True Story – How to lose 70 Pounds in Less than Two Years

How to lose 70 Pounds in Less than Two Years?

1) Cut back on red meat, cheese, sugary junk foods, softdrinks and fast food restaurants such as McDonalds.

2) Eat lots of fruits, vegetables and coarse grains, particularly recipes on this website.

3) Buy a treadmill and ipad, then work out 1-2 hours a day. (You can do more if you wish!) The ipad will be a life saving device that you can use to watch shows, movies and other types of entertainment so you don’t die form boredom.

Losing weight to stay healthy is very easy and simple but the hardest part is the determination and persistence. Like everything else, one would need some kind of pressure in continuing, because it always feels easier to take the short cut.

My Husband’s Story

(My husband in 2011, he weighed around 220 pounds)

I began dating my husband (oh God, that sounds so weird to say) in 2007 online. He lived in the United States while I lived in Australia. In 2011, I decided to visit him in the US. He was about 220 pounds and eating himself into his early grave. Not only did he just get operated for gallstones, he also suffered from sleep apnea, which can be pretty dangerous. Darn those evil burgers and fries! That time, I was so worried, I think anyone could tell, I just thought – Great, he’s gonna die in his 60’s if he doesn’t watch what he eats. It’s gonna take a hell of a lot of work to change things around.

The problem with him is, vegetables simply did not taste good in his experience. His own words were that they tasted like sweaty garbage, which was such a creative way of saying it. One would literally need to force it down his throat to even try it. The problem I feel is that often, vegetables are simply boiled, steamed or put in the oven without any flavours added. Because of its tastelessness, vegetables can turn off many people.

Growing up in a Chinese family where vegetables are always cooked with lots of salt and soy sauce, my family’s philosophy is that vegetables must be cooked with some oil with salt for it to taste good. It certainly doesn’t have to be rolled in boiling hot oil or deep fried, but salt is the key to making vegetables taste good. Now, I know that salt isn’t that good for the health either, and people with heart issues are recommended to stay away from it, but what I think is this. If a slight increase of salt can make the food tolerable or even likeable, then wouldn’t it be worth it to eat that with the vegetables, rather than sticking to just steaks and port chops all day? We all know a lot of that is very bad for the health.

After arriving to see what kind of horrendous situation my husband was in with all the fat he’s built up from eating years of burgers, I decided to cook a few dishes that I made back in Australia. A couple of them was string beans cooked with mushrooms and cabbage with carrots and mushrooms. In the end, I even talked him into giving broccoli a try. That was almost as hard as reaching Heaven! When my husband first ate it, I literally could see his eyeballs pop out of his face, because he literally refused to believe they were vegetables. His words were something like, they were aliens taking over a vegetable body because no way they could be vegetables, as they tasted so different from everything he’s ever had. What was the key ingredient? It’s simply a bit of salt or soy sauce!

Around the same time, I also started him on fruits. In the past, he just never thought of buying them to eat but since it’s been my family tradition to eat fruits each day, we bought enough to last for the week and cut ourselves a bowl for each day.

Though that didn’t stop us from having random arguments because he still loved his cheese and dips, and some of them were packed with sugar and fats that I wanted him to really cut back on them. This was when I started to become creative. I was sick of every sauce containing 7 grams of sugar, so I made my very own miso sauce with lots of other ingredients, which he called it lifeblood! Basically, we really went all out to avoid saturated fats and stuck with eating vegetables, legumes, beans and brown rice. I usually cook fish once a week, so we’d also feast on that.

It wasn’t long before we saw absolute dramatic effects. His weight was dropping! However, we came across a few hurdles around the 180pound mark because around then, it seemed to almost be impossible to lose more weight. Also, it didn’t help that almost every ounce of food he ate was made into weight. However, my hubby is determined and he ain’t giving up, dude! He was so determined around then, he actually set up a schedule, that every Monday, Wednesday and Friday are vegetable only days, so for dinner he’d simply eat a bowl of vegetables. Around this time, he even did three hours of treadmill a day. I often wonder how he has the stamina since I do one hour max and can’t go on further.

However, don’t be misguided that we’re avoiding all fats. In fact, we eat quite a lot of foods with good fat, like avocados, olive oil (particularly as a dip) and nuts. They are even helpful in losing weight! One of our favourite easy meals is avocado bread, simply toasted bread with avocados, lemon juice, salt and pepper, a nifty recipe I learned from my dad.

(My husband now, slim and sexy in 2013!)

Slowly but surely, my husband went down to 170, then slowly to 160. I still remember how much of a celebration it was to have reached then. It honestly felt like that was impossible. Then, he wanted to work one step further and go to 150 and stay there, so that in case he does occasionally eat something fatty, he wouldn’t freak out over gaining five pounds overnight and would have more than enough time to work it off. Even though I was almost getting a bit worried because he was so crazy about losing weight I thought he’d soon turn into a skeleton, it was great that he has since been able to keep to around 149-152. It feels like we’ve won a big battle, after so much hard work!

Some people may fear, what if they go back to eating bad after losing all that weight? Wouldn’t it be a waste of time? I would disagree because I feel that when you put all this hard work into such a long and hard goal, you will remember this and will likely avoid eating bad to gain the weight back, simply because you know how much you worked to get rid of it. In 2013, very recently actually, I went for a holiday in Australia for about 5 weeks without him and I was a bit worried about what he might eat. He was so certain that there was no way he’d eat bad food to erase all his work! That really made me feel relieved, and I feel that when you reach this stage, you probably will do anything you can to stay fit. Firstly, it looks better and feels better. I think anyone can say that they felt healthier weighing 150 pounds than 220.