The Dyas Family

I had a long term and short term goals. I knew I wanted to get down at least to 200lbs. and my doctor preferred to see me down to 190lbs or so. I set a long term goal of 190 and a short term goal of losing 2lbs per week, and therefore always had something I was working towards.

I ate less calories and worked out more. On a weekly basis I was probably taking in close to 20,000 calories on average. This was largely a result of eating out and ordering in, so…

I ate out and ordered in less frequently. When you eat at restaurants or order take out, it’s extremely easy to hit 2000 calories in single meal without even realizing it. Those places are in the business of making their food taste delicious, not keeping it low-cal.

I found exercise I enjoyed. I discovered I loved racquetball and started playing 3 times a week for an hour a session. It’s an excellent source of calorie burn, and I have a great deal of fun in the process. I also walked 4 miles on the days I didn’t play racquetball.

I identified exercise distractions. When walking on the treadmill for an hour, I’d either listen to my homemade “Workout Mix” on my iPod or I’d watch episodes of TV shows I wanted to see on DVD. Both made the time go by much quicker than just staring at the wall or the treadmill’s electronic display.

I switched from 3 large meals 6 small meals. I ate 150-200 calories “meals” every 2 hours or so throughout the course of the day. This kept me from being hungry, kept my metabolism active, and kept the calories from adding up as fast.

I avoided the gimmick diets. I did not want to be a prisoner of someone else’s weight loss plan. I did not want to be told what to eat and what not to eat. I like foods with carbs. I like foods with fats. I just liked them in smaller quantities than I used to.

I weighed myself weekly, and tracked my progress. This weekly benchmark told me how I was doing overall in the pursuit of my goal. If I had a bad week, I knew I needed to work extra hard the following week to make up for it.

I indulged occasionally, then worked it off. I always felt it was ok to have a few drinks or eat out occasionally. I just knew that it meant I had to do more exercise that week to reach my 2 lb. goal.

I was strong and confident. Friends would always give me a hard time about not going out to lunch with them, not drinking as much beer as them, or choosing the gym over the bar. I learned to be strong enough to tell them I was trying to be healthier and they were going to have to deal with it. After I showed some real results they were hesitant to give me crap for my actions that were obviously working for me.

I started drinking a lot of water. I was never much of a water drinker, but I started drinking about 1.5 liters a day at work. Not only did it help with digestion and keep me hydrated, but it also forced me to get up and walk to the bathroom more frequently.

I took the stairs at work every day. In reality I’m not sure how much this made a difference, but I felt healthier doing it, and it certainly didn’t hurt.

I made exercise a priority. My wife, Melissa, helped out a great deal with this one. There were often times when there was a million other things I should have been doing, but instead I played racquetball or walked on the treadmill for an hour. Many times this placed an additional burden on Melissa, but she was supportive enough to know it was important to me to maintain my routine.

I used positive feedback as fuel. When you’re losing weight, there’s few things more enjoyable than someone else noticing and commenting to you that you look good. At the beginning, I used the fact that no one had said anything to me yet as motivation. And then once people started noticing, I wanted them to keep noticing. Now that I’m approaching my target weight, I’m starting to use the fact that I don’t want to hear the opposite as motivation to maintain my healthy weight.

I drank less and drank light. For a while, I was the type to come home from work and have a beer or two before dinner. This was adding up to about 1000 calories a week I didn’t need. I cut the mid-week drinks out, but still allowed myself one night per weekend to indulge in a few beers. I also choose light beers as often as possible, however I treated myself to the good beers on occasion as well.

I shortened my commute. I realize this isn’t an option for everyone, but I decreased my daily commute time from 150 minutes to 30 minutes by finding a job in a building closer to my home. This effectively affords me 2 extra hours per day to exercise or finish something else so I can make time for exercise.

Check out what I’m doing these days to stay healthy here.