How I Lost 14 Pounds in 8 weeks Eating Ice Cream and Beer for Dinner

Yvette and I met last night for dinner at Richie's Diner after my jiu jitsu class for our weekly date night. I ordered a half pound bacon cheese burger, ate it, and when I stepped on the scale this morning I had lost another 1.4 pounds. How did that happen you ask?

In the following post I will detail out everything that I have been doing over the last 8 weeks to loose weight and it will not involve starving ( I am rarely hungry), I am not doing crazy workouts ( in fact, I am working out less than I have traditionally done in the past), and yes, it will involve eating food that will make you question my sanity. 

I want to start off by saying that these are only my results and you might question my methods, but I can only document what I learned, how I applied it, and what it has done to my body.

But first.... Beer and Ice-Cream pictures.

(a current favorite)

Here's what I will cover in this post:

My supplements

My exercise program

My feeding regimen

A few months back Mona Vie announced that they would be expanding their product line to include weight management/ weight loss products. Full disclosure here: Yvette and I are distributors for these guys and make money when people buy this product from us- ahhh..... the sweet smell of capitalism.  I was initially excited about this because there are so many fat people around me always looking for the next magic diet and spending a fortune on it. I figured that I'd get in the way of a few of those dollars and add to my checking account. 

However, I really didn't look at it as an opportunity for me personally to loose any weight. I've always been thin- we'll call it a runner's build as that makes me feel better, so what would I need with a weight loss product? However, I did notice that although I had run hundreds of miles every year for many years and worked out pretty regularly, I wasn't running around my house with my shirt off on a warm day like I had for most of my life. That was due to a little extra fat that I was carrying around my waist that was hiding the six-pack underneath. I'd pretty much written it off to aging ( I'll be 40 in a few months) and a slowing metabolism. But hey, I still looked better than most of the 39 year olds around me, right?

When the MonaVie RVL product came out in late November, I took a serious look at my diet and decided that replacing my almost daily habit of running through a fast food drive through and choosing the healthiest alternative possible ( Chicken tacos at Del Taco and Chicken Fajita pocket at Jack-in-the-Box if you're wondering) with a shake touted to be the most nutritionally dense on the market might not be a bad idea. It also helped that, when I did the math, I could save a ton of money too by doing this. 

So with that decision and the fact that I figured if it worked I would have a pretty good story ( like this one), I set a goal and embarked on my first real diet of my life- remember, runner's body. 

On November 14th I logged onto LoseIt and started a free account to track my progress (shout out to my friend Tracey Smith for pointing me this direction). I set up a goal to go from 174.2 to 160.0 pounds and it calculated a plan. Then I hooked it up to my Facebook account so that whenever I log my weight in (primarily via iPad app or on my Droid), it posts my results on Facebook for the whole world to see. Nothing like shame to keep you on track. I also purchased a cheap body fat analyzer so that I could keep track of that metric as it is truly a way better indicator or results than pure weight. Lastly, because I can be a bit of a data freak, I set up a separate spreadsheet to log my weight and body fat% daily. 

Because I know how much weight can vary throughout the day, I decided on measuring myself at the exact same time daily so that I can take out that variable. So each morning, I stumble over to the same scale, put it in the exact same spot on the floor, and jump up on it wearing the exact same clothing (boxer briefs because I know the curiosity is killing you). I then take my body fat percentage and record  the date, time of weigh in, weight and body fat%. Note: I had read in a book called the 4 Hour Body by Tim Ferris that just doing this step alone of daily measurement can result in a desired weight change and I believe it. That which is measured can be improved.

I am going to get to what my eating because I know that is what you really want to know, but first let's knock out my exercise regimen.

Currently I work out only 2-3 days per week. I am not sure that if I do more it will make a larger impact or not, but my current schedule only allows for this. Tuesday and Thursday night I roll a jiu jitsu class at 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Riverside  for an hour to an hour and a half. I highly recommend jiu jitsu as a workout as I have never found any workout that equals it for amount of energy used and results obtained for least amount of time invested. I regularly cut up to 3 pounds of water weight in a class. On Saturday morning I'll get in a run of somewhere between 4 and 8 miles. That's it. I have been running a Boot Camp training in my garage every morning at 5:30 for a great group of people but I never get to train with them as I am coaching the whole time. This workout schedule is WAY less that my schedules of the past where I've trained for 1/2 Ironmans ( pretty much a part time job) and ultra marathons ( running up to 50 miles per week) and I am lighter now than I've been in a long time, so I can conclude that it was diet changes that have made the difference.

DIET SECTION:

The headline doesn't lie. Two Saturdays ago I ate the following:

Breakfast:

Coco Pebbles- big bowl with milk

French Toast with real maple syrup made by my amazing wife

3 cups of coffee ( quantity not significant, I just really like coffee)

Lunch

1/2 of a large pepperoni pizza

Salad with ranch

Dinner:

One of the medium sized Coldstone Creamery Creations 

Six pack of Sam Adams Cherry Wheat Beer

Admittedly, this was a bit glutenous, but last Saturday was only slightly less decadent.

Here's what I remember there:

Breakfast

Raisin Bran Crunch with milk

3 Eggs with toast

More Coffee

Lunch: A huge Italian sandwich from Panera ( seriously big) and chips.

