Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I am not going to act like I am an expert on losing weight. I've succeeded twice at losing roughly 30 pounds in my life but unfortunately they were the same 30 pounds both times. Come to think of it, I'm more of an expert at how to gain weight. Lesson 1: eat massive portions. There is no lesson 2. But there is a specific way that I go about losing weight and I thought I would share.

There are 5 simple rules I follow. They have, without fail, caused me to lose weight every time I try them. If I don't lose weight, it's because I deviated from these rules. I also have ranked them in order from the most important to the least important.


1. Drink AT LEAST 64 ounces of water. More is better, less is failure.

Not 64 ounces of milk, orange juice, and water, or 52 ounces of water and a can of diet coke. 64 ounces of WATER! You can have milk and orange juice, but it doesn't count towards your 64 ounces.

I bring a 32 ounce bottle to work with me every day. I can already tell you that the success of my weight loss day depends on how quickly I drink that bottle. What I do is drink the entire thing by lunch time. Then at lunch I fill it up again and try to drink the rest by the end of the work day. It sounds like a lot, and you do end up peeing a crazy amount throughout the day, but no matter who the nutritionist or dietician is you talk to, they will always say you can't lose weight if you don't drink a lot of water. It fills you up and curbs your food cravings. It's hard at first, and you have to concentrate on doing it and forcing it down the first few days, but after a while, drinking that much becomes second nature.

2. Eat the exact same meals, every day, for breakfast and lunch. 

You are never going to lose weight if you give yourself choices. Well, let me modify that, giving yourself choices is what makes losing weight difficult. You can't leave the house and say "What am I going to eat today?" How did making choices work for you last time? It never does. So every single day, you eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch. It might be miserable after a while, but if I'm losing weight, I'm not interested in wandering into it.

I am not one of those people who thinks breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I think people who eat big breakfasts are also the same kind of people who will use that as their justification to have a breakfast burrito or a sausage, egg, & cheese biscuit from McDonald's. Breakfast is important in that you just eat something, but definitely nothing huge. I'd say something around 200 calories is perfect. If you combine that and all the water you drink, your body is perfectly fine until lunch.

At lunch my goal is to fill myself up on foods that are healthy and low in calories. I don't really aim for a certain calorie count but I generally think you should never exceed 600 calories for lunch.

My personal routine is eating a nutrigrain breakfast bar from Whole Foods for breakfast. Then at lunch I have an apple, banana (with a little peanut butter on each slice cuz bananas suck), carrots, and a nutrient shake.And depending on whether or not we have it, 5 Ritz crackers because that's how many crackers Ritz has decided is enough for a "portion" (stupid).

3. Eat a moderate dinner without stuffing yourself.  Decide how much is enough before you begin.

Before you start eating, eyeball how much dinner is enough to make you full, only put that on your plate, and eat nothing more. When I'm losing weight, I don't pay attention to the health content of dinner. Usually with Liz cooking, it's always healthy anyway. but you don't have to eat the craziest, healthiest dinner in the world at this point. Have what you want but just have a reasonable portion. Besides, after your super awesome day of water and healthy stuff, you'll find it difficult to want to ruin what you did.

Dinner is the only choice you get for food throughout the day. That's because it's also the only meal of the day that I am invested in with another person. If I get a big huge meal for dinner, I have to eat while Liz stares me down.

4. Workout on a routine, but not excessively. 

This is why marathon training doesn't help you lose weight. You go out and run 20 miles, you're going to come back craving massive amounts of food. On the other hand if you consistently run 3 or 5 miles, 5 days a week, then you get your body used to dealing with that. It's all psychological. If you are able to run 20 miles and resist the urge to splurge, then go for it. I just can't do it.

5. Weigh yourself every single day, almost obsess over it. 

This time around I stopped doing that because I figured it might be motivation to see how far I came in a week. It had the opposite effect. I ended up having to wait a week to realize I made little to no progress at all. It also caused me to not feel responsible for my daily food actions. If after a week I didn't lose weight, it's not necessarily because of the 1 beer I had Saturday night. It's the aggregate of the dumb decisions I did all week long. The goal is to limit every dumb decision.

If you weigh yourself every day, it's a constant reminder of what you are trying to do. You have to keep the goal in the forefront of your mind. I know every night that what I do has consequences tomorrow. It makes me not want to have a cupcake (Liz made 25 of them last night, ARG!) because I don't want to see what that did tomorrow morning. Small daily successes build up into big long term achievements.

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Over the past 2 weeks, I have followed rules 1, 3, and 4 and have only lost 2 pounds. I'm not too terribly thrilled with that. Rule #2 is super important and I need to go to the grocery store and stock up to make sure I follow it. It's heavily reliant on always having the right foods in the house. If you don't, then it's impossible and I inevitably trip up.

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This post has given me an idea on another blog post I want to write. What is the perfect day of food? Is there a perfect day of food? If so, I wonder what it would be like to have that same day of food for an entire month? I'm contemplating making that a February challenge for myself. The same thing every day for an entire month. Might have to make sure I take vitamins if I do that. Although it would be a surefire way to lose weight!!