New Diet...
Well, this isn't a particularly new theme for me... In fact, it seems to be pretty much an annual event where I set a goal of trying to lose some more weight. So, what's different this time? Well, I'm not sure exactly yet but things are definitely headed in the right direction.
A little background: I was 29 years old and Christmas was right around the corner in the Fall of 2002. I was staring at my 30th birthday in April and realizing that something needed to change... Fast approaching 300 lbs and feeling it every time I walked up the stairs. I distinctly remember walking out of my office building, and heading up the walkway which has 4 flights of 5 stairs to get to the parking lot and feeling totally out of breath. I'm not sure how or why I thought the Atkins diet would work, but I realized that I needed to try something. As I recall, it wasn't really all that hard after the first week or so... the removal of carbs from my diet totally killed the cravings. It really gave me a kick-start, and then my wife bought me a mountain bike for my birthday and I realized how much fun it was to start riding. About 50lbs later and a lot of triathlons, running races and biking and my diet had sort of stabilized of the last 6 years. I really didn't follow Atkins strictly after the first couple months, it was more the principles of removing carbs and sugar. Since then, I've fluctuated from 235 to as low as 208 (the morning after my Ironman!) but haven't really gotten to where I'd like to be.
For some reason this fall, I decided that I need to make a significant change again in order to bust through this plateau. Having read a lot of information about Atkins, South Beach, Zone, etc., I decided that cutting sugar was really the way for me to go. I remember the change in cravings after a week on Atkins and I decided that I needed to make the same sort of shift to kick-start my approach again.
It's now 2 weeks into my attempt to remove sugar from my diet. It's been a relatively positive experience so far with a couple slips (Hey, Halloween was smack in the middle of those 2 weeks!) At any rate, I've really seen a difference in cravings again, and have managed to change my diet significantly. Something has clearly clicked, and I'm just more interested in better food. As I've discussed with my wife, it's not a "diet" for me, more a change in mindset and realizing the impact to me when I put sugar into my body. I still have a craving to eat a lot of food, but it's not a danish or cookie! My next step is to start tuning the quantity, but I'm not really worried about that yet, just want to focus on more protein and better choices.
Results so far have been great, I'm at 223 lbs... probably down between 8 and 10 pounds from where I started, but more importantly I feel good. This morning when sitting at my kitchen table and bending over to tie my shoes I realized there wasn't as much pressure on my midsection (translation: my gut is smaller :). I've also kept up the weightlifting because I've enjoyed it and I think that I'm adding muscle while losing fat which is why I'm trying not to be fixated on the scale as much. I have to admit that I am a bit focused on the weight though, my goal is to get under 200 lbs by February. That's a little more than 5 lbs a month, and it will clearly be difficult over the holidays but for some reason I'm much more mentally into this time than I've been before.
Ideally, this will be my "secret" weapon going into next years triathlon season. What is the impact of carrying 25-30 less pounds up hills on my bike and run... I would think significant!
I'm going to try and hold myself accountable by posting every Thursday after a weigh in at the gym in the morning. Just one more reason to keep my motivation a bit higher...
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