Getting Healthy As A Blogger
As writers and bloggers, we spend most of our day in front of a computer or sitting down at our notebook. We wake up and head the work where we spend eight hours on a computer to pay the bills. Then we come home and turn on our laptop or desktop to write up our next blog post, continue our story, or write some poetry.
All this time adds up, and we find ourselves over-weight or out of shape. This inactivity and lack of education about food are what got the best of me over the years. I never got too large, but I was over-weight and kept putting on the pounds. I am about 5' 9" (175.26 cm) and weighed in at 192 lbs (87 kg) the day I realized how big I looked after seeing a photo of my wife and me on vacation.
By no means did I hold the weight well and looking at that photo, comparing it to how I looked in high school, was eye-opening. I tried a few diets and only once did I lose any weight but when I stopped all weight came back plus a few extra pounds.
Talk about frustrating.
Disclaimer
I'm not a doctor, and all the information that follows is my experience in losing weight. Do your research to learn what will work best for you and your condition. Don't listen to some random nerd on the internet.
/Disclaimer
The Journey
April 2015
Here was when I did the slow carb diet. I lost ten pounds (4.5 kg) in about a month. The problem was that I hated it, a lot. Once I stopped the diet, I gained all the weight back plus a few extra pounds in the next month. Not sustainable but this might have been due to my lack of understanding.
July 2015
Here I learned about intermittent fasting and many of the health benefits it can have on the body. I remembered that when I was in high school, I never ate breakfast and was intermittent fasting without even knowing. There was no weight gain back then either, and I would eat whatever junk sounded tasty.
After getting into the grove of intermittent fasting, I lost about two pounds or nine-tenths of a kilogram over the course of a month. Nothing impressive but I was still eating whatever tickled my fancy and not counting calories or macros. The fasting also improved my mental clarity in the morning while I was not eating.
The style I was using at the time is known as the 'Lean Gains' method. This protocol is where you stop eating after dinner, no snacks or caloric drinks, and then not eat again for sixteen hours. Luckily eight of those hours you can be asleep and the first few hours are after dinner.
February 2016
This month is where I ended after a hard push for fat loss. I counted calories and ate at a caloric deficit. Thanks to intermittent fasting it was much easier since I could eat two big meals instead of three or more small meals. The love of eating is strong with me, and when I eat, I want to eat big.
After about a two-and-a-half months, my weight dropped down twenty pounds or nine kilograms. At that point, my body stopped losing more weight, and I stayed between 170-172 lbs until recently. From my experiences, the only reason I could keep the weight from coming back was intermittent fasting.
December 2017
I was still at 170 pounds, eating whatever I wanted and shifted to a six-hour eating window instead of eight. This change in fasting time was to help keep me from eating snacks around two o'clock in the afternoon. Another thing I started to dabble in was ketosis. Eating a high-fat diet was interesting and seems to keep me full longer. Eating in this way even comes without the midday crash that normally happens on a standard diet.
April 2018
As of today I am 156 pounds (about 70.7kg), have more muscle mass, and eat a customized keto diet 90% of the time. Using a ketogenic diet has helped me out a ton. I limit carbs too much less than I ate on the "Standard American Diet" (SAD) and learned what works for me. Since I still fast for 17 to 18 hours each day, I have plenty of time to deplete any stored up carbohydrates in my body from the previous day.
Intermittent fasting allows my body to use its fat storage as energy during the fasting period. Fasting does work on SAD as you read early but the difference between a Ketogenic diet is how fast we use up the extra carbs in our body after our last meal. There is a lot of science out there that I want everyone to learn about and see if this approach is for them. Even without fasting a Ketogenic style diet shows vast improvements over our current standard of eating.
I will say, it is cool to be almost 40 pounds (18kg) lighter than I was at my heaviest. It's incredible what the body can do when given the correct foods that are full of nutrients. Another excellent bonus is that I now notice the muscle I built over the past eight months or so. I love to flex for my wife and watch her eyes roll (rofl).
Be A Healthy Writer
I share all of this to show you that getting healthy is a process and we need to respect the journey. Loosing too much weight too fast will only have us rebound and gain more after the fact. Never expect an easy way out and put in the effort today to make one change to your lifestyle.
I did not start out where I am today by piling all of it on at once. I made small changes over time as I learned new science and listened to other people sharing what they learned about health and nutrition. If today you cut out soda for the rest of your life then that's a point for your health. Keep looking for ways to be as healthy as you can, and when you look back in two years, you will be quite surprised.
Don't let an unhealthy body keep you from your writing or anything you love. Use it to your advantage and as a learning experience. The more informed we are, the better we will be down this road of life. Please feel free to ask me any questions about my diet or apps I use because the more people who take back their health, the better.
