How I Lower My Weight

Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love feeling hungry.

Hunger is what it feels like to burn fat and thus lose weight. If one wants to lose weight, he or she must consume fewer calories than he or she burns. This isn’t some magical formula. It is really straightforward. Calories in and calories out.

What does it feel like when one burns more calories than one consumes? Hunger. It feels like hunger. Anyone who is serious about dropping weight must tolerate being hungry, and my guess is the vast majority of people who fail to drop weigh even though they want to drop weight fold when the first hunger pang hits them. One must go into it knowing that it is impossible to lose weight without hunger pangs. Impossible. One must accept that he or she is going to be hungry, and he or she must decide to tolerate it, or even enjoy it. That’s entirely possible. When I am dieting and cutting my weight, I play a mental trick on myself in which I tell myself that the hunger pangs are the feeling of fat burning.

That said, if burning more calories than one consumes is the goal, that’s the approach. One must count calories or implement a system that counts them automatically. I’ve done both.

Keto, which is avoiding carbohydrates in favor of meats and fats, is one of the automatic systems because it cuts out the biggest empty calorie category. When people snack, it is almost always carbs they snack on, so keto, automatically, cuts out almost all snacking.

The other method is calorie counting or calorie restriction. I love spaghetti, pasta, pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs. On keto, one cannot have any of that. Too many empty calories.

For calorie counting to work, one must become extremely anal about the calories one consumes. Let’s say that if a person consumes 2000 calories a day, based on his body size and his activity level, he or she will not gain and not lose, but stay the same. If one deducts 500 calories from that, he or she will lose weight over time. After a few days of that, one starts to run a calorie deficit, and the body will take those needed calories out of his fat ass. To do this, one must allot himself the 1500 calories, then measure throughout the day and use the serving size written on the box. Measure it out. Weigh it. Whatever one has to do to make sure he or she is keeping up with the calories he or she consumes.

To get the 1500 calories, all one has to do is consume a couple of heaping platefuls of spaghetti with breadsticks. Done for the day. Once the body burns all of those calories, which it will do quickly because spaghetti is plateful of carbs, one will be hungry after, and if one consumed that pasta for breakfast (I have done this) he or she cannot eat again that day and still maintain the calorie count. It’s a bad strategy, but if one has the will power to consume that pasta for breakfast and tolerate the hunger for the rest of the day, one will lose weight doing it. It is calories in and calories out.

The keto approach is closer to automatic, and I prefer it for that reason, and it is really interesting to observe the changes that occurs to one’s body once he implements the keto approach.

On day one of keto, one cuts out the carbs. He eats ham and turkey and cheese and eggs, etc. The body is like, whut?

Day two, the body is going to start freaking out from the lack of carb inputs. It is looking for those carbs, but all it is getting is cheese. Whut?

Day three, four, and five, one will absolutely shit his or her brains out. It happens to me every time. Liquid explosive shits. I haven’t researched why this is the case, but I would guess that the bacterial flora in one’s gut is like, whut? We were expecting some Triskets and all we’re getting is these eggs and cheese. The flora has to adjust, but before it can, it freaks out.

After about three days of explosive water shits, the body adjusts, and this is kind of my favorite part: Turds reemerge as these super clean little rabbit droppings. I’m not even joking. Little compact turds and one’s ass comes clean with one wipe.

When one is in the clean rabbit turds phase, one knows his body is in ketosis, which is just the body shifting from a carb-burning model to a fat-burning model.

At that point, the weight really starts to drop.

Here’s what I do:

1. Walk two miles every morning.
2. Skip breakfast. I take coffee and a splash of half and half. That’s my breakfast. I don’t put any sugar or sweetener in my coffee. If you do, grow up. Let me just say, too, that I hate these put-butter-in-your-coffee weirdos. Stop being goofy. Who puts butter in their coffee? That’s stupid.
3. Ride my hunger pangs as long as I can. Usually I can make to to 2-2:30 before I feel like I need some calorie input. I eat protein/fat until my hunger is gone. Then I stop. This is where the online keto-bros really screw up what they tell people. Calories in/Calories out. If one gorges himself on cheese and eggs until he is about to pop, he’s still consuming calories. Calories in/Calories out. It doesn’t matter what one eats, either, as long as it isn’t carbs. No carbs at all. None. Eggs. Cheese. Ham. Turkey. Buffalo. But don’t replace the carb calories with protein calories. That’s not going to work.
4. Eat dinner at 6-7. Eat a huge salad. Eat a steak with green beans. Vegetables are great, and keto makes me love them. Sprouts. Broccoli. Green beans. Lettuce. Asparagus. It should go without saying, no starchy vegetables. No potatoes or anything that is starchy. Green vegetables, mostly, which are almost all water, so few calories. One can eat an entire head of lettuce and that’s like not even 100 calories, I think.
5. If a bedtime snack is necessary, keep those sugar-gree pudding or jello cups in the fridge and eat one or two of those. The jello ones have no calories so go nuts.
6. Make it to bed and let one’s body burn calories while he or she sleeps. If one makes it to bed hungry, he has won the day. Remember, hunger is what fat-burning feels like. Let dream you deal with it.
7. Wake up and do it all again.

Do it for one month. Make the commitment. In one month using this method, I typically can drop 10-15 lbs and go down a whole belt notch.