tools of the trade...

Here are some of the tools we use everyday...

Kitchen Scale: I think this is a must!!! The chances you will underestimate what you are eating are HIGH...A scale is a cake way to ensure you are calculating the best you can. The one we use is http://www.amazon.com/Ozeri-Professional-Digital-Kitchen-Tempered/dp/B003MSZBSI/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1330378758&sr=8-4 . You don't have to get this one, but for us it looks clean on our counter and has an easy "tare" feature. For those of you that understand the tare feature bear with me...but you throw your plate on the scale, hit tare and it takes away the weight of the plate, then toss on what you want weighed, hit tare and it takes away that weight as well, etc, etc. Shelley uses it for her cream for coffee, cereal and milk and even for baking and it just makes things quick and keeps you legit. Chips are a perfect example for a reason to use it!!! On the bag it says "about 14 chips" soooooo...is that 14 large chips, little chips or medium size????? On that same bag an exact weight is printed as well (example 28g). Just throw those on the scale and you have your LEGIT number! There are plenty of other killer scales out there, the point is, I would never want to do life without one. Once you get one you WILL understand!!!!

Restaurant nutrition info: This information is EVERYWHERE! If we're eating "out," we plan our meals long before entering the restaurant. For places we know we'll go to often, we save the info in our iPhones. If you have a smartphone, there are apps such as, "Livestrong , My Fitness Pal, Restaurant Nutrition," (the list goes on) are all there to help you with your calorie calculations. One word of advice though, the calculation they give you is a ball park number. I will crank up the number if I feel I've received a larger portion!!! For local joints, which we like better than chains :) we use the best guesstimate possible while comparing to the "chain" places.

Regular Scale: I weigh in every week or at least every 10 days. This is critical to knowing I am heading in the right direction and accountable. I don't weigh in less than 7 days, because the reality is if you are losing weight less than a week, then you are at too high a deficit or you are seeing water weight loss, which will only frustrate you when that weight comes back. If I have had a ton of sodium the night before I plan to weigh in, I won't weigh in until the next day or 2 after that. Sodium does nothing for weight loss, but can cause you to retain water and throw your weigh-in (and mood) off!

Write down everything that goes in your mouth: For us, we use an app on our iPhone, but even if it's a notebook, journal, piece of paper...WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!!! Your memory is not that good!!! ANYTHING that enters my mouth I enter in my app. Even the mints I have at church on Sundays to keep my breath nice and fresh :) get written down. I recently had a cold and needed to eat cough drops, each one is 15 calories and I ended the day eating 200 calories of cough drops!!! Write it down, and keep it legit. I began this journey on February 28th last year and can go back to that day and pull up EVERYTHING that has entered my mouth since then. Side note...even if you have a day that you eat over your goal, write it down!!!!!

These things are CRITICAL to your success and might seem inconvenient or difficult at first, but I promise you, with consistency they will just be a part of how you do life and something you can maintain!!!

So excited to hear how so many of you are changing your life 1lb at a time!!!!! Keep rolling!!!

Power of Consistency

I'm not on a diet...

We were in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina a month or so ago, celebrating one of our incredible friend's birthday. His Grandparents have an amazing house on the beach, one of those places that cause you to lust a little bit and then quickly repent. We were sitting in their sunroom, having casual conversations with a few people and the topic of my weight loss had come up. One of the ladies asked me about cheating on my "diet." I told her that to be honest I had never cheated from the day that I started this journey. She was in shock! "Never cheated???? Not even once???" I could tell in her voice (and the fact that she brought it up again while Shelley was around, hoping to catch me off guard :) ) that she was struggling believing that.

To address how I have been able to be consistent, let me first start with this....Diets do work!!! I will never tell you other than that. Back to my last post, many diets work, simply because you are putting yourself in a calorie deficit and your body is burning stored fat for fuel. They work, because initially your body is getting rid of water weight that it had been retaining, due to your eating. They work!!! While sitting here at Barnes & Noble, in my view is a HUGE display of diet books. They wouldn't be selling them, and making as much money off of us, if they didn't work! I have yet to meet someone, who has struggled with their weight, and not gone on some sort of diet which resulted in some level of weight loss. It's not like a diet is the "thing" that we've all been missing!! Seriously, it's not like I was sitting at Golden Corral eating a ton and just waiting for someone to lead me to a diet! We have gained weight and have been unable to keep it off, because we have not been able to be consistent in the "diets" and have been unable to make them a part of our core beliefs or simply our lifestyle!!!

