I lost 40 pounds about a year ago and haven't put it back on. I thought I'd post what I did to change that might help somebody. I never thought I could have lost 40 pounds, because I always felt I was thinner than most people and thought if I lost 40 pounds I would look sick, but I feel better and I think I actually look better.

I never really changed my workout schedule as I always have. I lift weights 3 days a week and do cardio twice a week. I actually only workout for about 30 minutes, but I've always lifted weight really heavy my entire life.

The things I changed were pretty simple. I used to eat eggs for breakfast everyday, which I actually think eggs are good. But eggs by themselves don't taste that great until the salt and cheese is added to my scrambled eggs. I really don't know about the health benefits of having cheese and salt every morning, so I started to make a protein shake in the morning.

I make the common breakfast smoothie you see everywhere, which is similar to this one:

https://www.swansonvitamins.com/healt...-smoothie.html

The only difference is that I don't add any sugar or honey and I use optimum nutrition all natural protein powder, which uses stevia instead of sugar or an alternative. I drink this 4-5 days a week for breakfast, since I can make it in 5 minutes or less. On the weekends I have eggs for breakfast many days.

I used to drink one can of diet soda a day. The thought was, it's diet soda so no calories and I wouldn't mind a little caffeine to pick me up. Well after seeing so many articles about how diet soda can actually make you fatter than regular soda I cut it out completely. This might have been the biggest factor in my weight loss. Instead I would drink only water or unsweet ice tea. So on a daily bases I mostly drinking green tea in the morning, water for lunch and dry red wine for dinner.

I used to be a big coffee drinker, but gave up coffee for green tea and oolong tea on the weekends. Mostly green tea, but just recently started to drink oolong tea. There's a few studies on weight loss with green and oolong tea, so that might have helped a little bit. The coffee I drank was always black, so I can't blame sugar or milk.

I didn't want to do a yo-yo diet, which I've done before with low carb, then off of it, so I did what my one of my friends who is in great shape does. Only eat things you wouldn't normally eat on the weekend. Chances are you'll go a week or two not eating anything bad if you only eat bad things on weekends. So coworkers bring in candy, brownies or any crap and I never even try them. I'll only eat junk if it's on the weekend, which means it's less day and not often. I found when I went on diets I would deprive myself so much that I would be too stricked and then not care, so it was a horrible yo-yo diet. Now I do a weekday diet and if I want to eat pizza or have a beer or ice cream it's only on the weekend.

I also used to drink beer every now and then. I still enjoy beer, but I've switched to drinking a glass of wine almost every night. Ironic as it is I've lost even more weight when I started to drink one glass of wine a night and I really only have a beer once a month with friends.

Changing life style made the most difference than dieting. I wanted to do something I could do the rest of my life, not diet, pigg out, diet, pigg out.

I do eat out lunch 4-5 days a week, but go to the same places and get similar meals. I eat at chipotle once a week, korean once a week and vietnamese once a week. The true asian resturants seem to give you portions that aren't over sized.

If anybody is interested I can post my workout routine, but I never changed it. I used to change my routine often to shock my muscles, but I haven't done that in years.

Congrats on your weight loss and keeping it off! Also, nice that you're sharing what worked for you with others.

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"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~Immanual Kant~

NatMedTalk and Beyond

Great job! I agree with the part about giving yourself a bit of leeway on the weekends, a bit of good-tasting foods will probably boost morale more than it will hinder your overall health.

Sure, it's a fast workout of 20-40 minutes 5 days a week. I used to spend hours at the gym, but I just don't have the time anymore or care to spend that much time there anymore. I actually go during lunch as well and I do what is called MAX-OT, but change it up a little bit. You can google MAX-OT and read more about it if you want, but basically they think you should warm up a muslce and then lift as heavy as you can reps from 4 to 6 times and only do two sets, not the typical 3 sets. I do something similar, but do reps 6-8 and I only do two sets of exerise. I'll just go ahead and post my typical routine.

Monday -> Chest and Biceps
Bench press (warm up 2 sets and never warm up the chest muscle again).
Flat bench press
Incline benchpress
Butterflies
Dips

After working out my Chest I don't warm up my triceps, since it's a secondary muscle being worked out with Chest.

cable arm extention
machine extention
over the head extention

Tuesday -> Back and Biceps
Warm up with cable pullups or bar pull ups and again 2 sets of warm ups before doing heavy weights.

cable pulldowns
bent over rows
cable rows (to hit the lower back as well)

Dumbell curls (don't warm up bicep either since most of the exercises use bicep as a secondary muslce)
hammer curls
machine curls

Wedneday -> Cardio

Thursday -> Shoulders and legs
Military press (2 warm ups and then 2 sets as usual)
dumbell lateral raises
side later raises
uprights (to work traps)
shrugs

Legs are the only exercise I do higher reps and higher sets. I also only do squats and leg presses. A lot of people I know at the gym neglect legs completely and run or feel other cardio exercises hit their legs enough. I personally do squats or leg presses and 4 sets of 8 to maybe even up to 12 reps.

You see I can almost do everything in about 30 minutes. I'm sweating pretty bad when I'm done lifting weights. The cardio days I do 45 minutes of cardio and to be honest I never skip the weights, but have skipped cardio. By doing 2 sets instead of 3 it also allows me to get to the gym quick and fast. I do follow MAX-OT in that I'm lifting to basically failure. I don't follow the rule of your body weight you should get twice as many grams of protein. So a 200 pound person should get 400 grams of protein a day.

The only negative thing about my routine is that you really should change your routine often. I personally don't have the motivation or drive to keep changing my routine so I figure showing up and doing something is better than nothing. Half the battle is just showing up and doing something.

JBO, you ROCK! Thanks for sharing your program. It sounds like it is a great lifestyle and I'm sure it makes you feel and look great! Very inspiring!!!!!