On Friday, I weighed in at 165 exactly. I had my normal meals throughout the day, followed by Chinese take-out for dinner, and a couple of slices of the kid’s pizza. I knew I was going to be doing yard work afterwards, and then walking the dog, so a few extra calories weren’t the end of the world.

Saturday morning, I weighed in at 165.2 pounds, which is about normal for me after Friday night. I usually gain .2 – .4 pounds on Friday. I then went to the gym, eat my regular meals, etc. However, we ended up going to an Irish pub for dinner. I ordered a calamari appetizer, had a salad, and an order of fish and chips. I didn’t finish the appetizer, or the second piece of fish. I also had a Guinness.

I walked the dog a little later that night, and felt miserable most of the night. Actually sick to my stomach from all the greasy, heavy food.

I woke up Sunday morning, and weighed in at 166.8 pounds. This is actually pretty normal for me, I average about a 2-3 pound weight gain over the weekend. But, I wasn’t really prepared for what all I was going to eat on Sunday. I went to the gym Sunday morning, had only a salad at lunch, and waited for the moms to show up.

Sky made a wine punch, and a small cheese and cracker appetizer, since we were going out to dinner a little later. We ended up going to Carrabba’s for dinner. I shared a calamari appetizer with Leon, which we didn’t finish, and some bruschetta. My main dish was the chick trio, which had 3 grilled pieces of chicken in different sauces and mashed potatoes. We all decided to get desserts afterwards, and I had some insane chocolate dish. Sky and I also split a bottle of Merlot.

Within about 30 minutes, I felt horrible. Almost to the point of throwing up on several occasions. I didn’t even feel like walking the dog. I put Anais to bed, and then pretty much fell asleep on the couch about 10 minutes into the movie we were watching. Sky woke me up, and I decided just to go to bed. As most everyone knows, I usually don’t get that much sleep, and a rarely go to bed before 2 AM.

I got on the scale this morning, and weighed in at 169.2 pounds. That’s a 4.2 pound gain since Friday, and 4.0 since Saturday morning. Looking back, it’s easy to see how I got so fat before. I would eat like that all the time, several times a week in some cases. I won’t be letting that happen again. Back to the program this morning, and a little extra working out for good measure.

In July of 09’, Sky joined the YMCA, so the kids could take swimming lessons.  It was at this point that I started lifting weights again.  I did a lot of lifting in college, along with karate and running.  When I graduated from my undergrad in 95’, I weighed 160, with a fat percentage of around 8%.  I’ve pretty much struggled with my weight since then. Gaining and losing the same weight over and over. Around 2001 to 2003, I got my weight back down to 190-195 again, but struggled to maintain that size.

This brings us back to this past July. I weighed around 235 when I started lifting again.  Forgetting that I was about to turn 39, and that my body had radically changed since the last time I seriously lifted, I fell into the bad habit of lifting weights to gain muscle mass.  I quickly did this, along with my weight jumping up over 240 pounds.  I’ll talk about weight myths in a bit, but the excuse that muscle weighs more than fat is accurate, but wrong at the same time. I was actually getting fatter as I ate more to compensate for what I believed was the extra energy I needed to lift and increase muscle mass.  This was not what I wanted at all.

I started doing a lot of research, looking at different weight lifting and nutritional approaches.  After a while, I stumbled upon Tom Venuto’s, Burn the Fat – Feed the Muscle books.  Let me start by saying, I’m not endorsing following this program. What I discovered was that I’ve been thinking about weight lifting wrong for a long time, along with what I thought I knew about nutrition. The one reason I really liked this book, is that it never tells you what to eat, or how to workout. It gives you guidelines and a better understanding of how the body burns fat and why. Once you understand this, fashioning a program for eating and exercising to fit your life is a lot simpler.

Here are a few highlights of what the book explains.  Your body needs to eat about every 3 to 3 ½ hours.  Venuto argues that you should stop eating around 7 or 8 each night, because of all the processing the body does while you sleep.  However, he does maintain that many professional bodybuilders will wake up during the night to maintain this 3 to 3 ½ hour schedule.  Also, it’s not a meal if you don’t have the proper amount of carb to protein to fat ratio.  There is no exact number for this ratio, but what works for me is 60/30/10.  Venuto gives some general advise on finding the proper ratio for your body type.

Next, you need to eat feed that is healthy. This should come as no surprise, but you’d be amazed at how much you have to rethink your assumptions about what is healthy.  The diet and food industry started in the 80s and 90s convincing us that low and fat free foods are healthy for us.  This is true, but not because they are low in fat, but because naturally healthy foods are low in fat content.  Removing the fat from a food and replacing it with sugar creates a different problem.  So, one of the first things to do is get rid of all these “healthy” fat free products from your diet, and start eating really healthy food.  This means lots of vegetables, whole grains, lean meat, fish, and fruits.

