How I lost 40+ pounds in 3 months /my most vulnerable linked in article

Back in October I made a promise to myself, and to all of my connections here on LinkedIn that I would get to 200 LBS from 240 by Jan 1.

A lot of my connections have been asking me how I did it. I’m by far no fitness expert. Heck, I’m probably the LAST person on earth to give health advice. But this is what I’ve been doing and some of the tools I’ve used to do it. 

I just started caring about my body and I got angry enough to act. Plus screaming to the world on LinkedIn back in October that I would probably was a little bit of a motivator too. Back in October I remember being in front of 3 mirrors with no shirt and wanted to puke. I was literally nauseated with myself. I stopped dancing around the obvious, took the blinders off and saw myself for what I was. Obese. I wasn’t a “few extra pounds” or “Athletic. I was obese. It was time for action.

Besides wanting a beach ready body, the real truth is being obsessed about my health probably kept me from checking out of life. A lot of my LinkedIn connections don't know that I've had some pretty big hits in my personal life in the past 3 years. Fitness definitely helped me stay in the game.

I got curious and haven’t stopped. I google. I ask questions. Lots of questions. Heck, just this morning I ran into a nutritionist at the grocery store. We spent a good 45 minutes talking about nutrition.

#PizzaLife: I used to occasionally “slam” a large thin crust pizzeria pie from my favorite Chicago area pizzeria. We are talking 2-4 times of the total recommended daily calories for me in one meal. About 10X’s the amount of my recommended daily allowance for fat, about 8 times the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat, TWENTY times the recommended MAXIMUM of sodium intake, a days’ worth of carbs. I overate. And I overate exactly the WRONG foods when I did. I was slowing moving towards certain extreme obesity if I didn’t make a course correction.

I didn’t do that every day. But I loved pizza. Too much. I’m from Chicago after all…Lou Malnati’s, Giordano’s, Rosati’s, Tombstone, DiGiorno, Screamin’ Sicilian, Stuffed Crust, Thin Crust, Rising Crust, Garlic Crust…look, I lived pizza and ate it 2-3 times a week in some form.

The truth is even when I wasn’t slamming a 3,000-calorie pizza it’s NOT hard to overeat today and that’s NOT a cop out. It is the truth. Restaurants, packaged food and the media have really brainwashed us.

Take lunch at Panera for example. A seemingly “healthy” place to eat, right? One of their most popular sandwiches and one I LOVE is their Roasted Turkey Apple & Cheddar Sandwich.

Here’s the breakdown on that sandwich alone BEFORE chips and a drink.

710 Calories which equates to 50% of my recommended caloric intake

32 Grams of Fat which equates to 60% of my recommended max fat intake for a day and the same for saturated fat

1280 MG of Sodium which equates to almost 70% of my personal recommended MAX intake of sodium in a day

This sandwich has roughly the same number of calories, fat and sodium as a big mac. Why am I smiling?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed this meal (exactly ONCE) in the last 3 months, but assuming all 3 meals a day were created equal and had no sides or beverages with that meal, one would be at 150-200% PLUS on almost all the above macros daily. I was overeating, probably about the same as millions of other Americans do.

On the other extreme end of the spectrum, Hardees, a popular restaurant chain has begun advertising an “All Star Meal Deal” which consists of a double cheeseburger, a spicy chicken sandwich, an order of French fries, a cookie and a coke, all for $5. I don’t know when it happened but it seems like fast food in America is desperately trying to pack as much damage per dollar as humanly possible. After crunching the numbers this meal alone would put the average person well out of commission for daily calories, fat, sodium, carbs and sugar. In fact in this meal there is 5 full size snickers bars worth of sugar. Can you imagine eating 5 snickers bars in a row? Just…Wow.

So what program am I on? I’m not following any specific program. It’s not a carb free diet, it’s not the keto plan. I’m not paying trainer hundreds of dollars a month or using a prescription or over the counter weight loss pill. I’m not using a late night as seen of tv device. I’m just paying attention to all the stuff I haven’t ever bothered to be concerned with. Over the past few months I’ve eaten McDonald’s Chicken Nuggets, Chinese food, Pizza, slammed a whole bag of tortilla chips and a whole jar of salsa and even bread here and there. I still enjoy eating and feeling full even sometimes. I’ll always have the fat kid gene in me. Those are exceptions though. I have ultimately re-trained my brain and stomach on what a healthy amount of food intake looks like. I’m quite content with a lot less food.

