If you’re thinking about trying to lose weight the first thing that comes to mind is changing your eating habits, and then exercising.  Well, let me tell you, reverse that thinking.

A few months ago I wrote about having lost over 100 lbs now (121 lbs since I wrote that).  I made brief mention of the fact I might write up a guide to how I did it, but wasn’t sure.  Well after several people contacted me about the subject, I figured I should, but I also wanted to collect my thoughts on it before I just launched into it.  I also figured firing this up just before we went into the holidays made the most sense.

Let me say right up front that I am not a medical expert, I have done this mostly by the seat of my pants with some input from a couple of close friends, and eventually my doctor.  If you do plan on embarking on any serious exercise plan,  you should always consult your physician first.

First Step, “Okay, I’m fed up”

The first step to me deciding that it was time to start losing weight was three-fold: I bought my first ever pair of pants with a 60-inch waist, I was having trouble walking around Walmart without my hip starting to hurt and I came to the realization I never saw heavy set older people.

The pants happened in Oct. 2006, and the walking around Walmart incident happened shortly before the end of that same year.  The noticing that I never really saw heavy set older people was more of a general observation, but one that really hit the point home to me that I needed to do something about my weight.

Like any good sheep, I decided to get serious about weight loss on Jan. 1st.  It wasn’t so much a New Years resolution as I have always just liked to be able to remember dates.  So, come Jan. 1st, 2007 I just said, “This is it, you are now going to exercise every other day.”

The reason for every other day was that I had taken a weight training class some years ago in my aborted attempt to go to college.  I learned a couple things in that class, #1 being that you should not exercise the same muscle groups more than once every 48 hours, and never go more than 72 hours.  So, lets say you do legs one day, you do arms the next, and so on.  Since I was starting from a cold start I decided once every other day doing the majority of everything was the right course.

I started off slowly with free weights at home, I think the heaviest weights I had at the time were 15 lbs.  I worked very slowly at this, and only bought heavier weights when I felt I was ready.  How do you know you’re ready?  Well, that was lesson #2 from the class I took, “If you can’t do 7 reputitions, it’s too heavy.  If you can do more than 12 reputitions, it’s too lite.”  This is an excellent rule of thumb, and is the one I have stuck with to this day.

Things will be slow when you first start, but don’t get discouraged.  I really felt like throwing in the towel multiple times, but as the amount of exercise you do increases, the more your weight loss will accelerate.  When I started this weight loss attempt, I was 400 lbs.  By July 2008 I was 360, so it took me nearly 18 months to lose those first 40 lbs, but in the 16 months since then I have lost another 81 lbs.

This was a combination of acceleration and adding more exercise this year.

Second Step, “Keep pushing yourself”

Those first months in 2007 were horrid.  I hated the exercise, I wasn’t seeing any progress, and I came close to giving up many times.  However, I knew that giving up would get me nowhere, and everything I read said to expect slow progress when you start.  I grunted a lot, and just kept plugging along.

The big turning point to me was the first time I went, “Huh… I think I can tighten my belt by a notch…”, and I did.  After that I was sold and kept plugging away at it as I finally had a visual marker that I was making progress.  Once I had that moment, I found it immensely easier to keep pushing my limits just a bit more.

Third Step, “Push yourself even more!”

I went to my doctor in October 2008 for a flu shot, and we discussed my weight loss briefly.  He said if I wanted to really lose weight, I needed to start walking.  I grunted and shrugged it off as I had never been a fan of walking.  I however made one large mistake … I mentioned this tidbit to the Diabolical Miss M, my sometime Scattercast guest.

Miss M has mentioned walking to me many times before, and now she had an ally.  At the same time, F, another friend of mine, had been talking to me about getting a treadmill.  So I was getting it from 3 angles to give in and walk.  In Nov. 2008, Miss M guilted me in to giving a walk a try after  a long instant messenger conversation.  Well, I did it, and I walked 2 miles just out of pure stubborness … and wound up sick from it.  It was probably the weather, but I was amazed I had done 2 miles when I thought I couldn’t do anything really.

I tried walking a few more times, and each time I ended up with some sort of health problem, so I started researching treadmills as I knew it was my allergies causing the problems, and had come to the conclusion I was going to need one that probably cost around $2500, something I wasn’t willing to do.  In March 2009 I went to the doctor to discuss my weight loss stalling out at 325 lbs, and again walking came up.  I finally agreed I would join a gym and try it on the treadmills there.

I researched buying a treadmill some more, and after talking to the local 24-hour gym, I figured out I could join the gym for over 7 years before I was losing money over buying a unit for my house.  The other bonus would be access to all of the other equipment, so the pros of the gym really started to win out.  On May 1st, 2009, I went to the gym for the first time.

So, what did I do with my rule about every other day?  Well, I decided to go for it and upped my exercise to 6 days a week: 3 at the gym, 3 at home, 1 day off each week.  The gym was all about defining muscles with a focus on my legs, and the days at home were all about building muscle with a focus on my arms and torso.  It seems to be working so far, and it also seems to have really accelerated my weight loss quite a bit.

Fourth Step, “Do what you are comfortable with”

What I have done for myself may not follow the letter of the law, as it were, when it comes to weight lifting, but I again stress this is what has worked for me.  Every person out there is different, and that’s a lot of the reason I don’t agree with cookie cutter diet systems and programs.  You have to find what works for you, your health, your budget, your schedule and so on.

Probably the most important thing is set an initial goal in your mind of what you want to accomplish, and then start researching it for yourself.

The next entry in this series will be about changing what you eat, and the third will be about staying motivated.  These will be published on Wednesday and Thursday of this week respectively, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure as not to miss them.