Renaissancemen.org

I have a pretty good story of losing 175 pounds in 3 years, but I’d like to start off with saying I gained about 50 or so back since in 2.5 years. Big picture of the gain is I used to exercise about 1 hour a day on the weekdays and 2-3 hours each weekend day. I have a 20 month old now and my time to exercise evaporated. So – going to attack that this year as my youngest is starting to get bigger.

Like many of you, I had dealt with struggles with weight my whole life. However, I was the athletic kid who just happened to have weight on him. When it was nice out, I’d be outside 10 hours a day playing, riding bikes, baseball, etc. When winter happened, I’d usually gain some.

Over time, I had reached 372 pounds. Most don’t understand how people like me can get there. Constant dieting my whole life, driven by half starving yourself, taking off 20-30 pounds, getting injured or exhausted, then before you know it, the 20 you lost came back and invited her friends. It was a constant cycle. I’m hear to tell you that calorie counting works, but it also doesn’t. WHAT you eat is the most important. If you eat right, HOW MUCH you eat should take care of itself.

I started in year 1 by meeting with a trainer and going over a suggested plan. She wanted me to eat 40/30/30 – That is, 40% carbs, 30% fats, 30% protein. I had been programmed as a kid that fats were bad for you, so I always avoided them. When I sat down and closely looked at what I NORMALLY ate, it was something like 75% carbs, 10% protein, 15% fats – or something stupidly skewed towards carbs. Also, I had grown up learning that you should eat 1800 calories a day. So, when you are over 300 pounds and eat mostly carbs, good luck to eat only 1800 calories. Why? Because of two things:

1. Hormonally, when you have a lot of carbs like that without fats and proteins, it spikes your blood sugar, you get insulin pumped into your system, then when this crashes, you get a hunger hormone released to tell you to eat. So I could eat 2 plates of pasta for dinner and bread, and 3 hours later want to eat my face off
2. Proteins and fats have a satiety effect. I’ve always been told “fats are bad”, but you also have to understand not all fats are created equal.

So when I met with the trainer, she started me at the 40/30/30 and 2700 calories. When I did THIS way of eating, it was VERY hard to eat 2700 calories. Lots and lots of broccoli, rice, and chicken breasts. Lots of food prep.

About 14 months in, I was down from 372 to about 300. Felt so much better, but was starting to lose control of the carbs. My trainer had been talking to me about keto, and I just thought it was an atkins gimmick. I had lost weight on Atkins before, but like everything else, it could come right back on me.

I gave it a shot, and then you realize keto is extremely healthy for you. Everything you learn is about this.

And what they WANT you to think keto is this…

Because these people control the media

Which looks in reality a lot like this…

And you quickly realize none of those big companies above sell any of that shit.

You then realize that ancient man did not have grains and corn and pasta – we evolved over 500,000 years and breads/grains are only the last few thousand.

Anyone who understands inflation and the Arab Spring realizes when food costs get too high in your budget, you lose your government in riots. So, in the 1970s – they invented the food pyramid to have you replace that 1800 calories with cheaper calories. Breads/grains/pastas are far cheaper than grass fed/finished beef.

Which then made my whole country sick. Which then made all of these people billions.

And – if you tried to tell people how keto CAN be healthy, the below people control the narrative.

So my weight loss story was essentially do the exact opposite of what they had told me to do repeatedly for 30 years of my life.

A few years ago, I competed in a sprint triathlon and fell in love with the sport. It was August of 2019. A few months later, my mom passed. I spent the last few weeks her life caring for her and barely sleeping with a job hours away. The day of her funeral, I was 224. 6 months later when my son was born, I was 245. I’ve hit back up to 260-270, but vow to get back to the triathlons. One thing of interest – the last 10 pounds I lost, I lost a TON of muscle. I ran a lot of 5ks, and by the time my mom had passed, my back was going through tons of problems, I had to go to physical therapy for a shoulder issue for months, then had the other shoulder have the same issue. For 3 years I had beaten my body to a pulp, and it needed to rest. Amazing how you gain weight when you stop exercising an hour a day!

Another thing I did for the last 2 years which I have NOT done since COVID. When I was working every day in the office, I did OMAD, or One Meal A Day. I would rarely eat on Fridays, calling it “Fasting Friday”. On a “regular diet”, this is not possible. You need to eat every few hours. Three times I was able to do 3-day fasts with ease. So I haven’t really eaten bad. I just now eat a lunch working at home and don’t exercise an hour a day and voila – there’s your 50-60 pounds.

Basement now done. Kid getting bigger. I’ll be writing more in this space here about taking me back below 200 and am looking to have a final weight around 175.

I have 137 posts here about everything I did, from the beginning. Search “healthy living” and you get them all.