How I lost the weight?

I have had a bunch of people ask me how I lost the weight and I generally respond with "eating right and exercise". Too be honest I did not really notice a difference in the mirror until my daughter showed me a picture of the two of us taken around the time of her winter dance. I was right around my peak weigh of 215 at the time. I guess I just fluffed off the "what have you been doing?" question because have not reached my goal yet and I could not see the difference in my appearance. The truth is when I think about everything I have been doing I have really been busting my butt, LITERALLY! Below is the outline of my weight loss routine. I am not an expert, I know there are a bunch of theories, I know there are people that say you should do "this or that". I am not claiming this is the magic formula, I am just saying this is what I am doing.

Workouts -

I start my day with a very quick and very light exercise while I am waiting for the shower to warm up. I do a set up 100 incline pushups against the bathroom counter top. This is not really a workout, I am just trying to get the blood flowing. It takes about a minute or so and the incline is fairly high. I read somewhere that even a very moderate amount of exercise will boost your resting metabolism for hours after exercising. It makes sense to me, so I added it to my routine. I did have to work my way up to 100 so there is some level of difficulty involved.

Using the same moderate exercise boosting your metabolism theory I started walking the stairs at work. I walk from the 10th floor of my building down to the first, back up to the 18th, then back down to the 10th. Again, not really "working out" but I do get the blood flowing. By the time I get back to my desk I am just barely starting to break a sweat. I cannot go to meetings looking like a sweaty pig so I need to watch my pace.

Lunch time workout - I try to get in my lunch time run whenever possible but it is highly dependent on my workload. Once or twice a week is about all I can squeeze in. Recently I upped the intensity by adding jump squats and incline pushups at the mid-way point. The run is not super long, but it gets the job done in the time allotted.

BJJ and Judo - I train twice a week on Mon and Thr, each night is BJJ followed by Judo. Lately I added the team training on Tue for a third night, but I am going to back that off to an every other week schedule. I can add it back in every week when tournaments approach.

Off nights – On nights I am not training I try to get my kettle bell workout in. Try as a may life often gets in the way, but I do what I can. I probably get the kettle bell workout in 1 – 3 times per week depending on what else is going on. Recently I upped the intensity by adding free squats between exercises.

Eating Right
A big part of my new eating habits revolve around preparing my food in advance. On Sundays I cut up and smash a few Avocados for freezing. I scoop the Avocado into an ice cube tray for freezing. I use a baby food tray because it has a cover and the cube sizes turn out to be a perfect serving size. Basically I use the Avocado as a substitute for other spreads such as butter, mayo and blue cheese. I also prepare eggs on Sundays, I pour egg beaters into a muffin tray and bake them for 15- 20 min. Each morning I have one muffin sized omelet on a mini bagel with Avocado spread. In addition to the Avocado and eggs, I make fruit smoothies for the week and freeze them in individual thermoses. 1 have one fruit smoothie per day around 3pm.

Lunch – No more chicken cheese steaks and no more garbage. For the most part I have 1 tuna pack with crackers, 1 Avocado cube and a little bit of mayo. This is a major change and a major decrease in my calorie intake.

Dinners are light and I try not to have seconds. This is also a major decrease in calorie intake. Cutting out seconds cuts my dinner calories in half, or almost in half. This was a hard one for me, the trick has been adding a fruit or salad before every meal. Adding a big serving of salad leaves me with a fuller feeling cutting down the urge for seconds.

Drinking calories – I don’t drink a lot of soda was not an issue. However, I did significantly cut down on drinking beer. I am not a big drinker, but I would have a beer at night before bed. Now I substitute a mixed drink for the beer. Not sure if this really helps since I am adding a sugary juice, but like I said before this is what I am doing.

Setting a goal and having a reason – I have a long term weigh goal that will take several more months to hit and a short term goal that should only take another few weeks. The trick for me is making the goal time bound and having a good reason to go after the goal. Setting my weight goals based on upcoming tournaments works best. It just is not enough to say “I want to lose weight”, for me it has to be “I am going to lose XXlbs by XX date because xxxxx”.

Starting weight 215
Weight at the time of this post 187
Goal 175 by Apr 2011