My Weight Loss - Diet

My weight loss started when I we ill first with pneumonia and then with my stroke and its attendant high blood pressure. The first 10 pounds were a result of the diuretic I was put on for my blood pressure, as in the week following being put on it I lost that weight while changing nothing in my diet. That just shows how much fluid my body was retaining. The next 10 pounds came with the stroke and my time in hospital. So basically the first 20 pounds came off in 2 weeks or so.

Following that I did not lose anything for a couple of months even though I was eating "healthy" and exercising. Part of that was simply a result of losing so much weight so quickly, but a bigger part was my buying into the eat healthy food and you will lose weight while forgetting the number of calories consumed compared to the number burned is what determines weight loss.

The thing is, there is some truth to the "healthy" food belief, but it is not that you can eat as much of that so called healthy food and still lose weight. The grain of truth is this, healthy food generally contains more fiber and is less calorie dense. By that I mean for a fairly large serving of beans, you are actually consuming less calories and will feel more full than and similar sized serving of say white flour pasta with a fatty ground beef in tomato sauce. Furthermore, with the healthy food, you will probably also consume more vitamins and minerals your body needs to stay strong and healthy. From this, the myth that you can eat healthy food and not gain weight developed. Don't get caught by this one. What matters is consuming less calories than you burn.

Eventually I realized that and seriously started counting calories at the beginning of June. At that point I was about 230 pounds. Counting calories by carefully measuring everything I eat has resulted in me dropping my weight to 197 as of a couple of weeks back. Better yet in that time my body composition changed dramatically. I started out at 230 pounds total, but that weight was made up of a fat mass of 102 pounds and a lean mass of 128 pounds. When I reached 197 my body composition changed to a fat mass of 59 pounds and a lean mass of 138 pounds. What that means is in that time where I lost 33 pounds total I really lost 43 pounds of body fat and gained 10 pounds of muscle. I still have more weight and fat to get rid of, but this is certainly a great start.

Just as a side note here, a scale that measures your body fat percentage or getting something else to do so is a very valuable tool to help in healthy weight reduction. It will give you a good picture of what is happening in your body, and can help you realize that even though you seem to be losing weight slowly, you may be losing fat quickly.

From all this there are a couple of lessons I would point to. First and probably most important, watch how many calories you eat. You need to create a deficit of calories burning more than you consume. Without measuring calories and recording them you will have a great deal of difficulty doing this. What can help is reading the nutrition labels, and actually measuring out your servings. At first I was surprised at what a serving was, but now I am used to it. A kitchen scale, especially and digital one, can be a great help in this. Second, remember that the quality of food matters. High fiber in particular, is very helpful in weigh loss. Yes you can get rid of the pounds eating whatever you want, but I find with the low fiber, highly processed stuff I would get more hungry and be more inclined to cheat than with the less processed, more natural, high fiber stuff.

With all this I also exercised a great deal, but that is a topic for another post.