Bilbo’s Got Heart Disease

What the shit is this?

Two posts?  In two days?  Has Sam Sykes gone mad?  Is he still doing an Ask Me Anything on Reddit Tonight at 8 PM Central?  Is he still at Phoenix Comicon this weekend?  Did he get dropped from Gollancz and he’s just carrying out the motions of being a published author for desperate fear of going mad and going on a violent rampage?

In order: Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  No, but I’d go on a violent rampage usually for fun, anyway.

No, my friends, the reason for this post is simple.  It’s a big day for me.  You may recall from previous posts my attempts to lose weight.  You may note from my twitter feed that I’ve been experiencing generally good success.  And if you’re at all invested in this, the journey of weight loss of a man who leads a largely sedentary lifestyle that may or may not be similar to your own, you might be wondering how it’s all gone down.

Today marks the day we hit my biggest weight goal yet.  With the help of my trainers, Peak Results Fitness and later The Akard Fitness Group, I’ve been able to shed about 70 pounds in one year.  This is tremendously big for me (oho), because it marks something I’ve always wanted to do and have never been able to.  And that’s truly all that really matters about weight loss.  Forget about doing it to look better naked (though there will be some who think you might), forget about doing it for self-esteem (you can have that already), forget about doing it to pick up the ladies (I can already bench the size of most men and women alike), forget about doing it for health…

…well, maybe don’t forget that one.  That one’s kind of important.

Point being, the chief reason to lose weight is if you want to.  And I know a lot of people who have been keeping up with my progress have wanted to and, thusly, have wanted to know what I’ve been doing.

I can’t give you a lot of advice on exercise (I have trainers, after all, and everyone’s situation and intensity levels are different), but one thing I think a lot of readers might want to know is what I’m doing differently nutritionally.  With diet consisting of just as much a part of any good fitness plan (if not more), I thought it might be handy for some people to go into deeper detail on what I do, mentally and physically, for health.

1. Alter Perceptions

I find a lot of people go into the idea of a diet with the same kind of intensity one goes into a Battle of Rourke’s Drift Reenactment with: a lot of gusto and bluster that ultimately leaves you fatigued and feeling a little silly.  People, I think, tend to view diets as an all-or-nothing situation in which there are only mountains of salads, minecarts full of artichoke hearts and if you eat something you actually like, you have committed a grave sin against Atkins-san and must commit ritual seppukku immediately.

As a result, a lot of people either go hard into diets and then burn out or just don’t bother in the first place.

Would it surprise you to know that I didn’t change a whole lot for my diet?  I still eat foods I like (though I prioritize them, as I will discuss later).  I’ve come to appreciate foods I didn’t like before.  I’ve never sat down and forced myself to eat something I found totally disgusting.

The attitude to carry into such an endeavor should be one of openness.  Go into it with the mindset that you may change things a little, that you may try stuff you wouldn’t normally, that your meal routine isn’t set in stone.  An all-or-nothing mindset is a closed mindset and a closed mindset will almost always end in failure, since there’s only one way to succeed.  Chances are, if you’re not doing that already, you’re not going to.

So remember: be gentle with yourself, but compromise.

2. Alter Priorities

In the same vein as avoiding all-or-nothing situations, it helps to be able to be easy with your current diet.  Look to what you currently eat and start making adjustments there.  Try identifying the most unhealthy things you can, the things that can’t possibly be justified as anything other than a real treat for you.  These might include pizzas, hamburgers, that sort of thing.  Identify them as treats and then treat them as such.

Make a pact with yourself that you’re going to eat them only when you feel you deserve it.  Sometimes we have bad days and need comfort foods.  Sometimes we have good days and want to reward ourselves.  Sometimes we just need it (some times).  If you try to deny yourself too many treats, you’ll eventually go nuts and binge.  A much more successful method is to dole them out to yourself in moderation.  Limit your treat to one or two slices if you get pizza, for example.

