"DIETING AND EXERCISING" MADE ME FAT! and how I lost all my weight!

I like to eat. I really like to eat. Worse yet, I normally like to eat foods that are not healthy! It gets even worse, when I get stressed or frustrated, I want to eat even more. And those facts are still true for me today. And I am sure I am not alone.
On my way to getting big, as in "huge" big, I tried and failed at many diets. Mostly because most diets involved depriving myself of the food I wanted to eat, or just left me feeling hungry all the time. That in turn would get me stressed or frustrated, which would make me want to eat more.
I would also try to exercise like a mad-man; I was a Fitness Club dream client; buy a membership, use it 3 or 4 times a week for the first month, and then slowly disappear from the gym floor as the novelty wore off, or the lack of results became frustrating, or work got too stressful, or when it just got too hard and not fun at all. Either way, the same old cycle would continue: stress, frustration, pint of double chocolate chip ice cream before going to bed!

You can get away with a lot when you are a cyclist.

Now, at this point, I could point out that on today's fun bike ride, I burned 2,111 calories (as estimated by Strava). That kind of lets me get away with my "I like to eat" motto without gaining the weight back. But spending calories is just part of the equation (OK, a big part of the equation and that's when cycling comes in, but more on that later). My problem always revolved around food:

Here was my key to losing weight: I stopped dieting!
Warning: things might get boring for a bit! please hang in there with me!

As it turns out, all my previous hard work "dieting" and "exercising" just left my poor body confused and broken down, as it received mixed messages. The key is to burn calories by being active, but you must also eat enough so that your body knows that it can freely burn those calories. Let me explain: every time I got hungry or even starving during my diets, my body's metabolism would slow down, as it never knew when the next meal would come. That would not only sabotage all my hard work in the gym as I didn't provide my body with enough nutrition, but it would also set me up for huge weight gain the moment my diet would end and I resumed eating all the foods I so desperately missed while dieting. (I could go much more on this, but it was getting so boring I went and took a nap!)

It was right around that time that I realized that "dieting" doesn't work for me, and that what I needed was a life-style adjustment: become a more active individual on a daily basis and never eat too much, but also - and this was the game changer for me: never eat too little! Obviously, basic nutrition and the types of food you consume are crucial, but I couldn't eat salads and whey protein mixes for the rest of my life. And being active daily is also crucial, but becoming a gym rat would only get me burnt out. The life-style change had to be permanent, and not a temporary thing, so for me, the exercise needed to be fun, and the food needed to taste good!

Yes, I called my blog VeloDiet so I could preach against Dieting,
but my marketing team said it sounded so good that it was ok!

Everyone is different, so finding a way to become an active individual (tennis, weight-lifting, cat-herding, soccer, rowing, ski-jumping) comes down to personal preference, but the key is that you must burn more calories than you consume in order to lose weight. This means more than walking to the mail box - my goal when I started was to get my cardiovascular system kicking for at least 30mins everyday (at 315lbs, I could only manage 20mins, but I was on my way!) Cycling works for me and I believe can work for many others, as it is more fun than exercise, and it is something that I could do daily (all I did at the start was walk 5 steps from the couch to the stationary bike and pedal for 30mins everyday while watching TV). Also, Cycling is low-impact (huge factor when someone is heavy) and it is a great cardiovascular exercise (you burn an incredible amount of calories and losing weight is all about the calories.)

Everyone is different, so finding a way to eat the correct amount of food will come down to personal preference, but the key for me was to never feel full but also to never feel hungry (it is important to know the difference between "hunger" and simply "wanting to eat more"). Obviously, eating healthy food is crucial and it can be a stumbling block for many of us. What worked for me was finding a balance of eating more healthy food (that I liked) and much less of the unhealthy food (that I liked). I only eat food that I like. Some people can completely cut-off  a lot of unhealthy foods from their lives, but I knew that I couldn't deprive myself because then I would think of it as a diet - and diet sucks! Moderation was the motto for my new lifestyle. There will be more blog posts in the future on the tricks that worked for me in achieving such balance (finding a healthy snack that tastes good and that you enjoy eating was a huge step for me!)



It's all about balance and finding what works for you!

Lastly, it takes time. I really had let myself go, so I knew it would take lots of time. The slow rate of weight loss was so difficult for me, that I stopped weighing myself for years so I wouldn't fall back on the old habits of eating too little and starving myself, or over-exercising and burning out. The weight loss happens slowly but as long as you continue with your active lifestyle (ride lots!) and responsible eating habits (don't overeat, don't feel hungry, more of the good, less of the bad), then you will be on your way.

Now, let's go for a bike ride!