A Tale of Two Neals
By: Neal Acree
Tags: Motivation, Weight Loss Tips, Weight Loss

Okay, so after posting about losing 50 pounds over this last year enough people asked me to share my strategy that I thought I’d put it down in one place. I have been reluctant to do this because the last thing I want is to come of like I’m trying to sound like an expert or to pat myself on the back. I cringe at the thought of being that guy that loses a little weight and makes a huge deal out of it. No, I’m only on the beginning of this journey and I still have a lot to learn.

Ultimately the thought of helping even one person out there made me realize that the least I can do is share my own experience. And all this is is my experience. I don’t believe in diets or quick fixes. I’ve tried everything at one point or another and I can say from experience there are no shortcuts. This is about change.

Not interested in reading my entire life story? Here are the Cliff’s Notes:

1. Exercise (I used a trainer but you don’t have to).

2. Cut way back on processed sugar/carbs.

3. Keep track of calories and limit portions with the help of an app.

4. Redefine your relationship with food and stop emotional eating.

5. Drinks lots of water and get plenty of sleep.

Have a few minutes? Allow me to dig a little deeper into this:

A year and 50 pounds ago I was eating a daily diet of tacos and ice cream. I was the father of newborn twins and a soon to be teenage daughter and had just wrapped the busiest year of my career. I was the heaviest I’d ever been and I was also the most tired I had ever been. I had known deep inside for a long time that I needed to make a change and with a new chapter of my life about to open I was ready.

While I certainly had enough external factors in my life to blame the weight gain on, I knew full well that I had gotten there through avoidance. Avoiding the reality of the consequences of diet and inactivity over time, avoiding dealing with stress by eating to feel better and worst of all avoiding the scale. In truth this all began when on a family trip to Hawaii I had to be weighed to take a helicopter ride. When they told me my weight I actually tried to convince them that their scale was broken. Well, it wasn’t.

I wasn’t a closet eater. In fact at the height of all this the eating became a part of my identity. My taco eating exploits became a staple for my social media including ongoing series of posts about taco places misspelling my name and my local taco dealer supplying me with tacos and even slipping in some free churros to keep me hooked. It was all in jest and I never felt any shame about it. I just knew that the game had run its course.

Enter The Salad

It started with salad. Instead of having tacos for 2–3 meals a day, I had salad for 2–3 meals a day (with protein, of course). That part wasn’t hard because I actually really like salad. I wasn’t eating the healthiest ones out there at first. I’d still have dressing and cheese on them but I didn’t go crazy. I knew that the complex carbs in the vegetables would give me more energy less carb coma than the tacos. The key factor here was that I switched to something I still enjoyed and still had a taco here and there. The change was relatively gradual and not too extreme to maintain.

The First Hurdle

Most things worth doing require us to break through an imaginary barrier and endure a period of pain or discomfort. Often the fear of that discomfort keeps us from breaking through. But the pain is temporary and almost always less than we imagine it to be.

The real challenge was in kicking the sugar. I knew from experience that losing that was the only way to go. I also knew that it wouldn’t go without a fight. The first couple days without sugar left me with terrible headaches and a general sense of discomfort. I was deep in the thralls of a sugar addiction. And what’s the big deal about sugar? That’s a whole different subject. One that has inspired numerous documentaries that I suggest you check out if you are unaware of the negative effects of processed sugar and how prevalent it is in our food.

But I also knew from experience that the discomfort of removing sugar was temporary. I went to bed early those first couple nights to avoid having to deal with the discomfort and sure enough, within a few days I barely missed it. Well, at least on a physical level. I did whatever I could to avoid a head on fight with the cravings. Went to bed early, took a nap, distracted myself. It became a full time job which was difficult with all of the other responsibilities in my life but I needed a change. I knew that for all of this to stick I’d have to redefine my entire relationship with food. But that wasn’t going to change overnight.

The initial removal of sugar from diet did what it has done many times before and gave me an almost instant 5 pound weight drop. I was a nice kick start but I knew it would take more than that to get where I needed to go.

The Journey Begins

The story really starts with me calling my friend Christine Bauman who had been offering to train me for years and saying “I’m ready”. Not only did she get me to start working out a couple times a week but she also gave me a ton of great advice about what to eat and turned me on to the MyFitnessPal app to track my calories.

