As June came to an end I was six months into my diet and down 45 lbs. Not quite the 2 lbs/week loss I was targeting but I’m pleased with the results. I figure now’s a good time to recap what’s worked and what hasn’t, if nothing else it will provide a source of encouragement down the road.

This all started back in November. Yea, I know November is more than six months ago, I’ll get to that. I hadn’t weighed myself recently, but I guessed I was about 100 lbs overweight. Despite the impending holidays being bad for diets I was in the right frame of mind to start a diet.

I never had much luck with diets, usually gaining the weight back once I stopped the diet. My best experience was many, many years ago (pre-millennium) when I just ate healthier and did a lot of walking and bike riding. So in November I looked at what I needed to do with the intent to just eat better.

Rather than just eat less (or exercise more) I knew there were some habits I had to change.

1. I had to break fast food habit. I was hitting fast food joints pretty regularly (McDonald’s, Wendy’s). It should be pretty easy for me to avoid these places. I ate there because I was lazy and like the name says, it was fast.  If I only ate there when I had to I could keep it relatively healthy, but if I ate there regularly I’d slide back to the bad stuff. So best to avoid them all together.
2. The harder habit for me to break would be avoiding the ready-to-eat and packaged foods. I hate grocery shopping, meal planning, and meal preparation so while it wasn’t fast food it wasn’t the healthier stuff either.

So I decided to break these habits in November. Since the holiday’s were approaching and it wouldn’t be the best time for weight loss I didn’t start tracking my weight. The November plan was a disaster. Well, maybe not outright disaster, but it was a failure. I did do more grocery shopping with slightly better food, but it was obvious to me the plan wouldn’t work.

I also added another habit I needed to learn – portion control. For example, if there were three pork chops in a package I’d cook and eat all three. Generally speaking a package of something was a serving size for me.

So in Late November I looked at Nutrisystem and their competitors. The main benefits I expected from these plans were:

1. Food would be delivered. Limited shopping needed.
2. While I wouldn’t break my package = portion habit at least in this case the packages would be a diet sized portion.
3. I wouldn’t have to count, track or plan anything. It would all be done for me. (I was a bit wrong on this)

I wasn’t at all interested in the support or coaching these plans offer, so that wasn’t a factor I considered.

The December Nutrisystem plan wasn’t great but it had potential. I was surprised at how much additional food was needed along with how much nutritional planning was required. There wasn’t any calorie counting, but things like fruits, veggies, and proteins had to be planned for and measured.

But as the new year approached I had come up with a workable plan. I ate the Nutrisystem provided food according to the plan. As for the rest of the stuff I didn’t track it or plan it. I simply shopped for the stuff I liked and ate it with the meals however I wanted as long as I kept portions reasonable and had a good nutritional mix overall.

I realized two more things:

1. I needed to weigh myself and track my weight. That pre-millennium weight loss had bicking and walking to track progress. Improving times were encouragement. That just wasn’t going to be possible this time, so weight would be how I tracked progress.
2. Nutrisystem wasn’t a good long term solution. I ate less but wasn’t learning anything about what or how to eat. So I bought Lose It! For my iPod Touch. Back in November I didn’t want anything that required me to count and track. Now I was diving it.

So on January 1st I began in earnest (but not a new year’s resolution). On January 1st I weighed myself and found that at 297 lbs I was more than 100 pounds overweight. But I set a soft goal of loosing 100 lbs during the year. By “soft goal” I mean I wouldn’t obsess about loosing 2 lbs a week as long as I was loosing weight.

Having lost 45 pounds so far I’m off the 100 lb mark but I’m happy with the results. I went off Nutrisystem in June by delaying the June shipment and have continued to loose weight and stay under my calorie budget most of the time. Today I formally cancelled all future shipments.

What’s Worked for Me

What I found works for me is:
1. I weigh myself every morning. There’s a debate as to which is better, daily weighing or less frequently, like weekly. Neither is wrong. I weigh myself at the same time each day so I’m in the habit, otherwise I’d forget. My weight fluctuates so I don’t obsess if it goes up a bit as long as it’s down for the week. I also don’t cut calories the next day if there’s a slight bump up. I stay on the plan. This has the benefit of keeping me from cheating by not allowing me to “make it up” before the next weigh-in. And I know I’d never make it up, at least not entirely.

2. Lose It! Is a great calorie tracking program. Easy to use and works well. It also tracks other nutritional information. Worthy of a article of it’s own. I thought I would hate and fail with any plan that required tracking. I was wrong. With Lose It1 the tracking is so easy its become second nature. Another plus is being able to plan meals and see where I’ll be at the end of the day. For example, if I’m going out to dinner and I know I’ll want one or two beers I can plan accordingly.

It didn’t take long for me to begin using calories as my primary control mechanism instead of trying to follow the Nutrisystem portions.

3. Even though I’m not even close to being a reasonably good cook I now prepare all meals at home except when I’m eating out socially or for business. No take home. Nutrisystem did help with this since in addition to nuking their food I had to prepare something to go with it. This helped build the meal preparation habit.

4. I read nutrition labels now, not the big letters on the labels that are marketing hype, but the actual nutrition information. At this point I focus on portion size and calories.

I don’t think I’d change anything I did from January on. I don’t think the Nutrisystem plan itself was critical to my success, rather it was just having the food in the house and already portioned out that was critical to help me build the right habits. Any similar plan would have worked. If I had the discipline I could have shopped for the food myself from the beginning since I do that now.

The Hard Stuff

The hard stuff has been:

1. It was not a surprise that getting and staying on the diet was difficult at first. But once I made it through January it became a habit.
2. Staying under my daily calorie budget has been difficult at times. It’s actually become easier without Nutrisystem since I have more flexibility. While I don’t cut back if I’ve gone over the day before, I do try to pick lower calorie choices in order to stay on track for the week.
3. There have been times where I’ve knowingly gone over my calorie budget because I wanted to feed a craving. The hard part is keeping it a one time thing. For example, summer is here and I really like vanilla ice cream with hot fudge from a local shop. It was a weekly event last summer. This year I stopped once to have a large serving but have avoided going back and haven’t really wanted to (although I make it a point to not drive by the place in my travels).
4. Eating out is a killer. One week I had training and business meetings throughout the week. This meant lunch brought in (pizza & deli sandwiches)and a few dinners out. The dinners are at nice restaurants so I’m not going to order a salad. I try to order smart but I had a steak at the steakhouse and pasta at the Italian restaurant. I was 3500 calories over budget (assuming my estimates were in the ballpark) that week but still managed to lose 1/2 a pound.
5. I overestimate calories if I am estimating. This is usually only needed when I eat out so it’s not very often. I don’t want to think I’m under budget and not lose weight. That would be frustrating. This does make it a little harder to stay within the diet.

Summary

The main reason I’m happy with my progress is I don’t struggle daily (just a few days). For the most part I don’t have to fight cravings even though there’s a lot of foods I like but don’t eat anymore. The stuff that’s replaced it is good.

I need to exercise more, especially now that the weather is good.

So as July 2010 kicks off I’m at 252 pounds. I’m still about 80 pound overweight, although that varies depending on who you ask. I suspect it will get harder keep the pace of weight lose going as I take the weight off. The less I weigh the fewer calories I need to maintain my weight. Lose It! automatically tracks my calorie budget and reduces it gradually as I get lighter.