About Me

Updated June 2012.

I’m a work in progress. Just like this site.

I started this site because I wanted to spread what I have learned over the years about losing weight and getting in shape. By a fat person, for a fat person. Fellow low-carber and now paleo convert Jimmy Moore, who is a great inspiration to a lot of people, often says on his podcasts that he feels a duty to spread the word and debunk the falsehoods and myths out there being spread about weight loss. I feel the same way.

My Story

Like lots of other folks, I have struggled with my weight for a long time. I was a very skinny young kid, and then all of a sudden by age 10 I was sporting some serious love handles. By 12 I was overweight (by any measure), and my weight kept going up from there. At 17, I went and signed up for six long years in the U.S. Navy. I figured it’d whip me into shape by force. At the conclusion of boot camp, I had to wave my fortunate friends off while I was ordered “to the fat farm” because even after 2 months of that I was still too fat and too weak to pass the performance test to graduate. After my enlistment I started college and during that time I ballooned up to about 260 pounds. At 5’10”, that’s what you call obese. It’s not all doom and gloom – I am very fortunate to have naturally large quads/thighs/calves. So I ‘always carried it well’.

Over the past 20 years I tried a number of diets. The government (USDA), Weight Watchers, Dr. Oz (especially that guy), and many more have prescribed all kinds of weight loss advice and it didn’t work for me, not long-term. A couple of times I was able to get on the low-cal + cardio treadmill and stay on it for months, all the while being hungry and hoping that I would wake up one day and not feel like a hamster on one of those circle exercise things. And invariably, I’d ‘fall off’ it. According to the ‘experts’, it was all due to my lack of will power. A couple of years ago my eyes were opened to another possibility – that their prescription formula of reduced calories + increased physical activity = weight loss might be flawed.

I’m now down to around 192 pounds, for a total loss of about 68 pounds, and am doing things I never thought I’d be able to do. Most of that weight was lost over a year ago and I’ve easily maintained it since. My FAT LOSS 101 page discusses the general philosophy/approach I took to lose the weight. But it was so simple I’ll just sum it up here: I ate less than 30g of carbs per day, on average, and I avoided physical exercise as when I tried that it would result in a stall due to my ‘working up an appetite.’ That’s it. Simple.

I’m Not Here to Give Advice

I have not simply learned how to lose weight but to also achieve the real end goal – to feel good.
It’s all about feeling good. Not simply losing weight. If I was fat and feeling great I’d still be fat and happy.

I hope to help others by exposing my struggles on this blog with weight loss, what’s worked for me, what hasn’t. I will invariably BE DEAD WRONG ON SOME THINGS. Just like current conventional wisdom has been dead wrong for decades.

In 2012, with a fairly healthy weight (for me) being maintained for quite some time now, I’ve shifted my focus to physical fitness. I’m a weakling and want to change that. So nowadays most of posts are me whining about that struggle.

 

3 replies on “About Me”

Thanks Cuz. I’m gonna try your way. I need to lose 40 lbs by next June for my 40th reunion. I hope this works. I’ll keep you posted.

Hi Terry,

I find that a lot of people do best when trying this type of diet if they use a book as a guide. One of the earlier Atkins’ books (from back when he was alive) such as Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution is one example. I don’t care much for his writing style but it’s a sound method. I didn’t use it (I read it after I had lost most of my weight, mainly out of curiosity), and I don’t like the rigidity of it, but a lot of people have found success with it. The one book I recommend is ‘Why We Get Fat’, by Gary Taubes. You’ll find it on Amazon.

While it’s easy and true to just say ‘don’t eat carbs and you’ll lose weight’, the reality is that a lot of people (I was one) are truly addicted to carbs (carbs = sugars and starches). So books like Atkins, South Beach, Protein Power, etc. step you through ‘phases’, where ‘Phase 1’ is basically a strict, very few carbs diet for the first 2 weeks. It’s a good way to go but it can be tough, especially the first week. The carb cravings stuck with me for almost 5 months, but it wasn’t bad at all after the first week or two.

I still eat carbs. It’s impossible not to. They are in vegetables, which is an important part of a diet (and the majority of mine, along with lots of fatty meats).

Good luck!
mark

I found your blog via low carb confidential. I used to have a blog a little while back which is how I knew him. I guess I am at the start of the journey but feeling good. I was always skeptical about diets but then I read Gary Taubes and something clicked and I believe this can work. Anyway I thought I would say hello and will be watching you blog intently, I always trust an ex fattie over a thin person telling me how to lose weight:)

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