How I Lost Those Last 5-10 Pounds of Weight

How I Lost Those Last 5-10 Pounds
	I recently decided that I wanted to lose 7 lbs (or just over 3 kilos), going from 130 lbs to the 123 lbs that I had been advised was my “ideal” weight. I also felt that there were a few areas of my body that could stand to lose a bit of fat. However I knew that the only way that would happen was if I lost weight overall. The thing is, when I checked how many calories I ate every day, it seemed as though I wasn’t over-eating and that, in fact, I was eating less than I needed, and should already be losing weight. I started going to the gym a lot, doing many intense cardio classes like spinning and boxing. No matter what I did, however, my weight stayed stubbornly at 130 lbs. Finally, I decided to do some research. After looking around on the internet I came up with two programs which, when I did them together, enabled me to lose the weight I wanted. These programs are the Every Other Day Diet by Jon Benson, a diet program, and the Final Phase Fat Loss by John Romaniello, an exercise program. I tried out a few other systems, but these gave me the best results. The rest of this note describes how these two programs worked for me as well as some of the modifications I made to them. I wrote it because friends and family noticed my weight loss, became curious, and asked me how I did it. I thought that it would make sense to write an explanation that others could refer to. I also outline briefly how I have been able to keep off the weight that I lost. Many of my friends, like me, are not in any way “fat”. However, they feel as though they could stand to lose an additional 5, 10, or even 12 pounds (or 2-6 kilos). It is actually quite hard to lose weight when you only want to lose a small amount. As the two programs I mentioned explain, your body actually fights you as you try to get rid of that last bit of fat. So this note is written with people like my friends in mind. However, I think that the programs will also work for those who have a lot more weight to lose. Please note that what I am outlining is not a quick fix solution. There are no diet pills involved. It involves changing one’s diet and exercising regularly. It requires a lot of discipline. I also think it is quite a healthy solution – the program focuses on eating foods that are good for you, and losing weight at a reasonable, measured pace of about 1-2 lbs per week. So here are the details. As I mentioned, there are two programs that I used together that produced the weight loss. For each one you need to purchase a book online (in pdf format). The Every Other Day Diet (EODD): Introducing SNAPP You will have to read the book to get all the details, but the main idea here is to vary your calories so that you have certain days called “BURN Days” where you eat fewer calories than you need to maintain your weight, and on other “FEED Days” you eat many more calories that you need to maintain your weight. On average, over one week, you will eat the number of calories you need to actually lose weight. By varying your calories in this way, rather than just eating the same low number of calories every day, you trick your body into establishing and maintaining a high metabolism, which helps you to lose weight. However, you can’t just eat whatever you want, you have to avoid “bad” foods and eat lots of healthy fruits, vegetables, and proteins according to the SNAPP diet, which the book describes. It’s not just about the number of calories you eat, but also the type of calories you eat. The exception is during the FEED Days when you can eat just about anything you want, including sweets and desserts. Of course, you can choose to eat healthy foods during your FEED Days as well. It’s a good program, but I found that I had to make a few modifications, which I outline below. Hopefully you will find some of this information helpful if you decide to adopt the diet yourself. My Tips for Following the EODD Do Count Your Calories: the program advises you to use certain guidelines like “eat as much as you like as long as you finish within 30 minutes” for a FEED Meal. This is to help you to eat the right number of calories every day without having to actually count them. That strategy did not work for me. I found that I had to plan the number of calories I needed every day, estimate the calories in the food I ate, and track what I had consumed. Note that I did follow the program’s guidelines generally, for example when estimating the number of nuts or amount of protein I needed to consume. But I also found out how many calories that entailed, and kept a note of it. The regime that worked for me was 5 BURN days and 2 FEED Days every week. I wanted to get to 1400 calories per day on average, so I aimed for 5 days of 1250 calories and 2 days of 1750 calories, which came to 1393 over 7 days. I made sure that the FEED Days were at least 2 days apart. I’ve also read that