Bac-Os or Bacn-Pieces are made from soy.
• Cool Whip is not whipped cream. It’s primarily an emulsion of water and vegetable oil. Nothing says “more, please” than a big glop of oil atop your pie.
• SunnyD is not orange juice. It doesn’t pretend to be, but it contains “less than 2%” of various juices, which means it could contain as little as none actual orange juice.
• Pancake Syrup generally contains not even a little bit of actual maple syrup. Most brands like Aunt Jemima, Log Cabin, or Hungry Jack don’t even use the word “maple” to describe their syrup, whereas some brands will refer to it as “maple-flavored syrup.”

What does this have to do with weight loss and clean livin’? Not much, other than I was surprised to learn about a few of these and wanted to share this knowledge because I don’t think a lot of this is widely known[1].

I don’t really eat many of these things anyway (especially from the second list) but mostly because they’re horrible for you, are highly caloric, and don’t taste very good. What a triple threat.

There’s no magic formula to losing weight (other than calories in < calories out), but there are some shortcuts, tricks, and tips that I’ve discovered through my four years of Clean Livin’ that could help you navigate the broken glass that’s hidden in the grass. These tips may not work for everyone, but they work for me, and if you can try them and not mind the changes, you get the added weight loss benefit for free.

Think about it this way: if you can substitute one thing for another that’s just as good (or sometimes even better) it’s one small step toward cutting out a small number of calories, but those small numbers add up over the course of a day, week, or year.

Stupid Human Tricks

• Downsize Your Plate – Since you’ll likely be done eating before you end up feeling full, most people will know that they’re done eating by looking down at their empty plate. You can reduce your calorie intake simply by making your plate smaller. It sounds stupid, but it works. I usually eat most of my meals on a salad or small dessert plate.
• Pre-Portion Everything – Don’t eat from a container or bag unless you intend to eat the entire thing. Sure, you may stop when you’re full, or when you’ve had a serving, but you’re far more likely to over-eat when you can’t see the portion that’s going into your stomach. Place what you intend to eat on a plate or bowl prior to eating it. If you decide you want more, at least you’re deciding to eat more and not just mindlessly shoving food down your craw.
• Measure Your Food – Unless you’re eating something that’s prepared and individually portioned, the only way you’re going to know just how much meat, beans, or soup you’re having is to measure it out with a measuring cup or weigh it on a food scale. Studies have shown that people underestimate the portion size of even something as simple as a chicken breast by 30–40%. It only takes a moment to put your plate on the scale, tare it (i.e. zero it out), and weigh a portion. You can even keep taring the scale between adding additional food to it. Weighing your food is the most accurate way to measure the calories in that food, because the volume of solid food items can vary between measuring depending on how the food is oriented or packed.
• Slow Down – I’m as guilty of eating too fast as anyone. Studies have shown, however, that people who eat more slowly also eat fewer calories than people who scarf down their food. Not only does it take about twenty minutes for you to start feeling full after you start eating, but by chewing your food more you taste it more, and will find that smaller portions won’t leave you feeling hungry afterwards if you eat your food more slowly.
• Pay Attention – My wife and I still eat while watching television sometimes. We almost always eat official “meals” at the dining room table, but will often eat an evening snack while watching a movie or TV show. We try to combat overeating by portioning our snacks (usually fruit or air-popped popcorn) in the kitchen and then taking our bowls to the sofa, but it’s probably still a bad habit that promotes mindless eating. Have you ever finished eating only to discover that you didn’t even notice you were eating by the time you were done? This is especially frustrating when you’ve been eating something unhealthy, because now you’ve not only eaten a large number of calories, but you didn’t even get to enjoy them. That doesn’t sound like fun. If you’re going to eat potato chips, at least eat them mindfully so you can enjoy the experience.

Easy Substitutions

• Mustard Instead of Mayo – Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil and egg, but it’s mostly oil. Mustard is usually comprised of ground mustard seeds (mustard is a plant), vinegar, and salt. Unless you get honey mustard or mustard mixed with some other sugary concoction, it’s usually zero calories, whereas mayo is 100 calories per tablespoon, which is about as much as you’d put on a sandwich if you don’t use a lot of mayo. You get the added benefit that mustard is tastier (although I do admit a love of mayo on certain types of sandwich).
• Fat Free Singles Cheese – If you’re going to eat processed American cheese anyway, switching to the 25–30 calorie variety versus the 60 calorie per slice regular is a no-brainer. They’re also usually individually wrapped and melt really well, so they’re great in omelettes, on sandwiches, and as a cheesy additive to beans. I actually prefer the taste of the fat-free vs. the regular slices of my local supermarket’s brand. The Kraft fat free singles are generally available everywhere, though, and are also very good.
• Reduced- or Non-Fat – I’ve been drinking 1% or 2% milk instead of whole milk for so long that the whole milk (typically 4% fat) tastes too creamy to me now. However, skim milk just tastes watery and thin. It’s amazing what 1% of dairy fat can do to the taste of milk. Switching from whole milk to 1% will save you 60 calories per cup. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but adding up a few 25–75 calorie substitutions in a day can mean an extra pound lost per month. Cheese is another area where you can get reduced or non-fat varieties of some cheeses. As with the fat free singles cheese, skim-milk (which is sometimes harder to find than “part-skim” varieties) mozzarella is another example where if you’re mixing it into a recipe or using it to top a baked dish you won’t even miss the added fat and the calories that it brings. Easy substitution.
• Leaner Cuts – You probably already consider boneless, skinless chicken breast a diet food, but did you know that the more succulent pork loin is ounce-for-ounce less caloric than chicken breast? Believe it, bucko. When eating red meat[1], like steak, you can probably switch out a fattier ribeye or sirloin for a leaner filet mignon or New York strip steak. Ground beef is usually labeled with the percent of lean meat that’s in the container, but with steaks it’s harder to tell, especially when you’ve been trained to look for good marbling (the white marble strains in the otherwise red meat is the fat). Barring buying a leaner cut of beef, grilling it so that the fat drips between the grates is a healthier option than pan-searing it so that it reabsorbs its fat while cooking. Pro tip: while letting the steak rest for a few minutes, take some marinade and pour it over the steak to make it juicier. Yes, after cooking. While the meat fibers cool and the protein strands relax they’ll wick up that flavorful juice and make even leaner cuts of beef taste fantastic. Just be sure to use a low-calorie marinade or you’re just substituting beef fat calories for calories in the marinade.