Thanks For Reading!
If you have any topics that you would like me to cover please feel free to comment them below and I'll add them all to my list!
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Thats a very good point . But skipping breakfast isnt a good intermittent fasting habit. I think we should choose skipping dinner(most preferred) or lunch for intermittent fasting .
For me it makes the most sense to skip the morning meal since I fasted over night and skipping dinner would be skipping out on my family. I don't have any ill effects from this method I chose to follow over the past 3 years.
Good to know you are running smooth on skipping breakfast . Just as a polite advise , i would encourage a visit to health specialist for once in a year . Glad your plan is working very good and you are maintaining for such a long time.
Great job on the intermittent fasting. I do it too and it is amazing!
Congratulations on your success. I'm not a professional writer but a blogging addict! Fortunately sports are another hobby of mine. Otherwise i could be in trouble :))
I've been intermittent fasting for a while, it works!
I love it and will never go back to three (or more) meals a day.
Coffee gets me through to my next meal, but it's not a rule I strictly follow; sometimes I just want to eat a break-fast, especially on a Sunday morning.
Before I moved to a low carb way of eating it was the same for me. Now I am down to one cup a day and some green tea. When I made the move into low carb I did not get the "keto flu" like most people and I think that is due to all the fasting I did in the past.
I did, it definitely helps to ween yourself into it.
Insightful post..... At least, you lost your belly fat! Haha
I totally understand this feeling. Gaining weight. UHG!
At the ripe old age of 41 I know I have to stay active and eat right to keep the weight off. Getting more into steemit and being a blogger has definitely taken place of a lot of my outside time. Poverty has me on the soup kitchen diet, high sodium, high fat, and no organic foods.
Ah well.
Thanks for addressing this topic, and sharing your successes.
If you keep the carbs low you should do fine. We all have more than enough fat on our bodies to fuel us for a long while.
Ketosis is magic, add fasting (shortening the window of time one would consume calories) is working.
Often, we also mistake thirst for hunger, and much graving can be done away with by having a glass of water.
That said, I have plenty of discipline to adhere to before I fit back into my 32W chinos.
I love every part of it and the fact that I don't carve sugar anymore is a life changer for me.
You do realize that carving sugar may lead to craving sugar :D
Anyway, I stay away from anything but water and coffee, sometimes tee. Rarely beer - avoiding that beer belly...
Good on you bro! Inspirational!
Same here! I love the coffee and tea myself but do my best to drink mostly water thru-out the day.
First of all congratulation for loosing so much weight and becoming fit. As you wrote..
I have read many contradictory articles on skipping breakfast. Some say skipping breakfast in the morning is not good as it can encourage body to gain weight others say that it can help loose weight. So, what is the right method? I am bit confused because I am also 80 kg and want to loose my weight a bit.
It's less about skipping breakfast and more about being in a fasted state for more than 12 hours. When we choose to not eat seems to be less important. So do what works best for you and try different times of the day.
Thank you.
Oh, this is interesting. Haven't heard of fasting for weight-loss before. Might give it a go along with my diet, and hopefully shed some baby-fat that subbornly lingers evermore. Congrats on the progress, JR!
Belly fat is where I carry most of my visible fat and what I learned is that in order to loose that fat our bodies need to loose fat from everywhere. It is almost as if it's the last place our body pulls from in the weight loss journey.
Thanks for the kind words and fell free to DM me with any questions.
That won't surprise me. I carry around my hips mostly while the rest has deflated, so that being the last part it sucks from makes sense. I'll be sure to pop some questions when I get into it. Thanks!
LOL, earning extra pounds after a diet is really shocking! ;)
Have you ever tried an HCLF (High Carb Low Fat) diet?
I stopped following it for socio-family issues but I will return to practice it, because I was definitely very fit, healthy and full of energy (I prepared and completed 2 marathons at that time)!
If you like raw whole wheat fruit and vegetables, I think it's the most healthy and natural diet, you know?
That is basically what I did when I was cutting calories back in 2016 when I lost 20lbs.
Some argue that potein and fat are more natural to what our ancestors ate but I'm no expert ;)
The fact is that we grow with our mother's milk, that contains almost the same protein and fat percentage we get eating fruits and vegetables... interesting, isn't it? :)
Yes but I'm not sure we can compare a new born to full grown person.
Even so, our ancestral mothers would have ate meat and fat when there was no plant food around. Then the mother's body gives the child what in needs and that changes daily.
Oh yes, I know: all of us are covered by myths and mental conditioning.
Personally, I taken away the myth of proteins some years ago, using my body as a laboratory. ;)
If you have not already done so, I suggest you read the definition of "Carnism", coined by the psychologist Melanie Joy, which I really love.