Two days ago, I reached a small milestone in my trek to change my body and health. I've officially been on this journey for 3 months or 1/4th of a year. I've lost 30 pounds, 25 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of lean. I'm not happy about the 5 pounds of lean, but I'm chalking it up as collateral damage. The first three weeks were spent doing 0-carbs. The rest of the time, I've been intermittent fasting and watching my carb intake. I also increased my exercise and activity level quite a bit, and I've been gradually increasing the intensity of my exercise along the way.
I started out just walking. Now I do interval training on my treadmill which kicks my ass quite a bit, but really gets the heart going. My current workout would have killed me 3 months ago, so I feel very positive about that. I wish my weight loss was moving along a little faster, mainly because I want to increase my exercise faster than my body can accept it. For instance, I do a 36 minute treadmill workout where I run for 30 seconds, then walk for 30 seconds, back and forth the entire time. So I get 18 minutes of running and 18 minutes of walking. It kills my shins, but my ankles and knees are handling it okay at least. If I were 20 pounds lighter, I could do more and it wouldn't hurt my legs so much.
So what have I learned in the last three months? The answer is "quite a bit about my body". I'm getting older (42 in October) and I wish I had been doing this 10 years ago. I would have been so much better off right now, if I had. Alas, I waited till mid-life before I decided to do something about my terrible body. So the first thing I've learned is that being healthy a year from now is a problem I have to deal with today. This is actually important to think about. People say things like this all the time, but seldom do others listen. You have to think, "what do I want my body to look like in two years?" and then work toward that. You have to create a mental image of what you want your body to look like, and then focus on that as you work toward it.
Now, your looks may not be your primary goal. Maybe it's more about health. "I want to run 5 miles without stopping." or "I want to be able to do a triathlon." You have to set your goal in the future. I wish I had thought about this more when I was 32. I wish 32 year old would have envisioned what he wanted to look like by the time he was 42. Oh well.
The second thing I've learned in the last three months is that there's a ton of experts that aren't really experts. There seems to be a huge amount of people specializing in nutrition and health that can't agree with each other on what is correct. I think this mainly has to do with anecdotal scenarios where everyone's body is different and we teach based on our own experience. Some people have huge success being vegetarian. Others have huge success doing keto. Some have success with paleo. Some exercise a lot, others don't. Some say exercising breaks a fast because it turns off ketosis. Others say exercise is effective during fasting. No one really seems to have 100% of it correct. It's like we all have to just stab at it with a knife and see what draws the most blood. I've literally spend the last 3 months experimenting with a lot of different things and haven't touched the surface of all the different things out there on the world wide web of information.
The third thing I've learned is that even when you think you have it figured out, you may have to change/adapt to accommodate a change in your own body. What worked for you at the beginning may not work for you a month later. I lost around 15 pounds in three weeks of no carbs, but most of that was the first two weeks and I plateaued for a week. I've been fasting for the rest of the time while my friend has been doing keto, we've lost the same amount of weight.
The fourth thing I've learned and I'll make this my final thing for this post... it's truly 80/20. It's 80% diet and 20% exercise. However, at the beginning, it should probably be more like 95% diet and 5% exercise. You have to concentrate on your diet way more than your exercise. I can go outside and burn 1000 calories running for an hour, but then I'm starving and have a hard time not raiding the fridge and eating 1200 calories to make up for it. You have to curve/change your eating habits tremendously before you can lose fat. The more fat you lose, the easier and more effective your exercising will be. The more you exercise, the more muscle you have, the more your body will burn calories. It's a cycle. It's the same cycle that got me fat, but in reverse. I got a sit-down job, I exercised less, I lost some lean muscle, my body stopped burning calories as efficiently, I ate things that gave me instant energy but made me crash (sugar), which also made me hungry more often, which made me eat more, which made me gain more weight, which made it harder to exercise, so on and so forth. I have to reverse this cycle. It's all about this cycle. It has two different directions. I have to make sure that I'm always pointed in the correct direction. The rest will fall into place.
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