I am fully aware that not everyone can afford a trainer and there have been many times in my life when I couldn’t either. I don’t believe that a trainer is mandatory to lose weight but for me I needed someone to show me the way. I also believe that while I couldn’t have done it without her, I also had to find my own way to the path. For me the biggest component to all of this (and the biggest obstacle) was my relationship with food. That I would have to overcome on my own.

Cue the Training Montage

I couldn’t give you an exact name for the training Christine had me do as it is something of her own invention. Plus everyone is different and will respond to different types of exercise differently. I do know that she tailored something specific to me that involves weight training and combinations of movements to work several areas at once. This maximized time and made the sessions a lot more productive. She also has a lot of physical therapy experience so she has been great at helping me not only avoid injuries from working out but recover quickly from chronic work-related pain.

The most important thing here is that exercise is essential and there are no shortcuts there. It was hard to get back into it (I had done plenty of it in my teens) but once it became a regular thing I started looking forward to it. I wouldn’t always want to work out but I’d look forward to how I felt after. I’d look forward to seeing my body change for the better and to feeling stronger. The change was gradual but the results were noticeable fairly quickly.

If you can’t afford a trainer there are plenty of great resources out there. Train with a friend, find info or classes online. Whatever you do, find a way to make yourself accountable and don’t let yourself make excuses when you don’t feel like working out. No matter how much I try to talk myself out of it at times, I’m always glad I made myself do it.

Keeping Track

One of the biggest factors in all of this was getting the MyFitnessPal app to track what I was eating. Why? Because all of this time I had been eating wthout really paying attention to how much I was eating let alone what was in what I was eating. I had tried to lose weight before but had never really found a way to closely monitor what I was eating. The app has a surprising amount of food options to log as it is updated online by users around the world. So there was never an excuse to not log something in.

It was a little hard to get used to at first but soon I was finding myself not eating unnecessary snacks just so I wouldn’t have to deal with entering them. Not that it was that difficult. I paid the hefty $50 subscription for the app to be able to lose the ads and be able to track macro ingredients like protein, carbs, fat, etc. It was hard to justify paying that much for a phone app but for me it was an investment in my health and I don’t think I could have done it without it. That being said, there are other apps out there and there are free alternatives. The most important thing is to keep track of what you’re eating.

The app also helps me enter my weight every day. I try not to obsess over it but it is motivating to see the progress over time and understand the patterns. Some days it’s up and some days it’s down but when I zoom out and see the graph over a few months I see that it has kept going down.

Cutting back

Once I had gotten used to using the app and was starting to build some momentum my trainer had me lower my daily amount of target calories. The adjustments were gradual as she warned that dropping the calories too low would cause me to lose muscle and definition. There was also the risk of triggering the body into thinking it is in survival mode where it starts storing fat to stave of starvation. So like I said, I cut back a little. Got comfortable with that then cut back some more but never took it too far.

Though I say “cutting back” in the general sense, I tried to do so with each meal. I learned to only eat until I was full instead of eating what was in front of me. The app also lets you track partial servings so if I didn’t need to eat something I’d save it for later.

I also worried less about adhering to 3 meals a day. I eat when I’m hungry but only what I need. I also avoid having a big dinner because I’ve found that I am more affected by what I eat at night. I’m more likely to go into a food coma after a big dinner than a big breakfast which is the opposite of how things are generally done.

A Change From Within

As I have said a few times already none of this would have been possible without a complete reprogramming of the brain and redefinition of my relationship with food. That sounds easy, right?

Admittedly this was the hardest part of all of this and possibly one of the hardest things I knew from decades of rigorous self examination (and some professional) that it was the only way.

So what is the secret? Well, like I said, there are no short cuts. There are only choices. Dozens if not hundreds of choices that get made every day. But this is about one choice at a time and it all comes down to making the right one more often than the wrong ones.

It also comes down to accountability. With the app you can see the choice right in front of you. No more lying to yourself or pretending you didn’t just eat an entire can of Pringles. If you have achieved the level of self discipline and self honesty that allows you to enter everything you eat into the app (it’s not as hard as it sounds), then each time you do you are faced with that choice.

It is at this moment you must ask yourself why you are eating. Chances are it won’t be too hard differentiate between true hunger and stress eating, bored snacking or habitual grazing. Or maybe will be harder to spot for some than others. If you’ve never really examined this too closely then it might be a little more deeply rooted for you. These habits may have grown quite clever in disguising themselves and might want to put up a fight. But the battle is won one choice at a time.