Consistency is the key! This is the thing which will get us the results we want! Since my initial weight gain 17 years ago I have lost weight, doing diets! Why? Because they work...But I have never been able to be consistent on a "diet." The fact that most diets have to factor in "cheat days" screams INCONSISTENCY! It's like they are saying to us, it's impossible to stay consistent with this eating pattern, so we are going to factor inconsistency right into the equation! I did the low carb thing for a while back in 2006 and lost some weight doing it, but how in the world am I going to really live a lifestyle of no pasta and bread for the rest of my life..I'm Italian!! Did it work??? Yep, I lost some weight...did I stay consistent with it??? Nope!

Here are a few reasons I don't think we stay consistent...

1) We set ourselves up with too large of a deficit: Don't be extreme!!! If you can only handle a 250 calorie deficit each day (which equates to a loss of a 1/2 lb per week or 25 lbs a year) rock it!!! Stay consistent with it. Don't start with a 1,000 calorie deficit per day (2 lbs per week or 102 lbs a year) and then in a week head down to Captain Georges, crush it... use up all of that deficit and then some!! Stick with what you can maintain...You are not on a diet you are just eating less than you burn in a day, you are being a good steward of what you have to work with.

2) We place foods "off-limits" instead of learning that there are no bad foods, just bad amounts of that food: This is huge!!! I am now wearing 32 jeans from tight 42's and weighing in the 180's from 278 and I still eat what I want when I want! It's funny how when we think in terms of "diet" we start to think "diet foods" (carrots and other things)... there's nothing wrong with these foods. I actually now try to eat about 80 percent clean foods, but when I started, I ate 20 percent clean foods and the other 80 percent of my calories were spent on non-diet foods, but I still consistently lost weight. Learn to live within your range and spend your calories how you choose. When we place foods in categories and then eventually delve into the "forbidden category," we have a tendency to eat WAY more...so guilt creeps in and we start to say to ourselves, "I have already messed up, so I might as well just eat a ton and start again tomorrow." Even now, if I feel like eating a doughnut, I eat it, it's my business and I manage my calories how I feel. No shame or foods that are off limits!

Let me give you some info that could be a revelation...If you have 2,500 calories to work with, meaning if you eat over that you will gain and if you eat less than that you will lose, and you consume 3,000 calories of veggies and fruit you will gain weight!!! No matter how "good" the food is, a calorie is a calorie!!! At the same time, if you eat 2,000 calories of McDonald's, you will LOSE weight! Down the road we can get into how much better you feel when you eat the healthier foods, but the reality is, there should be no foods that are "off-limits," only excessive amounts of that food. Shelley has a sweet-tooth and still continues to have dessert every night and as far as I go, I will not stop eating fried fish whenever I want to. There are no bad foods, just bad amounts!

3) We don't live within our range, just legalistically lock ourselves to a number:

Once you've figured out your BMR and what you actually have to work with, and then factor in a deficit that you can sustain consistently...You now have your range! This is where you would like to be with your deficit everyday (goal) and where you know you should never go over, because you will gain weight (reality). Living in your range gives you the freedom of knowing that with dinner parties, birthdays, holidays, etc you might not always be able to keep that deficit, but you will choose to never eat over what you actually have to work with. Picture it like a savings, you might hope to bank 1,000 deficit every day, this is your goal, but on somedays you might only bank 200, others 500, 700 and sometimes zero! Life changes and everyday is different...don't just make the decision to gain by going over what you have to work with!

This may seem basic to some and to others may be profound, but I promise you that consistency is the thing which has helped me lose over 90 lbs! You can do this! You can change your life! You can stay consistent! You are worth doing this and getting healthy is very attainable!!!

If you need help setting up a plan and figuring out your range, please give me a shout!!!

something's got to give...

In January 2011 I felt hopeless...

I was probably the biggest I had been and needed help. If you have ever struggled with your weight you know this feeling! Maybe you are like me and you could look back on areas of your past and see victories, things which through Christ you were able to overcome. Possibly, even major addictions that had you bound and you experienced freedom, but food and weight seemed like such a hopeless situation!