Easy Foods To Cut

This one is harder to provide examples for, because the high-calorie foods that you eat often but don’t really enjoy that much will be different for you than they are for me, but I can at least share a list of foods that I’ve cut out or those of which I’ve drastically reduced my consumption.

If you’re eating something out of habit or just because it’s there (for example, snacks that are available in the office) and you wouldn’t miss them, just cut them out. Not eating something you don’t even like isn’t a sacrifice at all. If you examine what you’re eating every day and really think about it, there are probably at least a few foods that you can give the pink slip.

While I haven’t completely barred any food from my diet (because I’m not on a diet, I’m just eating better), there are a bunch of things that I hardly ever eat anymore.

• The Offender: Soda/Pop – Of course, as I list soda as a beverage I rarely consume, I just finished drinking a tiny plastic cup of Coke Zero while I type this on an airplane. I used to drink a few cans of regular Coca-Cola Classic while at work (because it was there) every day, and switching to coffee and then water made it easy to remove hundreds of calories from my daily intake. I don’t miss it at all, although I did buy a SodaStream carbonator to make fizzy water for when I want some bubbles, which is hardly ever.
  The Lower-Calorie Substitute – I usually drink plain old filtered or tap water (I know, I’m boring).
• Offender: High Carb Breakfasts – I used to eat a lot more bagels, pancakes, and waffles than I do now.
  Substitute: Usually yogurt with a bunch of nutritionally-strategic additives – granola, berries, walnuts, flax seed, chia seed, or other foods that I’m getting into my diet by adding them to my morning mélange. I’ll have eggs for breakfast once or twice a week (and then maybe once again for lunch or dinner). I’ll have oatmeal once or twice a week (which I should increase but I like my yogurt more).
• Offender: Sugary Desserts and Snacks – I used to eat a lot of cake, pie, or ice cream for dessert.
  Substitute: – I’ll have some fruit or popcorn. Sometimes in the summer we’ll splurge and have some frozen yogurt or kefir, which is about 100–120 calories per 5 oz, as opposed to the 200ish calories in the same volume of ice cream.
• Offender: Cheeseburgers – Man, I loves me a good burger. Add cheese, bacon, and katsup to really kick things up a notch, especially if you throw in a side of crispy french fries and a tasty cold beer.
  Substitute: – There is no substitute for a burger. I just eat them less frequently. I enjoy them a whole lot more when I do eat them now, though, and will grill up the burgers myself rather than get them at a restaurant.
• Offender: Sausage – Most sausages are loaded with fat (and other things).
  Substitute: Chicken Sausage – Before you close your browser in disgust, just hear me out. I used to be like you, scoffing at the idea of a chicken sausage or some other ridiculous hot dog substitute, but in the past few years chicken sausages have really kicked it up a notch. At one-half to two-thirds fewer calories than their pork or beef counterparts, chicken sausages can be well spiced and mixed with healthy alternatives to fat, like apples, peppers, or even low-fat cheese. Living in Chicago, I’m particular partial to the new chicken sausages from Vienna Beef. They’re so good I actually prefer them to their hot dogs (although I do miss the natural casing snap of the standard dogs).
• Offender: French Fries, Rice, Bread Stuffing, Pasta, and other Starches – Growing up most meals would consist of a well-rounded plate of some meat, fish, or other protein, some vegetable, and some starch like macaroni & cheese or rice. The problem with these starches is that they provide a ton of calories without providing that much in the way of nutrition.
  Substitute: Beans – Beans also contain a lot of starch, of course, and with that, a lot of calories compared to vegetables or proteins. However, beans are also loaded with dietary fiber and vitamins, and are thus really good for you. I usually don’t eat more than a half-cup serving of beans at any given time, but they’re excellent (and if you spice them up, much tastier than boring ol’ white rice).

Small changes to your eating habits add up over time to big weight loss. A few calories here and there don’t seem like much, but you can easily lose a pound a week by reducing your calorie intake by just 350 calories a day; reduced because you’ve found ways around starving yourself by eating lower-calorie foods that taste just as good (or better) than their higher-calorie culinary equivalents.

No one is ever satisfied by that answer, though, because it’s only part of the equation. It’s harder to tell people that there are a whole bunch of things that you have to change: what you eat, your habits, hobbies, tools, attitude, and self-perception. I’ve been posting my “secrets” to this blog for the past four years. I tried to distill the psychological aspects of weight loss in “How to Lose Weight” but that’s not the only part (although I believe it’s the biggest part).

I’ve been trying to come up with an elevator pitch that condenses my weight loss “secrets” down into a 20–30 second soundbite, but its’ hard to compact a few dozen little things into a pithy statement, and even if I could, people would likely be dissatisfied with that answer anyway.

The Bigger You Are, The Faster You Fall

Here’s something that’s promising: the more weight that you have to lose, the easier the initial pounds come off. It’s encouraging to see weight come off the scale every single day when you’re just starting out with your Clean Livin’ regime, even just a week or two in.

Not everyone has as much to lose as I did, though, so my results are probably atypical and while I’m happy to be an inspiration for anyone, don’t be disappointed if you don’t lose 50 pounds in three months like I did.

As I’ve lost more weight it’s gotten harder to lose weight, and it’ll likely get harder still. I’ve had to reduce my calorie budget a couple of times already since I’m no longer burning as many calories just keeping my now smaller body alive. It’s not terrible. I’ve adjusted by eating healthier, lower-calorie foods so I wouldn’t have to reduce portions to the point where I’m hungry all the time (although I am hungry before I eat).

You’ll have to experiment a little, and adjust your calorie budget based on your weigh-ins, how fast you want to lose, etc.