There are short term consequences to these choices. Believe me, I know. The discomfort of denying yourself something external that you are used to relying on for your very happiness can be excruciating. It can lead to everything from physical pain (headaches, body aches) to depression and a general sense of dread.

These cravings can have a really deep foothold in your psyche and they can pull the very strings to your sense of wellbeing to get what they want. They have access to all of your intelligence, they know all your weaknesses and they have made an art form out of exploiting them. But for all their perceived power, they are all simply thoughts in your head and can be redirected, reflected back at themselves and eventually dulled to a faint whisper. It takes time but it can absolutely be done.

Every single time you choose to ignore a mental craving you are rewiring your brain for the better and loosening the physical hold you might be feeling. The more you do it, the easier it gets. The more you deny yourself the ability to deal with emotions or stress through eating, the more you are forced to face them head on and build more constructive mechanisms to dealing with them. And the more positive choices you make, the more you’ll see a positive physical change that will only fuel your progress.

For clarification I’m not talking about serious issues here. If you truly need help on that level then you should talk to a professional. I’m just talking about powering through the cravings you get when you’re bored, stressed or when you find yourself using food as a crutch in any way. It really does come down to one choice at a time and it really does get a lot easier over time. In fact, while that first hurdle can be quite a doozy, it should become noticeably easier to make the right choices fairly quickly.

For what it’s worth all of this stuff on overcoming a mental dependance on food ties deeply into sugar cravings. For me my relationship with sugar and food are tightly intertwined. All the stuff about gradually rewiring your brain and overcoming the physical hold that mental cravings can have is about sugar as much as anything.

Something Sweet

I should also mention that while I have cut back quite a bit on refined sugar, I do have a few berries after a meal to satisfy my sweet tooth. I used to laugh at the idea of having berries for dessert. I wouldn’t have dessert all the time but when I did I would go all out. But now I look forward to them. Just a small handful here and there for balance. I also have a couple pumps of vanilla syrup in my morning coffee. A year ago I was adding seven but it wasn’t as hard to scale back as I thought it would be.

A Little Magic

I don’t know what else to call drinking plenty of water and getting a normal amount of sleep in all of this other than a little bit of magic. Somehow the single most effective thing in all of this was simply drinking more water (an ounce per day for every pound you weigh) and sleeping. This obviously works in conjunction with all the other things and is part of helping your body through its metamorphosis. And yes, I know that both of these can be extremely difficult to achieve for some (the sleep part is the hardest for me to maintain) but it made such a huge difference I could hardly believe it.

Seeing the Change

The real motivating factor through all of this is actually seeing the transformation. From looking in the mirror to feeling my clothes fit the way they were supposed to I was constantly being rewarded for the effort I put into it. I had a section of clothes in my closet for “if I ever got around to losing some weight” and I honestly thought I’d never wear them again. Now they are my every day clothes.

I look at old photos and I barely recognize myself. I know I haven’t changed that much on the outside but somehow I can see the changes I made on the inside. The best part is seeing people that haven’t seen me for a long time and hearing their reaction. My point here is that yes, it was really hard but it was also totally worth it.

One more thing. This wasn’t about vanity. While looking better and fitting into my clothes better is a nice bonus the real driving force behind all of this is my family. Wanting to be around for them as long as I can be. Wanting to have the energy to give them as much of myself as I can while working as hard for them as I can.

Everything In Moderation

Lastly one of the biggest keys is to not go to extremes on any of it. Don’t starve yourself, don’t push yourself so hard physically or mentally that you’ll rebound right back into your bad habits. Gradual change is manageable change. I still have tacos from time to time. I still have ice cream as well. Its rare because I don’t feel the need for them very often but when I do I know I’m making my own choice.

Once my metabolism got used to the new weight I can have a cheat day here and there where I eat bad the entire day and it doesn’t affect me. It’s rare that I do but it’s nice to know that as long as I keep working at it, it’s not a life sentence of self deprivation.

I’ll end in saying that I know I have a long way to go. I’d love to lose another 20 pounds and build enough muscle to get rid of my belly fat. But I also know that maintaining the physical and mental transformation is the most important thing. I often find myself on the verge of slipping but then I remember how much work I’ve put into this so far.

I hope that if you’ve managed to read to the end of this that I was able to help in some way. I would probably have been the last person to see myself here now giving advice on the subject. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I can do it, you can do it. There’s no reason to believe you can’t.