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Jambo!(And then you’d say: “Jambo Sana!”). Little Swahili lesson for you. No big deal, just getting your ass cultured. Speaking of getting cultured, my parents came to visit me in New York City a few weekends ago. First time they’d been to NYC since I moved here. Did we do anything cultured? Well, we were going to do a museum, but my dad hates museums, and it was a be-A-utiful day in the city, so we spent the day kind of aimlessly cavorting around Central Park. Even taught my parents how to #ThrowItLow. Talk about cultured, right?
Besides treating ourselves to fine dining, comedy shows, and even teaching my parents how to ride the NYC subway, I got the usual chirps from mom and dad about my body. “Do more cardio” says mom. “Stop shooting your body full of dianabol” says dad. You know, usual mom and dad advice. So of course I laughed them off “hahaha” and said the usual responses: “I’ve been the same size since college,” “I can’t go on long runs anymore because I have a bad lower back,” “I like taking illegal steroids from Uzbekistan that make me look like an anthropomorphic bowling ball.”
But in the privacy of my own gym locker, among the sea of old man dick, I tepidly decided to step on the scale for the first time in months.
The scale tipped 207 pounds. 5’8″, 207. Those stats, according to a BMI calculator, make me obese. Obese?! Does this look like the body of an obese 27-year old?
According to my BMI, I'm obese (5'8", ~ 205lbs)… this looks like a dude who's obese? pic.twitter.com/EHm8arX8eX
— Boston Max (@BostonMaxG) April 9, 2018
Nevertheless, if you’re not trying to improve yourself, you’re just not trying. There are ample pounds to lose. I’ve been eating and drinking like a king the last three-ish months, because when you’ve got a girl you’re dating, you’ve got to treat her like a princess and no price is too much (and by that, I mean we just Seamless dinner all the time and wash it down with the finest lagers courtesy of Anheuser-Busch Inbev and the most delicious Trader Joe’s wines south of $20).
So maybe I gained a few El Bee’s. Had a few Chardonnays. What of it? Thing is, even with my parents chirping me, wanting me to get down to my high school wrestling weight of 140, or my girl telling me she likes me having a bit of a shmushy tummy, it’s not THEM who my body is for. It’s for ME. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to lose a pound or two or fifteen. If I could get down to like 190 by mid-summer? I’d be a beast. Benching 300 lbs and saving babies from burning buildings. Plus, I’d just look hot AF up on my rooftop pool. The question then obviously becomes: how am I going to do it?
I eat pretty freakin’ healthy Monday through Friday. I do a 5:2 kind of thing where during the work week I eat like an asshole. I’m talking eggs, organic meats, fish, salads, avocados, quinoa, and protein shakes. No booze. No sweets. No empty carbs. I’m in the gym eating weights. But then Friday night comes around and I do like we all do. I don’t count the number of IPAs I’m drinking. I have drunk late night pizza. I go to the bar to crush Bud Lights, wings, and plates of nachos. I live in a perpetual state of limbo where I basically ruin a week’s worth of hard work over the course of a two-day weekend. It’s how I live in equilibrium. It’s how I break even Steven all the time like I’m Jerry Seinfeld.
The only way I knew I’d be able to tackle my little love handle dilemma was something kind of drastic. Like, giving up my weekend indulgences. But, I love beer I love wings I love nachos. I enjoy NOT doing high intensity interval training on Sundays when I could in fact be brunching instead. Late-night pizza? It’s the best. It’s better than winning the lottery. I would know, I won $5 on a scratchy once. So how was I going to conquer my BMI and not be obese, and maybe drop down into the “overweight” category? I decided to do some diet research.
I worked round the clock for weeks searching the dark corners of the internet for secret diet tricks. Workouts they only tell you about when you’re an East German Olympic athlete. I even went on Amazon to try and procure Ivan Drago’s state-of-the-art workout equipment. I took PTO days from work. I locked myself in the New York public library with the homeless and the indigent. After combing through countless PhD students’ theses, I’ve found the diet I’ve decided to commit to until pool SZN: the 5:2 fasting diet.
It’s wicked simple. Two days a week (non-consecutive day), I eat no more than 600 calories. I tried it last week. On Tuesday and Thursday each day I only ate three eggs and three protein shakes. It sucked. I was hungry all day. I went to bed hungry. And after all that, I actually lost a pound last week. Hell yeah. So, I think I’m going to commit. For two days a week, for the foreseeable future, I’m going to basically starve myself two days a week.
It’s going to suck. It will be painful. It’ll be annoying. I’ll have to say no to weeknight sushi with my new girlfriend. Maybe have to say no to watching playoff hockey at the bar. But friends, I can’t be obese. Is BMI a crock of shit? Yes. But according to modern science, BMI is basically a good population health predictor of obesity and co-morbidities (like diabetes and heart disease), and I qualify as obese. (Then again, so is Gronk at 6’6″ 265 but I won’t be the one to tell him he’s obese).
Anyway, I’m not going to let any Tom Dick or Poindexter be able to tell me that according to #science I’m obese. So I’m going to starve myself for a while. .
Respond
Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
Things like this are why I write anonymously. Not because I care what people think but because if I ever took a shirtless selfie in 2018, my family would drive to my house and give me a swirly.
cringe level over 9000 knowing you posted that photo and caption combo on IG
“this looks like a dude who is obese?” No. It looks like a total douche, though.