Surely you’re thinking “I want to lose weight as fast as possible,” but if you want to keep it off, and get healthier while you’re losing weight, that’s probably not your best strategy. Optimal, sustainable (local and organic) weight loss is healthy only if you lose about 1–2 pounds per week, which means creating a calorie deficit of 500–1000 calories per day, either through eating less, eating healthier foods, by exercising more, or some combination of the three.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

A lot of people ask me “what do you eat?” as if there’s a magic weight loss diet. Me? I eat what I like. I try to eat new vegetables, or familiar favorites prepared in a new and exciting way. Novelty helps me. People are so used to various diets that stipulate cutting out entire swathes of foods that they expect I’ll have a short and simple answer like “Oh, I used the Paleo Diet” or “I cut out carbs, fats, and sugar.”

Sometimes people get annoyed with me when I try to simplify my eating strategy down to “I count calories, stay within my budget most days, and eat healthier foods so I’m hardly ever hungry.” Is it because that’s the conventional wisdom that everyone already knows? It’s common knowledge because it works, people.

Constant Feedback

Weigh yourself. Record the weight. Log what food you eat. Count the calories (especially helpful is to plan out a meal before you eat it). Take a tape measure and measure your waist. Take your blood pressure if you have a cuff. Talk to your doctor about measuring your percentage of body fat.

The more you know the more information you’ll have to help you make better decisions.

Check the color of your urine. While cloudy, yellow urine isn’t a sure sign that you’re dehydrated, clear pee is a good sign that you’re well-hydrated, especially if it’s combined with more frequent urination[2].

Wash the Weight Away

You’re not drinking water because you’re thirsty, you’re drinking water to flush out the crud that’s been building up in your system, and making it easier to get the water that comes out of your adipose tissue (i.e. your fat cells) flushed out of your body as you break down the fat cells (which also contain water) to make up for the calorie deficit you’re creating by eating fewer calories. Why weigh all that extra water weight? Go pee that stuff out because you’re hydrating like crazy.

It’s a Decision

That’s all fitness is: a series of good choices that get you to where you want to go.

You are trying to transform your body, but the transformation has to begin in your mind. Imagine an Olympic athlete suddenly inhabited your body (like in one of those Freaky Friday, 18 Again, Vice Versa, or Like Father, Like Son movies, but with an athlete switching bodies with you instead of a relative whose life will inspire you to change. That athlete will likely be frustrated with how your body performs, like asking a race car driver to compete in the Indy 500 in a Prius. You can bet they’d whip their new body into better shape, though. So become that athlete yourself and you won’t have to wait around and hope for a magic mirror, fountain, or fortune cookie.

You’re Not Exercising. You’re An Athlete.

Exercise isn’t something you do for thirty minutes at a certain time every day. It’s who you are. You are motion. You are activity. Every day you’re getting stronger. Your day-over-day improvements in strength, endurance, and speed may be imperceptible to you, but week-over-week, month-after-month you’ll start to find that you can do so much more than you could a month or two ago. Exercise isn’t work. It’s training.

Goals Are Where You Are Going To Be, and What You Are Going To Do To Get There

Your weight loss goals aren’t something that would be nice to do. Your goals are a series of small things that you do that get you incrementally closer to where you want to be. You’re playing the long game, setting milestones and taking every step necessary to get there.

Your goals are small enough that each one should be 100% achievable. You’re going to lose those ten pounds because you’re going to create a calorie deficit every day, by reducing what you eat at most meals, most days, and increasing your activity level to take up the slack.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
– Computer scientist Alan Kay, 1971

So How Did You Lose So Much Weight?

I eat better and move around a lot more.

The dictionary defines food as “any substance your body can translate into energy.” By this definition water isn’t a food, but let’s say that it’s “anything you can eat or drink that supports your body’s energy needs.” Your body is a complex amalgam of many systems, but to simplify we’ll only be interested in the body as a mechanical and chemical system. To use a car analogy, your body needs fuel in order to function. The best part about food energy[1] is that it can be measured, so we can know (albeit sometimes with some difficulty) what’s going into our gas tanks (stomachs).

You’re probably familiar with the unit we use to measure the amount of energy in food when consumed. It’s listed on the back of every pre-packaged food item in the form of Calories.

Cal or kCal?

The Calories in food are actually kilocalories in the scientific sense. Sometimes these calories are divided into small calories and big (or large) Calories, and it’s customary to use a capital C when referring to that unit of measure, although I’ll probably use the lower-case more often because it’s less obnoxious to read that way.

Nutritionists’ calorie, kcal, or just Calorie, is the amount of energy needed to increase 1 kilogram of water by 1° C. While it’s a metric measurement, in scientific circles the use of the SI-unit “joule” is more common. In current usage the calorie almost always means the amount of energy in food, specifically.

Input / Output

How much energy does it take to burn a pound of body fat?

There are 453.6 grams per pound. You have to create a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories to burn one pound of fat. Dietary fat has nine calories per gram.

9 calories per gram × 453.6 grams = 4,082.4 calories.

Since burning a pound of body fat only takes a deficit of 3,500 calories, we can do some more simple math: 3,500 calories divided by 453.6 grams = 7.7 calories per gram of body fat, which is less than the 9 calories that we know fat to contain per gram. So why does it take fewer calories to burn the fat than it does to intake the same amount of fat?

The reason is because stored body fat, called “adipose tissue” by scientists, isn’t pure fat like the dietary fat you consume. Adipose tissue is comprised primarily of fat, but also contains protein and a lot of water. Protein only has four calories per gram as opposed to fat’s nine, and water doesn’t have any calories, so that’s why it’s biologically easier to burn body fat than to store a pound of fat due to an excess of food intake. Of course, it’s easier to sit on your ass watching TV and eating potato chips than it is to exercise, and calorie-dense & nutritionally vacant foods comprise far too much of the average diet, making losing weight harder from a psychological and practical standpoint than gaining weight is for most people. Nature is on your side, but Human Nature is against you.

Time To Lose

If you only created a calorie deficit of 100 calories per day it would take five weeks to lose a single pound of fat. To lose 1–2 pounds per week, which is the most you’ll want to lose safely (i.e. without causing harm to your body) you’ll need to create a deficit of 500–1,000 calories every day. You can do this with a combination of calorie restriction and exercise. Just keep in mind that exercise will only do so much. The 80/20 rule applies here: 80% of your weight loss will come from your diet, and 20% should come from exercise. Walking briskly only burns about 100 calories per mile. Since you’ll have to walk almost six miles to burn off one Big Mac, altering your diet will result in greater results than exercise. That doesn’t mean that exercise is useless, just that if your only goal is weight loss, exercise is less important than diet. One advantage of exercise, though, is that it increases your metabolism.