women should never eat less that 1200 calories per day and men should not eat less that 1600 calories per day, so I always bore that in mind when planning my daily diet. Watch the oil: when I started counting my calories I was amazed by just how many there are in a tablespoon of oil. Up until then, whenever I was cooking, I would throw olive oil around pretty liberally, without thinking much about it. After my realization, however, I carefully measured and controlled the amount of oil I used. Substitute yoghurt for the shake: if, like me, you don’t have the time or inclination to make a fruit shake every morning, you can use yoghurt instead, and add the protein powder to this. You can then have fruit on the side. Use a plain yoghurt. Use the online help: when you purchase the EODD book you get access to a website. There is quite a bit of helpful information on there, as many people have already asked the same questions that you are likely to have. It was there, for example, that I found the tip about using yoghurt instead of making a shake. Split the P meal into 2 pieces: if you get hungry between the “A” and “P” meals of the SNAPP diet, try splitting the “P” meal into 2, and having part of it as a light lunch and the rest for dinner. The book also mentions other solutions to this problem, including eating an extra apple. Note for vegetarians: the SNAPP diet involves making sure you get a lot of protein. For vegetarians who don’t eat fish (like me), that can be a bit tough. My solution was to introduce eggs into my diet. I’m not a big lover of eggs, but while I was on the diet I had one pretty much every day as part of the first “P” meal. I also made sure to eat beans, and I did buy the protein powder, as recommended. Where to get protein powder: I was worried about this initially because I’d never bought protein powder before. But it’s not hard – go to a health food store, or try your local gym. Whey protein is supposed to be one of the best kinds. If you want more information, search the EODD website, because people have asked this question before. How to find calories in foods: I found the following website useful for estimating the calories in my food. You can search for additional ones on the internet. http://www.thecaloriecounter.com How to find the calories you need to intake: this website can help you to figure out how many calories per day you need to intake on average to lose, gain, or maintain weight, based on factors like your age, height, and exercise regime. Once again, there will be other websites like this out there on the internet. http://www.nutracheck.co.uk Do count the calories in drinks: don’t forget that drinks also have calories. Alcohol, especially, needs to be watched. You can still drink alcohol, but do count the calories, and don’t go overboard, as it can slow down the fat burning process. The EODD book gives some guidelines. Healthy drinks also have calories, so if you regularly drink juices, for example, do count them. The only drink that is calorie free, as far as I know, is water. Do count FEED Day calories: as the book explains, you can use your FEED Days to indulge and eat lots of things you won’t on the other days. These are good days to up your carb content and eat pizza, cupcakes, burgers, whatever you want. However, I went totally overboard when I first started. You do have to stick to your allotted calories on your FEED Day, otherwise you will undo all the discipline you have shown during the other days. So still count your calories. Find out just how many you consumed in that giant pizza! Plan ahead: try to plan out what you are going to eat well in advance – try to plan out the whole week if possible. Decide which days are going to be your FEED Days, and what you are going to eat every day. This way you are much more likely to stick to the diet. You can also then adjust if unexpected events come up e.g. a party where you anticipate there will be lots of food. You can then potentially make that a FEED Day instead of another one. Keep it Simple: the EODD book has lots of different options and recipes and DCCs, but I found it all a bit confusing. I kept it simple: I followed SNAPP, I found “P” meals that I liked and knew how to cook and estimated how many calories were in them (my meals followed the SNAPP guidelines of being mostly protein and vegetables), I counted my calories, and had 5 BURN days and 2 FEED Days per week. You might want to go with more or fewer FEED Days. The book even has an option where you have a FEED Day every other day (hence the name of the diet). Whatever you choose, I would make sure to divide the calories up properly on a daily basis to make sure you don’t exceed your target for the week. Eating is psychological: one thing I realized during the diet is that eating is very psychological. I think it has as much to do with our brains as our stomachs. There are times when I would not be hungry, but I’d still crave