I have been told I am overweight. I was told this as if it were news – it’s not news honey, I can see when I look in a mirror, and with a face like mine I do look in the mirror often.
But seriously, yes I am indeed overweight. Still. I’ve tried to adopt the “change your lifestyle, don’t be on a diet” concept, but not being on a diet constantly makes you think of being on a diet, which makes you think of food, and therefore eat. So that doesn’t work.
I read Tim Ferriss’s The 4 Hour Work Week, and enjoyed it. I was pleased to see he shared many of my ideas, but also had some new one that I could put in to practice. This in turn lead me to another book by the same author, “The 4 Hour Body”. Taking the concepts of minimum effective dose and strategic exercise combined with scheduled overeating, it seemed as if it was worth a go.
There’s no calorie counting, just choosing food (especially “slow carbs”) in a simple, set pattern, and watching the results. Like a muppet – a muppet that didn’t believe this would really amount to anything but might be interesting to try – I did not take any “before” photos, nor did I take any “before” measurements other than my weight.
In just over two months, I have lost over 20 pounds.
I am not hungry all the time, nor do I find it hard to eat “properly”. On Saturday, I ate a 9 inch pizza, some deep fried chips, half a pot of coleslaw, 3 slices of garlic bread and two bowls of ice cream. IN ONE MEAL, AT 9PM. And I weigh less now than I did on Friday.
It is claimed in the book that you can lose upwards of 20 pounds in a month, but frankly, to have lost 20 pounds at all is a bit of a miracle. If you have excess weight hanging about your person, I can thoroughly recommend reading this book and starting to eat as Tim suggests. It may be psychological, it may just be that I’m eating better (pizza and ice cream notwithstanding) but I definitely feel better about myself and seem to have more energy.
Wonder if there’s still time to enter the Olympics?