Metabolism is the way your body breaks down food, determines its constitution, and gets the right nutrients to the cells that need them. Your body burns energy all the time, even now while you’re reading this. The more physical exertion, the more energy it takes.

I was going to take some pictures of 100 calories of foods to show volumes of various foods that all have the same number of calories, but someone already beat me to it (with a gallery of what 200 calories of various foods looks like).

Take This To The Bank

Caloric intake is like having a per diem. Every day you get a certain budget, and then it resets for the next day while you sleep. The amount of calories you require on a daily basis varies from person to person, but the USDA’s guidelines for nutritional labeling of food items bases the amounts on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your needs may be more or less than that based on your weight, gender, or age. There are even variations in the metabolism of individuals, so any talk of measuring your intake vs. calories burned will be ballpark figures.

Calorie Density

Some foods are more calorie dense than others, meaning that you can eat larger amounts of some foods without taking as big of a hit in your daily budget.

Water, insoluble fiber, cholesterol, vitamins, and minerals don’t have any calories but provide other vital nutrients. Practically all foods contain some combination of the above constituents, and food calories are calculated based on the amount of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates that they contain.

How Much Of Each Nutrient Should I Eat Daily?

The Institute of Medicine provides a recommendation table called the acceptable macronutrient distribution range (AMDR) which specifies the percentages of each macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs, etc.) people should consume daily based on their age and gender. For adults, on average, you should base your percentage of macronutrient intakes on:

As you can see, the totals of the maximum range exceed 100%, so depending on your age and gender you’ll need more or less of each nutrient. Remember, however, that your body weight is a simple balance of caloric intake versus outtake. Calories are calories whether they come from fat, protein, or a jelly donut. You can get all of your calories from eating potato chips and still lose weight. You may die of malnutrition, but you’ll lose weight.

Free Energy

Your metabolism is working all the time, burning energy just to keep your vital functions working, your body heat constant, heart beating, and lungs breathing. The amount of energy needed to keep you alive is called your basal metabolic rate. BMR varies in individuals, but a good average figure is that your BMR constitutes about 60% of your total energy consumption. You also burn energy digesting food, and of course through activity.

The average woman burns 10 calories per pound, and men burn 11 calories per pound.

Let’s assume for example a 150 pound woman (because the math works out conveniently). Her BMR would result in a caloric consumption of 1,500 calories (150 lbs x 10 calories), which is 60% of a total of 2,500, which is the amount of calories she’d have to consume daily to maintain the same weight.

But like I said above, BMR varies based on a great number of factors, including genetics, body frame, height, weight, etc. It’s widely known that the BMR of overweight people is actually much greater than that of fit people since it takes more energy to keep more mass moving, and being overweight stresses the body causing an overweight person to burn more energy than if they weren’t carrying the extra weight. If you’re overweight, this is excellent news.

Your BMR constitutes about 60% of your daily caloric needs. Another 10% goes to digesting food and carrying nutrients to your organs. Only 30% of your daily caloric intake goes to powering your muscles to move your body around through activity. So it seems that you’d be well-served by figuring out how to increase your basal metabolic rate. Of course, to know how to increase it you’ll need to know how to calculate yours first.

Some fancy scales can determine your BMR by sending a small electrical current through your body (one foot to the other) and measuring the resistance caused by water in your cells. It’s a rough estimate. There are also handheld devices that can measure your body fat percentages so you can calculate your BMR more accurately. Your doctor can prescribe far more accurate tests that require expensive equipment, or by suspending you in a tank of water like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back.

Personally, I base my intake on an 1800–2000 calorie diet and have been losing weight more rapidly than is recommended by my doctor. I’d have to recommend that you talk to your physician or dietitian to figure out how many calories you should be consuming daily, and what percentage of macronutrients you should target.

Raising Your Metabolism

Here are a few ways to boost your metabolism:

• Exercise – Not only does exercise help make you stronger and feel better, but you get a small metabolism bump that lasts hours after you’ve finished exercising. That’s why it’s better to work out in the morning rather than at night after work (if you have to choose).
• Build muscle – Every pound of muscle burns about 6 calories per day through general use, while each pound of fat only requires about 2 calories a day. While you can’t turn fat into muscle (they’re completely different tissues) you can increase your muscle mass through exercise and thus raise your metabolic rate slightly. The more muscle you have, the more energy you burn.
• Don’t starve yourself. – You burn excess fat by creating a calorie deficit, but if you create too much of a deficit your body thinks it’s starving and slows down your metabolism in order to keep you alive for as long as possible.
• Get enough sleep. – Sleep depravation slows down your metabolism. Even though you burn fewer calories while sleeping than while awake, you’ll burn fewer calories still if you don’t get enough sleep. Most adults need 7–9 hours of sleep per night.
• Eat smaller. – I don’t mean eat smaller portions (although you should do that too) but eat smaller meals more frequently. Your metabolism slows down when you’re done digesting food, so eating smaller amounts of food spread out throughout the day will actually keep your metabolism going stronger for longer.
• Eat more fish. – Especially those containing omega–3 fatty acids. Salmon, sardines, and other rich in omega–3 fish oils have been known to raise your metabolic burn by as much as an additional 400 calories per day.
• Spice it up. – Studies have shown that eating spicy foods actually raises your metabolism. Some diet pills actually contain pure capsaicin, the protein that makes food taste hot & spicy. Spices also have the added benefit of adding a tasty kick to some blander (but healthier) foods.
• Drink green tea. – Drinking green tea before a workout is said to increase the amount of calories you burn between 15 and 20%.
• Drink coffee – The caffeine in coffee is a stimulant and slightly raises your metabolism.
• Eat more protein. – Proteins take more energy to burn than fats or carbohydrates, which extends the amount of time you spend metabolizing your food between meals. Plus, protein is essential for promoting muscle growth, which also burns more calories.
• Be younger – Metabolism slows with age, so the best way to speed up your metabolism is to grown younger. Oh yeah, that’s impossible. I guess you’ll have to stick to eating right and working out, then.

