How I met my weightloss

In the first 2 parts I told what it was that made me a fatty and then what motivated me to change that about myself. In this part I will tell you the steps I took to actually drop weight, and how I don't think it was very difficult.

Keep in mind that I am not a doctor nor am I a fitness trainer or dietician. I am not necessarily saying that you should do this, but only that it worked for me.

we can change if we want to...

After the triathlon I was feeling pretty good about things. I had accomplished something that I really wasn't sure I could do but I had a problem. Why was I still overweight (yeah yeah, i know this doesn't change in 2 months but other than the fact that I was obviously stronger, i wasn't any smaller - maybe just 5 lbs or a couple kilos.) I actually remembered something that many people know about but actually impacted members of my family years ago.

Perhaps it sounds cliche, but my parents years ago went on the Atkins diet when they felt as though they could stand to lose a bit of weight and even though i wasn't around I know that it worked. It's actually better if you aren't around and you don't see someone for months at a time because then the change seems so shocking. This is what people experience when they see me after not having been in the country for a while. Anyway, it's basically just avoiding carbohydrates - in case you hadn't heard about it.

There is a real issue with dodging carbs because do you know what foods are high in carbohydrates? Literally, all the best ones!

Living in Asia and no longer consuming rice is easier said than done seeing as how everything is served with rice. Even if you go to the fancy expat places everything has some element of delicious bread involved. Also all the easy snacks are basically just bags of carbs. So how do you go about getting past this? Unfortunately you have to cook everything yourself or not eat. Those are the only two ways (or at least it was for me.)

This incorporated going to the local grocery store and buying a bunch of meat. For me it was ground beef, bacon, and chicken breast. Then i had to find a way to make them taste good (except bacon, that is already awesome in it's out-of-the-bag form.) This involved finding or creating sauces, which introduces another problem. An awful lot of sauces out there have lots of sugar in it, which is the absolute worst carb you can possibly consume. So you have to be very careful about this. I found an app that can scan most items by barcode at the grocery store which probably isn't an issue for you since it is likely already written on there anyway. I needed it because the products here always have an impossible-to-remove sticker over the nutritional information that it is Thai (and sometimes the information is for the wrong product) anyway, the app is made by myfitnesspal and it is free. Check it out if you want it.

it's basically like this

Moving on before i get too wordy.

The good thing about the low-carb diet is that you can have all the cheese and salad dressing you want. Because although these are abosolutely loaded with fat, they are extremely low or completely devoid of carbs. Milk is ok too. On the other hand, fruit, and fruit juices, are not allowed.

For me the biggest problem was that the number one culpret of carb intake is my best friend beer. I had come to find out something I kind of already knew and that is that beer is loaded with carbs. An average full-flavored lager is 12-20 grams each. Take in consideration that the Whopper from Burger King has only 19 grams, and it is easier to understand why someone like me could gain 60 pounds.

It was extremely common for me to have 12 beers. I would be physically incapable of eating 12 whoppers.

Here is the kicker: I never stopped drinking beer. I simply changed brands. Granted, the new brand is not near as good tasting but it only has 3 grams of carbs per bottle. It starts to taste pretty awful after like 6 of them and maybe that is a good thing.

Lots of people out there say that this beer is terrible and i don't entirely disagree with you, but if you want to drink beer and also want to lose weight.... that's the sacrifice you have to make. Wine or spirits mixed with soda water or diet coke is fine also.

So, in my first month I shocked the system and NEVER had more than 50 grams of carbs a day and at first it was really tough. I never had pizza, i never had a piece of bread, i never had potato chips (you can't have potatoes either, by they way,) and i never had fruit or fruit juice.

A nutritionist would say that this diet is appalling but i gotta say that I am not sure that I believe what they have to say anymore. When i was growing up i was told that we had to eat a pile of spaghetti and bread to get the amount of grains or whatever that we need to be healthy.

Now I understand that beer is not in the chart but my friends and family members who rarely drank ended up gaining weight as well and lost it as soon as they cut down on carbs. They weren't stuffing their faces with Mars Bars prior to that either (obviously you can't have candy bars.)

Even the top most trainers in the world will tell you that weight loss is 80% what you put in your body, and 20% what you do with it. Meaning that you can exercise like a madman but if you are eating pancake sandwiches with an Oreo macciato smoothie milkshake from Starbucks.... you're not going to lose weight.

You can lose weight by using only these diet tactics. However, you feel a lot better about yourself if you exercise also. Don't go crazy with it at first, that will come. If you overdo it on day one day two is unlikely to happen at all. I go to the gym and mostly do weights but also will just get on a treadmill and walk for 40 minutes while i listen to people talk about crypto on youtube or listen to metal. You don't need to swim a triathlon to drop weight. You just need to watch what you eat and make your heart beat faster than it normally would.

you have to find a way to use this stuff

It also wouldn't hurt to make friends with some people that also live active lifestyles. I now hang out with people that are in the gym on a constant basis and I can finally talk to someone about something other than how much Jagermeister i had the other night.

I went from 235 pounds to 187 and now I am at the point where I am actually trying to go back up to around 200, but in a good way. I want to put on muscle. This is a difficult task as well because you have to eat so much protein. Supplements help such as whey protein but they are expensive and not always easy to find.

I think I've written enough about this for the day but here are some pics of me in Heroic Fitness in Ao Nang, Krabi. This is the first time they have ever been online in any capacity because I am not a selfie guy...

Now I said it wasn't difficult because of a couple reasons and here they are.

• i set reasonable, achievable goals
• I didn't push myself too hard at the gym... not to the point of hurting myself or encouraging me to not want to go back
• I always went to the gym not knowing what i would do. Sometimes I did very little, but still went.
• I was still able to drink beer

Now I know that an extremely high fat diet is bad for you and that is why i have stepped back from it a bit. I don't know what the doctors say but you don't need to be one or even know one to realize that drowning everything in mayonnaise and cheese isn't gonna be good for you. However, the no carb diet worked wonders for rapid weight loss, now i just eat more sensibly and I even eat bread / pizza / rice etc from time to time. I just don't go nuts with it anymore.

Once I reach 200 again, this time a strong 200. I hope to violate this very odd rule at my gym.

I hope this was informative and that you enjoyed it. I'm not bragging. I still have a long ways to go, but at least I don't hate the guy in the mirror anymore.