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How To Lose Weight: 20lbs in two months

April 17, 2011 – 4:42 pm

I haven’t updated this blog in almost a year…

That’s because weight loss hasn’t been one of my goals.

I was more focused on changing careers. And also trying to work out my personal life.

Long story short, in 2010, I got divorced, completed my MBA, found an amazing job, moved from one coast to the other, and traveled a great deal. Unfortunately, I also put on a ton of weight.

At the beginning of the 2011, I was about 200 lbs, with 32.5% body fat. With my 5′ 9.5″ frame, I didn’t look too bad, but I sure didn’t look fit either.

Although I somewhat skeptical of the accuracy of the fat percentage measurement of my bathroom scale, I was overweight and I knew it. Maybe I was only 29% instead of 32.5%. But I was still overweight.

After moving to Florida, I decided to get rid of the excess weight. I had already jettisoned the personal-life baggage, so the time was right.

At 36, I had two Masters Degrees, a new, well-paying job I loved, and had just moved cross-country. I didn’t have any more excuses to be over-weight.

Now it was time to focus on the last issue – Weight Loss!

Weight has always been one of my arch nemesis. In undergrad, the stress of academics and personal issues caused me to balloon up to 215 lbs. I went on a strict diet of fish, eggs and black coffee for about 8 weeks and dropped to 155 pounds.

But that was over ten years ago.

Now I’m in my late-thirties and have a slower metabolism to deal with.

I started my diet at the end of February. I just finished reading Tim Ferris’s book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman.

I’ll write a review of it someday, but the book is awesome! I strongly recommend it. I based my diet on his recommendations.

My diet consists of the following:

Breakfast:

1. Chocolate flavored Protein Shake (2 scoops). Make sure you get at least 40 grams of protein in the morning. It’ll curb your appetite all day.

2. Black coffee (2 cups). 1 satchet of Splenda. Nothing else.

Lunch:

1. Can of Chili-beans (Costco brand)

or

2. 10 oz Steak

Dinner:

1. 10 oz Steak

or

2. 9oz of Spinach, blended along with an Avocado, tomato and a bell pepper. Salt, pepper and red chilli powder to taste.

or

3.  Shrimp mixed in with Lentil Soup

Snacks:

Whenever hungry, I’d munch on mixed nuts or Pure Protein High Protein Bar, Chocolate Deluxe,. As you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of chocolate.

I stayed away from all deserts. I used only Splenda as a sweetener, and that too, in moderation.

Once every seven to ten days, I would indulge myself by eating anything I wanted to for one meal. Absolutely anything. Including alcohol. And twice in two months, i eat crap all day long. It’s okay to take a break once a month. But for the most part, the cravings for sweets and junk foods have completely disappeared.

I once ate four Dorito chips and my co-worker remarked that it was the first time she’d ever seen me eat junk food. That quickly made me stop eating more!

I’ve also been taking nutritional supplements. A generic multi-vitamin, and 5HTP to help me sleep better. I didn’t take any of the supplements mentioned in Tim Ferriss’s book.

I’m also working out a few times a week, just weights, no cardio. Although I have been swimming a couple of times.

Over the past 2 months, I’ve lost 20 lbs. I now weigh 179 lbs, 28% body fat. Again, I’m suspicious of the accuracy of my scale, because I look a lot better. My jeans went from a 36-inch waist size down to a 32.

Buying new 32-inch jeans was awesome. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I wore that size.

Even my coworkers remarked that I’m looking good! And everyone says I look younger too.

As Tim Ferris mentioned in his book, The 4 Hour body, losing 20 lbs makes you look a lot better – regardless of your body weight.

He’s absolutely right.

I had a complete physical and blood work done two weeks ago. Everything was good. I was worried about my cholesterol, since I’ve been eating mainly red meat. But that was at the lower end of the normal range – which is excellent.

A couple of things to note:

1. Be careful cooking steaks – I burnt myself pretty badly with grease splatter. ( Incidentally, Cocoa Butter with Vitamin-E
helps prevent scarring for mild burns.)

2. Don’t overdo the nuts – that will hamper your weight loss. But a few are good for taking the edge off your appetite.

3. Avoid alcohol. Every time I drank beer or vodka, I started to gain weight. The occasional glass of red wine didn’t hurt. I stuck mainly to club soda or diet Pepsi when I went out drinking with my friends. After a while, they got used to me not drinking alcohol.