OR WILL YOU?!??!?

Burning Calories Through Inactivity

Did you know that you burn calories all the time? Right now reading this is burning more calories than you’d burn if you were sleeping or just sitting still on the sofa. This is sometimes referred to as NEAT – non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is the activity that you wouldn’t consider activity – fidgeting, shivering, pacing, talking – all of these things burn a small amount of calories.

No one is going to suggest that you replace your daily 30 minute workout with fidgeting on the sofa, but by keeping in mind that just about everything you do with your body burns calories you can make a game of it by trying to burn as many calories as you can per day.

The following figures are based on the Compendium of Physical Activity, a reference that assigns a MET value (defined as the ratio of activity to a standard resting metabolic rate) to various activities based on their intensity. Sitting still is the baseline of 1.0 METs per hour. The METs are considered an average over time, which is why gardening is higher than surfing – surfing may be higher intensity for brief intervals, but constant gardening beats out waiting for that perfect wave to come.

I’d argue that sexual activity is rated far too low in terms of physical intensity, but then I’d be bragging.

None of these things are generally considered “exercise” (except maybe bicycling, which I included because it’s not work if it’s fun, right?) yet all of these activities burn some calories. Cooking burns more calories than sitting. Reading burns slightly more calories than watching TV (I wonder if that’s because of the page turns). Walking tends to burn more calories the faster you walk, but the interesting part about walking/jogging/running is that you burn the same calories over the same distance no matter your intensity. So running one mile burns the same number of calories as slowly walking that same mile (although running will burn them faster).

So get out there and burn some calories. Or just sit here in front of your screen and burn slightly fewer calories.

• Under 40 BMI (change in classification)
• Halfway Point (315.5 pounds)
• Under 300 Pounds

How Morbid

40 BMI is the threshold for moving from “morbidly obese” to simply “obese.” Granted, it’s not much to brag about, but it’s my first major step down the BMI scale (the next is from obese to merely “overweight,” which I’ll reach at 240 pounds for me).

Since BMI is relative to your height (but oddly, not age or gender) your BMI will be different than mine even at the same weight. Still, even a relative win is a win. I’ve apparently reduced my risks of a great number of diseases and have added a couple of decades onto my life.

While I don’t know much about the Obesity Action Coalition, they have more information about morbid obesity.

I didn't lose the weight eating Gray's Papaya dogs, but every once in a while...

Halfway

Since I’ve had to lose so much weight, the halfway point for me was when I lost 135.5 pounds, at 315.5 pounds. By any measure, losing more than 135 pounds is a lot of weight – more than many entire humans!

300

Hail Sparta!

Getting below 300 pounds was a major mental milestone for me. Seeing that number change doesn’t mean that much in terms of how I look or feel, but seeing the first number on the scale change was major, especially since I’m not sure I’ll need to see it change again (I’m still not really sure what my “ideal weight” should be but I figure I’ll know it when I get there and keep re-evaluating as I go).

Since I’m still considering my True Weight to be a two-week average. I just got below 300 (on average) today even though I first weighed-in below 300 pounds (299.8 to be exact) on April 25th, 2010 (two weeks ago).

“If you really want to be depressed, weigh yourself in grams.”
— Jason Love

One of the tricks I’ve found for keeping up with my own fitness progress is to try to get as much feedback that I can. When you drive a car you can look at the speedometer to see how fast you’re going, look at the lines that divide each lane to stay on course, and look at other gauges and dials to tell the status of your vehicle. Unfortunately, your body’s feedback is vaguer and less precise. You know when you need water because you feel thirsty. You know when you need food because you feel hungry. In theory, you know when you’ve had enough food when you feel full.

The problem is that my mechanism for feeling full is broken. I tend to not feel full until I’ve already eaten too much. If I eat a little and stop, I’ll feel full (or not) after waiting a while. So my meals have been broken up into small grazing periods where I’ll eat a little, log it, wait to see if I’m still hungry, and then eat a little more if so (sometimes).  So since I don’t have a working mechanism for knowing what and how much to eat, I needed some help. Technology to the rescue!

Plotting Your Downsizing

One of the most important pieces of information you can easily measure is your weight.  Get a scale that is reasonably accurate and weigh yourself every day. Log that weight somewhere, even if it’s just a simple spreadsheet or by using an online service (I like Gyminee, but there are many more out there).  Weigh yourself wearing the same thing (if anything) in the same place at the same time every day if possible. The overall accuracy of the scale isn’t as important as how accurate it is compared to itself. You really only care about the change in your weight, so if it’s mostly accurate, that’s probably good enough.  Most new scales are very, very accurate.  I got this scale and it works great.

You can’t really count on your day-to-day weight as having too much meaning since your water balance will vary by up to several pounds per day, but you can plot the trend over time.  As you burn fat you’ll retain more water temporarily, and so you’ll actually gain some weight (since water weighs more than fat) before you lose it.  Contrary to popular myth, fat cells never fill with water, and while they do shrink they never go away. You can read more about how fat is burned.  I’m finding that my weight loss, when plotted on a chart, looks more like a saw blade than a constant negative slope pointing down.

As you can see in the “Weight Over Time” chart (which shows my actual daily weigh-ins) the overall trend is down (in this case each grey horizontal line represents ten pounds and the x-axis is time), but there may be a few days where my weight increases before starting on a downward trend again.  Sometimes it levels-off for a few days.

Just because you’re logging your weight every day doesn’t mean you have to give that weight too much meaning. It’s okay if it goes up for a few days. Of course, human nature being what it is, it feels better when you see your weight decrease, since that’s your goal, but given the trend I’ve been seeing in my graph I know enough now to recognize the pattern of weight loss. Do I tend to eat more healthily and maybe get a little more exercise in on days when my weight increases?  You bet.  That’s good positive feedback. You go off course, you can correct.  If you only weighed-in once a week you’d have that much longer to go that much further astray before you adjusted your habits.

