My Journey On YOAD: Living YOAD

My Story

In July 2006, I visited the doctor for a multitude of
ongoing medical problems and when I weighed
in I remember being 305lbs. That was the heaviest
I could ever remember weighing on any scale in my life.

My wife, also overweight, started some small changes
in her diet at that time and those changes made its way
through into my diet as well.

In September 2006, I watched my mother undergo
triple bypass surgey. And I always believed her
to be of modest health although she had passed
on a few of her problems to me including high blood
pressure and acid reflux issues. In her early 20's,
unaware of her high blood pressure problem, she
actually had a stroke, although not very severe.

My dad is a bit healthier even though being
12 years older than my mom, but he has borderline
adult onset diabetes and he had a stint put into an
artery a few years back.

Taking in all this information, It was then I decided
I needed to make some serious changes in my life
or I will be the next one on the heart ward not too
long from now.

It was Novemeber, 2006 and I was already following
the few changes my wife had made to her diet and we had
both lost about 15lbs in the last few months. Any
change at this point was a good change. We watched
a Discovery Health special called YOU: On A Diet featuring
the YOU docs and a few families incorporating YOAD
into their daily lives and showing their amazing progress.

The very next day, November 7th, 2006, my wife and
I went through every cabinet and cupboard in our
house and got rid of ALL the bad foods. We then
went to the grocery store and bought foods that
met YOAD and from that day we have not looked back!

We could not find the book at any local store so we
ordered it off Amazon. It took a few weeks to arrive
but we started cooking with only YOAD approved foods
using YOAD approved methods and we WERE seeing
results even before the book arrived.

From there it has been all downhilll. I have lost 110lbs
since starting on YOAD in November but about 125lbs
over the last 18 months total. Wahoo!

And most of my medical problems related to my weight
have now vanished including high bood pressure, acid
reflux and sleep apnea. I have much more energy and
I feel better than I can ever remember!

And its all thanks to YOAD!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Living YOAD

Maintaining my weight on YOAD is a different beast than losing weight on YOAD. I have been in maintenance mode now following YOAD since December, 2007. I started YOAD in November 2006 and I weighed about 290lbs. This past Christmas day I reached my target weight of 166lbs.

Losing weight is MUCH easier than maintaining. You reduce your calories, eat the right foods, do the exercise, or, just like on “The Biggest Loser” at the end of the week you won’t see the results you want on the scale or the measuring tape. Maintaining the weight means finding a balance of all the aforementioned things while not continuing to lose weight and not to start gaining the weight back.

Well, overall I give myself a B+ for trying to find the balance. I am now 159lbs so over the last 4 months I have still lost another 7lbs. I have slowly increased my calories and even have had a few more “cheat” days here and there (once a month instead of once every three months). But, I am no where near the “underweight” mark and I am still healthy and happy.

To be honest, I have been deathly afraid to increase my calories too much too fast. I can see myself so easily begin to overeat and put all that weight back on again. And, I don’t want to go back to being full after a meal. Sometimes I come home in the evenings and have a great, filling dinner and be totally satisfied and I realize I am 300 calories shy for the day. But, I do keep deserts in the house that are not YOAD but not crazy unhealthy, either. Like soy milk ice cream bars that are 100 calories and have 9 sugars. But still no hydrogenated oils or HFCS. I might grab one of those along with an apple for desert and enjoy the rest of my evening.

So, as I have already said, I don’t have that pressure on my anymore to lose weight and that has opened up a few doors for me that were closed during the weight loss phase. I find myself not as over worried about having something small off the diet. Where I work EVERYONE has some kind of candy at their desks. Mini Snickers bars, M&M’s, mini Reese’s cups, Life Savers, Laffy Taffy….the list goes on. On overage, I may take 2 or 3 pieces of candy per week. Last week I was really good and took none. It varies. But I don’t sweat over it. This past week was really bad because they had a BIG company luncheon last Friday and they brought in these HUGE cupcakes from Sam’s club…about 500 calories per cupcake at least, and they bought too much. They kept some in the fridge and broke out one new box each day this week and had them in the break rooms and on a couple of desks throughout the building. Yesterday I was sooooo tempted to have one. But, I didn’t and I was a good boy. I opted for a banana instead and that satisfied the sweet tooth.

I have also found other ways to be smart on the diet without going overboard. My wife is also on YOAD but she is still losing weight. She has lost about 70lbs so far but wants to lose about 40lbs more. One of the things we have continued to enjoy on the diet has been fried foods. Cooking at home we use 100% pure peanut oil and we take into account the extra calories the oil provides. Typically, you can add 50 calories per serving of whatever you are cooking and that is the true calories taking in any oil absorbed by the food. Of course, it can vary with how long its cooked and what you are cooking, but 50 calories is very close to what it’s going to be and that is what my wife and I always use. And we still don’t fry all that often. We do, however, LOVE fried fish. Recently, we found a great English restaurant near our house that makes the best fish and chips. They use haddock which is my #1 favorite fish! But, the serving sizes are outrages. So, about once a month we allow ourselves the little treat and go there and we split a dinner and get an extra plate. Doing that we have a nice meal, about 900 calories each including the dinner salad we order, and we get to enjoy some good food.

We have to live. We don’t want to be in a bubble and be so rigid that we can’t enjoy small pleasures like that. But, we are smart about going about it and not going crazy. YOAD allows us to live longer but we want to live while living.

Okay, I have ranted enough. I just wanted to share this and get this down on paper while it was in my head.