Here are the main things I’ve been doing that I believe have been the most impactful on my weight loss.

1-I got myself to the gym every day. Literally EVERY DAY. 7 days a week for 3 months. Thanksgiving, Christmas new years’ day… No excuses. I was probably “overdoing” it but I wanted to be at or REAL close to 200LBS by 1-1-2018…and I was starting at 240+. Eventually I scaled back to maximize the time more with “HIT” (High Intensity Interval Cardio) instead of doing 60 minutes a day on the elliptical I am now doing 30 but it’s a much more intense 30 minutes.

I embraced what I really enjoy in the gym. The elliptical. It’s probably something different for you. Maybe it’s the treadmill. Or the bike. Hell, maybe you don’t enjoy anything in the gym. I’d suggest you find something you can grow to like. If you dread it, you won’t go? But for me I enjoy the elliptical. Eventually I started following a workout of high intensity training on YouTube I like. The guys’ name is Adrian Bryant. I put the link below. He has lots of other videos. I just really like how he pushes me to keep going. It’s like having a personal trainer right next to me. If you like any of his other videos let me know and I’ll try it. I’m due to switch things up soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wi6kARs7Us&t=646s

That HIT workout above - It’s hard, and I couldn’t complete it the first time I tried it, but it was a way for me to take something I already natively enjoy to the next level after a few months of pounding the elliptical for an hour a day 7 day a week. Now I’m doing that HIT on the elliptical every other day and doing weights on non-cardio days. I really get into my cardio on the elliptical and get in my “zone”. I love the feeling of being drenched in sweat. Maybe that’s weird. Oh, I don’t care what people think if I’m in my zone and jamming out to my tunes am rocking it on the elliptical. I’m not there for you. I’m there for ME. Plus I have to work twice as hard because I’ve never payed attention to this stuff so I’m GOING to enjoy it. If I don’t I won’t come back. I’m not going back to being fat.

2-I plan my meals, and I don’t bring foods home “accidentally”. My core meals are pretty much the same. I’m not going to lie. It was a boring at first. And there were times when watching people eat what I thought “real food” was plain old made me angry. Push.

For me, raw grilled unseasoned boneless skinless chicken breast (3-ounce portions) with veggies works. (make NO mistake, the chicken that is sold in the frozen foods section, even those that look innocent AREN’T. They generally have somewhere around 500% more salt than the plain raw chicken found at the meat counter in your supermarket. The cooked “rotisserie” style chicken like Boston Market, Walmart etc. sells are almost the same. It’s probably close to the equivalent of eating an iceberg lettuce salad with ranch and feeling good about eating healthy when you’ve simply consumed water from the iceberg lettuce and oil in the ranch dressing.) Another popular choice for some people is to mix in rice with that grilled chicken. I may switch things up soon and start doing that too. The key for me is to add just enough variety that I stay on point but not too much where I get lost in my mission of losing a massive amount of weight. I’ll sometimes add pesto, hot sauce, low sodium salsa (Did I mention I like salsa?) occasionally add BBQ sauce (not too often, though because it’s generally high in sugar I haven’t looked for a low sugar/sodium version yet…hmmm…) and even more rarely, I’ll throw (1) THIN slice of cheese over it.

Containers:

This has been HUGE for me. Seriously. There are probably better choices out there with features I don’t even know exist, but I knew I had to kill my insane portion sizes 3 months ago. I’m still using them.

I use Glad’s 9-ounce small size which is one and 1/8 cup re-usable containers. They are JUST big enough to pack 3-ounces of chicken and some veggies/rice in. If you go looking for them, you’ll probably think exactly what I thought. “This isn’t big enough to hold a meal”! Yes, It is. Push.

Each protein pack or meal pack I make with 3-ounces of grilled chicken has 82 calories, 1.9 grams of fat, 135 grams of sodium, ZERO carbs and 17 grams of protein. Obviously if you add rice you have to factor that in. Vegetables are universally considered free game and I don’t count those. Since each protein pack is only 82 calories you can have as many as you need throughout the day. Sometimes I’ll have 2, sometimes I’ll have 5. I tried setting an alarm on my phone at intervals to remind myself to eat at set times but sometimes I’m just not hungry, so that doesn’t work for me. I just grab a protein pack when I’m hungry. No guilt.