a certain food or sweet, just because I wanted to eat it, not because I needed to eat it. The following tips try to address this phenomenon. Use anticipation of the FEED Days: as human beings we often want something more when we know we can’t have it. There will be times when you really, really want to break the diet and eat something you shouldn’t. I have found that it helps to push that desire into the future onto an upcoming FEED Day. For example, if I’m really craving a cupcake, I can tell myself, “if you can just hold on today and not eat a cupcake, you can have one tomorrow on your FEED Day”. Don’t buy stuff you shouldn’t eat: the easiest way to avoid eating something is to not have it around you. So in the example above, it would be much harder for me to avoid eating the cupcake if it was sitting right in front of me on the kitchen counter. Throw away all of the things you shouldn’t be eating and make yourself have to go out and buy them if you want them. Don’t give up if you pig out: occasionally you will give in to a craving, especially at the beginning of the program. Or you might be doing really well one day and then suddenly get invited somewhere with lots of free food and drinks, and find yourself unable to resist. If this happens, don’t give the whole thing up. Note the calories you ate, see how much you overate by, and if possible, readjust the rest of the day and/or the rest of the week. Maybe you can make that day a FEED Day instead of another one you were planning later in the week. But don’t over-compensate by trying to starve yourself, however – remember the rule about women not eating less than 1200 calories and men not eating less than 1600 calories per day. Use meals out as FEED Days: one of the things that can really derail you on this diet is eating out. It’s relatively easy to control and count your food calories when you are doing the cooking. It’s much harder if you are at a restaurant. That’s why if I knew I was going out for a big lunch or dinner one day, I would try to make that day a FEED Day. That way I would have more freedom in what I ate and how much I ate without violating my diet. I would still try to estimate how many calories were in the meals I ate when I was out, however, so that I could count them towards my daily and weekly targets. Your mind will eventually adjust: the diet will get easier over time. It will be hard at first, especially if you are used to eating a lot of junk. But eventually your mind will get used to the fact that you are eating in this healthy new way. The psychological craving for food should become greatly diminished or might even disappear. This assumes, of course, that you are not actually starving yourself, which you should not be doing on this program. The Final Phase Fat Loss Program This online book talks a bit about diet and nutrition, but it is mainly about exercise. You may be surprised to find out that it is heavily focused on weight lifting, not cardio. I was surprised because I thought that the best way to lose weight was via long sessions of running, cycling, spinning, boxing etc. The program explains why this is not the case. It outlines a detailed schedule of weight lifting, and it focuses on free weights rather than machines. So it should be easier for people to do at home. There is some cardio, but it is included only once for every 4 sessions of weight lifting, and it involves a specific type of cardio called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). The book is also very interesting because it gives a lot of information about how hormones affect weight loss and how different hormones affect where we store fat in our bodies. It gives specific exercises that can combat these different hormones. I haven’t come across information like this anywhere else. However, one of the main reasons I like the Final Phase Fat Loss program (in addition to the fact that it worked for me) is that it gives a detailed, easy to follow schedule of exactly which exercises to do each day. There is no guesswork involved. The training schedule is set out over 6 weeks, but I found that it made a difference right away (in combination with the EODD diet program, of course). I don’t have too much to add to this program, but I do want to make a couple of points. My Tips for Following the Final Phase Fat Loss Program Google missing exercises: when I downloaded the book and its accompanying documents, the description of the exercises was not complete. The author realized this and posted some of the missing ones on his Youtube Channel. However, I still found that there were a few missing. When this happened I just googled the name of the exercise and was able to find diagrams or other Youtube videos that described them. Hopefully, however, the author’s exercise library will complete by the time you download the book. Adjust the schedule to suit yours: this is pretty obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway. The