In fact, it was 10 pounds in 12 days. From Monday January the 2nd to Friday the 13th. So far I’ve lost over 17 pounds in a little under four weeks and I’m going strong. I sort of feel like the incredible hulk – it’s crazy what dropping as little as 15 pounds will do to your energy levels and work productivity. It was going through this process that sparked my renewed interest in the health and fitness community and snow balled into me being much more passionate about all this.
If you’re looking to lose weight quickly, there are three things you need to optimize or focus on:
- Your diet – what you eat and drink
- Your exercise – timing and duration of specific exercises
- Supplementation – speeding up the process with the help of safe drugs
I lost my weight by only optimizing my diet. I changed what I ate dramatically and literally melted the weight off. I remember waking up on the fourth day after starting this in complete amazement by the fact that my fingers felt skinny. I’m not sure if it was the amount of salt I ate or what, but my fingers and hands have felt fat for the last year – this alone was enough to keep me going. For the sake of this overview, I will not go into any detail on supplements (as I have yet to learn much about them), and will only briefly touch on exercising. Instead, I’ll focus on optimizing diet for rapid weight loss.
So how did I lose this weight so quickly?
I followed in my brother’s footsteps and adopted the diet from the book, The Four Hour body. If you haven’t yet read this highly controversial book I definitely recommend you pick it up.
Click here to buy Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Body
Not going into details of the diet (you can read that yourself). These were the key changes I made that I know helped with the rapid weight loss.
I ate a big, high-protein breakfast
I love my breakfasts. It’s crazy to think that I could lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks while eating this every morning. It’s great though because in the evening when I sometimes get cravings, I will just remind myself how awesome breakfast is going to be. I included a picture to the right of a typical breakfast that I will eat. It’s three fried eggs, 4-6 pieces of bacon, and fried mushrooms, onions, and beans. Delicious.
Lets be honest, there were mornings that I just didn’t have it in me to make this. For those mornings I would fall back to just 2-3 hardboiled eggs, or a single hardboiled egg and a protein shake made with water + whey protein isolate. Since I work from home, I can typically take the time to make a big breakfast, but probably 1/6 days I would have to fall back to the quick breakfast.
Remove most dairy products
This wasn’t a huge issue for me. I haven’t drank much milk since junior high, and although I do enjoy cheese on almost everything it was easy enough to give up. Luckily, I could still use butter to cook with, and if you are like the many people that love cream in their coffee – this is okay as well as long as it’s heavy cream and not milk. Cheese is a big part of my cheat days as I explain below.
Water, Coffee, or Tea
This was one of the biggest challenges for me. That said it is crazy how fast you can lose weight quickly if you simply cut out drinking unnecessary calories. Admittedly, I’ve historically enjoyed a beer or two over dinner at home – and even more than one or two if out with some friends. Although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a beer a night, or a glass of wine a night, I know the former is not great for losing weight.
If all you have is two weeks to lose weight, you’re going to have to be very strict with this rule. Luckily you can still drink any water-based drink such as coffee and tea, so it’s not all bad. I usually have a huge glass of ice cold water plus one or two large cups of coffee in the morning to kick start my day.
No white carbohydrates
In fact, anything that is white or can be white. So no pastas, no rice, no breads, no oatmeal, no potatoes, etc. However, I still ate a ton of carbohydrates. I just ate better high-fiber carbs such as black beans, kidney beans, and lentils. The latter I didn’t really enjoy, so most of my meals were made up of beans. The picture to the left is an example of what I would eat for supper. This night I had a spread of black beans, cooked frozen veggies, and sliced ham. I basically substituted the ham for any other meat – chicken, beef, or pork mostly – and alternated between black and kidney beans. Note – if you find your food getting bland, try using mustard and pepper. For lunch, I’ll often take 1/2-1 can of tuna, 1-2 cups of frozen veggies, and a big scoop of bean, cook in the microwave, add a couple squeezes of mustard and pepper and shake.
Moderate 20 minute weight resistance twice per week
When I was reading the Four Hour Body, it really got me interested in how the body works and how it deals with exercise, food, etc. This is one thing that I think really helped me – especially during my cheat days. I will do a light to moderate 20 minute work out consisting of the following exercises:
- Bicep curl x 15
- Air squats x 50
- Military shoulder press x 15
- Wide arm pushups x 20
- Against-the-wall tricep extensions
- As many close-grip pull ups as possible
- Calf raises x 30
The goal of the workout was to promote food storage to muscle instead of fat – this is especially important during your cheat days. As recommended in the book, during my cheat day I will look to do the air squats + tricep extensions even if I’m eating out. I didn’t go to the gym at all for this, instead I just took a couple old 20lb dumbbells, a pair of 10lb dumbbells and a pull up bar from home. If you don’t have a pull up bar don’t buy one, simply exchange the exercise for a back row or seated back fly exercise. I also don’t own a weight bench so no need to spend your money on that.
I gave myself one cheat day
I say one cheat day, because I wanted to illustrate the fact that this diet can be used for people wanting to know how to lose weight in 2 weeks. If you are only using this as a fast way to lose weight, then you’ll only want to indulge in one cheat day during your two-week period. However, I now give myself every Saturday as a cheat day.
I believe that this cheat day is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, the science behind it suggests that if you go for too long on a limited-calorie diet (which this isn’t, however I noticed that it took me much, much less food to fill me up when I ate well, so you tend to naturally eat less on this diet) that your metabolism will shift to a lower gear in order to compromise for the lower intake of calories. By cheating one day and spiking the number of calories you consume, it will keep your metabolism from doing this – and allow you to maintain your high metabolic rate throughout the week.
Personally, I find the cheat day important because it gives you something to look forward to. This diet is a huge change from most Westerners’ lifestyles. With the diet comes a lot of cravings, especially in the beginning. I would make a little note of anything that I was craving and made sure I went out and bought it Saturday morning. For example, this is what my first cheat day looked like:
- Breakfast – bacon and eggs with hash-browns, toast, a ton of ketchup, and a fruit smoothie
- Snack – Full bag of All Dressed potato chips and a large bag of sugar candy (Cherry Blasters)
- Lunch – Entire box of extra cheesy Kraft Dinner
- Snack – 2 large Caramilk chocolate bars
- Supper (and evening snack) – 1/2 large poutine, a few garlic fingers and 7 slices of a 16″ large pizza from Alexandras Pizza.
Even typing that out makes me a bit sick to my stomach. Needless to say, I didn’t crave any sort of junk for a while after that day. In fact thinking back it was at least Thursday before I made a note of anything for the next cheat day.
Final words on this way to lose weight quickly
What I explained above was how I lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks. I’m continuing to lose week after week at an average of 4-5 pounds per week (I’m sure this will slow down once I get closer to my goal weight). The above method works like a charm but it is not for everyone. It’s a difficult diet to follow if you are simply looking to lose a few pounds and not 100% dedicated to losing weight. As I mentioned, it’s a dramatic change from most of our lifestyles and diets, but I’m positive it will work if you are committed to it and adhere to it. I’ve yet to determine if it is a long-term solution as far as adherence goes – I suspect that it is a great way to reach your goal weight, but there are easier (and more fun) ways to maintain it.
I may document my exact meals in more detail down the road so you have something to follow, but in the mean time you can always check out Tim’s book, The Four Hour Body.
If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.