Why has my diet been restricted to just a handful of items? Because it’s much easier to stick to a diet if you don’t have to think too much about it.

But I’ll be slowly adding more items in to my diet. (One book I strongly recommend is The Metabolic Cookbook. It’s packed with information and awesome recipes  that will help you maintain your weight loss).

Eating only three things for dinner is just not feasible on a long term basis. It is also somewhat anti-social.

Once you’re in maintenance phase (instead of weight loss phase), you can adjust your diet. You need to learn how to substitute various items in your regular every day meals to keep the weight off. The Metabolic Cookbook does just that.

I’ll be writing a review on it shortly, but just know that I strongly recommend it.

One more thing…

But you’re better off eating alone for the first two months. Studies have shown that eating with someone else increases your calorie  consumption by 50%. Eating with large groups can increase it by nearly 100%. I’m not making this up.

Fat Man Joe | Diet, Updates, weight loss | Comments (0)

Using a Pedometer To Lose Weight

March 2, 2010 – 9:37 pm

I’ll admit it – I’m a failure. Despite trying to eat healthy, my weight is constant at 190lbs. It’s actually increased from about a month ago when is was about 184lbs.

Like I mentioned in my last post, after reading the book In Defense of Food, I’ve started eating salads at least 4-5 times per week. But even though its been 2-3 weeks, I haven’t seen any difference in my weight. If anything, its increasing.

It’s time to increase the exercise in my life. I try and get to the gym at least 4 times a week, but this year its been more like once or twice at most. I started the year waking up at 5 am and getting my morning workout in but that tapered off once I got busy with school. Well, I’m finishing off my MBA pretty soon, so I won’t have any excuse not to go to the gym more regularly. But that might be too late. I don’t want to look overweight for my interviews. When you’re overweight, clothes don’t fit well and that puts you in a negative mindset to begin with. Plus, interviewees may think that because you’re overweight, you might be lazy as well. (I’m not saying that people with insulin resistance are lazy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that what the average thin person thought).

I just read an article about the effects of walking on weight loss and it really made me think.

These studies indicate that average adults probably take more steps than many people thought (about 5,000 steps per day perhaps) and that young children take far more steps than average adults. The second paper used sealed pedometers (no feedback available to the user) and showed that students tend to decrease activities as they get older and that relatively few of them get 10,000 steps every day. These teenagers also recorded far fewer steps when they didn’t go to school (weekends vs. weekdays).

For weight controllers, simple clear and easily remembered goals probably help them stay focused. We know that 10,000 steps of activity every day, not just on weekends, does such things as increase metabolic rate all day and improve (accelerate) metabolism (use of) fat. We can also see from the Hohepa study that more than 85% of high school students fail to achieve 10,000 steps per day. This level of activity in adults produces notable health benefits. Putting this all together, Wellspring still recommends 10,000 steps per day (each and every day) as the goal for young weight controllers. If they hit that goal or surpass it, they’ll achieve far more consistent activity than their peers, certainly much more activity than the average overweight teenager, and improve their long-term prospects to lose weight and keep it off.

Everyone knows how to lose weight – you simply eat less calories than you consume. However, losing weight isn’t as easy as it sounds. So far I haven’t lost any weight this year so something is obviously wrong. Either, I’m not getting enough exercise, or I’m eating too many calories.

Deciding I need to take extreme measures, I went and got myself a cheap used iPod Touch, and along with the Nike+ Sports Sensor attachment to use as a pedometer, and find out exactly how many steps I take each day. The extra sensor fits inside (or outside) your shoe and accurately calculates how many steps you take, the distance covered and how many calories you’ve burned. Their is a pedometer application in the Touch that automatically tracks your long term progress.

Another advantage of using the iPod Touch is that you can download free applications like My Fitness Pal, which is a diary of what you eat each day – it automatically pulls the estimated calories from a database so you also get a rough idea of how many calories you are consuming. It allows you to put in weight loss goals and tracks whether you ate more than the required number of calories to reach your goal.

