"I pick up chicks with my ab!"

What’s funny is that I was so active and heavily involved in sports from ever since I can remember that it was a mystery to me why I was “the fat kid”. I played basketball, golf, cricket, football (association), tennis, volleyball, and most recently football (American) almost every day for like the past fifteen plus years and I couldn’t shake the blubber. To make matters worse, my younger brothers were lean as hell and didn’t do $h!t all each day but eat whatever they wanted, watch TV, play video games, and go on the computer.

I lived life somewhat secretly hating them and their seemingly superhuman metabolism. I then started to resent my parents as well for passing on all the “fuck up” genes on to me before going on to make the “proper” children since they (my parents) were lean too. In that resentment for them, I started to wonder how much my father resented having me (the “fat fuck”) as his son since I was to be his pride and joy being that I was his first born son.

I think I mentioned in the Stop Having Babies post that I spent my younger life constantly seeking his approval and acknowledgement and this was probably my impetus for being so athletically involved. On one hand you had the muscular dude who was known within the community for his accomplishments at any sport he put his hands to, and on the other you had his jelly roll for a son that probably wouldn’t amount to anything other than be a heart attack victim. I felt so much pressure to try and change that “destiny”

Hours of practice eventually made me good at any sport I tried, but I was still fat. This then moved past being able to get my father’s approval and became a personal goal/challenge that I was failing miserably at. This failure then lead to me trying every single trick in the book to lose weight.

Dieting, exercising, diet pills, bulimia, you name it; I tried it. If I had the money I would have probably tried liposuction and gastric bypass surgery as well. No matter what though, nothing seemed to work.

However, during the six month period I spent last year escaping the confines of Antigua and visiting everyone possible in Canada and the States, I sat down for like a week straight researching dieting, exercising, and losing weight. After reading hundreds of articles, I picked out the information that made the most sense to me, I formulated my own little weight loss program and crossed my fingers hoping that it’d work. Three months later, I was “missing” over 60lbs and the best part was that I was still eating the foods I liked, wasn’t on some crazy workout plan, and had my blood tests were coming back “negative” for everything. *middle finger to everyone who asked me if I contracted AIDS after I came back*

So, what did I do? Well before I get to that let me just state that I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or muscle-bound jerkwad at the gym who thinks he knows everything about fitness, so take EVERYTHING from here on with a HUGE grain of salt and realize that if you try any of this it’s at your own risk. I’m merely just giving my opinion of the stuff I’ve tried and have actually found to work just in case there are others out there who had the same struggles I had and wanted to know what other alternatives may have been available.

You know what? Scrap all of that. Put it on the record that I am doing this for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. Feel free to take that however you please. I’ll try not to laugh too hard if I read about you dying on the internet or hear about your family trying to sue Beef Pattie.

This is what’s up though…

The quickest way

The simplest way to lose weight is to just not eat. However, unless you can deal with the increasingly intense hunger pains your brain will be sending your way, starvation won’t be the nicest option for you. Thankfully, professional models who wanted to maintain that look of “skin hugging bone” while not having to deal with a trivial thing like hunger pains created a technique that made you able to eat, but “not eat” at the same time. It was called “sticking your finger down your throat when you got done eating”.

Get a REAL job... and some tits while you're at it...

Shun it all you want but that $h!t works like a mother phuq-er! Tried it for like a week or two and lost 20lbs EASY. The thing is, your brain is like a fat police officer that’s been on the force for a while; dumb and lazy. You get a full stomach and it feels things are cool and shuts of all alarms. You puke after his “stomach full” patrol when he checks to see if you’ve had food and he’ll never pass back again for another couple of hours (depending on how often you’re accustomed to eating). So with this method you almost never have to deal with hunger pains… but there is a catch…

Unfortunately, our bodies were designed to run off of calories and since we need to actually DIGEST food to have calories to burn, this method only works for models since they don’t do phuq all with their lives except expect life to be handed to them. This is why I don’t feel bad about the fashion industry putting more stress on girls to be thinner. Balancing not eating and not dying are the only work these b!t(hes REALLY do. I say let them heffas WORK for those million dollar contracts. Your new line of halter tops isn’t going to sell itself. If you’re not risking your life every day trying to be in a spread for Elle, then you’re not a model; you’re just a b!t(h who knows someone with a camera. –REAL