I had tried many "fad diets" and even lost weight on some of them in the past, but now I found myself facing some of the most difficult questions: "where do I begin??," "how do I begin??" and even worse, "do I really want to begin something knowing that I am just going to fail???" Talk about setting yourself up for failure...attempting to start something with the lie planted in your mind, that you are probably just going to fail!!! On top of all that, I had the internal pressure of "I'm a pastor and I don't have self-control in this area!"

At the beginning of February of 2011 I had a thought. Knowing I needed to lose weight and that I was in need of some motivation, I talked to about 5 guys from church about doing a little contest. The goal was to lose 50 lbs in 3 months. This meant about 3.85 lbs a week. Watching shows like, "The Biggest Loser," made this seem attainable to me. I had an arsenal of weight loss strategies which had helped me drop some weight in the past and the biggest winner of the bunch was always the low-carb approach. However, this time I wanted to attempt something a little different, so I thought about counting calories. I began on February 28th and was pretty determined to do it. I gave myself 1,500 calories a day and went forward! I came up with this number by assuming that 2,000 was probably where I should be, but I was extreme, so I would roll with 1,500!

I lost a little bit of weight initially and was doing ok, but as time went on some of the guys made the decision to pull out of the contest until I was one of the few still trying to make this happen. At this point something clicked in me...if I was on Oprah back in the day, it would have been called my "ah ha moment"... that moment of clarity where God directs you to the tools needed to complete your journey. What began as a desire to just lose some weight, became a spiritual experience through which God was teaching me stewardship and discipline. I remember talking to one of my great friends at a dinner table and saying, "Bro, I wish that God would just give me a mind like Jillian Michaels," a well known trainer from The Biggest Loser, "to where I'd see food like she sees it...I don't think she ever wants to crush a bunch of Long John Silver's fish!!" We both laughed about it, but in reality God was starting this process in me. I started to study calories, nutrition and just how to really lose weight and KEEP IT OFF! I went from someone who was obsessed with a DIET to someone looking to find a lifestyle that I could keep consistently forever! I also went from being someone who just wanted to take the weight off to instead desiring to be a healthy person and be around for my beautiful wife and incredible daughter as long as I possibly can.

Through research, study, and at times obsession, God was leading me to the revelations that I believe are very important things many need to really overcoming their weight issues and to ultimately change their lives forever!

Here are some of them and I hope to flesh them out in more detail in other posts...

1. There is VERY simple math connected to weight loss ("Calories in vs. Calories out" is totally legit)
2. Diets work, but you can't live forever doing a diet
3. If you monitor your calories correctly you can eat WHATEVER you want in moderation. (There are no bad foods just bad amounts)
4. The time of the day in which you eat doesn't do anything to stop you from losing weight. You CAN eat before you go to bed if you want!
5. You never need to plateau in your weight loss!
6. Exercise alone doesn't make you lose weight, HOWEVER exercise and an active lifestyle can help you feel great and EAT A TON MORE!
7. ANYONE CAN LOSE WEIGHT!!!!!

Since this is such a huge revelation in my life I struggle with this "blog" setting...at times I feel like I want to write a book, because I have so much to say, but I will restrain myself and instead of going through every one of these right away I will just begin with #1...

Here is the simple math...There are tons of strategies, but all of them basically come down to ONE consistent principle: your body burns a certain amount of calories in a day and if you burn more than you consume you WILL lose weight. I had heard this for years, but the math behind it was really the thing that made it clear for me...

Here are the facts...

• In order to lose one pound of body fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in over a period of time! This is a fact! It can be over a period of days, weeks or months, but eventually this is what needs to happen. So, in order to lose one true pound of body fat in a week you need to burn 500 more calories in a day...2 pounds? 1,000 per day or 7,000 in a week. There is no getting around this... If you are on a diet like Weight Watchers, they are using this math to cause you to lose...Slim Fast? Same math!

You can't escape this! You can't "fad diet" this fact away. It's either something you avoid and just hope that it balances out or decide to go on a diet for a season, which already factors this math in, but this is a FACT! For me, instead of avoiding it, I determined to make this math work for me. I wanted a true 750-1,000 calorie deficit to lose 2lbs a week. Once I had settled the fact that this was going to be a "lifestyle," 2 lbs was attainable and something that I knew I could keep consistent. Anything over the 1,000 calorie deficit a day is not only unhealthy for you (you are going to burn muscle), but something even more important is that it's NOT something you can keep consistent for a long period of time! Most people start with an extreme calorie deficit and then hop off and on, off and on, etc, etc. Instead, set yourself up with something attainable, then you can let the compound loss work for you, and in the long run lose tons more!!! I would rather lose a 1/4 lb a week and allow that to compound over time than lose a ton quickly and not be able to sustain it.