program is quite intense, outlining several days of working out per week. Typically there is one day dedicated to HIIT cardio, and there are also scheduled break days. This didn’t always work for me. Sometimes I did the cardio on the same day as I did my weights, to avoid an extra visit to the gym. Sometimes I took my break on a Wednesday when the schedule called for it to be on a Friday. The point is, you can adjust the plan to work for you. The one thing I didn’t tamper with, however, was the order of the exercises the book lays out, because the author has put them together strategically to get the best results. Other Points Supplements: many of the plans I researched strongly recommend taking a multi-vitamin food supplement during your diet and exercise program. They explain that this makes sure the body is receiving the nutrients it needs, enabling it to build muscle and burn calories. I was sceptical and reluctant at first (partly because I dislike taking tablets), but eventually I decided to follow the advice. The Final Phase Fat Loss book recommends some companies that make supplements, and you may want to try one of those. I wanted to buy one in my local health store, so I found the ingredients in one of the multivitamin supplements I’d read about (called Prograde) and tried to find a duplicate. As it turns out, it is actually really hard to get one that has all of those vitamins together, but I ended up choosing a supplement called “SUPER ONE, Food Supplement, Timed Release” by Holland and Barrett. To be honest, I’m not sure how much the vitamin supplements contributed to my weight loss because I did the EODD, Final Phase Fat Loss plan, and the supplementation all together. I can’t say what would have happened if I had skipped the supplements. But I figure that it can’t hurt to take them. Maintenance: once I reached my desired weight, I moved onto a less restrictive maintenance diet. I figured out from using one of the calorie calculators that I could eat about 1700 calories per day to maintain my weight, rather than the 1400 per day I had aimed for during my weight loss phase (this would vary depending on how much I exercised). So I allowed myself to eat more. One of the first changes I made from the SNAPP diet was to have a bigger lunch. I also got rid of some of the things I enjoyed the least, like eggs, protein powder, and yoghurt. This is just me because I’m not a big fan of dairy. I also brought more carbohydrates back into my diet, things like potatoes and whole wheat pasta. However, for some of you, you may want to stay on the SNAPP diet or something very close to it. This will be up to you. The one thing I did continue to do, however, was vary my calories on certain days. I still aimed for FEED Days when I would eat more than 1700 calories, and BURN Days when I ate less than 1700. I just think this is a good little trick to keep my metabolism high and hopefully keep any weight gain at bay. I also find it helpful psychologically to have some days when I can “cheat” and eat foods I normally wouldn’t. The main thing, however, is that I strive for a healthy, balanced diet, with a good sense of and control over my calorie intake. I’m not as strict as I was before, but I am still very aware of what I am eating. And if I find myself overeating on one day, I’ll be that bit more careful the next day, to compensate. In addition, as we all know, working out regularly is healthy, whether you want to lose weight or not. So I am aiming for the proverbial 2-3 times per week. Because of the Final Phase program, however, I am more focused on weights than I was before. I keep my cardio sessions to short HIIT ones. In the maintenance phase there is much more flexibility. You can do what works for you. But hopefully some of the principles you put into practice during your EODD and Final Phase Fat Loss days can stay with you from now on. Recap So, just to recap, it was only after combining the alternating calorie diet with the weights-intensive and high-interval cardio exercise program that my weight loss started to happen. Once it started, the weight loss was consistent and fast, about 1-2 lbs per week. I also took a multi-vitamin supplement, as many of the books I’d read advised, and that may have helped the process as well. The links to the 2 programs I used are here: the Every Other Day Diet and the Final Phase Fat Loss program. Once I got to my desired weight, I came off the strict diet plan. However, I still try to eat in a healthy way, and I still attempt to vary my calories to keep my metabolism high, with a watch on the overall number of calories I eat each week. I also try to work out a few times a week. Doing these things has enabled me to maintain my weight at the new lower level. I hope this note helps you. I wish you the best of luck on your weight loss journey!

How I Lost Those Last 5-10 Pounds

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