OK, back to being serious…

Calorie counting

Probably the most unique and helpful information I’ve found in my research is that once you eat fewer calories than what your body actually needs to maintain its current weight, you’ll lose weight. Doesn’t sound too groundbreaking huh? Well the hardest part about it is figuring out how many calories you need to maintain your current weight and eat below it. Before jumping to starve yourself though, let me touch on how this works.

First you need to find out your basal metabolic rate (BMR). That’s the amount of calories you’d burn performing basic bodily functions (like breathing) while doing nothing but lay in bed all day. Although it’s not 100% accurate, a good way to calculate it would be to just multiply your current body weight by 10. Using me as an example, mine currently would be about 2200.

Now let’s say you don’t stay home all day like my like a model waiting for the phone to ring and you go outside. Every time to take a step, turn a door knob, flick a pen, lift a stack of paper, etc. you burn calories. Anything that involves your body using even the tiniest of muscles burns calories since they are what use them. The easiest was to calculate how many calories you burn would be to get a heart rate monitor but for this example, let’s say I burn 1300 calories per day going through my average routine. That brings the amount of calories I’d need to maintain my current weight to 3500.

Remember this figure fluctuates based on your level of activity (I play football on Wednesdays so that probably brings my caloric needs to 4700 on that day). Also, a person with say 30lbs more muscle mass than I have would require more calories since more muscles translates to a higher BMR. Still with me?

So I now have my average caloric needs per day pinned at 3500. The rule of thumb is that for every 3500 calories I burn, I lose a pound off my weight. Based on my caloric needs, if I didn’t eat all day I’d lose a pound. However, I wouldn’t be able to function (well). What is suggested is to take a gradual approach and consume 200-500 calories below what you actually need and every week or two you’d lose a pound. To find out how much you can cut down by though you should actually consult a sports medicine doctor but I think I dropped mine down by at least 1500 calories per day (inclusive of being active of course).

So what if you ate over you caloric needs? Well, unused calories are stored under the skin as fat for later use by your muscles. Your muscles however are some spoilt mother phuq-ers because before these brats burn fat, they burn the calories you most recently consumed first. Look at it as a mother reheating leftovers from the day before and the kid throwing a tantrum demanding “fresh food”. The sad part is that our bodies are a bad mother who lets the little phuq-er have his way so we have to just work around that. You give him enough to just quit the belly aching (no pun intended) and eventually he’ll “eat” the other stuff.

"I WANT FRESH FOOD!!!"

It was really rough starting out at first but eventually my body got accustomed to it and made adjustments. I personally wouldn’t suggest such a drastic change to anyone since it was probably just pure will power that got me through those first few weeks. Now I’m really laid back with it since It actually worked for me so I’m at about 250 calories below caloric needs and quite comfortable too. Now that I’ve gotten the theory of this losing weight thing out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff…
FOOD!!!

Changing your diet

Besides being a notorious calorie counter, I’ve also had to watch what I eat. The two things mesh together more than a lot of people would think. Being in New York aided me GREATLY since all menus (even the smallest of “mom and pop” cook shops) had to have the calories for each item posted with them. When I started out I was around 275lbs and needed maybe 3850 to maintain that. If you don’t watch out, breakfast can easily run you 1000 calories, lunch 2000, and dinner the same. Add some snacks in between and you’ll be a blimp in no time. Something as seemingly healthy as spinach dip I’ve seen rack up 1760 calories.

Keeping you fuller;longer!

Added to that, you’d also need to take note of what are good calories and empty calories. In all cases possible you should strive for good calories before anything else. These are from unprocessed foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain foods, unprocessed meats, unrefined sugar, etc. It’s always best to consume food closest to its original state because of the additional vitamins, minerals, fibers, etc. that accompany them. Empty calories on the other hand do have the same energy content as the good calories “pound for pound”, but they lack all the other “good stuff” (nutrients) since they were stripped away while they were being processed. However, the most important reason (to me at least) why you should avoid empty calories is because of one thing: they leave you feeling empty.

