What I learned and how you can do the same: Part 1
Back in 2007 I was happy; I just had a beautiful newborn daughter and was married (for the 2nd time). I spent so much time taking care of my then pregnant wife I didn't notice how bad of shape I was getting in. It happens slowly, if you have a gradual change over time you just don't see it when you look in the mirror. I know, it sounds stupid or silly but when it happens to you, you will know what I mean. Our self-image, the way we see ourselves is usually what we see when we look in the mirror. Minor changes here and there may go unnoticed leading us to not realizing what is happening until it’s too late. When you realize it, it hits you pretty hard. That realization came for me when I looked at photos from the trip we took to Las Vegas:
Above: Daughter and I in Las Vegas, NV 2007
Until this point I weighed an average of 145 lbs. When I exited High School I weighed 145. When I attended college I weighed 145. So when I looked at these pictures it shook me to the core. How did this happen? I thought something must be wrong, until now I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I never had to worry and I maintained the same weight most of my life. For someone who is 6ft 2in 145 may be a little too thin. I used to have next to no fat and a lot of definition on my frame. At this point I weighed 250+ lbs. with no idea how it happened, or what to do about it. I say 250+ because I became so worried, and a little bit depressed, So much so that I stopped stepping onto the scale. At my heaviest I was most likely around 275 lbs.
Being over 6ft tall and carrying weight evenly helped make it so I didn’t look 'that heavy'. I was certain I had to do something. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning, get out of bed... take a few steps and my heart would start racing. I went to my family doctor to get a physical to make sure that nothing was wrong with me. I was only overweight according to the Doctor. Normally I had irregular heartbeats, which I had since High School but this was different. No matter what the doctor said to reassure me I knew this was a huge warning sign.
I wanted to make my first logical step in the right direction. I wasn't content to simply say "I am eating unhealthy" as most people would, then begin to "eat healthy". What is unhealthy to eat and drink anyway? Today every other doctor, nutritionist and other ‘experts’ have different opinions. I thought there had to be more to it than just eating the wrong foods. I haven't changed the types of things I ate since I was in school. Here I was 25 and now I am packing on weight from eating the same things I ate since I was a kid... why? I thought perhaps my metabolism changed, but I was not about to blame that on my age. 25, in my opinion, just was not old enough to blame the metabolism failure on my age.
I thought I could figure out what I am eating and drinking that could be causing my metabolism to slow down to the extent that it had. My idea was simple enough, but tedious. I decided for now I will not change anything, but instead gather up all of the Ingredient/Nutrition labels for every last thing I eat and drink. Then I could compare every single label. If I could find one or two common ingredients in everything I ingested that could be my problem and my answer.
I disregarded things such as food coloring to make it easier, and since as far as I know food coloring hasn’t went through that many changes. Not to mention the amounts of coloring in food are rather small. I focused on the main ingredients. Many, many labels later I realized that almost every single thing I ate or drank had 1 or 2 ingredients in common. Practically everything I ate or drank had one or both of these ingredients listed. A rational person might think sugar was one of the problems… it turns out it wasn’t. The first ingredient I noticed was “High Fructose Corn Syrup” and the second one was “Corn Syrup”. I checked everything, even down to the bread I used for sandwiches. Cereal, many pre-prepared foods, pizza, granola bars, various snacks, breads, soft drinks, and even juice… Corn Syrup/High Fructose Corn Syrup was in everything! At this point you may be replaying commercials through your head where ‘they’ said that “High Fructose Corn Syrup/Corn Syrup is nutritionally the same as real sugar”. These types of commercials and bogus studies were nothing more than an ad campaign paid for by lobbying firms working for those who profit off of the sales of corn syrup.
At some point between the 90s and present day, corn syrup has been used more and more until it accounted for half of the sweetener used in our food supply. I’m not one of those people that go on rants about corn syrup, actually at this point I believed what I was told as far as it being equal to sugar as far as health goes. I knew sugar was bad to take in at large quantities, and so was anything else for that matter. I did not for the life of me think that taken at the same quantities you will become unhealthier with High Fructose Corn Syrup/Corn Syrup than if you would have just taken in real sugar instead. I thought could this really be my problem?
I decided to put it to the test. I had no ambition to become muscular, or to be a “fitness buff”. I simply wanted to be healthier and to be at a more healthy weight. I suppose the goal was to just look and feel better. After seeing those pictures I did not see myself in the same way when I looked in the mirror. Who could blame me, right? I wanted to put this to the test. I’m scientifically minded and just had to test out my theory based on the evidence I gathered during my label reading. What I would do is change nothing about the types of foods I ate, instead I would buy the same types of foods as long as they used real sugar instead of corn syrup. I would also buy diet drinks that contained sweeteners other than HFCS/Corn Syrup. I decided I would do this for a few months, and stick to it… no matter what. I know that other artificial sweeteners were also unhealthy, and some can cause cancer. My main concern at this point was simply to rid myself of what was causing weight gain.