By prepackaging my protein/meal packs there’s no real temptation to deviate from my core foods or find myself in a position where I’m justifying crappy fast food or some high sodium frozen food that’s “easy”. I pack these meal portions up twice a week (literally every 3.5 days to be exact, yes, I have this down) and always have plenty of meal packs to grab and go from the fridge as needed. I’m quite proud of how scientifically I have it down. To date I’ve only thrown 2 protein packs away because they were too old. I don’t know why I’m proud of that, but I am.

At first it was weird eating these little containers of rather bland chicken and broccoli, and I felt deprived but once I fought through it for a few weeks I stopped craving the garbage I’ve lived off. In fact, now when I eat even one piece of pizza I’m amazed at how much salt I taste. I just don’t crave the foods I lived off once I stopped eating them. I track everything I eat along with my macros in probably one of, if not the most popular app of its kind by UnderArmour - it’s called MyFitnessPal and it’s available for the IPhone and Android devices. There are some cool social media aspects of the app that allow you to make connections (if you want) and share encouragement, successes and failures. The best part? It’s FREE! Don’t bother paying for the upgraded/paid version, seriously, the free version works great! If you want to connect on MyFitnessPal my username is UAcolin

I weigh my foods down to the ounce and even gram on a kitchen scale.

(That's tofu on the scale, I promise it tastes better than it looks)

If I want 2 servings of butter I’m aware of how it affects my macros (carbs, fat and protein) because I’m constantly referring to MyfitnessPal (MFP) and checking to see if anything I’m considering consuming will throw me so far off balance for the day I’m done. If it does I renegotiate my portion size or my food choice. A lot of people make fun of this, but it helped to train my brain on portion sizes. Most nutritionists will tell you to get on a food scale if you’re trying to lose weight. It’s amazing what my perception of a “serving size” was compared to what reality is. Tracking every food I put in my mouth has given me a baseline for a visual reference but I actually enjoy the accountability of weighing and tracking my foods in MFP still. Maybe the novelty will wear off after time but again it’s about training your brain to understand what a portion size LOOKS like so when you don’t have access to your scale you can be more informed. For me it was reversing 20+ years of bad habits. I don’t plan on that happening in 90 days. Weighing foods is weird, and people laugh, but I’m doing something right, because I’ve dropped 40 pounds. I’m also still learning (lots) using it 2 months in, so I’m not ready to stop using it.

The one thing I wasn’t willing to give up? You guessed it. Chips and Salsa. If you’re a chips and salsa fiend like me, Food For Thought's Salsa Line is a guilt free salsa I’ve fallen in love with. Most salsas have an INSANE amount of salt. I scoured stores high and low to find the lowest salt salsa I could and had no clue how good this stuff was. The first link is a cherry salsa, the second is a more traditional salsa they make. Both are really good and I've been able to find both of the above at whole foods but I know they have a “find a store” link on their site. The cherry salsa is insane good.

https://foodforthought.net/product/cherry-salsa/

https://foodforthought.net/product/garden-salsa/

A few other really helpful grocery items I’ve discovered that have been really helpful.

PB2-a low fat, low calorie peanut butter made from peanuts. It has 85% less fat and calories than regular peanut butter because they filter the fat and oil out. It’s real peanut butter. It’s powder. You must add water. It’s delicious and it comes in chocolate flavor too! Seriously this i lifesaver for those who enjoy peanut butter.

I’m not particularly big on ice cream but picked it up on the advice in one of my MFP c. If you’re an ice cream die hard Halo Top Ice Cream is a low fat low calorie ice cream that is high in protein. I’ve tried the peanut butter cup variant and I sure didn’t feel like I was eating “healthier” ice cream.

3-Macros and hydration - I look at nutrition fact labels and pay attention to my daily calorie, Protein, Fat and Carb intake along with sugar and sodium. I try to keep saturated fats, sodium, bad carbs and sugar relatively low, but I embrace good carbs like sweet potatoes. It’s amazing how delicious a sweet potato with a single serving of butter (sometimes even TWO!) and brown sugar is when you’ve purged your system of the garbage. And if you’re eating clean throughout the day the brown sugar and butter will not hurt you. A lot of times I’ll save this for an evening meal when I historically like to “graze” more and replace the potato chips with that sweet potato and yummy toppings.

I almost completely avoid the foods that got me fat. Pizza. Cakes, cookies, and caloric beverages.

