I started 2017 morbidly obese, tipping the scale at 334 pounds. I would often see a Facebook friend post his progress on a low-carb / high (healthy) fat way of eating dubbed No Sugars, No Grains – #NSNG on your social media – and I was intrigued. I’ve already blogged about it here, but it bears repeating because it has been so beneficial to both Christie and I.
Between March and the end of the year I dropped 80 pounds. Christie lost close to 50. Those are huge milestones. The weight loss came primarily from diet, not exercise. You cannot outrun a bad diet.
Click To Enlarge
While this blog and this website are about personal finance, we will occasionally discuss diet and exercise topics too. There are so many similarities. Want to pay off debt? It takes discipline. Want to lose weight? It takes the same kind of discipline. Thankfully, we know what it takes to pay off debt. We are applying the same discipline with our way of eating. And, surprise, surprise, it’s working.
Finish by Jon Acuff @ Amazon
Other notable milestones during the year: I jogged a 5K. Now understand….Christie walks faster than I jog, but that’s not the point. The point is, I jogged an entire 5-freakin’-K. Took me 50 minutes but I did it. If you are out of shape and want to do it too, I used the Couch To 5K system (C25K). An app on my phone walked me (and jogged me) through a 9-week training plan that I crammed into 16 weeks. Hey I’m a Clydesdale, not a Thoroughbred! There’s no shame in finishing slow. The point is, I finished.
Eat Happy by Anna Vocino @ Amazon
Our way of eating includes quite a bit of saturated fat. No, you shouldn’t dive head first into a vat of lard, but every day we eat some combination of heavy cream, bacon, avocado, cheese, olive oil, eggs, and beef. A lot of what we eat each week comes directly from Eat Happy by Anna Vocino. After ten months of this I had my annual physical and bloodwork. My doctor’s handwritten note on the test results says “Perfect!” and he suggests I no longer need triglyceride medication.
Christie is approaching her goal weight and being able to get into a favorite pair of Rockies jeans, size 5/6. I’ve gone from 3XL shirts to XL and plan on losing another 20 pounds by the end of Q1 2018, and then possibly a final 20 pounds by the end of 2018. That would put me at 215 pounds. I can’t recall when I last weighed that. 9th grade maybe?
With the holidays, colder weather, and shorter days here at the New Year we have tapered off our running and walking. We are both looking forward to reenergizing that part of health ASAP. No excuses!
Probably the most important aspect of 2017’s changes in our diet and exercise is that we are implementing the food aspect as a Way of Life. I use the term “diet” meaning “what we eat”. Not in the traditional sense of a restrictive, temporary thing. Let’s revisit this thought in one year, then in two years, but for the first time in my life, I feel forever committed about this way of eating. I knew I was consuming too much sugar, in many forms, in my daily food intake. The truth is, all we’ve really done is drastically reduced the amount of sugar we eat. And we are retraining our brain to not be dependent on sugar. We no longer crave it or artificial sweeteners.
This way of eating is something we are doing together. We are defining and meeting shared goals as well as individual goals. How about you? Do you do a recap of the year to see where you came from, what you accomplished, and what you can do better?
Recent Comments