How I lost 20 pounds in my 40's
I get asked a lot how I lost 20+ pounds. I'm still in the process of losing 10 more pounds for a total of 30 pounds (or 13% of my body weight).
I very much like the phrase find out what the cost is, and then pay it. Please understand that my perspective is from a man in their 40's that swims 4 times a week for 45 minutes each time. I burn around 700+ calories per swim. I also do an optional pushup, pullup, situp, and squat routine (without weights) once a week. If you workout less per week, this method will help you either way. You just have to adjust the math to account for your net calorie burn.
The point is that for me, the change was mainly my diet. I'm a very pragmatic person. So for me losing weight is hard yet simple. It's basically another way of budgeting. To lose a pound per week you need to burn 3500 calories per week. I'm 6'2" in height and weigh 210 pounds to date. To maintain my weight I need to eat around 3000 calories per day when I workout, or 2300 calories when I don't workout. That means my net calorie intake per day needs to be negative 500 calories. In other words, my 2500 calories when I workout or 1800 calories when I don't workout.
When you factor in drinking wine and eating with friends on the weekends you have to add another 1000 calories per day (I'm including the alcohol calories). I found it very difficult to eat less than 1800 calories per day, so my solution is to add a fasting day or broccoli monday (see more info below) as an alternative to fasting. The point is to account/burn that extra 1-2k additional calories you consumed on the weekend.
Here is the cost:
I lost around 14 pounds (or 6.1% of my body weight) by meal prepping twice a week. I researched and selected about 10 meals of around 500 calories that I could prep within 45 minutes. I make about around 5 meals during each meal prepping session. i.e. Breakfast burritos, chicken/black rice/broccoli, salmon/black rice/broccoli, and fish tacos.
For breakfast, I prep a half a cup overnight oats or muesli. I warm these up with blueberries in the microwave or have them cold with a half a cup of greek yogurt.
For healthy snacking, I'll have popcorn (i.e. Himalayan Pink Salt Lesser Evil Popcorn), lara bars, nuts (cashews/almonds), or a couple of pieces of healthy bread slices (i.e. Dave's Killer Bread) with almond butter.
I also have a 35 calorie green juice from Clean Juice nearly every morning.
To lose the rest of the weight (the other 16 pounds or 6.9% of the weight) I'm relying on what I call Broccoli Mondays. This is an alternative to a 24 hour fast, due to wanting to workout that day. I eat as much steamed broccoli with lemon as I want until 5pm. This is 12 hours from the time I wake up. At 5pm I'll eat a full 1000 calorie meal (equivalent 2 two of my prepped meals).
Important to note, that the first month of doing the meal prepping I was hungry all the time. This is why healthy snacking is critical. After a month, the continuous hunger went away. I've always loved to eat, so eating less was a struggle at the beginning. My advice is to go all in for a month and watch the results. After a month decide if you want to continue. I'm 99% confident this will work for nearly everyone.
Once I reach a morning weight of 200 pounds. Morning weight is weighing yourself first thing in the morning when you wake up and haven't had anything to eat or drink yet.
Further Context of Why I decided to lose the weight:
I went to a consult with a surgeon concerning my umbilical hernia on July 27, 2022. Surgeon stated my hernia was small at the moment and could wait for probably another 5+ years before it would have to be removed. But, that I was obese at 6'2" and 230 pounds. He was concerned that mesh used to repair the hernia would tear at my current weight. He advised I lose 30 pounds, but that the mesh should hold at a weight of around 215 pounds.
I've never been called obese in my whole life, so this news came as a shock. I've always been somewhat on the thin side. I swim 4-5 times a week and I'm 44 years old as of this post.
After my murderous thoughts, I explained to my doctor that I hadn't been 200 pounds since sophomore year of college. Getting back to 200 pounds seemed improbable. Now I know it's not only possible, but probable.