Simple, logical, and straight forward - add in the food pyramid, a 1500 calorie per day limit, the number of minutes to exercise, and the number of days and you have exactly what an engineer like myself loves. A straight forward specification to follow.
Being an engineer I believed in this specification, backed by "science" and recommended by our well respected medical establishment and struggled to follow it for many years. Being an engineer graphs and charts are sometimes how I speak so below are the results of trying to follow this specification with weights taken from the 2001 through January 2009:
Obviously I gained weight pretty steadily until I found myself at 415 lbs in size 56 pants and 4XL shirts. I felt miserable and lost without a direction - my life should have been great, wife, kids, and job all the components of the American dream. Instead I was a physical mess with no end to the spiral in sight.
Admittedly I did not follow the spec that had been laid out for me - but damn it if I didn't try. I even had some limited success in 2004 - but for the most part I could not fit the exercise into my life and could not control my relationship with food for more than short periods of time.
At this point in my life it had really come to crisis mode - I knew I needed to do something and had to make it permanent. But what to do? How to do it?
I started from scratch so to say - threw out the food pyramid, the exercise guidelines, and pretty much anything else I had in my head concerning diet and exercise. From there I devised my own plan and own guidelines, I researched, read, and critically examined every piece of information I could. Blogs, newspapers, TV shows, Pubmed, everything was fair game. I used what made sense to me and borrowed what I felt worked and discounted that which did not with some learning along the way.
I started the first phase of my new journey in February of 2009 - here is the previous weight record with the past 18 months results following my new path:
A pretty dramatic turn around - I have reversed the past 10 years gains plus more in just 18 months and continue to make steady progress in the right direction.
How I got at the bottom of that hill from the top? I approached everything in small steps, used bits of many popular plans and theories that are out there and put them together in a way that made sense to a super-super obese 415 pound man.
I believe not one author, doctor, blog, university, or association has it 100% right (and neither do I) - but I hope by sharing on this blog how I approached it it may help other super obese, obese, or unsatisfied folks achieve their personal goals and achieve just some of what I feel now.
My journey has been dramatic to date as the before and during pages on the right will attest - but I am still on it and will endeavor to always approach each step logically with sound research and thought.
My next entry I will start to lay out what I have been through in major phases and the reasons and thoughts behind it. In the end I hope those that read and share will these posts will see the beautiful simplicity of the solution.
-LL
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