A simple $10 pedometer might be better than the $200 for the iPod Touch and Nike+ Sport Sensor, but I think this combination will probably give me extra push I need to lose weight. I spent a total of $218 on a 32GB 3rd generation refurbished Touch, $18 on the sensor (see the above links) and I also got myself a Marware Sportsuit Sensor Case for attaching the sensor to my sneakers.

While I haven’t gotten the sensor yet, I did get the Touch. It has a built-in mechanism to allow you to use it as a pedometer. The free apps I used to see how much walking I get gone on a regular basis left me pretty disappointed. It seems that on a regular day where I go to college, I end up walking less than 2,000 steps per day. That is pretty sedentary. According to 10000steps.org, 5000-7500 steps is light active, 10000 is active and over 12000 is very active. 2000 is plain old sedentary. And on days I don’t go to college and I don’t go to either the gym or the beach (maybe 60% of the time), I don’t even get the 2,000 steps in! Although if I’m on the elliptical machine for an hour, that’s probably close to 5,000 steps. So on a good day (2 a week at most), I’m moderately active. No wonder I’m not losing weight.

And the plot thickens…

I also load My Fitness Plan diary on to the Touch. I thought today was a good day in terms of not overeating. I had a protein shake for breakfast, a healthy large green salad with mesquite chicken and a small piece of peach cobbler for lunch, followed by a Jack-in-the-box Sirloin Steak burger (no fries) for dinner. Apparently the burger did me in – at nearly 1,000 calories it pushed me over the edge of my required calorific-intake goals required to lose 1.5lbs/week. Although not by a whole lot, it did open my eyes and give me a pretty accurate breakdown of the nutritional value of the days food intake.

So now I know exactly why I’m not losing any weight – I don’t get any exercise and I overeat by about 120 calories on a normal day (occasionally it’s probably much worse).

Fat Man Joe | weight loss | Comments (0)

Eat Food, Not Food-Like Products: Book Review

February 21, 2010 – 5:41 pm

I just finished reading In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, probably the best $7 I’ve ever spent on a diet book – but without it being a diet book! It’s more about changing the way you eat by making you realize that 95% of your diet is crap and you really need to change the way you think about your food.

It’s an incredibly easy read and I was able to finish it in 2 days. The basic premise is that processed food is making us sick – a lot of food that we think is good for us is completely nutritionally deficient and actually harmful. Most of the food in the supermarket (especially the sort of food that doesn’t rot) is 50% sugar (in some form or another). One of the biggest evils is the invention of high-fructose corn syrup that constitutes a major portion of what we eat. About 1/3rd of the US population with develop diabetes by 2050 and we can thank the food industry and the government nexus for that.

When shopping, avoid the center aisles. Avoid anything that can’t rot and anything with an ingredient you can’t pronounce. Avoid any food product that makes health claims. If it has to tell you that its healthy, it’s probably not really food to begin with.

The book also has some memorable quotes:

“Eat food, not food-like products.”

“Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does.”

“You are what you eat eats too.”
Most cows end their days on a diet of corn, unsold candy, ground up cows, and a pharmacy’s worth of antibiotics. Try and eat less beef. On another note, methane from cows constitutes over 25% of global warming emissions – reducing the amount of beef in your diet will slow global warming too!

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Eat natural food, the kind your grandmother served (and not because she was so wise, but because the food industry had not yet learned that the big money was in processing, not harvesting). Use meat sparingly. Eat your greens, the leafier and more varied the better.

Basically, ignore the western diets and the food pyramid tables we’ve been taught are so healthy for the past few decades. Look to the cultures where people eat well and live long. They eat veggies where meat is a side dish, not the other way around. Ignore the faddists and experts. Trust your gut. Literally.

If you don’t save yourself, no one else will. Not the government, the American Medical Association and not the food industry.

I’ve decided I’m going to eat a lot more salads. The local Trader Joe’s has some amazing salads for less than $5 per meal. Add some fresh fruit and at least I’ll be eating healthier, regardless of whether I lose weight or not.


Fat Man Joe | Diet, book review | Comments (0)

Disabled Marine Does Cross-fit

February 2, 2010 – 10:07 pm

This disabled marine cannot walk but he can do cross-fit! If this doesn’t motivate you nothing will.