Yes. That Stuff. The weird thing is now I enjoy looking, mulling over nutrition labels excessively, only to WALK AWAY. It’s weird. It’s empowering.

99% of the time I have water instead of milk, pop or coffee. It’s amazing how many calories I used to consume with drinks. For me it was milk and an occasional pop. I try to drink no less than 5 bottles of 16.9 oz. bottles of water a day but I try for 6-8 which is closer to a gallon. It keeps me a little fuller and less likely to want to snack because I’m not properly hydrated. It also purges out the unnecessary salt I take in. I stage these bottles of water for the day, so I am visually reminded to hydrate. regardless of where I am, at home, in the car or at a client. Just like anything else hydration doesn’t happen by accident. I know it’s not as landfill friendly as a reusable container, but the small containers work better for me than a gallon jug which is just too intimidating for me to tackle. 

 4-Gear. There’s only 3 things I’d recommend you get. For $70-$100 you can get everything you need to really make a difference in your life. You don’t need a $400 3rd gen Apple Watch or even a $100 FitBit. You need the desire. Maybe eve anger. It took awhile for me to get those.

I invested in a $33 WiFi body weight scale that tracks my weight and a bunch of other metrics through a proprietary app for the scale on my phone. Here’s the link to mine

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FHELB56/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There are more expensive scales that will directly feed into MyFitnessPal (MFP) so you don’t have to enter those numbers manually into MFP … since I’m only updating my weight once a week at most in MFP from the scale app that I use with my scale it’s just not that big of a deal for me. If you want the all-out scale that feeds data directly into MFP, UnderArmour sells one for $80. There is also a less expensive MFP connected scale for $50. Looking back, I probably would have opted for that one. Yeah, this is the scale I would get if I had a re-do:

https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Connected-Solution-including-Backlit/dp/B00N9ENKDI/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1515210277&sr=8-1&keywords=myfitnesspal+scale

Kitchen scale - I invested in a sub $20 kitchen scale. I cannot tell you how useful this has been. Seriously, get yourself a scale if you struggle with portion sizes to retrain your brain and stomach. Even if you don’t, if you’re looking to lose weight get a scale. This is the single best investment I’ve made of all the gear I’ve bought. It works. Here’s the link to the one I have. I like it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UIVIXVO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

One thing that I will add that obviously has nothing to do with weight management is a pair of wireless earbuds. It’s a game changer. I couldn’t pull the trigger on Apples $160 AirPods, so I did a bunch of research and found these. They are one fifth of the price at $35 and I LOVE them. Gone are the days I accidentally violently fling my phone across the gym while working out on the elliptical. I’m clumsy.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M3575QC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I got myself a great weight training book called Strength Training Anatomy 3rd edition by Frederic Delavier. The one I use has a red cover but there are a few variations. Here’s the link to the book I use. The first customer review explains the differences between the different books he wrote so you can decide which one is best for you.

https://www.amazon.com/Strength-Training-Anatomy-Frederic-Delavier/dp/0736092269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515202032&sr=8-1&keywords=strength+training+anatomy

I take that book to the gym every time I do weights on my non cardio days. It forces me to concentrate on a different muscle group every day I do weights. I note what weights and dates I do what activities, so I can monitor my progress. At first, I was slightly embarrassed about reading a how-to book in the gym and following along with it but I’m not there for anyone but me. I don’t care what you think. Now I “kinda” look like I know what I’m doing, and I get “that look” like, who’s THIS guy? But I’m there to do what I must do and bounce. Plain and simple.

Am I obsessed? I don’t think so. I’m paying attention to stuff I never cared about. Stuff I never KNEW to care about. I’m learning as I’m going. Asking LOTS of people who have been there before me for advice. Ok maybe I am. Obsessed. I don’t really care. But I’d rather be obsessed and 40 LBS lighter with a plan that’s working to lose the last 30 LBS than excuses. 

To all my connections, friends and colleagues who have supported, encouraged, and asked for me to share what’s worked for me, THANK YOU for your kind words and encouragement. A special shot out to Salih Abdur-Rasheed for his kindness and generosity with sharing his fitness advice so freely and to Sean Mulroney for being so awesome and fearless in his pursuit for his weight loss goals If you aren't familiar with or connected to him and you think my story is inspiring seriously, follow his.

I still have more weight to lose, though, so please don’t stop cheering me on!