Nothing makes you feel hungrier faster than processed foods. Have you ever had a “big” meal then like an hour or two later you feel like you haven’t eaten anything at all? That’s those empty calories from all that processed food phuq-ing with you.

You see, processed foods in a sense starts the digestion process for you in the process of them being processed since the food is already being broken down*laughs at that sentence*. That translates to less time being spent in your stomach and less calories being burned by your body during the digestion process (since that burns calories as well). So now you’re making yourself hungrier faster and robbing yourself of an opportunity to effortlessly burn calories (we’re trying to work smarter and not harder here guys).

The “empty to good calorie” change was hard for me because I didn’t even realize how much they were a part of my diet. Unnatural sugars and carbohydrates are the really sneaky mofos though. They make sure they find their @$$e$ EVERYWHERE. Pastries, pasta, rice, deserts, sodas, juice drinks (NOT to be confused with juice), etc. are all breeding grounds for them. Like I think I read somewhere that you shouldn’t consume more than 40grams of unnatural sugars per day. That’s messed up since a single can of Coke has about 32-38grams of the stuff.

With that in mind, I cut out all artificial sugars out of my diet completely (or at least I tried my best to). If something didn’t say “100% Juice” I wouldn’t drink it. A short list of things I cut out completely (or at least drastically cut down on) include:

• Fried/greasy foods (these make me vomit when consumed now)
• Butter
• Bread, pasta, and other flour based foods
• Dressings
• Pastries (ESPECIALLY those with frosting and fillings)
• Desert foods
• Snacks (chips, biscuits, chocolate bars, etc.)
• Candies

I made sure I ate three meals each day; especially breakfast (which was a chore in itself). Also I made sure the last meal I ate was before 9pm or at least a full four hours before I went to sleep. I don’t remember why I started  doing that or if there was any sound logical reason behind that, but it’s something I tried and has now become a part of my daily routine so I’m just stating that here too. *Kanye shrugs*

Really, if you feel like “cheating” you best option is always to turn to fruit first. Your body has a higher tolerance for the natural sugars and I’m sure one grafted mango would keep you fuller longer than two danishes. I’d almost bet my nuts on that one.

Exercise and staying active

Sure it may be possible to lose weight without doing any of this, but it’s a great aid. Not to mention that it’ll make you healthier overall and it contributes to a more toned body. My homegirl Bethany tried just the above and lost weight comfortably but that could just mean she has a higher metabolism. I hate your guts by the way though Beth.

I say this because my body sucks balls and I probably wouldn’t be able to lose weight if I wasn’t hella active too. Trust me; just like Enzyte (don’t ask *middle finger to Smiling Bob*), Xenadrine doesn’t do $h!t. The same probably can be said about all diet pills. The thing to remember though is that everybody is different, but feel free to still hate on everyone who looks better or is in better shape than you. I know my @$$ still does that!

“It’s not ‘hating’ if you admit to doing it” –Young Jack Thriller

Moving forward

Me in my old jeans.

I can’t think of anything else that has contributed to me losing weight right now but that was probably the bulk of it. It wasn’t like some kind of “eat a salad stuffed into longbread” marketable success story, but it was a little victory for me that makes me all “tinglie” on the inside ^_^. There probably are better ways to lose weight but this is mainly for anyone wondering how I did it.

I wish I had a before and after pic to post but I’ll just drop one of me in some old jeans on here instead. It’s kind of ironic that I’m not nearly as active now as I was before and this is the time I think I’ve finally gotten my weight under control. I think I can attest that mostly to some serious calorie counting and strictly sticking to my new dietary choices. All of that has become a natural part of me and has maybe boosted my metabolism *double Kanye shrug*. Either that or maybe it’s me inventing my new hobby of Challenge Fucking, but that’s a whooooole other story for another time.

Happy shedding!