Now that we know this, it brings us to the second part of the math- How much do I actually burn?

• Everyone of us has something called a BMR (not to be mistaken with BMI). This is your Basal Metabolic Rate. It is what your body burns determined by your height and weight to perform what's necessary: the functioning of each of your organs, digestion, etc. This is what you are burning while sleeping, sitting down at work, watching TV, etc. You can figure yours out here. This makes up 80%-90% of your daily calorie burn, depending on activity level during the day and not factoring in exercise.

For me, being a pastor can be mentally exhausting, but unfortunately, not very physically exhausting; tons of sitting in meetings, counseling appointments, sermon preparation, leadership development, etc. What I didn't understand was that I was actually only burning a very very small amount of calories in a day. Even at my largest I was only guaranteed to burn 3,000.

Now you might not think this is a big deal, but for me it was huge. For the first time in my life I came face to face with my true numbers! What I ACTUALLY had to work with. I think sometimes it's easier for us to live in a fantasy land and just assume that things will balance out. We try to make a few good decisions and that should make up for the bad. The reality I was faced with was that on most days I burned 3,000 calories (without exercise and without an active lifestyle, which we will get into later) and if I ate more than that, I was actually CHOOSING to get fat! Man...Choosing! It hit me so hard in that moment, and still impacts me in a crazy way to this day! It wasn't that my desire for Five Guys' burgers and a bag full of fries, which I loved, faded magically away, it was that I came to the realization that I didn't have the calories to eat it!!! Not because I am on a diet...I just don't burn enough calories in a day to eat 4,000 calories of burgers and fries, PERIOD! By choosing to eat it, I was now making the conscious decision to get FAT! Up until this point I sorta looked at getting fat as something that just happened, but now it was a choice. Not only was this convicting, but at the same time, incredibly freeing. If I could choose to get fat I could CHOOSE to get skinny! I just had to use the above math (3,500 calorie deficit over time will cause me to lose 1 lb of fat). This was the start of the process for me...

I guess the pastor's heart in me wants to leave you with a challenge...Would you ever really want to choose to get fat? Are you assuming the math will just work out somehow or are you actually desiring to have the math work for you? Do you want to make the conscious decision to get skinny? With God's strength you can do this!!! You are worth it!!

Since launching this site, I have received many emails from people struggling in this area and I want to toss out the option to you that if you need more help, I would love to help and will be praying for you! Message me...

my journey...

I used to be big...

I guess that's the best way to begin a blog about weight loss, my journey, and how to change your life!!

My parents raised me with a basic understanding of nutrition in the sense of what foods were good and what foods were bad. We never had soda in the house, unless it was for a party and even then we were only allowed one can. We were taught to eat good foods...fruit, veggies and never any "sugar cereal!"

So, how did I go from a somewhat healthy, active childhood of High School wrestling, tennis and playing outside to an adulthood weighing over 300 lbs (possibly even closer to 350 lbs than I know, because there was a season I didn't weigh myself)??? Was it no will power? Lack of discipline? Was it a pain that I was trying to heal? Was it emotional eating or eating out of boredom? The answer to that is pretty simple for me, my wife Shelley (who has also lost 35 lbs, going from a size 14 to size 4) and many others that I am helping to overcome their weight issues...a bad understanding of nutrition! Sure I've heard quite a bit, "calories in vs calories out," but really understanding it all in a way that made sense, I didn't hear. Since catching this "revelation" I have gotten to 185 lbs  (and still losing) , tight 48 jeans to 34 jeans and my heart is to never see another person struggle with something that there is no need to struggle with. NO FAD DIET, just some determination, simple nutrition and hard work. My goal in starting theweightlosspastor.com is to encourage and pastor others into seeing their best life now! As a Pastor, I encourage people to live out what Christ says in scripture, that "Christ came so that we may have life and life abundantly!" Although, I've always preached this in the spiritual sense, I also believe that getting control in the area of health will add to our life, giving us the abundant life that Christ intended! My prayer is that through my story and the knowledge I have gained, which has gotten me to where I am and continue to head, I can be an asset to you in your journey!!