The more you do this, the less you’ll crave the real bad stuff and the more you’ll crave alternatives, which we’ll get into down here.

3. The Bearable Alternatives

It’s important to eat.  Starving yourself will slow down your metabolism and make you miserable.  Eating frequently keeps the giant, raging furnace that is your metabolism burning at all times.  Every two to three hours, you should be eating something.  Mostly high in protein, if you can help it.

You may have to train yourself to do this.  For a lack of a better descriptor, a “nerdy lifestyle” like the one I lead can sometimes lead to me focusing intensely on one thing for hours at a time (such as video games, reading…or, you know, my job) and forgetting everything else.  If you’ve been doing this for awhile, your metabolism will have adjusted to it.  You’ll find it hard (at first) to eat every three hours because you won’t feel hungry.

The good news is that changes really quickly.  The more you eat, the hungrier you get, as weird as that sounds.  And the hungrier you get, the faster that furnace is burning through stuff.

Lately, I’ve taken to buying a package of ground turkey at the store, grilling that up in some light olive oil, taco seasoning and cholula sauce and eating that.  Turkey is a pretty bland meat by itself, so it seasons very well.  If you’re a fan of eggs, egg whites are a very good protein source.  I also like keeping carrots around, for general snacking.  Lighter soups can be good for heartier things, as well.

Basically, aim for protein and aim often.

4. Replace What You Can

I used to love white rice.  I ate it nearly every time I could.  It’s fairly carb-heavy, though, so I began to adjust to a life of brown rice.  Now, white rice feels like it sticks to my insides while brown rice goes down smooth.  Apply that to a lot of what you do.  See what you can get that’s similar to what you already eat, but lower in carbohydrates, lower in fat or lower in sodium.

I’ve heard some people completely cut bread out of their lives.  That’s amazing for them, but it’s not something I can do personally.  I love bread too much.  But I don’t miss white bread at all.  It tastes nasty and artificial to me.

While it might be tough at first, I find the compromise of lower-replacements to be something that you quickly get used to.  And once you’re used to it, you have a harder time going back to the less healthy stuff.

5. Drinkers Beware

Probably my biggest weakness is drinking.  I love it.  I love the taste of alcohol, I love going to parties, I love wine, I love socializing at wine events, some people will even tell you I enjoy being drunk.  These people are probably remembering the time I broke wind near them and laughed.  Don’t be misled.  I would have done that, anyway.

The problem is that drinking tends to add a lot of water weight and, if you go in for fancier stuff, calories and carbohydrates.  So, approach it the same way you can approach anything else under this method: identify, treat and replace.

Identify what your goal is.  If you’re just having one drink, then you might be able to splurge a little and have, say, a heavier beer.  But be honest with yourself: if it’s not going to be one beer and you know it isn’t, switch to something lighter.

Treat yourself.  Now and again, you might want a fancy cocktail or a nice glass of wine.  You can have those, but do make sure you’re in a good spot to enjoy them.  Blowing $100 on a bottle of wine when you’re too shitfaced to enjoy it is actually pretty embarrassing the next morning.

Replace your standard fare.  I’ve actually adopted the official drink of Myke Cole, fellow author and noted fitness nut, of vodka and soda water as my going-on drink.  It’s pretty low-impact and can get the job of having something to sip done proper.  Light beer, rum and diet coke, lighter wines will also do the job nicely.

Just be aware of your situation and act accordingly.

6. Forgive Yourself

Sometimes, you may screw up and eat more than you wanted to.  Sometimes, you’ll gain a few pounds.  It’s important not to beat yourself up over it, because then you’ll likely go nuts and burn out.  But it’s just as important to remind yourself that you can get back on the horse at any time, but you have to get on it.  If you go through a bad night, your next reaction should be to get up and say: “Okay, that didn’t go so well.  Now we try again.”

That’s pretty much my entire plan so far.  It’s worked well for me.  I hope it provides some help for you!

Hope to see you guys at Reddit tomorrow!