Fat Man Joe | Inspirational | Comments (0)

Bronchitis Ruins Diet

February 2, 2010 – 10:05 pm

Immediately after starting my diet, I developed allergic bronchitis. I was eating about 20 lozenges everyday – not a good idea when you’re trying to lose weight. Anyway, I eventually found that over-the-counter Claritin and copious amounts of green tea cleared it up, but I spent most of summer indoors, not working out and not really doing any dieting either.

Since then I haven’t really had a chance to lose weight, although I have been going to the gym pretty regularly. At least I’m still where where I was in July at 189 lbs and haven’t put on any more weight.

Its really hard following the Atkins diet while college is in session. Lets see if I can just lose weight through exercise alone – I doubt it – I haven’t historically had much luck without severe dietary change, and without a high protein diet, I can’t seem to be able to curb my appetite.

Fat Man Joe | Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Atkins Diet: One Month Later…

July 26, 2009 – 8:09 pm

So I started the Atkins diet about a month ago. About 14 days into the program I was down to 185 lbs. Since the diet has a diuretic effect, I suspect that most of the weight loss was water, but I was happy nonetheless. My belly started going in and I felt good.

Then I went for a trip to Vancouver for a week. I tried very hard to stick to the diet, not drink any alcohol or carbs, but it was pretty tough. I did take protein powder, sachets of splenda, and low-carb protein bars with me which helped a lot. But I came back a week later at 186 lbs. Not too bad.

But then my Mom decided to visit for a month! That’s really shot my diet. After a week, I’m back at 190 lbs :-( I’m still trying to stick to my diet, but its tough and I’ve been rather sloppy. The probably with the Atkins Diet is that you can’t eat more than a certain amount of carbs which varies from person to person. In most cases this could be at most 50 grams but could be as low as 10 gms. So even any slight variation from the diet can negative all the weight loss.

It’s Sunday evening and I’m trying to cook enough meat for the week which will help in sticking to the diet. Hopefully the 190 lbs won’t go back up to 194 lbs where I started!

Fat Man Joe | Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Going On The Atkins Diet

June 23, 2009 – 8:20 pm

Over a year after I started this site, I’ve finally decided to go on a diet. Not only was I overweight to begin with, my exercise and diet may have actually slipped further downhill in the past year. Most of it was due to my MBA program, but to be truthful, it’s mainly because of my overwhelming desire to overburden myself with work and study commitments. In the end, I overworked myself and didn’t get any time to exercise or take care of myself.

Anyway, now it’s summer and I have more free time. It dawned on me last week that I’m still really, really overweight and I haven’t done anything to achieve my weight-reduction goals. I’m currently 5′9.5 and 194lbs with 30.5% body fat. Not sure how accurate the body fat measurement is, but I’m using digital weighting machine I bought on Amazon for about $50. I’ve been this weight before, but the percentage of fat has been lower!  Ideally, my goal is drop to 175lbs.

One of the issues I’ve been facing is that I crave sweets in the evening and I’ve started drinking a lot of alcohol since I started the MBA program. Cutting out alcohol would be a necessary step towards losing weight. I’m not really sure how the body metabolizes alcohol and whether it leads to weight gain, but at this point I really need to be particularly careful. I have also had a tendency to avoid sugar items. I always drink diet sodas (which I try to avoid anyway) and have been using Splenda instead of sugar for the past 5 years.

Over ten years ago, while I was in college, I had been studying like crazy for my finals. I used to eat nothing but eggs, fish, cubes of processed cheese and drink coffee. I also used to take a lot of vitamins, which I’ve been taking since childhood (don’t really know why, I think my Dad used to get them free from Medical reps). I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the induction phase of the Atkins Diet. In three weeks, I lost a remarkable amount of weight and suffered no negative side-effects of an imbalanced diet. My parents who were doctors, were shocked to see my weight loss when I went back home and my Dad did a whole bunch of tests (I think he may have suspected I was on drugs!). But everything came back normal.

So I know the Atkins diet really does work well for me, the only problem is that it’s hard to start it.  The induction phase is pretty strict. I think your daily carb intake is restricted to under 40 grams (more or less, depending on your bodies tolerance) .The severe carbohydrate restriction is very difficult especially when you like carbs!  Also, finding new recipies to break the monotany of eggs and fish is very hard.

