Cory O'Daniel – These are just words Software development, thoughts, and randomness

Hey fatty!; or my preliminary Slow Carb diet results

In the past 35 days I have gone from 211 pounds down to 194.6 pounds. And I did it without doing grueling workouts and honestly without sacrificing too much on a diet.

Around Christmas I had just gotten a copy of The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. I was really interested in losing a lot of weight easily. Something I hadn't been able to do in almost 9 years of trying very hard.

There are a lot of doctors, experts and speculators that criticize the book saying that the plans couldn't/didn't work. There are a lot of people out there that have changed their lives that beg to differ, and I am one of those people.

My backstory
I'm 30 years old. When I was 22 I started to get a little chubby, not giant, but I rocked a serious beer gut. By the time I was 26 I had started to get kinda fat. Up around 220lbs on a 5'10" frame. Started to get that second chin too, not cute.

My harajuku moment
Around the end of 2009 was the first time I had ever accurately had my body fat measured. I had 20.2% body fat and weighed just about 215lbs. I have a sweet tooth and love burgers, so I had difficulty losing weight even while I was working out. The treadmill wasn't cutting it, and with 1/5 of my body being fat, I was really disappointed in myself.

My exercise plan
March 2010 I began P90X. I didn't want to get muscular so I did P90X Lean, I busted my ass for three months, but I'd go on and off the diet. I'd do really well for a week, not see my weight change, then I'd snack because I figured, "hey, carrots and juice aren't making me skinny anyway."

After my 90 days of P90X I didn't have the awesome abs and body that you see in the infomercial, but I did the work out every-single-day. Nothing really changed, I had significantly more endurance and lost about 4 lbs, but that was it.

So what to do?

I tried again.
I did P90X for another 90 days doing the regular program and I started cycling to work every day I could. I thought that my problem with P90X was going with the Lean program rather than the more intense standard program - I didn't blame it on my snacking which only happened once or twice a week and I sure as hell didn't blame it on my lattes.

After my second 90 days of P90X I can drop and do 100 push-ups easily. My arms and shoulders are pretty well defined, and I have some pretty creepy muscular legs. If the rest of my body looked like my legs, you'd be banging me right now (all cycling and plyo).

I still had a fatty core. I had gotten my weight down to 211 and my body fat down to 18.8%. All-in-all I had some neat results, but I was still disappointed.

My new plan
After reading the Four Hour Body and hearing about people losing all the weight I wanted to lose in 30 days and not working out 7 days a week. I figured it was way easier than P90X so why not? It's only 30 days!

For me, numbers are inspiration and if I see something changing, I get happy. Nothing changes, disappointment.

My first step was to buy a high quality scale that could "accurately" measure weight and body fat. I wanted to see it every day, and I need the mental/emotional reward of seeing my numbers go down.

I decided to move into the diet one meal at a time. I was going to replace my breakfast that normally consisted of either a bagel or a donut and a medium latte with the very standard eggs, beans and spinach. During the initial phase I also stopped working out completely because I wanted to ensure the results were coming from the diet.

The results were amazing. For two weeks I replaced just my breakfast with a slow carb meal. I ate just as bad as I normally do for lunch and dinner. Milk and carbs are a trigger food for me. I dropped my weight to 197.8 from 211, that's just about 13 pounds.

Unfortunately after those two weeks I got bronchitis and didn't 'feel' like being on the diet while I was sick, I wanted comfort food. I slowly teetered back to the over 200 mark by adding milk and carbs back into my diet in the AM.

Where I am today
This morning I weighed in 194.6 pounds and 15.1% body fat.

I've been back on the diet now for only two weeks. Last week only doing slow carb meals twice a day and having a 'normal' dinner. This week I've been doing slow carb meals for every meal.

The most important thing about the book is that it's about experimenting. If it doesn't work, figure out why or don't do it.

I succeeded by setting little goals for myself and being persistent with knowing what was happening to my body quantitatively.

Now for the first time in almost 10 years I weigh less than I did in college and I'm on my way to having a torso like these super sexy legs I'm rocking.

I have shifted my focus from my weight to body fat percentage. I'm tweaking things to maintain my 3% monthly drop in body fat and the new target is a cool 12%.

I've also started working out again, but I'm doing the kettle bell and slow cadence workouts described in the four hour body rather than intense time wasting workouts like P90X as I'm going for definition, not endurance. If the exercise plans have the same effect as the diet I'll see you bedside mid-March.

Update
As of February 17th, I dropped below 190. I'm losing on average 1/2 to 1 lb a day.