Weight lifting is the next important area to consider. What most people want is lean muscle; what they get is big and bulky.  This is due to eating the wrong foods, and to lack of cardio exercises.  Unless you’re a professional athlete or body builder, you don’t need to lift more than 3 times a week.  What you do need is 30-60 minutes every day of cardio.

Now that I had the basics established in my head, it was time to make a change.  One of the key facts to remember about trying to become healthier is that you are not on a diet.  There is not a point at which you are going to go back to the way you were living before.  This is a lifestyle change, and until you realize that, you will continue to fail.

At the beginning of October, I decided it was time to make this change.  I started by not going out to lunch each day.  I was still lifting 3-4 times a week, with no cardio work.  After 2 weeks, I dropped down to 235 again.  I knew this was still not what I really needed to do if I was going to be serious about changing my overall health.  I worked on a game plan, along with clearly defined goals.  I would take whatever my weight was on Nov 1^st as a starting point, and decide what my timeline would be.  My ultimate goal is 165 pounds by November 1, 2010.  My starting weight ended up being 232 pounds, which meant I had a total weight goal of 67 pounds.  Just to clarify, 165 pounds was not some random goal.  I looked at the BMI for my height, 5’10”, and 165 lbs is the center weight for a healthy BMI for my height.  I will talk about BMI in a bit.

In the first 2 weeks, I lost 12 pounds, but my diet was all over the place as I tried to figure out the proper calorie intake each day.  I also started walking the dog each night, though with no real idea of what I was doing in terms of cardio exercise.  It was at this point that I discovered Livestrong.com.  This site has radically changed my understanding of what I eat each day, along with how my exercises relate to calories burned.  Losing weight is actually really simple, eat/burn less calories than your body needs each day, and you will lose weight.  Livestrong will figure out your daily calorie allowance based on height and current weight and how much weight you want to lose each week.  Right now, my daily calorie allotment is right at 1300.  However, don’t let this number trick you.  I rarely only eat 1300 calories a day.  This is your total number after both food consumption and exercising.  Most days I eat around 1500-1700.  If you’re really serious about tracking your calorie intake and consumption, I’d recommend BodyMedia, which you wear all day long. As of January 20, I have lost 45 pounds, and my current weight is 187 pounds.

Remember that every person is different, and you will need to find what works for you, but this is a typical day/week of eating and working out for me.  I lift 3 days a week.  By lifting, I mean and intense 45 minutes of weight lifting, with no more than 30 seconds rest between sets.  As a side note, there is a myth that as you lose weight you get weaker.  I am actually lifting more at 187 than I ever did at 240.  I also walk the dog every night.  Livestrong will allow you to figure out exactly how far you are walking, and you create walking loops that determine calories burned based on elevation, speed, etc.  I walk 2 miles every night, with lots of elevation variations, in 30 minutes.  That burns about 300 calories everyday.  Keep that number in mind, weight lifting for 45 minutes, intensely, burns about the same amount.  Weight lifting will not get you fit! On days I don’t lift, I also ride a stationary bike for 30 minutes on a moderate weight lose program.  The average speed is about 14 miles per hour across lots of different elevations and resistances.  Most days, I burn around 600 calories through direct exercise.  Often on the weekend I burn more, as I do all three activities to off set my weekly cheat meal.  A side note, often I see people leave the gym and they grab a banana or two in their car as they drive off.  These people have just defeated the whole point of working out.  A medium size banana is 120 calories. So if you ate 2 of these and you only worked out for 45 minutes, your net calorie consumption for that workout is about 60 calories, complete waste of time.

Speaking of a complete waste of time, I’m going to mention supplements and shakes only briefly.  There is no need to use any such products.  The use of these products is a myth created by the fitness industry.  Most of those “muscle” magazines are actually owned and published by the companies that make supplements.  You do not need to take a protein shake before or after lifting.  If you’re eating correctly, you will get all the protein you need each day.  I am only eating 1500-1700 calories a day, and I get 300% the daily allowance of protein.  I do take a multi-vitamin, just in case I’m not getting enough of certain vitamins each day.  However, in most cases, I get more than what I need just through eating properly.

So, what do I eat each day?  You can actually track and view this on Livestrong, along with all sorts of graphs that show you ratios of carb/protein/fat.  I usually eat the same breakfast every day, mainly because it’s got everything I need, and it’s easy to prepare.  I have a boiled egg (no yolk), a slice of whole grain toast with ½ tablespoon of honey, and a smoothie.  The smoothie consists of ½ cup strawberries, ½ cup peaches, ¼ cup raspberries, 1 medium banana, ½ cup of non-fat yogurt, and 4 ounces of orange juice.  Total calories for my breakfast are around 425.  Just so you know, breakfast meets 50% of the daily-recommended protein amount.