Since a little weight gain is a good thing (as long as it’s temporary) I don’t really worry too much about my daily weight as much as the trend over time. I calculate my “true weight” by taking an average of my weights for the past two weeks and dividing by fourteen.  Even though there’s math involved it’s not all that scientific – it’s just a straight average weight over a two week period, but then I composite that data each week and compare that to a week ago.  Yes, that means that every week gets averaged twice – once it’s the “front” week and the other it’s the “back” week – it makes it easier to see the trend.

It’s been working pretty well so far.  Weighing-in every day is quick and easy.  My scale has a nice big readout and shows me the previous day’s weight so I can compare whenever I weigh in.

Count On It

Another important thing to measure is your calorie intake. You can probably do this with a book and a piece of paper, but this is the kind of thing for which a computer is perfect. You can find lots of calorie databases on the internet, or buy lots and lots of different programs that have the data for counting the calories in a large amount of different foods.  Some even include caloric information for chain restaurants and pre-packaged food.

I’ll tell you one thing – I haven’t been able to consistently count my calories every day. I started out well, but eventually logging everything I ate became too much of a chore to maintain.  I’m still looking for a system that will make this easier, but I haven’t found it yet. However, you should record the food you eat every day and the number of calories it contains so you can tell what you should eat, and how much of it.  I could justify my own lax performance by saying that I recorded my eating faithfully for the first 2-3 months, so I know what I should and shouldn’t eat now, but that’s not really true.

So why did I stop? Because I haven’t found a tool yet that isn’t time consuming and frustrating to use. I still recommend you find one, even a bad tool, and stick with it for a bit, especially if you’re just starting out, because just being aware of what you put in your body will make you conscious of something that used to glide completely under your radar. To control your eating habits you have to first be aware of them.

When I first started counting the calories I consumed and logging everything I ate I discovered three things:

1. I ate a LOT more calories than I thought I did, even when I didn’t eat that much food overall.
2. I didn’t really think about how much I ate throughout the day (snacks, candy, etc.) until I started logging everything.
3. When you have a daily caloric budget and stick to it, you tend to fill your diet with things that contain fewer calories so you won’t be hungry.  Eating lower-calorie foods means you can eat even more than you would have otherwise, although that can be a problem sometimes. If I eat too healthily I have to make up extra calories I don’t want at dinner so I don’t trigger the starvation storage of extra fat.  From experience, I can tell you that this is rarely an issue.

My diet plan doesn’t have many rules. The fewer the rules the easier they are to remember and keep faithful to them.  One of those rules, though, is that calorie savings aren’t cumulative – if I’m supposed to take in 1800-2000 calories a day, I can’t consume 1600 calories for four days and then eat 2800 calories on Saturday. My caloric clock resets at midnight (or when I go to sleep, but realistically I’m not eating that late anymore).  I can bank calories during the day if I know I’m going out to dinner at night, but not for more than a 24 hour period.

So how do I keep faithful if I’ve stopped logging my daily caloric intake?  I eyeball it.  I’ve done enough counting and logging to know roughly how many calories I’m getting from most of the foods that I eat. I like a lot of variety in my diet, but after a while you’ll know roughly how many calories your meals contain, you can do the math either in your head (which I’m bad at) or in a note or application.  I’ve been using a few different iPhone applications, but I still haven’t found one that completely works for me. In any case, I roughly estimate my calories now. I can usually predict within a half a pound what my weight will be from day to day based on what I ate and how much water I drank the day before. I should probably go back to being more stringent in my counting since I’ve been plateauing a little (and not eating right since Thanksgiving – a topic for another time).

Still, I can’t fall too far off the wagon because I know I’ll be weighing-in every day. It’s all connected – your diet, exercise, attitude, etc.  Weighing-in is such a regular part of my day that I almost never neglect to get on the scale.  Sometimes I forget to record it, but I usually get 6-7 weigh-ins recorded per week.  Having that data lets me plan goals, too.  More on that later.

So if an athlete’s mind could get my body into good shape, my body isn’t really the problem.  The problem is that I was a fat guy, mentally, for a long time.  As a consequence, I shaped my body to match my mind.

The “trick” to weight loss and a healthy body isn’t a secret in and of itself: eat healthy foods, not too much of them, and get exercise.  That’s what you have to do.  What people don’t tell you is how to do it.

Here’s how.  The Secret – the key to getting healthy:

Become a healthy person, then act naturally.

Fitter, Happier, More Productive

How do you do that, then?  I wish I could tell you that it was easy, or that there was a secret elixer you could drink to become a thin person. It would be simple if you could go to the county faire and see the hypnotist. The truth is both simpler and more difficult than that.

You become a fit person by choosing to be one.  You have to make the choice every day, several times a day, at least at first.  After a while your new lifestyle becomes habit and it’s not as much of a chore. Every morning you’ll decide to exercise.  At every meal you have to choose to eat more healty foods, and in much smaller portions than you’re used to.  Why do you do this?  Because you have to.  Because you’re sick of being held back by a body that doesn’t work the way you want it to. Because to live another day as a fat person is unbearable and it’s stopping you from doing the things that you, as a healthy, fit person, want to do.

What kinds of things do I want to do?  At first I just wanted to be able to walk up a couple flights of steps without being out of breath and getting chest pain.  I wanted to be able to keep up with thin people when walking somewhere.  I wanted to be able to get up from a chair or pick up something that weighs more than five pounds without grunting a little.

In just a few weeks of eating right and exercising regularly, I was able to do those things, so I continue to re-assess and re-set my goals.  Now I’m feeling cocky and ambitious. I want to go hiking without feeling like I’m going to die.  I want to play tennis regularly.  I want to learn how to swim, which I’ve never done.  I want to run a 5K.  I want to run a marathon.  I want to run across an entire state.  I want to dance with the prettiest girl in the club (I do this already, truth be told) and I want her to want to have sex with me.  I want to wear shirts without sleeves to show off my massive guns.  I want to climb a fucking mountain.

Keep in mind that these are my short term goals.  Once I accomplish these I’ll come up with something more impressive.

So given my goals, why the hell would I eat a piece of cheesecake when it takes me a step back from them?  Why would I take a cab or ride the bus when I could walk somewhere?  Why wouldn’t I hit the gym most days when the gym helps me make my muscles bigger and makes me stronger?

