Photo by Dunny.

This was written last month before starting fitfilter.com, but I want to share it with everyone. I wrote earlier about diet and fitness goal setting tips and now I’d like to expand upon that and talk about my goals.

The question I always get from my dad when I tell him I’m going on a diet is “Why?!” (then again that is his response to pretty much everything I say I’m going to do). I’ll tell him why then he’ll ask how, “Are you going to starve yourself again?” He also always reminds me to stay off diet drinks because “Aspartame is poison” and how pickles have “negative calories”, but that is a digression. I’m going to answer all the applicable questions in one fell swoop in this post. The “What, when, why, where and how” to my diet and fitness goals.

See the end of this article for the early February update in italics.

The reason (why):

I made an epiphany earlier this year that I was addicted to food. I was not grossly overweight, not even obese by BMI calculations but I was mindlessly eating and putting food on a pedestal in life. I have yo-yo’d up and down over ten times and enough is enough. I am going to use all of the years of using myself as a guinea pig for every new diet and reading fitness and diet books and Men’s Health and to my advantage. I want to get down to a healthy weight and establish fitness and healthy eating as a life long habit

Goals (what and when):

I am starting at around 183lbs.

January - get down to 170

February - 165

March - 160

April - 155

May - Increase muscle mass and strength. Up protein and calories and follow a more strict work out regime, much like the one Tim Ferris posted about here which is also known as HIT (High Intensity Training ).

June
Goal: 150 (beach time!)

The plan (how and where):

I am using a meal replacement type diet. More specifically, Slim Fast. My wife and I love the taste of the stuff, it’s cheap, and it’s easy to acquire.

I have a Slim Fast when I get to work around 8am (190 calories, 5g fiber, 10g protein), at lunch (Noon), then I snack in the afternoon up to 200 calories (I usually eat mixed nuts, no peanuts, but sometimes will go with fruit or leftovers from dinner). This puts me at 600 calories when I get home at 5. My wife and I do Taebo> (35 minutes) then eat dinner. Dinner is typically ~500 calories and is always something healthy (Stephanie is an excellent healthy vegetarian cook). Then I can have more later in the night. The diet is easy, a characteristic that will ensure I stick with it.

I try to eat less than 1500 calories a day. By some calorie calculators this puts me “too low” but for me I think 1500 is a good amount; I have a very slow metabolism.

I also do weight training two times a week. I only do multi-joint movements (bench press, squat, military press) because I’m not going to kid myself and think I am going to put on a lot muscle during this time.

I realize 13 lbs in the first month is a lofty goal. At the beginning of new eating plans people lose the most weight. In the past I have been able to lose 10-15 lbs pretty quick but it was on unsustainable diets. I will have to see what happens this time with an easier diet. I can envision myself staying on this diet for the rest of my life, which is the key to a healthy lifestyle change.

This plan will put me at 150lbs which is what I was when I started college almost 10 years ago. I have never set long term goals and short term goals so explicitly and I think it will make a big difference.

I will post before-after pictures after I lose weight, I’m not that brave yet.

February update

January blew by. The eating plan and cardio were very easy to stick to. However, I missed my goal by 1 pound! I was going to buy some new jeans from Banana Republic if I made 170. Regardless, 12 lbs was a very good first month for the effort that I put in. My January goal was very risky but it was a great experiment. I am not going to re-adjust my goals since I was very close, onward to 165!