Two Thousand Pounds, and Ten Percent Happier
May 2019 — stall breaker, a group that kept losing, and two hard years
The menu I built and wasn't eating
By late May the bathing suits were coming out. Pool party invites, weddings, a date coming up, whatever your deal was. That meant my inbox filled up with the same two questions: how do I lose X pounds by X date, and can I go faster? So on May 23rd I went live from the backyard, birds yelling over me, to do a little tough love about stall breaker (live SMGI5574).
Stall breaker was my answer to "what's the fastest safe way to eat before you need a doctor watching you." I built it myself, sitting in Cronometer for hours. I started with protein, because people losing weight need it to keep their muscle, and picked chicken breast. Not because it's the leanest. Tilapia or plain canned tuna would be leaner. But everybody knows how to buy it, it's cheap, and you can cook it a hundred ways. Then I added just enough salmon to cover the omega-3s, and no more. Then vegetables. I plugged in asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and every form of broccoli, and found out the cheap steamer bag of broccoli cuts is mostly stem. I know, it sucks. But that's why it's cheap, and it's why it's high in fiber and low in carbs next to the florets. Then a common, cheap multivitamin, a calcium-and-minerals supplement for the electrolytes, baby spinach for the leafy greens, and a few ounces of brown mushrooms for copper. The mushrooms brought extra protein, so I backed out a little chicken (live SMGI5574).
Step by step, nutrient by nutrient. And then I could already hear it ringing in my ears: but I don't like those foods.
Here's the honest part. I wasn't eating stall breaker myself right then. I said so on that same live. You don't always have to eat it. It's a tool for when you want to go as fast as you safely can, and everybody losing at a gentler pace was really eating stall breaker with their own changes. One member had been on the diet two years, ate a fattier version he liked, and stall breaker foods were on his plate all the time (live SMGI5574).
Over 2,000 pounds
What I could say that morning was that I'd helped hundreds of people in the group lose over 2,000 pounds. I put it as ten 200-pound men who didn't exist anymore. I'm not a doctor and I'm nobody's celebrity nutrition guru. I told people if they didn't believe me, post in the group and ask whether anyone had worked with me and had a bad time. If I deleted the post, you'd know something was up (live SMGI5574).
And when somebody asked how to go even faster than stall breaker, I wouldn't answer. That menu was the lowest I could go and still get complete nutrition in. Asking to go lower than that is asking me how to do anorexia, and I don't answer that question (live SMGI5574).
Ten percent happier
A week later, on May 30th, I did a different kind of live. Calmer. I'd borrowed the "10% happier" idea, which I was pretty sure came from a meditation author with a book and an app by that name. The point is that meditation gets oversold. It won't make you a Zen monk. It makes you about 10% happier, and that's a free, accessible 10%. If you're depressed, going from zero to ten can feel like a lot (live SVTV6584).
I don't meditate much. Every time I get comfortable enough to really meditate, I fall asleep. So I listed my own free 10%s instead (live SVTV6584):
- Sleep. Seven good hours, minimum. I'd missed that the night before. To my credit it was a staying-asleep problem, not a going-to-bed-late problem. When you sleep less you make worse food decisions and you've got less willpower to work with.
- Caffeine. I was drinking coffee on camera, at night. I'm at most two coffees a day, but running on caffeine instead of sleep is like an alcoholic fighting a hangover by drinking again.
- The night color shift on my phone, so I'm not staring at blue light at bedtime.
- Gardening and plants. I'd already walked you all through my garden. Nature is a big one for me.
- Journaling, even if it's an email to yourself or a private post only you can see.
- Coloring books. Something creative.
- Music, for the days you've got nothing.
That last one mattered to me. Talking about people dealing with depression, I said on that live that the past two years had been tough for me. Some days you don't have enough in you to go for a walk, because the walk is you saving yourself. Music comes from outside you. You can be half lying in bed not caring, put on music, and get a little push anyway. Some days two percent is all you're going to get, and that's still more than zero (live SVTV6584).
The group was my coach too
I had a few coaching clients by then, and all of them were doing well except one. I think that person and I just weren't on the same page yet about what they needed versus what they thought they wanted. That was new for me (live SVTV6584).
But the line I'd underline from that night is the one I said near the end. I make better choices because I have to be accountable to the group. I'm coaching you, and you guys are kind of my coach (live SVTV6584). I was the guy with the menus and the Cronometer hours. I was also a guy having a rough couple of years who ate better because a lot of people were watching.
What I'd tell you now
I still like how stall breaker was built: protein first, vegetables for fiber and micronutrients, then fill the gaps on purpose. The protein part holds up. In one trial, raising protein from 15% to 30% of calories (with carbs held steady) cut how much people ate on their own by 441 calories a day, and they lost 4.9 kg over 12 weeks. That was a small study of 19 adults (Weigle et al., 2005). See protein and fullness and how to break a stall without crash dieting. If you've had an eating disorder, don't run a tight menu like this on your own. Do it with your care team (eating-disorder history). And if low days are more than a few low days, tell your doctor. Plants and music helped me. They aren't treatment.
Watch the originals: the stall breaker live, the 10% happier live.
Earlier: Chubby Cheeks Over the Winter · Later: Am I Still KetoDick If I Eat Mashed Potatoes?