While on the diet, you’re allowed to eat any amounts of protein and fat – its only the carbohydrates that are restricted. A lot of people say that eating a high-protein diet causes kidney failure. There may be some truth to this, but I don’t think its necessarily applicable. With people who are overweight, these spikes and crashes cause food cravings. Going on a low-carb or no-carb diet reduces the spikes that occur in your blood sugar levels and maintains an even level throughout the day. This in turn reduces your cravings, and makes you eat less food, thus lowering your calorific intake. I don’t think dieters on an Atkins diet eat more protein than regular people – it’s just that a larger portion of their diet is protein.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes – wish me luck!

Fat Man Joe | Diet, Updates | Comments (0)

Heart Disease Facts: Forewarned Is Forearmed

March 14, 2009 – 7:05 am

My friend sent me an interesting article about heart disease. It’s a sad day when your friends start sending you these kinds of articles. Its as if you wake up one day and you realize you’ve developed the middle age spread and have hair growing out of your ears.

Surprising Heart Disease Facts

By MARY KEARL
You may know that heart disease is the leading cause of death among Americans, and you may even know the basic risk factors. The things you can control — like smoking,high blood pressure,high cholesterol, being overweight or — plus the things you can’t, such as age, sex and genes. Here, Nancy Snyderman, M.D., author of Medical Myths That Can Kill You: And the 101 Truths That Will Save, Extend, and Improve Your Life will reveal the startling facts you probably don’t know about heart disease.

If you have this on your ear…

A transverse crease — one that goes horizontally across your ear — may indicate heart disease, says Dr. Snyderman. “About eight years ago, there was a study of 108 people that found that individuals with a crease in at least one earlobe were more likely to die than people with out ear creases.” This indented mark gives a clue about your body’s levels of elastin — a protein that affects blood vessel functioning. If you don’t have enough elastin, it could be a sign of heart disease.

Baldness is a risk factor

Men who are balding at the front of the head and the crown should get their hearts evaluated, says Dr. Snyderman. “It has to do with vascular supply to the hair follicles — everything in your body needs a blood vessel. The earlier the baldness and the more bald the baldness, the higher the risk of heart disease.” Compared with men who are not bald, the risk of heart disease increases by 9 percent if the balding is at the front of a man’s head, by 23 percent if it is at the crown and by 36 percent if he is completely bald on the top of his head, according to a Harvard Health study cited by Dr. Snyderman.

Snoring can indicate heart disease

“If you snore and you have sleep apnea — when you stop breathing at night for 10 seconds or longer — the risk of heart disease is real,” says Dr. Snyderman. “We brush off snoring as no big deal, but your heart and your lungs have to work that much longer just to circulate your blood, and this takes a toll. This affects men and women equally.”

How erectile dysfunction relates to heart disease

“If a man comes to the doctor’s office complaining that he can’t get an erection, he really has to get his heart evaluated,” says Dr. Snyderman. If you’re having a hard time getting blood to the penis to achieve an orgasm, “you have to wonder if the vascular supply coming out of the heart or to the heart isn’t good.” Men who have erectile dysfunction are 80 percent more likely to develop heart disease than men who do not, and young men in their 40s who have erectile dysfunction are twice as likely to get heart disease, according to a Mayo Clinic study cited by Dr. Snyderman.

Risky combinations

Having multiple risk factors can up your odds for heart disease astronomically. The combination of high blood pressure and baldness ups a man’s risk by 79 percent, whereas having high cholesterol and male-patterned baldness increases his risk by 178 percent, according to a Harvard Health study cited by Dr. Snyderman.

Jaw pain may signal a heart attack

You know the basic heart attack symptoms: pain shooting down your left arm, or a large pain under the breast bone, which Dr. Snyderman says patients describe as “having an elephant sitting on your chest.” But one unusual sore spot related to heart attacks is often a complaint among women — pain in the jaw, when heart attack pain radiates up to the jaws and teeth.

Men and women feel heart attack pain differently

“Women more than men have this intuitive sense that something is not quite right,” says Dr. Snyderman. “Usually for men, the way they discover heart attack risk is when they feel, ‘Oh, my God, something is happening.’”

