Tanel & Tom’s Weight Loss Plan
My weight has crept up about 15 pounds and Tom’s weight has crept up about 35 pounds since our courting days. And for those of you who listen to the podcast, you know that Tom isn’t happy about his weight. We both use the excuse that Tom likes to cook and does it too well. I have an additional excuse of having had babies. My weight bounced back to pre-marriage levels after the 1st kid. After the second kid, it wasn’t so easy. We’ve both felt the weight creeping up and just haven’t been able to do anything about it.
A couple of months ago, I did a little research for Tom about how other people have lost weight. He is not interested in signing up for some sort of plan and neither of us are willing to eat fake food (i.e. “fat-free”, “sugar-free”, etc). My motto is that if I’m going to eat it, I’m going to eat the real thing and just eat less of it. The only exception to this rule is the Coke Zeros I use to drink my rum on the weekends.
So here are the links I sent him, which he proceeded to look at about a month later:
Jeremy Zawodny’s blog
The Hackers Diet
Calorie King
I also attached the spreadsheet Jeremy Zawodny had on his website.
Fast forward another month: Tom saw a picture of himself in a bathing suit while we were on vacation at his parents and was disgusted. On the 7 hour ride home, we discussed what we would do.
Eat less. Eat less. Eat less. Figure out the number of calories required for weight loss and then simply keep track of the number of calories that go into your body every day. We’d also weigh ourselves every day. Since our exercise schedule is sporadic at best, we wouldn’t consider that at all. The one thing Tom wasn’t willing to do was to keep track every day so I said I would do it for 3 weeks. Here we are 8 weeks later, and I’m still doing it. Actually, it’s worked out OK because I need to do it for me and him asking me what his calories are for the day reminds me.
So far, Tom is down 23 pounds, and I’m down about 10. For the most part, it’s been pretty easy – for me anyway. We try to limit ourselves to 1,000 calories per day during the week and allow some extra on the weekend for some drinks and/or dessert. The key is not to go totally overboard on the weekend, and limit it to 1,500 to 1,700 calories on Friday and Saturday, or it defeats the purpose of eating well during the week. There are times when Tom gets fairly hungry and refuses to eat anything because he’s had his limit for the day. I, on the other hand, will always have a little snack if I’m feeling famished. The key is to have a 25 or 50 calorie snack as opposed to a 200 calorie snack. On the other hand, Tom will have days where he feels like he’s starved himself enough and will have a hamburger and french fries or something equally unhealthy. He pays for it in the short term but it helps him keep to his plan for the long term. We’ve found that there are a few things you really need to make this “plan” work:
The scale we were originally using was highly variable which stressed Tom out immensely. A couple of weeks ago, we decided to invest in a new scale. We also have a food scale which is pretty much imperative if you’re going to count calories. We suggest you look for one with buttons that are fully covered (easier to clean), has a large, square top (easier to put round plates on), is digital (easier to read), and can convert between ounces and grams. The most important feature, however, is that you can “zero it out” with the touch of a button. This means you can put a plate on there, zero it, add some food, zero it again, add more, etc. Most scales these days can do this but you probably want to make sure the one you are looking at can as well.
If you’d like more details or want to join us, feel free to contact us.
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