If I had to choose one question that I’ve been asked the most over the past few years it is this:  how have you kept the weight off?  Of course I get those ‘how did you do it?’ questions but mostly it is the ‘how do you continue to do it?’ questions.  Here is my answer:

I focused on my habits.

I have heard, and have even used myself, the phrase ‘I did it by changing my lifestyle’ but rarely is there any real explanation of HOW someone went about doing that.  Your lifestyle is just an accumulation of habits that you’ve created over a lifetime.  Obviously, if you’ve found yourself in a position where you are overweight, not all of those habits have been good ones. 

In an effort to try to answer the question of how you change your lifestyle to increase your chances of long term, or sustained, weight loss success, I have compiled a few ideas that I hope will help.

Over the past four weeks, in an effort to break through a fat loss plateau, I endeavored into the world of low carb dieting via the Men’s Health TNT Diet.  I’ve dabbled in the low carb world a few years back.  I tried the Atkins diet back in the “day” (the 300 lb day).  I made it one week BUT that was the longest I’d actually stuck to any diet.  That at least gave me something to hang my hat on.

You may or may not be familiar with the theory behind low carb dieting so I will attempt to explain it in plain English…or at least in my Georgia version of plain English.  Your body has a pecking order for burning calories.   Before it will turn to burning fat, it will first turn to your “glycogen stores”.  Your body essentially does three things when you consume carbohydrates: 1.) it burns them immediately for fuel  2.) it stores them as glycogen in your liver and muscles or 3.) if the glycogen stores are full, it is stored in your fat cells.

I spent most of today watching a train wreck.  One of those things you hate to watch but you just can’t turn away.  It’s been a fairly blah day here in Georgia so that means indoor family time!  That would normally be the case but today my son has been on a Spongebob coloring marathon, my wife was at work and my daughter had a play performance across town.   I was still in charge of my son but I wasn’t the center of his attention.  Woe to me if he’s never the center of my attention!

While the crayon shrapnel was flying, I was cruising the channels and stumbled upon “Man vs. Food” on the Travel Channel.  THAT is the train wreck I couldn’t turn away from.  If you aren’t familiar with this show, the premise is a man travels across the US in search of food challenges like “eating a 6 lb. hamburger in 3o minutes” or “eating 17 chili dogs in one sitting.”  It truly is a spectacle to behold and the host makes it through almost all the challenges.

It appears that the Government is considering a man boob and muffin top tax (MBMT for short).  Unless you’ve been living in a cave over the past couple of months, I’m sure you are aware of the new health care bill that is in congress.  The reason for the bill is to try to “fix” our health care system by instituting measures that will both reduce the cost of health care and provide insurance to those that can’t afford it.

As with anything that comes out of Washington, this, too, comes with a ridiculous price tag.  This one is estimated to cost the tax payers $1 Trillion (with a T) .  This has many sane members in congress balking at the proposal.  How are we going to pay for it?

A recent study released showed that obesity currently accounts for nearly 10% of all health care spending.  Because of this outrageous statistic, Congress, in all its wisdom, has decided they can cash in on our seeming addiction to “fatty” foods and sugary sodas.  The Joint Committee on Taxation calculated that just a 3 cent tax on every 12-ounce can of sugary soda would raise over $51 billion over a decade.  That is averages out to 169,900,000,000  (169.9 BILLON) cans of non-diet soda per year! 

I’ve written a couple of posts on my super foods so, in the sense of being fair and balanced, I thought I’d write one from the other end of the spectrum.  This list (and data) is courtesy of Men’s Health but the commentary is all mine.

Going out to eat and eating healthy is an extremely difficult thing to do if you aren’t prepared.  You really don’t know what ingredients they are using in their recipes.  Some of the menu selections sure sound harmless enough, right?  Maybe this list will be an eye opener and will help you make smart decisions.  Be prepared to be shocked and awed.