How to lose 20 pounds in 30 days - My quest

Several months ago I ran across a post that Tim Ferris posted up on his blog at 4HourWorkWeek.com titled How To Lose 20 Pounds In 30 Days...Without Doing Any Exercise and two questions popped into my mind. The first question was, "Does this really work?" The second question was, "Would I have the discipline to see if this could work?" Since reading that post, I had been looking for a reason and the motivation to try it out. After all, when I read that post I weighed 205 pounds and my doctor wanted me at 185 pounds.

Fast forward several months later to Oct. 29th, 2007. I am now a proud dad of daughter that is only 18 days old. My wife and I had just got done remodeling the house that we bought and had gone 3 months without a kitchen. I was now sitting in my doctor's office waiting to see my doctor and my name was called. The first thing the assistant does is take me to the scale to weigh me. I help her out by moving the big weight to 200, since I know I weigh at least 200 pounds. She started moving the little weight to 205, then 210, then 220, and finally stopped at 225! Are you kidding me? I now weighed 225 pounds. This was the heaviest I had ever been. I felt like crawling in a hole, though I'm not sure I would have fit.

In to the doctor I go. While seeing the doc, I also find out that my blood pressure is borderline high, 135/80, and that I need to work on getting that down along with my weight. The doc then says that I need to come back in 30 days for a follow up and that I should have some blood work done before I come back. At first I was a little bummed. All the working out and eating right I had done in the past had been destroyed by letting myself slide for just 3 months. Then, I remembered Tim's post. This was now the opportunity that I was looking for. I had 30 days to lose as much weight as I could before seeing the doctor again and I wasn't going to have much time to exercise with our newborn daughter and my busy schedule.

When I got home I looked up the Tim's post again and read every word in the post along with every comment and reply that followed the post. I was now serious about doing this and I wanted to arm myself with the knowledge to make this a success. After reading everything, I headed out to the store to get the recommended foods - meat, legumes, and green veggies.

I'm not going to go into the details of the diet plan that Tim posted because I want to give him the traffic he deserves, but I will summarize what I added and why.

The basic premise of the eating plan to lost 20 pounds in 30 days without doing any exercise is to avoid "white carbohydrates" such as rice, bread, potatoes, and sugars and instead focus on foods that are low on the glycemic index such as lean meats, legumes, and green veggies. One thing that Tim doesn't mention in his list of lean meats is fish, so this is the one thing that I added that he didn't mention. The fish that I ate during my plan was salmon because it's low in fat and rich in omegas.

If you've looked at a calendar, you know that October 29th, 2007 fell on a Monday. You also know that this is 2 days before Halloween and 26 days before Thanksgiving; two major, calorie packed holidays. That's ok, I have 1 cheat day a week at my disposal.

I began my eating plan immediately after getting home from the store. I cooked up some chicken, pinto beans and asparagus. I was off to the races.

The first day was pretty easy as I was still highly motivated and in shock from my doctor's visit. The second day on the other hand was a bit more difficult. The reason for this was that it was Halloween and we were due to go to a Halloween party at our friends' house. Not knowing what the menu was going to be, I grabbed a can of turkey chili out of the cupboard. This isn't on the list of item's to eat over at Tim's blog, but I was improvising since it could be a much worse menu where we were heading. Plus, the turkey chili was made of lean turkey and kidney beans, though it did have a bit of sugar in it. It turned out that our friends had brought in some bbq chicken and beef, so I was in the clear and was able to stick to my eating plan. The next couple of days were tough because my body started to realize that I was eating much differently than I had been during the last three months. I started to notice that I was getting agitated easier. Because of this, I started to increase the amount of beans and greens during my meals. This worked.

Saturday eventually came and I was now able to take a cheat day and eat what I wanted to eat. I have to admit that I went a little overboard this day and ate a lot of carbs and sugar. So much so that I literally felt sick towards the end of the day. Sunday I was back on the routine and detoxing from the day before. After this first week I started to notice that my clothes were starting to fit a little looser than normal. I stepped on the scale and weighed in at 220. Now, normal logic would say that I dropped 5 pounds in the first week. Though, the problem was that this was a different scale than the one at the doctor's office and I had forgot to weigh myself when I got home from the doctor so that I could track my results on my scale. Oh well, at least I had something to track how the next three weeks would go.

The next couple weeks went really smooth and I was able to stick to the eating plan. It was now November 19th and I weighed in at 216 and my clothes really started to feel really loose on me. I could also notice more definition in my arms, legs, and jaw line. I was also noticing that my belly wasn't sticking out as much. I was starting to feel really good about the resuts, though I was still only about half way toward my goal of 20 pounds and only 10 days to go.

I did my cheat day on Friday the 19th and then stuck to the plan until Wednesday the 23rd, the day before Thanksgiving. The morning of Thanksgiving I weighed in at 212 pounds on my home scale. That was 4 pounds lighter than just 5 days earlier. The next day was Thanksgiving and I took it as a cheat day, even though it was a Thursday. There was no way I was going to be able to be able to resist all that great food while all of my family and friends were enjoying it. This also gave me 5 days after Thanksgiving to see how much weight I could drop before weighing in at the doctor. By the way, the day after Thanksgiving I weighed in at 214, so I gained a couple of pounds back. Note: I always weighed in right after waking up so that I could get a consistent result

On November 27th the CEO of the company I work for called an all hands meeting for the same time that I had an appointment with the doctor. Due to this, I had to postpone my doctor appointment to the 3rd of December, so I wasn't going to get weighed in exactly 30 days prior to my last appointment. I then continued on with my plan, though the problem I had was that the 30th and the 1st were tough for me to follow the plan due to our social schedule, so I had to "cheat" on both of these days and not stick to the plan.

Finally December 3rd came and it was time to go weigh in at the doctor. Just to make sure I could see the difference in my scale compared to my doctor's, I weighed in at 214 just prior to going to the doctor. This meant that I had gained a couple of pounds over the weekend due to not being able to stick to the plan. We'd see what the doctor's scale said.

I got to the doctor and it was time to weigh in. I headed to the scale and eagerly waited for the assistant to find a balance; the actual amount of weight that I had lost. Finally she round the balance, right at 217. So, the verdict was that I had lost 8 pounds in 30 days; 12 pounds short of my goal.

What this a success or a failure? In my mind it was a little of both. Let me explain.

I do see this as a bit of a failure because I did cheat a little throughout the 30 days because of my lack of planning. I would find myself in situations where I was hungry but hadn't prepared anything ahead of time that was within my plan. This caused me to snack on mixed nuts, peanut butter, and cheese. Now, these are still low in the glycemic index and aren't white carbs, but they also aren't low in fat. I think this was a contributing factor into why I didn't reach a total weight loss of 20 pounds in 30 days.

The success was that I found an eating plan that I enjoyed and could easily stick to. My doctor was also really happy that I had lost that much weight in that amount of time. I felt and looked thinner.as it appears that I lost my weight in fat and did not give up any muscle. Lastly, I was able to do this while crossing over two calorie packed holidays without exercising at all.

Overall this was a success in my book. Do I think that a person could lose 20 pounds in 30 days? Yes, I do think this is an achievable goal. In fact, I will be continuing this plan until I can reach my goal of 185, but will be adding in exercise to help speed up the weight loss. I will follow up with my progress every 30 days to let you know how I'm doing.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this post and I will try to answer them. Also, let me know if you think you would be able to accomplish losing 20 pounds in 30 days.