I eat a mid-morning snack, ¾ cup of Total Whole Grain cereal.

For lunch, I have a meat and salad.  Some days, I have a soy burger for the meat, but lately I’ve been eating deli sliced turkey or chicken.  My salad is filled with lots of vegetables, and I use balsamic vinegar as dressing.  Dressing is the key for salads.  Most low-fat or fat-free dressings are still loaded with calories.  However, 5 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar is only 25 calories, compared to 140 calories in a single tablespoon of honey-mustard.  I do not have bread more than once a day.  So I either eat my lunchmeat plain or in a spinach or lettuce wrap.  I do use a tablespoon of spicy mustard on the lunchmeat in either case.

I have a mid-afternoon snack of 2 containers of yogurt.  I get a lot of different yogurt flavors, but I always get the Lit and Fit Dannon.  Yogurt is a near perfect snack, with almost the exact carb/protein ratio I need.

My final meal of the day is dinner.  I diverge from Venuto’s plan a bit here.  He recommends that your calorie intake go down with each meal of the day.  I usually have a very large dinner (nothing compared to what I use to eat though).  I have a high protein, lean meat every night.  Examples: salmon, tuna, lean chicken breasts, sea scallops, squid, shrimp.  With seafood, remember to look at the cholesterol levels, they may shock you.  I then have some sort of vegetable stir fry.  Stir fry works for my schedule, it’s fast and easy.  My current stir fry recipe is ½ cup broccoli, ¼ of a zucchini, ¼ cup red onions, ½ cup of Del Monte Diced Tomatoes With Basil, Garlic & Oregano (no Salt Added), ¼ bell pepper, minced garlic and chili powder. I also have a heavy carb on the side, long grain rice, whole grain pasta, or red potatoes are my current favs, but I switch up the carbs a lot.  The key for all of these, carbs and meats, is to look at serving sizes, and follow them.  I also have 1 ½ servings of red wine most nights (9 ounces).  Some nights I will have 2 ½ servings of scotch instead (2.5 ounces).  The key is no beer.  I love beer, but if you want to get lean, find another source of alcohol.

In case you haven’t noticed, I eat a lot during the day.  And once I reach my weight goal, I will be able to increase my daily calorie intake by about 150 calories to maintain my weight.  Having said that, the first couple of weeks, you are going to feel hungry.  That’s why a site like Livestrong is so important.  It will figure out how much you should eat based on your current weight.  This will help you stop cravings, as long as you eat 5 or more times during the day.

On the weekends, I have a cheat meal.  We used to go out to eat 3-4 times a week.  Now we only go out on Saturday night.  I pretty much eat whatever I want on this meal, within reason.  For example, I would not get a desert from say Chili’s.  The chocolate volcano is over 1300 calories for 1 serving, and what they bring you is 2 servings.  We usually go out to a more high-end restaurant, so I can’t figure out the calories on Livestrong for those meals anyway, Livestrong does have nutritional info for most national chains.  I do pay for this one cheat meal each week.  On average, I gain back 1 -2 pounds after that meal.  Just think about what that means.  Even with all the working-out I do, a single meal puts back on 1-2 pounds.  Now you get the idea of how bad most of us eat each day.

Most weeks, my total weight lose is about 3 pounds.  Some weeks it’s a little more, and on occasion it has been a little less.  As I get closer to my final goal, the amount has dropped off a bit.  This is not a plateau, it’s just that now my body requires more exercise and few calories because of my weight.  My next weight goal is 185 by the end of February.  I’m only 2 pounds away, and it’s not even the end of January.

Finally, a couple of weight lifting and nutrition myths to debunk:

If I’m lifting weights, then the whole BMI thing is wrong.  This is not true.  If you are lifting for lean muscle, then your BMI will be correct.

Muscle weighs more than fat.  This is true, but has nothing to do with what you are trying to accomplish, so stop using it as an excuse.

I can save up calories during the day to eat more at dinner. True, you can, and it will accomplish nothing.  Stagger your calories throughout the day, and worry more about getting the correct ratio of carbs/proteins/fats.  You have to be in this for the long haul, there is no going back to what you ate before.

I need to drink a protein shake or eat a protein bar before lifting to get a better workout.  The supplement industry as brainwashed you, stop listening to them.

When I reach my goal, fill in the blank.  Becoming healthier is not something you stop doing when you reach your weight goal.

I don’t have time to workout “x” amount each day.  If something is important to you, you will find the time.

If I do “x” workout plan, I’ll lose all my weight in 30 days.  If you want to lose lots of weight fast, go ahead and follow one of these plans.  You will gain it all back just as quickly.  It’s a lifestyle change, not a plan.