Category: Personal

Weight Loss Update 2: Electric Boogaloo

Posted on by David Bisset

I won’t bother explaining the reference in the title but if you want to be brought up to speed: I lost 110+ pounds in about a year (2018-2019). I last updated my situation in August/September 2019, and two years later into a pandemic I wanted to live up to the promise of writing each year about this journey.

I have kept the weight off, improved my blood pressure, and kept my blood sugar at bay (high normal or in warning territory most days) Writing yearly updates helps me hold myself accountable and perhaps it can bring something positive by anyone else reading this. If you have any questions you can find me on Twitter.

Less Strict, But Still Careful

What I Changed:

  • I stopped going Keto officially since I didn’t need to lose that much weight anymore. However I am still avoiding all sugars and keeping a low-carb livestyle (if i say it like that makes it sound like i’m an influencer on Instagram). I still miss bananas (too much natural fruit). I still avoid soda for the most part. I miss nothing of note.
  • I haven’t changed much what I eat – a salad almost every weekday. I do “meatless Mondays” now just to give my body a break from the increased fat and cholesterol I usually have over the weekend. Almond shakes and Lily’s chocolate chips (in cookies or straight out of the bag) are my fav deserts. Still do most of the cooking/baking from the home. Chipotle is my fav place otherwise.
  • I do a low-level fast – I basically eat within a 2-3 hour window every day. I drink / sipping coffee starting around noon (coldbrew no-sugar with about 15 calories per serving, with some water). Coffee is a hunger suppressant and the tactic of eating within a window helps lower how much I can stuff into my body. On the weekends I tend to start eating a little earlier to treat/reward myself but end up eating about the same amount of food regardless.
  • I increased my exercise – I still get up and walk/run early in the morning. I used to do 10k steps in my last update in 2019. My minimum per day is 12k however I haven’t been that low in over a year. In the past few months I’ve been doing 24k+ steps (and recently passed a record 34k steps). I walk around the house on calls sometimes and walk around the block after I drop off my kids from school. Apple Watch gifted to me late 2019 has been a big help in tracking. I have an active calorie goal now – not steps – but my a typical day sees me walk or running 10 miles or more.
  • Slowing down – I can’t keep getting up 2 hours before my kids’ school starts and running outside, so i’m thinking about a standalone bike to reduce the pressure put on myself (and my legs). What i’m doing now isn’t sustainable and I think i’ve arrived at a place where my health improvements won’t get that much better, so I will ramp down the calories/miles I do per day.
  • My wife wants me to lift weights. I’ve been fighting this. I guess next year we’ll see.

Losing Over 100 Pounds – What Worked For Me

Posted on by David Bisset

I lost 110+ pounds in about a year. Although I spend most of my time indoors and my social life pales in comparison to a platypus this didn’t escape notice from some. Although I don’t like particularly talking about my past diet or my health in general, I do realize I wondered how some people in my industry did it. I watched some health talks (some at tech conferences, so that trend has effected me directly) – and the speakers sharing what worked for them, why they did what they did… that helped inspired my changes.

So instead of repeating myself, I wanted to write this quick blog post and point people to it although i’m more than happy to be someone’s source of inspiration or point someone in the right direction.

Warning I shouldn’t have to give: i’m not a doctor or anyone even close to knowing medical things… your doctor should be the one who gives you real advice. In fact, this isn’t advice i’m giving but just things that worked for me. Everybody’s body is different.

Changing My Diet

Before: I was basically consuming half a take-out pizza, some fast food (I wasn’t big on fast food but it was good on the road), bread, pasta, and anything with carbs. On the brighter side: I wasn’t big on deserts or soda. I drank mostly water. I never smoked and was not a heavy or even a moderate drinker. This didn’t keep my weight down however BUT likely saved my body some additional damage.

After: Diet was I think maybe 80% of the reason why I changed and how fast I did it.

  • Stage One: Immediately go low-carb and no processed sugar. I initially still had bananas but eventually worked those out of my diet (natural sugar was still sugar). Made sure I ate some sort of veggies, even if it was a salad, every day. I did this for about five months.
  • Stage Two: Kept going but I gradually lowered my fat intake, ate more veggies. In the end though I discovered the right kind of fat in the right kind of amounts WAS good, so I just made sure if i was taking in fat it was from meat and sources that were “healthy” (coconut butter or oil, steaks or burgers that I cook myself vs getting something at a fast food place).
  • Stage Three: Basically trying to get as close to Keto as possible and tracking myself on an app. This means you eat a certain ratio of fats, proteins, and carbs. 30-50 carbs per day I think is the requirement. For Stage three I was keeping it at 20 or below each day.

