The backstory

I was 90 kg (a whopping 198 lb) at 5'5'' (165 cm) a year and half ago when I finally decided to take hold of my life; my diet then consisted of simply writing down absolutely everything I ate, at what time and how much, along with the calorie count. With just this simple method, I managed to lose 10 kg over the span of 5 months. That's about 2 kg (4.5 lb) a month, which is supposed to be a nice and steady rate. I was happy with it, at least.

But then, everything stopped. At 80 kg (176.5 lb), I'm definitely not satisfied with my body, yet my diet method wasn't working anymore. Back then I didn't do anything about it...but now it's been just over a year, and nothing's changed. I had reached a plateau. And what did I do once I hit the plateau?

Essentially nothing. I began looking at supplements and continued writing down everything I ate, but I never even thought of adding exercise into my regime. I hated exercise. I'm lethargic and sedentary and wanted "the easy way out."

Well, all that changes today. When my roommate began her diet last week, she rode her bike to classes every day and ate less than 1200 calories a day. She was dropping pounds like marbles, according to her. I began looking online for "the easy way out" again just last night, when I ran across a website for an e-book.

This book is Tom Venuto's Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (for $40). The site looked just like one of those diet scam sites that I became so familiar with, but I was interested in the links surrounding it on google--sure enough, I found a link on ripoffreport.com about it and began reading. What was strange, though, was that the person accusing the book actually seemed more noobish than the people defending it. And there were TONS of people defending the book with valid, legit reasoning. I was almost won over. Almost.

The only thing that was preventing me from getting the book was the cost, so I ended up taking the cheap, lame route and downloading it off a free e-book website (wait, I redeemed myself!). After I got it and began reading...something just clicked off in my brain. This guy is amazing. He managed to make me rethink exercising and fitness. He actually motivated me to do this. I finished half the book before I went back on the site and bought my own copy.

So today, the first thing I did when I had spare time was go to the local gym and hop on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes at my target heart zone. That's how inspiring it is.

Now, there's nothing new in this book at all; it's just how the material is organized and presented. You know, exercise and nutrition help you lose weight. That's all. But this body builder beats down everything I had misconceptions on and helped me stable myself on the right track. A few of those I'll highlight in points, such as...

1. The scale tells you only the surface of the story! What? Even BMI is weak at analyzing fitness. You don't want to lose weight in kilograms or pounds--you want to lose body fat! Measure your body fat percentage, not just your weight.

2. Exercise (cardio/aerobics) is a must to lose fat! Dieting or fasting will only help you lose water and muscle!

3. Strength training is also a must to lose fat! Having muscles boosts your metabolism and burns fat just by sitting there idling.

...and other such information as this. No these aren't quoted, they came off the top of my head. Anyways, they may seem cheesy coming from me, but they really do sound good in the book. I just recommend getting it. And no, I won't give you the link to the free website, because I really wanna support this dude.

Anyways, this is the backstory to beginning my nutrition program. Next is the plan I'm going to use ^^