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The reason behind my weight loss
this past year i was traveling to hong kong for my first real vacation outside of the usa. as i was walking around all day i suddenly realized that all that sitting down on the job for 4 years with little exercise didn't do me any good; i was out of shape. i told myself that when i would come home i would start to exercise and lose some weight and get into better shape.

this was january of 2001. in june of 2001 i forked over $1099 for the bowflex. i wanted a machine that could allow me to do many different exercises to work the entire body.

got the machine in the mail and put everything together. the first thing i decided to do was go through all my cupboards and throw out all the junk food i had. i didn't have much to be honest. i wasn't really a junk food junky if you could believe this!

went to the grocery store and bought all the healthy food that the guide in the bowflex manual suggested. they suggest 1500 calories a day, so i decided to go for it. 1500 calories a day seems low but i was never hungry that much at all.



The key to my weight loss is a few small things that helped very much
  • i stopped eating fast food
  • i stopped drinking all sugary pop
  • very low sugar, if any
  • no more fried foods
  • stopped eating beef for no particular reason


    • i first started the bowflex better body routine. i found out that after 45 minutes my arms would start shaking. that's a good sign i was out of shape. after doing this routine i switched over to the next level and then finally at 6 weeks the 'body building' routine. talk about tough. i got through it the first time and couldn't believe how much more 'difficult' it was. it made my muscles kill the next day. the first time it took me nearly an hour and a half to finish it.

    I said to myself 'there is no way i'm going to be able to do this every day'. it's not good to sound negative but it was true. i decided to instead go for it every other day for 4 days a week.

    to be totally honest i did absolutely NO aerobic/cardiovascular activity during 75% of my weight loss process. towards the end i invested in a stationary bike and eventually did a lot of walking and eventually running. i guess during the last 12 weeks i did do a few days of this routine that requires your heart rate to be constantly up.

    During the first week i lost 8lbs. That's excessive i think, but i worked really hard at it.the first week i ate 1500 calories a day and had no junk food but one single pop tart. i frequently would eat out at subway, that helped a lot. you also will need to drink lots of water. try going for a gallon a day.

    during my first 12 weeks i also did not consume protein powder, meal replacements or energy bars. i did not do that until week 16 when i tried to go for the body-for-life thing.



    Facing problems along the way
    when i got on the scale after the first few weeks the results just kept me going. i wanted to try as hard as i could and keep at it. some weeks you get on the scale and nothing has changed. your still the same weight. instead you measure your body parts with a tape measure and you find out that you in fact did lose a few inches of body fat. no matter how bad i did one week i had to keep telling myself i'm doing well and to keep at it no matter what. often at times i would come home late and be tired. try to avoid working out to late at night if you get sleepy or have to work early in the morning. sometimes at 2am i would force myself to get my lazy butt to work and do some exercise instead of giving myself an excuse. sometimes when you are so tired it's hard to put in all your effort you possibly can and 'go to ten' on the workouts.

    to be totally honest i really had very little problems in resisting the temptations of food. i just was sick of feeding myself junk and never wanted to go back to that sort of life. why ruin all the hard work i put into losing weight?




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