Heart disease kills this gender more …

Men. “Estrogen probably protects women a little bit, until later in life when estrogen levels drop,” says Dr. Snyderman. “But women also access the healthcare system more than men. Men go to the pediatrician and stay in the healthcare system till they’re 18, then they disappear. Unfortunately, with heart disease being the number-one killer, it’s often heart disease that brings men to the doctor’s office.”

Men’s risky behavior ups their risk

Men are greater risk-takers than women — and this could have an impact on whether they are affected by heart disease, says Dr. Snyderman. “The typical overworked guy is a smoker, who works and is under stress. On top of that, he has a bad diet and never exercises. These become cumulative factors. Obviously genetics play a role, too.”

Sleep matters

“We are a sleep-deprived nation,” says Snyderman. “When you cut back on shuteye, your immune system really takes a hit. Stress and lack of sleep are really compound factors that can increase heart-disease risk.”

Fat Man Joe | Health, Heart | Comments (1)

Do Bras Cause Cancer?

January 15, 2009 – 2:02 am

As if you needed another reason to promote women to go bra-less, here’s the health story:

Is it possible that wearing a bra can actually cause cancer? Studies show that this is a very real possibility. The reason is that regularly wearing a bra prevents lymph drainage and circulation, which can greatly increase the possibility of developing breast cancer.

The lymphatic and circulatory systems are responsible for both delivering vital nutrients and clearing out toxins. When the body does not have access to nutrients or when it is under the attack of toxins, cancer may develop.

A study published in the European Journal of Cancer studied factors for breast cancer such as breast size and handedness. They discovered that premenopausal women who do not wear bras are less than half as likely to get breast cancer that those who regularly wear a bra. A study conducted by researcher David Moth revealed that even the lightest bras place pressure on the lymphatic system.

Other research published in Chronobiology International in 2000 discovered that regular bra wearing decreases the production of melatonin, which is a potent natural antioxidant and the hormone that regulates sleep, boosts the immune system and, incredibly fights aging. Balanced melatonin levels are essential for the body to fight many types of cancer, including breast cancer.

Researchers Singer and Grismaijer observed 4,500 women and their bra wearing practices. An amazing 3 out of 4 women who wore their bras 24 hours per day developed breast cancer. Women who wore their bras more than 12 hours per day had a 1 in 7 chance of getting breast cancer. 1 out 152 women who wore their bra less than 12 hours a day got breast cancer and an incredibly low 1 out of 168 women who rarely or never wear a bra developed breast cancer.

These same researchers studied the indigenous populations of New Zealand and Australia. The Maoris, who are indigenous to New Zealand, are basically fully integrated into mainstream New Zealand life and interestingly have the same chances of developing breast cancer. The aboriginals of Australia on the other hand have not integrated into regular western society and do not regularly wear bras, and have practically no breast cancer. Japanese, Fijians, and many women from other cultures were found to have a significantly higher chance of developing breast cancer when they began wearing bras.

It may be interesting to note that a very small proportion of men do develop breast cancer, exactly the same amount as women who go braless!

European, Journal of Cancer 1991 ;27(2): 131-5.
Cancer is Not a Disease by Andreas Moritz

Fat Man Joe | cancer | Comments (0)

Welcome To The Fattest Man In Thailand

April 2, 2008 – 11:25 pm

Welcome to the Fattest Man In Thailand. I’m Fat Joe and I’ll be covering topics such as exercise, diet, nutrition, weight loss, muscle gain, supplementation, fitness and even mental well-being. Additionally, I’ll share with you my personal experiences of health, plans and goals. You’ll read about my acheivements and disappointments. I’ll spend some time covering new health news and break-throughs. I’ll cover what I read in health magazines and discuss the psychology behind making good health decisions.

In the interests of full disclosure I do not currently live in Thailand and I’m not in the health profession at all. I do not dispense advise, and I can only offer my best opinion. You should double check with a doctor, pharmacist or trainer before following through on anything you read here.

On the other hand, I have the advantage of being an Average Joe. If I can make a goal, there should be no reason why you can’t. If I fail and learn a lesson in the process, you can avoid my mistakes.

To find out how this site came about, read my About page.

Fat Man Joe | Introduction | Comments (0)