Well, what did you put him through?
First, I asked his height, and from there, determined his calorie intake should not exceed 2,000 calories/day. He never counted calories in his life. He used to order six cheeseburgers at McDonalds for lunch, plus fries and full octane soda.I gave him a calorie counting book, the kind that gives you the calories for almost all regular foods. He began counting calories, and this was an epiphany for him. He really didn’t realize before, how many calories he was eating each day. That was step No.1.
The next step was my suggestion of calorie percentages of protein, fats and carbs. I told him he needed all of them, but probably in different proportions than he was eating. I was a competitive natural bodybuilder for (5) years. Won a few contests. I was ripped at 1% bodyfat for a couple of my contests, 2% at others, and this by underwater weighing methods, not electrical impedance, or the caliper method, both which are not very accurate. The average American eats 50% fat, 12% protein, 38% carbs. My bodybuilding diet was 50% protein, 40% carbs and 10% fat. I suggested this to him, and he did it. He actually went beyond all of this, and added fasting 48 hrs. in a row, once a week. I did not suggest that, but he read about it on the internet and decided to try it. As you can imagine, he began losing 3-5 lbs. a week. When he got to 183 lbs. he stopped fasting totally.
One of my principals for him, and me, since we were not getting ready to stand on stage for a bodybuilding contest, was to eat one ‘cheat meal’ a week. It’s surprising what a human can sacrifice when he/she knows there is a feast at the end of the week. Our day was (is) Friday mornings. A cafe in a nearby town serves Cinnamon rolls the size of a frisbee (no joke or exaggeration), swimming in a pool of liquid sugar. We are there every Friday on this journey. After the cinnamon roll, we then have ‘breakfast’! Mine is two eggs over easy with a lot of hash browns. His is the same, with an additional chicken fried steak smothered in gravy. After this blowout, we go immediately back to our strict diets of 2,000 calories a day for him, and about 1,700 for me for the rest of the week until the next Friday. Any dietician would probably be horrified at this Friday behavior, but all I an tell you is, it kept us ‘centered’ with something to look forward to, and it took the edge off an entire week of
self denial. We were certainly not then, nor now, ready to stand on a BB stage, but we’ve both come a long ways from where we started, him in particular.
Our final step was exercise. He did not walk, run, lift weights, bike or anything, except TaeKwon-Do, which he is my student. He has been with me for 35 years, and is an 8th degree black belt. I invited him to lift in my basement gym (2) times a week, and ride bikes with my wife and I anytime he could, outside of his work schedule. What a difference all of that has made for him! I am so proud of him, and he is so happy.
In conclusion, some will say, ‘well it was the exercise’, and I will not disagree that the exercise is important. But, he and I both feel, that the diet accounts for 80% of our success. One cannot exercise enough to discount 2,000 EXTRA calories a day, above and beyond the baseline 2,000 calories he was eating. Or at least, not for us at our ages, and with his restriction of time he must spend at work and sleeping. YMMV.
