Fargo, North Dakota.

The old man in the photo above may be a senior citizen, but as this is being written, he is in the best physical shape in many years. OK, so now I will stop writing in the third person. That photo of me was taken in Oklahoma in the summer of 2017. November 29, 2017 marks the fifth anniversary of the beginning of my personal fitness journey. Most of my life, I’ve been considered obese by the nefarious BMI (Body Mass Index) scale. In November 2012, my doctor convinced me that I needed to do something about my increasing weight. He showed me a history of my weight gain over the last several years, documented each year at my annual checkup. That November, I bent the scale at 231 pounds in the doctor’s office. Each year for over a decade, I’d managed to add a few pounds to that number. Though I’ve been able to maintain an aviation physical and continued to fly, I was concerned about my blood pressure and cholesterol, was taking a daily BP control med, and a prescribed statin for cholesterol reduction.

It’s probably here that I should mention that I have no financial affiliation with any of the products mentioned in this article. I’m simply a user of these tools to help me meet my fitness goals. Your mileage may vary.

Enter Lose It!

I’d known my physician for over thirty years having met him at a gathering of ham radio operators shortly after moving to Fargo. He and I are both techno-geeks, always looking for the latest and greatest tools. He commented on an app he’d found for his iPhone and how he started his own weight loss journey. He mentioned that people who become less active in their old age, often gain weight sometimes at the rate of a few pounds a year. It isn’t a big sacrifice to cut back a little on the portion size each meal and hold a consistent weight. Cut back a little more and the weight will slowly fall off. He showed me how the free app could be used to track what I eat and how I can set a goal of weight loss per month or week. I downloaded the app and set a goal of losing two pounds a week thinking that would be cool, but knowing that would likely not happen, weight loss programs and human perseverance being known for their past history, especially in my case.

My doctor told me that the secret to cutting back is to log what you eat and to pay attention to calories in vs. calories out. Until the smartphone, that’s been a difficult process. With Apps like Lose It! loaded on my mobile device, logging a meal is made much easier. The secret is to remember that calorie counts and exercise burn are always approximate. Don’t sweat it if you go over on a daily calorie count, and try to look at the week’s total calories eaten. Try to make them less than the sum of the seven daily counts. In other words, in November, 2012, Lose It! calculated that a person of my height and weight could eat a bit over 2200 calories a day to maintain my current weight. I don’t remember anymore what it said I should eat to lose two pounds per week, but that was my suggested goal. The weekly scale in Lose It! would tell me if I was over or under that weekly goal. The theory: As long as I keep my weekly calorie count below that weekly goal, I should lose weight.

Tracking in a program like Lose It! is made easier by remembering typical meals, by being able to scan bar codes on food products, even by taking a photo of the food during the lookup process. The program documents many restaurant menus and if the item I just ate has a green check mark by it, I know that the calorie count has been documented and verified. If I go to a restaurant, for example, and order an 8-ounce broiled sirloin, I don’t sweat it if the restaurant isn’t listed in Lose It! Any restaurant’s 8-ounce sirloin is going to have a similar count. Who cares about exact? What is necessary is being consistent and most importantly, not cheating on the number I enter (unless, of course, I want to estimate high.) It does me no good, for example, to say I ate 1 3/4 ounces of potato chips if I’ve eaten 3 ounces. Yes, I bought a food scale for use at home and I use it regularly on foods that don’t list a calorie count. I also rely on the package weights. If a bag of chips is labeled 1 3/4 ounces, that’s what it is.

But what about carbs, ketosis, detox, gluten free, etc.?

I’m not a dietitian but the scientist in me says that it all boils down to calories. If you take in less calories than you burn, the weight has to come off. I eat pretty much a similar diet to what I always have, just adjusting to smaller portions. OK, truth be told, I don’t eat nearly as many cheeseburgers as I used to. Given a little restraint and the ability to enjoy foods that I like on occasion makes the perseverance easier. If we go out to eat and I consume more calories that day than I am allowed, I don’t get all bent and frustrated, I simply resolve to eat less at some other meals, just so the end-of-week caloric input is less than the proposed caloric need to meet that week’s weight loss goal. Trust me, it works. Don’t just take my word for it, check out James Fell and Yvette D’Entremont for their take on physical fitness and science.

