So, it’s almost another week gone by with my natural weight loss plan, and I’m a little surprised how well I’m doing. I’ve been getting back into the swing of things, but still not as regimented about my workouts or yoga as I would like. It takes time to build up the habits again, but I’ll get there. I guess I haven’t been slacking that much, I’m pretty surprised at how much weight came off this week. I dropped another four pounds and about 0.30% body fat. That’s double my 2lbs per week goal! And I think I know why…
One of the things that Amy and I have changed since the first time I had to lose a bunch weight is how much processed food we eat. Years ago, our initial motivation was to get the weight off and get back in shape, and we did so by working out hard and watching calories. As the years have gone by, though, we’ve become much more conscience of the quality of those calories.
We all know that eating 1000 calories of Ho-Ho’s and Doritios is going to have a much different effect than 1000 calories of broccoli and chicken breast. So yes, not all calories are created equal, but I was personally never aware of how much of a difference it makes until I did a few experiments like this one.
The first time around with natural weight loss, getting back down below 300 lbs was easy, 250 significantly harder, and getting below 200 was a bitch! It seems like I hardly ate anything and worked my ass off every day just to get and stay below 200. Now, it’s much easier, and I eat waaaaay more food than I did back then while spending much less time in the gym. Near as I can tell it’s due to one thing… eliminating 80 to 90 percent of the processed food we eat.
For instance, take my lunch while at work. Where I used to take Smart Ones or Lean Cuisine every day, I now take a nice big fresh tuna or chicken or egg or whatever salad most days. Instead of a box of low calorie, but high sodium and highly processed junk, I now have a big bowl of fresh mostly organic, mostly raw simple unprocessed goodness. It’s about the same number of calories, but they are much higher quality and make a huge difference. That’s an effect natural weight loss.
We’ve eliminated as much high fructose corn syrup as we can, eliminated a ton of the overly refined sugars and grains and swapped a large percentage of our beloved starchy breads and pastas for meals based much more on vegetables, especially raw ones. Don’t get me wrong, I still had pizza while watching football and Charlie, and Ox and I snuck off for a donut while Amy and Jody were at the movies, but the vast majority of the time we eat so much better than before.
Make no mistake, for the most part when I say “I” or “We”, I mostly mean Amy. She does all the hard work of shopping, chopping, prepping and cooking. I do my best to help her out, but that usually entails keeping the kids out of her way by playing outside. I’m a lucky guy for many reasons, and she’s the biggest!
Anyway, all her effort for a natural weight loss does pay off. The kids are healthy while still enjoying treats from time to time and my waistline stays in check quite easily as long as we stick to what we (she) knows is best for us. I really think our much easier time with natural weight loss and maintenance is because we’ve just simply stopped eating so much processed food and consume much better quality calories now.
Randy “I used to hate salad!” Lee
PREACH!!!!