GMYH Health Update: Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

My hatred of the obese has not exactly been a secret. Frankly, the sight of a morbidly obese man or child wolfing down a couple Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Burritos each makes me want to cry, puke, and kill, all at once. After a couple weeks away from the gym, including one week where I was basically drinking and eating every minute I wasn't sleeping, my health and body have gone into severe decline. It's time for me to step up to ensure that I do not become one of the millions of people I superficially hate.

A few months ago (6 or 7), I bought the book, The Abs Diet, which is written by the Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health magazine. Of course, I didn't read it until last week. Waiting that long was probably a mistake, but hindsight's always 20/20. Essentially, the book tells you why other diets (i.e., low-carb, low-fat, Weight Watchers, the Zone, etc.) set you up for failure and lead you to put the weight back on, either because they cause binging or are too big of a pain in the ass to follow. Then, it explains how to take weight off and keep it off. Its tenets are pretty easy to follow:

• It gives 12 categories of "power foods" that you should eat (nuts, beans, green vegetables, dairy, instant oatmeal, eggs, lean meats, peanut butter, olive oil, whole grain breads/pastas/cereals, whey protein, and berries), and it gives you various easy recipes, so that even Christoff and Tradd can do it.
• It tells you about various foods you should avoid, even ones that bill themselves as being healthy.
• It's not about starvation or cutting calories, but rather eating the right kinds of food, and you actually might eat more than you did before. Therefore, you don't count calories.
• It tells you to eat 6 small meals a day, rather than 3 big meals, to keep your metabolism up and your blood sugar levels even throughout the day.
• It also explains that the most important part of weight loss (and raising metabolism) is gaining/maintaining muscle, but alas, all it asks you to do is lift weights 3 times a week for 30 minutes (granted, those 30 minutes will kick your ass).

The main drawbacks are that it only allows one meal a week where you can eat whatever you want. Also, it restricts alcohol intake to 2 drinks a day (and unfortunately, that doesn't mean that I can save them up and have 7 each on Friday and Saturday night). At the end of 6 weeks, assuming you stick to the plan, you will have lost around 20 pounds of fat, gained around 5-6 pounds of muscle, and severely dropped your body fat percentage. The best part is that it actually gives you a plan for after the 6 weeks so that, assuming you continue the basic tenets, you will actually keep the weight off for the rest of your life.

Anyway, here are my vitals as they currently stand:
Weight: 182.8 (not the heaviest I've ever been, but pretty damn close)
BMI: 27.0 (that would be in the "overweight" range)
Waist-to-Hip Ratio: 0.901 (not bad, but possibly inflated because of my bulbous ass)
Body Fat %: 25.6% (seriously)

So that I will actually stick to this (which actually doesn't seem like it's going to be that hard), I will be posting my vitals each week. For you fatties out there, I invite you to try the Abs Diet with me. On Amazon, the book is only $16.47 for hardback and $10.85 for paperback. After reading the whole book, the "diet" actually makes sense, and it doesn't have that "you gotta be kidding me" aspect that the low-carb diets have (i.e., "So, I can eat as much bacon, sausage, hamburger, and steak as I can shovel into my mouth, but I have to cut out fruits, vegetables, and any sort of grains? And this will make me skinny with no adverse health effects?").

I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to post "before" and "after" pictures, but ladies, rest assured, they will be all nude.