I didn’t meet that 2 lbs per week goal most of the time. As I said, I didn’t expect to. However, over the months, the weight decreased steadily. I’ve posted the details below. Finally, in July 2015, about two and a half years after I started my journey, I hit my goal weight, losing 60 pounds. From that point on, I changed to a maintenance mode. I told Lose It! that my new goal was to lose an additional 10 pounds knowing that it would keep tracking a a lower than maintenance calorie count and that if I didn’t meet the week’s goal, it would not be a big deal. At this point, I didn’t mind so much if my weekly eating goal, now only about 1650 calories per day, was exceeded by my caloric intake.

As this is being written in October, 2017 in anticipation of my 5-year anniversary, I’ve maintained my original goal weight or less with a few excursions of a pound or two above my 170-pound goal on occasion. Though I could still lose more weight, at least according to my BMI, I’m no longer on the statins or blood pressure meds and other than a few old age related aches and pains, I’m feeling very good for a man of almost seven decades.

But what about exercise?

I’ve been going to a gym since the mid-1990s, but usually for only a 30-minute cardio class or walk on a treadmill maybe three times a week. When I retired, I decided that since I no longer have to be at work, I can take an hour a day for exercise, at least five days a week. The good news is that when I tell Lose It! how much I’ve exercised, those calories get tracked, thus allowing me to enjoy a little larger portion of food. The more I work, the more I can eat. I purchased a Fitbit and subscribed to the premium Lose It! service which syncs Fitbit data with my Lose It! app automatically adjusting my daily calorie goal to match my activity.

At some point, awhile back, I decided to check out a new class at the gym. A program called Group Active provided me with a variety of exercise in a one-hour class. Twenty minutes of cardio, twenty minutes of light weight training, and twenty minutes of core, balance, and flexibility, four to five days a week, have given me the resting heart rate of a young man, normal blood pressure and a reasonable cholesterol level, all med free. In the winter, when we are in Arizona, I follow a similar regimen on my own, though our gym there doesn’t specifically offer a Group Active class. Many thanks to Molly and Barb at Total Balance Fitness in Fargo for their advice on my weight loss and fitness journey. In Arizona, with hiking trails nearby, regular readers of my blog know that I spend some of my exercise time enjoying the beauty of the Arizona desert at a nice, leisurely 25-30 minutes per mile on the trail. A one minute promo from the Group Active designers is here.

I also do those “tricks” mentioned in many places. I park at the far end of parking lots. I take the stairs instead of the elevator most of the time, especially going down. In addition (or in place of) the daily gym trip, I try to go for a walk every day. Like my other goals, I don’t get frustrated because I don’t do these things. There’s always tomorrow.

I promised details. Here they are, captured from my Lose It! App.

The first day of my weight loss journey, November 29, 2012, I weighed in at 229 pounds, buck naked. After reaching my 170 pound goal in July 2015, I’ve varied between 164 and 171 pounds. That’s still “overweight” by BMI standards, but I feel good, I’m fit and in better health than I have been most of my life. BMI? IDGAF. (Don’t look up that acronym. >grin<) Early on, I recorded my weight weekly or even only when I noticed a consistent couple-pound loss. In 2015, I purchased a Lose It! scale. When I step on it, the scale uses a bluetooth connection to transmit my weight, percent of body fat, hydration, and BMI to my iPad’s Lose It! app. Unless I am travelling, I step on the scale every morning. It’s easy to see from the chart about when I purchased the scale.

A short time after reaching my 170-pound goal, I decided to set a new goal but only to help with maintenance. Now, if I go over the daily calorie count or even the weekly calorie allowance, again, IDGAF. As long as I stay around 170, I’m good and when I go above 170, I know that I need to cut back the calories or exercise a bit more so that by the end of the week, I’m in weight loss territory.

Of course, here’s the obligatory “before” photograph. I don’t actually have any photos of me in 2012, but the photo above was taken in January, 2010. Looking at my medical history, at that time I weighed in at under 220 pounds. That’s right, I’d gained over six pounds a year in just two years. No wonder the doctor was concerned.

A wise man once told me, “Success is a journey, not a destination.” That saying is especially appropriate when it comes to weight loss and fitness. Who knows what tomorrow may bring. As long as I can, I plan to keep on my journey. If you read this far, you really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you!

John Steiner