But… HOW?

Okay, I know, I still haven’t said how to become a fit person with your mind. Some people have accused me of tricking myself. Fine, if that’s what you need to believe. The truth is that once I thought about what I was doing and how unhealthy my relationship with food was I changed instantly.  It was like I awoke from a dream, as though I were sleepwalking through my life up until that point and was now finally awake.  I had (Christ I cannot believe I’m going to say this) a moment of clarity. My thinking was so clear that I couldn’t believe that I ate the crap I used to eat and exercised as little as I did. In that instant I was transformed into a healthy person and emerged like a phoenix from the… well, you get the idea.

So all I can do is tell you how I arrived at my decision to be healthy, and how transformative that moment was for me.  I made a decision and the rest has been fairly easy.  You may not be able to make that decision, or not know how.  I bet that going through the motions will yield the same results that I’ve seen.  Why not give it a try?

Say Something Nice

Most people I know have been really helpful and encouraging.  Even complete strangers sometimes say nice things, like when I’m looking through books on nutrition and exercise at the book store, or walking on the treadmill looking unhappy (I find the treadmill to be dull as all hell and it gives me motion sickness a little).  Most of my friends have been extremely supportive.

Some people haven’t, though.  And some never will.  It’s okay that people will feel resentment that you’re making a change that they haven’t chosen to make for themselves, or wish they had the “willpower” or whatever excuse they come up with to not do the right thing.  They’ll tell you that your habits won’t last.  Or they’ll say something like “We’ll see” or “Oh, wouldn’t that be nice!” like your goals are an unattainable pipe dream.  Fuck those people.  They can pretty much die in a fire.

If they come around once they see you getting fitter, that’s great.  Everyone is welcome to come around and join Team Jough at any time, even if they’ve been jerks to me in the past about my newfound healthiness.  Some people may see you as an inspiration and start eating healthier and exercising themselves.  That’s totally cool.

I used to work with a guy who lives near where I work, and works near where I live, and I pass him from time to time when I walk the three miles to work (while he’s on his way to catch the bus). Sure, we stopped and talked the first time.  Then I just got a little wave.  Now he gives me this sheepish wave, or says something like “Walking to work again?” in a critical tone.  You bet I’m walking to work again.  And it’s okay that he’s taking the bus.  He doesn’t have to walk to work just because I’m walking a somewhat longer distance than he would have to.  Maybe he’ll start walking to work some day and feel better about his situation.  I don’t really let his unhappiness affect me.

After all, I delight in my condition.

As it happens, I found that the opposite was true. The foods I’m eating now are not only healthier than the junk food I was eating before, but they also taste much better. For one thing, fresh ingredients just tend to taste better than processed, dried, frozen, or otherwise manipulated ones. But that’s not the trick.  The trick is to sneak a little extra deliciousness into everything you eat so that it’s full of flavour.

The trick to getting more deliciousness into your diet has to do with umami, the relatively recently discovered fifth taste (along with sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and saltiness).  It’s the savoury taste, that deliciousness that you get from protein-heavy foods like meat and cheese, especially when browning them (the maillard reaction is a powerful flavour-enhancer).  I actually bought a counter-top grill/panini press for the purpose of taking low-fat meats and making them more delicious (not to mention more convenient to cook).

So my trick is to plan a balanced meal and then “save” some of my calories for things that have very intense and delicious umami, like bacon and cheese.

Here are some things you can sprinkle on a salad to make it 10x more delicious and only slightly less nutritious (and even most of these things have some nutritional value):

• crumbled bacon (but NOT that fake Bac-Os salty soy crap)
• grated parmesan cheese (get the shredded rather than the salty dust, or better yet, grate your own from a wedge)
• mild banana pepper rings (I like the tangy mild ones better than the hot)
• crushed red pepper flakes
• crushed walnuts
• slivers of almonds
• crumbled feta or blue cheese (you can get these in resealable tubs now and a little pinch goes a long way)
• kalamata (Greek) olives
• sunflower seeds
• sliced strawberries (yes, in a garden salad)
• other peppers, cheeses, or fruits

Tired of bland boneless chicken breast?  Grill it or pan fry it in a cast iron skillet (I like to use a spray can of olive oil to just barely oil the pan) and make a sauce from Greek yogurt (which is more like sour cream than the yogurt we’re used to eating as a breakfast or dessert – I like the Fage brand which I can get at pretty much any supermarket), dill, and a little lemon juice.  Cut up the cooked chicken breast, mix it with a little of the yogurt sauce, and put it in a whole wheat wrap with some lettuce, onions, and bell peppers for a very low calorie dinner.

Fish is generally pretty healthy and depending on what kind you eat can be really healthy.  Stick with tuna and salmon which are high in Omega-3 fatty acids and you get a nice combination of healthy and delicious. Even shrimp, which I always thought were supposed to be bad for you, are almost completely fat-free (albeit high in cholesterol), cook fast, and the peeled and frozen bags of uncooked shrimp actually aren’t too bad when they’re thawed and keep for weeks in the freezer.  Granted, you shouldn’t eat the whole bag in one sitting, but 8-10 large shrimp (about 3.5oz) are only a hundred calories or so, and are good along with some vegetables or a salad.

Losing weight and getting healthy is hard enough as it is.  Don’t punish yourself by eating food without any umami.  A regular diet of food that is just absolutely fucking delicious isn’t a diet you tend to slip, you know?

Calories In < Calories Out = Weight Loss

Yes, it’s really that simple.  Calories are a unit of energy, and your body literally burns calories to power itself.  Most of your caloric expenditure is spent keeping your body at a constant ~98.6F temperature. The rest is used to move your muscles, fuel your organs, etc.  Thinking deeply about something burns more calories than passively watching TV or listening to music. The first time I played in a chess tournament (I’m not all that good, but the tournaments are fun) I was surprised by how physically exhausting it was.