Photo is a huge douche move but also throwing a “Sup?” at you Boston Max
The only time I cringed was when I walked into my bathroom after my girlfriend took a poop and saw more skidmarks than a fucking racetrack
I never want to see that picture again
As someone who’s lost over 60 lbs and kept it off, I just don’t get why you’d try a short term diet like that. It’s obviously unsustainable so even if you lose weight up front once you stop eating 600 cals a day twice a week you’ll put it back on within a month, guaranteed. Also, the chances of anyone actually limiting him or herself to just 600 calories on any day is low. People’s personal estimates on how many calories or servings they’re eating are very inaccurate.
To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you are burning, that’s just science. So why not just try to do that consistently most or every day instead of having two days where you hate yourself and then five where you eat like shit? It’ll actually be sustainable and you will adapt quickly to your new diet.
I’m 6ft0, went from pushing 240 to maintaining about 175. It’s really not that hard if you take a long term view on it and just generally make healthy choices and exercise.
How long did it take you to lose all that weight?
I started January last year and by June I was down to around 180. Exercise is a bigger component for me now while I’m not trying to lose weight, but the weight loss was definitely diet driven. I was counting calories on myfitnesspal and all that. It started because signed up for a half marathon kind of on a whim and initially started losing weight to get ready for that, but I was only running like three days a week so I had to definitely be mindful about what I was eating.
Turns out I actually got pretty good at the distance running and now am running 6ish times a week to train for my second full marathon. There are plenty of days where I’ll burn 3500 calories or more so obviously eating more than normal is totally necessary, but I’m not gaining weight. You just have to be smart about it, have goals, and track your progress to keep yourself accountable.
MyFitnessPal is how I lost weight as well. Love that app.
Your previous diet of eating healthy during the week and wilin out on the weekend is that of a college girl. Be better.
Starving yourself for 2 days and you only lost a pound? With a BMR of ~1800 calories/day, that tells me that you’re not really working as hard as you think you are the rest of the week. And that’s ignoring water weight, etc.
Why don’t you just do like every other dude in their late 20’s and switch to “hard liquor of your choice + soda” for a few weeks to lose weight? You’re going from 150-200 calories a drink to barely 100.
I think Joe Rogan said he was technically obese by that calculation, and he’s swoll, woke and bald. You’re doing fine.
Did you see that gram video of him kicking the power kube in the studio a few weeks back? Raw power. My pants got tight watching it.
All joking aside, intermittent fasting is really good for your body. But you don’t need to be as extreme as you wrote it out, so try doing it everyday like this instead.
First week: stop eating at 7pm, getting used to not eating after 7pm will be the hardest thing.
Second week: implement an 18:6 fasting/eating period. Basically just skip breakfast, and stop eating again at 7pm, or whenever your 6 hour window is over.
Drink lots of water, don’t use sugar substitutes at all, and don’t think of IF as a diet. You’ll notice your body change in more ways than just weight: cravings go away and you won’t feel hungry as often. I do 18:6 almost everyday, some days I accidentally end up doing 20:4 and that’s because I’m literally not hungry.
Your stomach will go down to its intended size, which is the equivalent of your fist balled up, so don’t overeat at once, spread it out during your window.
I’ve been doing IF for a few months and it’s more realistic to maintain than some extreme calorie restrictive diet, especially the way you wrote out. I’ve lost 20 pounds so far and gone down several pants sizes, but not from doing anything extreme. Yes, a calorie deficit is the only way to lose weight, 3500 calories = 1 pound, so don’t expect to lose 5+ pounds a week, as your first big “woosh” is going to be water weight. 1-2 pounds of weight loss a week is still 52-100 pounds gone per year, so be good to your body.
I have been doing 18:6 for the last 8 years and I love it. I also don’t have a gallbladder and eating before noon makes me sick but at this point I can’t imagine going back.
“I’m talking eggs, organic meats, fish, salads, avocados, quinoa, and protein shakes.”
What kind of salads are you eating? Any dressing? How much avocado are you eating? They can be healthy in small amounts, but fat is fat and you can have too much of a good thing. How much sugar is in those protein shakes? You’re only supposed to be having 35-40 grams of added sugar a day (less than what’s in a can of soda). How is the quinoa cooked? How big are your servings?
Over the last few months, I cut my sugar intake, stopped eating after 7 pm on most days and am consciously trying to cut my portion sizes. I still have the shitty, but wonderful meals every now (mostly Friday nights and weekends, although no late meals ever) and I haven’t been to the gym in the last three months because of busy season. I’ve so far lost 15 pounds and no it’s not muscle – I’ve consistently watched the body fat percentage on my scale decrease. It’s all about the diet.
Obese or in shape is a mindset, BM. Don’t listen to the haters in the science community. Feel good, look good brother.
It’s funny how that’s labeled as “obese” and yet in this day and age everyone’s also pushing to “love yourself” and “be comfortable in your own skin.” So basically the doctors tell you you’re obese yet the rest of the country says it’s ok to be unhealthy and obese. Alright.
My thought is that while you should strive to be the healthiest version of yourself possible, body positivity is about not feeling a sense of shame. Even if you’re not considered obese/overweight, not everyone is going to look like an Instagram model.
If you’re overweight/obese, do something about it. But sitting around feeling shame and disgust at your body is not going to help anything – if anything, that’s made me depressed and less motivated when I’ve been overweight. You can be comfortable in your own body but still work to make it healthier.