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Weight Loss without Exercising, Starvation, FAD Diets or the Gym Part 1

 “Surely this is the Mecca of all diets, you lose weight without having to do any exercise and the weight just stays off! This is Part 1 of my 4 part series outlining my Weight loss and lifestyle change:

  • Part 1 – Losing Weight Without Exercising https://www.corporatedad.co.uk/health/daddiet/losing-weight-without-exercising-part-1/
  • Part 2 – Eating Healthy without Compromising Choice (Nutritional advice, Rory Flashman’s Programme, Tim, and dietary choices)
  • Part 3 – Exercise without the Strain (How to start training, walking, hiking and the pros and cons.)
  • Part 4 – Long Term Health Benefits (My day with Bupa, the results of my peak health assessment and my summary of where I’m up to.)
I want to tell you know, that’s not going to happen through a diet. As a 5-6 times a week gym goer, 6 mile a day golf walker and overall fit and healthy 20 something streak of piss, I could eat what I wanted and drink more than I wanted. I didn’t understand metabolism or macros then when I was in my best shape and it was a case of do lots of activity and it counter balances the rest. Right? Well I’m 34 now and I still don’t know anything about macros but I know a whole lot about fad diets, malnutrition and unsustainable fasting. In my mid twenties, after a 5 year shoulder injury that gave me serious muscle imbalances, my knees couldn’t take the strain of long periods sat in the car, the extra weight through fast food and years of neglect. This then quickly turned into a downward spiral of can’t do activity cause I get injured, eat more food, gain more weight and put more pressure on my joints/back/neck/shoulder you name it and it hurt! After seeing a number of consultants, no one could explain why I had terrible back pain and it even stopped me playing the few rounds of golf a year I could. Stopping the only activity I was doing at the time. I guess the next few years into my early 30s were a blur of a loving family, Beth going to high school, work, work problems, moving house, getting married, IVF, buying house, balancing books and generally living life to the fullest possible when possible. My approach was to stop doing activity and it stopped hurting! Solved. At this time my weight was 18 and a half stone. At 6ft 3, I was more like a lanky streak of bacon wrapped in lard than the 20 year old heart breaker. (heart breaker added for dramatic effect!) I was a 30+ man, overweight with some very nice however unhelpful friends and family. There’s an old saying about boiling frogs which sums this up well:
“Imagine a pot filled with cold water. A frog is quietly swimming in it. The fire is lit under that pot. Water starts warming up. Soon it becomes lukewarm. The frog finds this rather pleasant and keeps swimming. The temperature keeps rising. Water is now warm. It’s a little more than what the frog enjoys; it becomes a bit tired, but it doesn’t panic. Water is now really warm. The frog finds that unpleasant, but it has also become weak, by now, so the frog stands the heat as it can and does nothing. The temperature will thus keep rising up to the moment the frog will simply end up being cooked and die, without ever extracting itself from the pot. Plunged in a pot half-way through boiling temperature, the frog would immediately give a powerful and salutary push with its legs and find itself out of it.”
That’s me, I was the frog slowly increasing in weight day by day, buying bigger close a size at a time without anyone telling me I was getting Fat!

So why am I telling you all this?

I want you to understand my story and what I was going through, all the excuses I found to not look and how friends and family should have acted. If you know someone who’s in the boiling pot, please tell them. Sit them down and tell them, explain that it’s all going to be ok, but they have to make a change. My general health got worse and worse over time gradually and it wasn’t good enough. There’s only so much weight that you can put on, sore backs, cracked neck and muscle spasms. Something has to give.

So what was my change/trigger?

1457199647 We had Dorothy. Beth and I have a great relationship, we do amazing things but running round, carrying her  or picking her up from the floor isn’t something I’ve had to do for a number of years. haha Sorry Beth. All of a sudden, this heavy baby was in my arms, or I’d have to pick her up from the floor or balance multiple things all putting strain on my back. Imagine how I felt not being able to hold my own baby for 5 minutes. Pretty devastated. The thoughts of her having a father that couldn’t run around and play like Beth and I did when she was 6+ was painful and I made a conscious effort to seek out my problems.

Was it a medical issue?

I visited the doctors and consultants a number of times and even after a hospital stay because of a trapped nerve, they informed me that there was no slipped discs or bulges. No curvature but potentially I should see a podiatrist. You see the muscle imbalance had tilted my hip and the extra weight was putting immense pressure on my right knee! Right we’re getting answers to my back problems.

OK so what about the weight loss?

Let me get to that. I’m now starting to work out a chain of events that’s causing me to put on weight. I like activity and adventure, not afraid of some hard work but I can’t. The weight was causing the pain which stops me exercising which doesn’t help with the weight and so on and so forth. I needed to shift weight!

Starving myself!

Having eaten like an American at an all you can eat contest for about 5 years I can imagine my stomach was the size of a baby elephant. I was constantly hungry and to give you an idea of the food I consumed, it would be a Maccies Breakfast, snack at 12, sandwich and crisps maybe a pie, then pizza slice/hotdog before way home, amazing homemade dinner and then toastx4 before bed. It wasn’t a conscious choice either. My body craved it. I believe that without sacrifice you don’t get to where you need to be. In some ways I was right as over the next two weeks I lived on no breakfast, a 90 calorie soup for lunch and one normal meal in the evening. You can imagine stress levels were high, stomach was bloated and in real pain and I looked like I hadn’t slept at all. I felt like I was going into shutdown.

Saturday Dad Meetup

Having dragged myself to a Dad Meetup in BrewDog I ate the biggest burger they had, drunk pints of Guinness and was loving life again. It’s just what I needed. My body craved the fats and calories like a vintage loving wife craves a good tea room. Having met Tim earlier in the day for the first time, I explain how starved I was and quickly started to explain this Dad Diet program. Me being skeptical brushed it off but I agreed to speak to Rory the nutritionist. What he told me has changed my life for the better.

Finally losing weight! YEAH!

Having understood my personality and how I take in information, we went through the mechanics of fad diets, starvation and malnutrition, powder based meal replacements and I was getting it. There was something to this, but how could I possibly lose weight and eat what I wanted.
This can’t be right. Where is the diet, all he talks about is lifestyle change? But he knows I can exercise so how can I do that?
Hope you enjoyed this Part 1! It’s going to be an ongoing series revealing some of the secrets of no activity weight loss, putting you in touch with the right people and helping share your stories too. Currently this is where I’m down to, I’m walking 94+ miles for charity next week and I’m starting to see muscles again! To point out, I lost 12kg on food choices alone then the rest has come through activity and actually I started to put weight back on. So there’s a lot to it.

Phill

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