Photo by Leo R.

I’ve lost 25 lbs after three months. I met my 5 pound goal for March.

Early January I weighed 185 and I’m 160 pounds now. I think this is the first time I’ve weighed 160 since my sophomore year in college — 2001. My upper abs are showing through and since I’ve concentrated a lot more on weight training I’ve have put on some muscle so my fat gains are likely more than 25lbs.

In March I made a few changes to my diet and exercise which I’ll outline in this post. I’ll also summarize how I got to this point for anyone new to the blog.

I started at 185lbs in January and wanted to lose 15lbs in the first month and 5lbs in each addition month. I decided to cut calories and start doing some sort of aerobics — my wife and I chose Taebo. I started out drinking Slim Fast shakes for breakfast/lunch. They have a good amount of protein/fiber and I think they taste great. It worked as advertised in my opinion. It was fast, easy, and curbed hunger a lot better than a bowl of cereal. We stuck to the diet and Taebo four or five days a week that first month. I paid attention to carbohydrate intake and specifically tried to make sure I never took in simple carbohydrates without protein/fiber — I made up a system that I needed to always have more protein/fiber grams than sugar grams if I was going to eat it. I lost 14 pounds and my wife lost 10.

In February I started concentrating a lot on maximizing my metabolism. In past diets it’s always around the one month mark that my losses slow dramatically and I get frustrated. I did a lot of research and started spacing out meals/snacks as much as possible, further limiting my carbohydrate intake, and started weight training again. In the past I’ve been a very enthusiastic weight trainer. I love doing it. I didn’t start back very seriously in January because I didn’t think I could gain muscle while losing fat, the numbers really don’t add up. But then I read a few articles on muscle memory and realized I had lost a lot of muscle due to inactivity over the years — I was far from the strength level I was when I got out of high school. In February my wife and I started weight training three times a week. The gains came very fast initially and my strength went way up after only a few workouts, I was hooked. At the end of February I had lost 6 pounds and my wife had lost
5.

In March I became more passionate about resistance training. I didn’t do more, as I think that would be counterproductive, but I changed my diet and other exercise to facilitate more muscle gain — and therefore more fat loss. I started monitoring my protein intake and concentrated on getting more. Most days I get around 150 grams which is over half my calorie intake for the day. I space my calories out so that I’m eating every two hours and am rarely hungry. I’ve also completely dropped aerobic activity in favor of weight training. My strength goes up workout to workout and I can tell from the mirror I’ve put on some muscle. How much is impossible to tell but I know I’ve lost more than 25lbs of fat now.

By the end of April I hope to be at 155 pounds and then down to 150 by the middle of June when we go to the beach. I will post before/after pictures at that time which will hopefully show a 30+ pounds of fat lost and 5+ pounds of muscle gained. After the beach I will be moving into maintenance and muscle gaining mode but will need likely diet a month or so before August in preparation for Stephanie and my long overdue honeymoon in the Bahamas.