For me, I couldn’t either find good pre-made food for Keto or most of it was too expensive. I couldn’t rely on anyone to cook for me, so I was kinda forced to try some Keto recipes for myself. I never cooked much in my life but in my early 40s i’m doing it now. Pizza, cinnamon rolls, brownies, and almond flour bread (which can be made into hamburger buns, etc.) are my favorites. I don’t think I would be as happy or even stayed on my diet if i didn’t learn to cook some dishes. Oh and fat bombs are great. It is amazing what can be made without real sugar and be low carb (sadly things won’t taste like Papa Johns or Wendys, but over time you will actually forget what they tasted like and my desire for them is a memory now).

Exercise

Before: I had a desk job as a computer programmer. I didn’t do any sports and wasn’t active at all. My phone wouldn’t record more than maybe 500 – 1000 steps on a GOOD day for me.

After: I thought I could exercise more and stay low carb (stage one, see above) but I wasn’t losing weight fast enough. I made a goal of 10k steps per day for a year, which i recently accomplished. I did some cardo but it was basically going from no activity to being active. I think that maybe was 10% of the total plan. That’s not alot – diet is the biggest factor for me, but just to be ACTIVE I think improved my mental attitude as well. Still want to regularly work out at a gym someday but time hasn’t allowed me that luxury. But i’m still getting in 10k-12k steps every day, even if i’m still waking up at 5am to do it.

Personally if you were eating as crappy as I was and NOT being active, you might not have to go all “gym and exercise” nuts so don’t let that scare you. Diet is the biggest thing but I never did more than walking (although I did every day).

Fasting

Before: I would literally eat any time I wanted.

After: Once I got maybe six months into my “diet” I was slowing down and then I heard about fasting. I wasn’t a big breakfast eater anyway so I gave it a try. At first it was hard – I wasn’t hungry most days (because by then my body was using my stored fat as energy thanks to Keto) but it was just a mental thing. I *should* be eating. In any case, you work yourself from eating at 2pm and 6pm to eating at 3pm and 5pm… and I got to a point where I ate one meal a day. It takes me about an hour or two to eat, but technically i’m fasting most days now 22 hours on average. Today i’m not fasting as much to lose weight but as much as trying to maintain my weight. And I’ll stop fasting for conferences or special occasions – and as long as i stay on my diet and don’t eat something stupid then I have no withdrawals when i resume fasting. Fasting was 10% of the total plan but it was an important 10%. It really helped push me over the line into “no longer obese” land.

Important to note that there’s little chance of getting all your nutrients on “one meal per day” so I started making sure I took daily vitamins and started using nutritional yeast.

Below is a screenshot of the app I use to track my fasts – Zero.

Achieving A Personal Goal That Took One Year And 5 Million+ Steps

Posted on by David Bisset

When I was overweight (by more than 100 pounds) I made it a goal to go a full year walking at least 10,000 steps every day. Started in August, so with the heat in Florida I had to wake up early before sunrise. Previous according to my phone, I walked anywhere between 300 steps (!!!!) to 2000 in a typical day (I work from home, from a desk and still do).

That goal was recently met and I wanted to document it. Also what I had to do: 98% of the time I walked outside… so I walked in rain (only once did I walk in a mall during a tropical storm), cold near-frozen mornings, horrible exercise rooms at hotels while attending conferences out of town, at corporate retreats… and never missed a day. Sometimes I had to walk circles in hotel rooms to get that last few hundred steps before midnight. 🌗

Fast forward a year, I can do 10,000 steps in a morning (instead of the whole day) without too much effort. I typically get up at around 4:30am every morning (whether I wanted too or not, and which meant i was falling asleep at networking parties and meetups around 9pm).

I want to thank my wife and children for dealing with a dad that didn’t stay up most nights, woke up making noise early in the morning, and acting a little crazy when the days was almost over and i didn’t get 10k steps in yet. My wife especially was extremely supportive.

I will continue to keep walking at least 10k steps, probably aim for 12k every day outside of special days. Switching to bike riding might also allow burning more calories in less time. Stats according to my iPhone (so technically I walked more than this, but this is my official numbers):

August 18, 2018 – August 18, 2019

Miles Walked: 2,397.4
Flights Climbed: 2,599
Steps: 5,217,566
Average steps: 14,200 Per Day

Because i’m a nerd, here’s a google doc with all the data.

Note: Walking a lot more… say 20,000 steps a day… didn’t do anything noticeable in terms of weight loss so after a while I didn’t stress it. Takes a little over an hour for me to walk 10k steps so I couldn’t afford the time for 20k with very little or no returns. This post isn’t about weight loss, exercise, diet or anything like that. For me personally it’s about setting a goal. For the record during the time I did lose over 100 pounds (but the walking was only a small part of that). I wanted to document one of the longest most proud personal goals of my life – and i encourage my daughters and others that it’s doable.

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