Make no small plans

Hello and welcome to Tobias Talks

I feel so ready. I’ve had a couple of injuries over the last few weeks, mostly self-inflicted. But these seem to have been enough to spur me into action. I now have approximately 10 months until my wedding. In my weight loss obsessed head that means that at 2lbs a week, 8lb a month (assuming 4 weeks a month). For 10 months means I can lose 80 lbs before the wedding. As someone who is currently sitting at 280 lbs the goal seems fairly clear. 200 lbs by my wedding day! This may be unattainable, I haven’t weighed under 200 lbs since I was a teenager.

I am still a big advocate of CICO, but no longer an advocate of IIFYM. The idea that a person can eat whatever they want and still lose weight is simply not true. Not for any scientific reasons but for a number of human reasons. Eating ultra processed foods such as takeaways and ready meals causes a cascade of physical reactions in the body that essentially leads to an increase in hunger and reduced energy. Two things that make sustaining a weight loss diet very difficult.

Instead I am aiming to eat less calorie dense foods, primarily fruits and vegetables. As we all know, fruit and vegetables are very good for you and are full of vitamins and nutrients. But for my purposes what is most valuable is how few calories there are per 100g of food. As an example if you compare 100g of cheese to 100g of carrots. The cheese has approximately 400 calories/100g and the carrots approximately 40 calories/100g. That’s a huge difference! And whilst the protein and fat rich cheese will be filling, when you consider the volume of these foods there is no doubt in my mind that a whole KILOGRAM of carrots will be more filling than 100g of cheese.

So for this week my goal will be daily walks of at least 30 minutes. Tracking calories at a maximum of 2000 calories per day. And hopefully, by the end of this week, I will be 2 lbs lighter and on my way to 200 lbs!

Your Friend, Tobias