Introduction
My mum would call it ‘puppy fat’, which is supposed to be an endearing term for ‘fat on the body of a baby or child which disappears around adolescence’. However, I was always conscious that I was taller but also a bit fatter than the other kids. This larger size helped me in some sports, but it was not until a mistimed comment from an extended family member that I became motivated to try to be a more ‘normal’ size.
Teenage Years and Early Adulthood
The teenage years are the hardest for self-consciousness and why mistimed comments can have a much larger impact than intended. But as a result, at the age of 14 I joined a gym despite advice that weights at that young age can affect normal growth. The increased exercise worked for me, and I was able to maintain a healthy weight until the end of high school. That is, until I discovered social drinking.
Leaving high school at 172lb (at 6’1” this was a BMI of 22.7 and right in the middle of the healthy range), I have always struggled to keep my BMI in the healthy range below 25 (or below 190lb) since. Poor nutrition and excessive drinking during college didn’t help. However due to my higher-than-normal consciousness of weight (set at a very early age), I never let my weight get too much above 185lb.
Turning 30 and Moving to New Zealand
As I imagine happens to a lot of us however, something changed when I reached 30. I took a year off work to undertake my MBA at the University of Oxford in England. With a return to the excessive drinking and a lack of exercise due to study, I gained over 200lb (BMI of 27) and was no longer the healthy person I had been my whole life.
At the end of my study in 2011, my wife and I moved to New Zealand, and I decided to retake control of my weight. Returning to work, I was once again in a routine to be able to start regular exercise. 2011 was also the year that the Dukan diet (removing carbs and fat from the diet) was extremely popular and I decided to try it out. I love meat and dairy, and it is easy to get high-quality, low-cost protein in New Zealand, so this diet worked really well for me and I was able to get back down to my previous 185-190lb weight. Ultimately however, the diet was not sustainable for me due to the restricted nature of the diet, but I was able to keep off any extra weight gain through exercise (up to 5 times a week) and removing snacking from my diet during the week.
Looking at the Research
Reading the latest scientific articles, it quickly became clear that there is no consensus in the academic world about the longer-term sustainability of traditional diets. And there is certainly no evidence that any one traditional diet is better than any other based on clinical evidence despite their popularity. It appears that the only consensus that can be reached by health experts is that ‘making lifestyle changes – including following a healthy eating pattern, reducing caloric intake, and engaging in physical activity – is the basis for achieving long-term weight loss’ (National Institutes of Health, 2015).
I was already engaging in physical activity up to 5 times during the week when work allowed and very rarely less than 3 times a week. I also ate reasonably healthily and didn’t want to restrict my diet anymore based on the traditional restriction diets, which I had tried before with the Dukan diet. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I made the decision that to make any dietary changes sustainable for me, I was unwilling to sacrifice my social life or my social drinking in the weekend. Therefore, the only lever I had to make a change in my lifestyle was to reduce my calorie intake. Research into the calorie restriction needed for weight loss, it appears you need to reduce your weekly calorie intake to approximately 75% of your normal calorie intake to be effective.
Personalized Calorie Reduction
I knew from the start that a regular calorie-reduced diet would not work for me. As can be seen in the table below, I know that I just don’t have the willpower to be able to stick to a diet that is 24/7 (like the portion and calorie restriction of a Weight Watchers type diet). I am very social in the weekend and tend to overeat during these two days, while I have much more self-control during the week.
| Weight | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maintenance | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Loss | 75% | 75% | 75% | 75% | 75% | 75% | 75% | 75% |
The 5:2 Fast Diet
I found a diet that appeared to suit me a lot more. The 5:2 Fast Diet has been extremely popular in the UK, while not quite so popular in the US. At its most basic, it involves 2 days of fasting (eating a controlled number of calories - 500 calories for women and 600 calories for men) and 5 days of eating ‘normally’. I liked the concept that I would only have to be consciously dieting for 2 days and enjoying life for the rest of the week. It was the first traditional diet to split the calories out into a ‘weekly calorie intake’, which seemed to make sense to me and fit into my way of living.