I went to the store and intently read every single label on the types of foods I usually bought. If it had not listed Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, or Fructose I bought it. I added Fructose into the mix because around that time I read a story about how the manufacturers of Corn Syrup related additives were intending to obfuscate it’s nasty ingredient by renaming it “Fructose” and somehow it was ‘legal’ for them to do so. I wanted to freely test out my ideas, and didn’t want to chance being fooled by some kind of legal loophole that allowed manufacturers to lie about the ingredients they used. So I bought the usual kinds of foods I ate as long as they had an artificial sweetener or sugar. I made absolutely sure that nothing I bought had High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, or Fructose within the ingredients.
Above: Chart of Corn derived sweeteners vs. sugar consumption from 1966–2004 from USDA
You can plainly see that over time the use of Corn derived sweeteners has increased to a staggering amount, and this chart stops at 2004! The thing I thought that would be hardest was following through with my diet plan. I didn’t realize that the hardest thing would be to find foods that didn’t use Corn Syrup or HFCS. When it didn’t have CS or HFCS on the label it had “Fructose” and as I pointed out earlier they started renaming HFCS to Fructose on labels because according to the manufacturers “It’s the same thing”. Eventually I found a replacement for all my food items that used either sugar, or an artificial sweetener that wasn’t Fructose/CS/HFCS. I would also like to add that there are many times I came across an item where the front of the packaging had in large font “High Fructose Corn Syrup Free!” only to read the ingredient label and “Corn Syrup” or “Fructose” was one of the main ingredients. There are no shortcuts you have to read the ingredient label! Then I made a note of everything so I could replace them when needed. It was easier for me just to stick with the same exact food items for this stretch of time than to go through the store and do it for every visit. It was like a wild goose chase and I spent hours in the store trying to find non CS/HFCS foods.
The first difference I noticed came by the end of the first week of eating foods without corn sweeteners. I felt this weird craving, like my body wanted something to satisfy an addiction. I am no stranger to addiction, being that I smoke cigarettes. I found that to be strange considering I wasn’t avoiding sweets, just sweets and foods that had any type of corn syrup. At one point it was a pretty strong craving, and eventually went away. That was my first sign that I was on the right track, and that something truly isn’t right about Corn Syrup. Also I would like to note I know there are differences between HFCS and normal Corn Syrup. However, foods with Corn Syrup accounted for almost half of my diet (or more) and HFCS the other half.
At the end of the first month I dropped around 10 lbs. or very close to it. The second month, the same thing. The third month came and went with same result. I thought this is unbelievable because I hadn’t changed one thing about the types of foods I ate, I simply made sure they didn’t contain the aforementioned ingredients and I was dropping almost ten pounds a month. Eventually I hit a peak where I wasn’t losing any more weight simply by avoiding CS/HFCS. That came around the middle of the 4th month. However over 40 lbs. was lost simply by avoiding CS/HFCS! All without eating better types of food and without working out. It was about the beginning of the 5th month in that I decided to do better. I hit a peak weight loss of around 45 pounds without breaking a sweat, literally.
I decided to make alterations to my diet and actually eat healthier types of foods. I am no vegetarian, and I couldn’t ever be. I did decide I would change the types of meat I ate. A few examples are I replaced regular bacon with turkey bacon. I replaced regular burgers with turkey burgers. I would replace 3-4 eggs with egg whites (with one added whole egg mixed in). I would drink more water and less diet soda. I replaced steak with a chicken breast. You get the point. I stuck to this until my next physical with the same doctor and the weight just kept coming off. During these visits the first thing they usually do is take your blood pressure, temp, and your weight with a nurse.
I remember the questionable look on my doctor’s face when he walked in the room, only a year after the previous visit. He asked me “Mr. Lantz ummm is this weight loss intentional?” I told him it was, then he asked if I would mind if he took some blood samples. He wanted to rule out diseases that usually had a symptom of high weight loss, like HIV/AIDS for example. I laughed knowing what he was thinking could be the cause. He also asked me about the changes I made, and I told him the biggest change was avoiding HFCS/CS in my diet. He just could not believe that would make such a difference. I wouldn’t have thought so either, but the results proved it to me beyond a doubt. All told I lost 90-100 lbs.:
Above: Around a year and a half later (Not a morning person)
I did not calorie count, I did not workout. Almost half of that weight came off by avoiding CS/HFCS, the other half by managing the types of meats I ate, and avoiding unnecessary sources of fat/cholesterol. I stopped eating pizza every other night, and made better meal choices. I didn’t obsess about calories. Once again during this time I did not do workouts. I am not a lazy person, I walk a lot. I did a few jogs here and there, as there are footpaths for joggers where I live. I did not jog the whole time either, I’d jog a few hundred feet, walk a little and then jog again. Usually I’d only walk/jog about a mile or two and only every so often. It does sound unbelievable but take a look at the pictures again. In 07 I basically had no neck to speak of. The after picture is almost 2 years later. Here they are again side by side:
Above: Before and after
During this time I was not sure if I would succeed in losing the weight, or if there would be any difference. I didn’t take before or after pictures of my body. Had I known I definitely would have done so. Just the difference in my face alone was massive! This is only part 1 of the story. Years after this I decided to make an even more drastic change. For the next attempt at transforming my body I did take body photos. /End Part 1.
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