Certain foods take more calories of energy to consume than others. Fat happens to be a really efficient means of storing calories for use later, which is why you get fat if you take in more calories than you need.  Your body simply stores it for a time when it may need that extra energy later, like a squirrel collects a cache of nuts for the winter. Why is it so hard and take so long to lose weight?  Because one pound of fat takes about 3,500 calories to burn, so you have to create a deficit of 500 calories per day (on average) to lose one pound of fat per week.  Of course, when you’re overweight, your body has to work harder just to maintain itself, so if you follow a 1900-2100 calorie plan (like I am) you’re probably taking in only half to a third of the calories you burn, and the fat will come off pretty quickly.  There may be such a thing as too quickly, too. I can’t stress enough that you should talk to a doctor before getting started on any kind of diet or fitness plan.

People are asking me what I’m doing to lose weight. I tell them I’m eating better and exercising (go figure). I’m not following any particular diet plan. Diets suck and are hard to follow, especially if you live in the world and want to go out and do things with people, so I was pretty sure when I started that I didn’t want to follow anything as strict and dull as Atkins, “The South Beach Diet,” “The Jolly Bean Diet,” the “Feel Miserable The Entire Time You’re On the Diet Until You Go Off The Plan And Put All The Weight You Lost (Plus BONUS Pounds!) Diet,” &c.  I really needed to change my lifestyle, and my relationship with food (more on that abusive relationship later).

The Art of Losing Isn’t Hard to Master

The real truth about dieting that any nutritionist will tell you, is that it almost doesn’t matter what you eat if weight loss is your only goal. As long as you keep the calories you consume below the threshold of the calories your body needs every day, you’ll lose weight. Yes, by eating more nutritious and healthier foods you’ll be able to eat more for a lower amount of total calories, feel better, and perhaps be happier in your weight loss (as I am), but you could probably eat a Big Mac three meals a day, and you could still lose weight if your body needs more than 1800 calories a day (as mine likely does).  So if you really love fast food, there’s probably a plan you could follow to eat at your favourite take-out place every single day if you wanted, albeit probably in smaller portions than to which you’re accustomed.

Part of the problem is that I like to taste things that are delicious. I love cooking.  I love going out and spending time with friends and loved ones. So rather than limiting myself to certain foods, I’m developing a strategy for eating.  It only took a few weeks to feel comfortable with it, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that lately I’ve been eating more delicious foods than I was when I was getting delivery 3-4 days a week.  I mean, I love pizza, but it’s not the most flavourful food on the planet.

One thing’s for certain: pre-packaged highly-processed food costs a whole lot less than fresh stuff. Go to the supermarket and you probably have more fresh vegetable and meat choices than ever before in history. Multiculturalism is in, too, so it’s now pretty easy to find some of my new favourite foods, like Greek yogurt, hummus, various low-cal Asian sauces and marinades, &c. However, this stuff isn’t as cheap as say, a box of macaroni and cheese, but it sure tastes better and leaves me feeling better, both physically and emotionally.

So I feel better, and I feel better. For each of my personal fitness vectors, the eating-better part is the easiest. I almost never feel like I’m depriving myself of anything because I’m eating things with lots of flavour and I’m finding that a balanced meal (or at least a balanced daily diet, even if I don’t perfectly balance every meal) is far more satisfying than most of the junk food I consumed en masse.  Personal Fitness Vectors sounds pretty technical, but it just means I’m waging the war on several fronts (maybe I should pick a metaphor that doesn’t sound like I’m attacking myself). In addition to eating better, I’m also studying nutrition and fitness, biology, the science of how my body processes food and nutrients, how the body burns fat, why it stores fat in the first place, etc.

Working Out Is Hard To Do

I don’t have a regular exercise routine either (although I am lifting weights and am meeting with a personal trainer twice a week). Exercise is important to keeping a healthy body and feeling better. Being active will mean you don’t have to be as strict with counting calories, but you’ve never seriously exercised before, you may be as dismayed as I was to learn that exercise has a nominal impact on weight loss.  You can pedal your heart out for a solid hour on an exercise bike until you’re out of breath and sweating profusely and you might burn a thousand calories (if you’re my size, height, and age).  That’s about the equivalent of a medium sized value meal at a fast food restaurant, which is actually not bad – if you can exercise at high-intensity for an hour straight without passing out or dying.

In reality, I’m generally burning only a few hundred calories an hour.  Exercise also raises your metabolic rate, but it raises it so little as to be insignificant to helping with weight loss (although every little bit helps, right?).  Another potential weight loss benefit – exercise may curb your appetite (I know it does mine) by increasing a protein in your blood called BDNF, which lowers your blood pressure and suppresses the hunger reflex.

Of course, my goal it to be fit and healthy, not simply to lose weight as fast as I can, so I’m getting other benefits from working out, too. More muscle means you’re increasing your body’s caloric requirements – those muscles need energy to move – and getting stronger from exercise means that it’ll get easier over time, and more enjoyable. It’s already nice to be able to keep up with healthy people when walking.  Previously I had a hard time keeping up with friends and coworkers who all walk at a pretty swift pace.  Now they have a hard time keeping up with me.

Actually, my legs have been getting much stronger and much faster than anything else.  Granted, most of the leg exercises I’m doing are just using my own body weight as resistance (gravity is a harsh mistress) but I’m already seeing marked improvement.

Overall, I’ve been happy with my progress so far, albeit impatient with the speed at which I’m improving.  But I’m only in week ten, and I expect I have another 150 or so weeks to go before I’m even close to being fit.  In the meantime, I’m getting in progressively better shape.

I started this site because my personal trainer suggested that I start a log of my goals, progress, feelings about exercise, dieting, food, &c., and I thought it would be easier to type it than write it, and easier to keep it on the Internet then tied to a particular computer or location.  As I started writing, I thought I’d keep myself more honest by making it public so anyone reading could view my progress and comment on my findings.

My goal is not simply to be thin, or generally fit, but also healthy, athletic, strong, agile, active, and (most importantly), to look great naked. To achieve my fitness goals I’m also changing other habits (slowly) and taking this opportunity to foster overall self-improvement.  I’m not just losing weight, I’m trying to be a better person.  It isn’t easy, but little that is worthwhile ever is.

However, if you’re trying to get fit in modern society, you’re fighting an uphill battle.  The deck is stacked against you, and getting fit can be made a whole lot easier and more fun than most diet specialists make it sound.
Here we go…