Dinner:

Mushroom Ravioli with cream sauce at California Pizza Kitchen

Another Mushroom Ravioli plate with tomato sauce because he brought the wrong one the first time so I ate both.

Bread with real butter

Chocolate from the rocky mountain chocolate factory 

Jack-n-coke with dinner ( the only time I ever drink soda is with Jack Daniel's)

2 glasses of milk when we got home to wash down the chocolate.

Both of the above days were "Cheat Days". I'll explain the meaning of that in more detail below in my rules for eating. I've taken these rules from the 4 Hour Body book mainly because they jived with what I already knew and believed ( but just didn't practice) about diet.

Rules for Eating:

1st and most important: 1 cheat day per week. 24 hours of food debauchery. Nothing is off limits. This serves three purposes. First, it keeps me sane, because I know that I can have any foods that I've removed from my diet every 7 days and gives me less temptation throughout the week. Second, it confuses the hell out of my body and does not give it a chance to "reset" to a lower baseline. Third, I believe that it lends to a lifestyle that I can live with long-term. I'm not sure that I could give up milk forever, but I can give it up six days per week, forever. I cheat on Saturdays and have been adding between 2-5 pounds. By Tuesday it is gone.  Warning about cheat days: You probably won't feel well during these days when you apply the other rules to the other 6 days of the week, but it sure is fun other than that. I first saw this work with a friend of mine, Jeremy, who dumped over 100 pounds using a cheat day a few years ago. I was along for one of them at a buffet in Vegas, holy crap. 

Next: No bread whatsoever. That means that when I had the burger last night, it was in a lettuce wrap. I stay away from crackers and chips. I would never eat white bread knowing what goes on with bleached flower, but now I try to stay away from anything that would have bleached flower in it ( beware many wheat breads are colored white bread- that is why I just choose to stay away from breads altogether). 

I eat high protein meals with lots of vegetables and beans. I NEVER count calories, as I don't believe that all calories are created equal. And, I'm not all that concerned about the amount of fat in my meals (did I mention that the burger had bacon in it?. I eat only "slow carbs". To me that means that if a machine has processed it and my body doesn't have to do the work, then I am going to pass on that. I stay away from grains too. Yep, that includes oatmeal ( one of my personal favorites). I don't eat fruit and use the Mona Vie juice to give me what is necessary from fruit without all of the extra calories. I do not drink my calories. I drink only water and coffee or tea. I do not drink milk and stay away from dairy for the most part ( the exception to this would be cottage cheese if I actually liked it). No white potatoes. Red potatoes are good and yams or sweet potatoes are better.

I always start my day with a high protein breakfast. This is a huge tip. It sets up your day and will help mitigate cravings.

Here's a typical day for me:

BREAKFAST:

3 egg omelet ( eggs courtesy of my hens that we purchased this year). I use the whole egg. If I were using store bought eggs I would use 3 egg whites and 1 whole egg. It is my understanding that my chickens egg yolks aren't as bad cholesterol-wise as the store bought ones. I am doing that experiment right now and will have blood-work done again in 6 months to see how true that is in my body.

Omelet will have a variety of things in it, including, but not necessarily at the same time: Spinach, mushrooms, grilled onions and bell peppers, pepperoni, ham, black beans, pinto beans, refried beans, and other kinds of beans, salsa and just a touch of cheese to keep it together. I salt lightly and use generous amounts of pepper.

This mornings omelet was a cheese omelet on top of a healthy serving of pinto beans with a mango salsa on top ( I would have preferred tomato salsa but Yvette bought the Mango Salsa to support HomeBoy Industries the other day at the store and it is really good).

I'll have a half of a MonaVie RVL meal replacement bar or protein bar from Pure Protein if I get hungry before lunch and the other half between lunch and dinner ( closer to dinner so that I don't come home starving and crash my cupboard and eat all my kids' chips and crackers).

Lunch: I drink my lunch- Mona Vie RVL Chocolate Shake mixed with cold water for lunch. This is the only shake mix that I have ever found that I can drink with water and not milk. With water it is 190 nutritionally dense calories and it does satisfy my hunger.

Dinner: Usually beef, chicken and occasionally fish ( we'd eat this more if it weren't so freakin expensive) with vegetables. I try to keep in mind that this meal should be smaller and live by the mantra that my friend Lance Smith gave me: Eat breakfast like a King, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper whenever possible. That is not to say I leave the table hungry though. I hate being hungry and very rarely am eating this way.

I'd like to say I don't eat after 6 or 7 and it probably would be best, but life gets in the way and more times than I'd like to, I am sitting down to dinner at 8 ( last night 8:30).

Those are the rules that I've lived by to loose 14 pounds over the last 8 weeks. I reset my goal this morning to go to 155 because I'm hovering at around 12.5% body fat and I'd like to get below 10% and maintain it there. We'll see if 155 gets me there.

Feel free to email me directly or comment on what I've written. If it disagrees with what I've written I will only say this, I am no expert, nor do I claim to be, I am just applying what I've read, what I've learned over life, and the RVL product and here are the results I am getting. Try it or don't.