The Most Effective Way I Fixed My Bulging Waistline After 6 Years of No Progress.
I was trapped until I realised the answers I needed were right under my feet.
I dropped over 30 pounds in six months, and now, seeing my abs in the mirror has become the norm.
I get it — the topless images are “a bit thirst trappy”, as one commenter put it, but if you knew my starting point, you’d understand why I’m proud to keep sharing them and why I put actual results in the top draw.
Online theories with no real backing seriously annoy me, especially when I think back to the six years of my own trial and error. Excuse the French, but thinking about the wasted time really pisses me off.
A torturous habit I’ll never forget was grabbing my belly fat that bulged over my belt buckle. It was some weird coping mechanism I’d use at work while staring aimlessly out the window of my former wage slave job.
Work colleagues would walk past my desk and ask, “Jay, you ok, mate? You look in pain”.
I was hurting, just in a different way.
I was dealing with the sinking feeling of the daily broken promises I was making to myself by not having a healthy lunch planned each day, snacking out of the vending machine, purposely not packing my gym kit in the car out of unexplainable fear, and then picking up Dominoes on the way home after a few beers.
It’s like Chris Williamson says:
“You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.”
I had absolutely nothing to show for in the proof department.
I was the guy who dabbled in dieting like some recreational drug user: Paleo, Keto, 5/2, Vegan, skipping breakfast, you name it.
My turning point in it all was when my buddy and three-time Body Fitness world champion AJ Ellison said something that stuck with me:
“Jay, whenever you choose to do something, it has to be something you’re prepared to do for life. I find diets that exclude certain food groups are far too restrictive and short-lived”.
His dieting (and life) metaphor made me understand why I’d give up so easily.
Digging deep into why I went after those things, it boiled down to impatience and desperation. That angst of ‘wanting it now’ led me to search for quick results — a trap I’ve watched many folks stumble into.
I got there with my fitness, and so have many others, which means one thing: You can, too.
Allow me to share some thoughts.
Less Eating, More Sweating.
Fitness, to me, was a giant mess.
I’d end up in a YouTube K-hole listening to so-called credible experts talk about fitness and weight loss strategies, only to be more confused and dosed in cynicism when they’d push a product off the back of it.
“The Diary of a CEO” is fast becoming my go-to podcast. But every so often, they totally botch it.
Steven Bartlett featured a doctor, Tim Spector, who hooked me in and scrambled my brain with a short clip to promote the podcast, where he says:
“Exercise doesn’t help weight loss, and we must stop obsessing about calories; there’s never been any long-term study showing that calorie counting is an effective way to lose weight and maintain weight loss after the first few weeks.”
Seriously?
I clicked on the full-length video, which I guess was their intention behind the clickbait BS — then I watched the entire one-hour 30-minute video and concluded that it was still BS.
Studies show that the energy you eat minus what you burn through exercise will cause you to gain or lose weight. It’s clear enough for a five-year-old to understand.
One research paper submitted by the Cardiometabolic Research Institute said:
“The prevailing concept of caloric restriction often called the “calories in, calories out”, remains a fundamental principle in obesity management. Energy balance, which involves the relationship between calorie intake and expenditure, is crucial in obesity”.
Unsurprisingly, Doctor Tim and Uncle Steve were on an advert upselling “Zoe” a week after watching the podcast. Facepalm.
Let’s cut through the noise.
Here’s precisely how I lost 30 pounds.
I’ll make you one promise: no BS. I’ll lay out every (lived) fact I’ve got.
Trying to piece together this entire fitness journey through research would mean a ton of trial and error. So, I figured the best way to dodge all the sales pitches was to chat with a buddy who is a fitness pro.
There’s something damn refreshing about someone speaking to every pain point you have in your life from an expert view. When Chris hopped on a call with me, he spoke as if weight loss wasn’t this Everest Herculean effort I’d built in my head.
Chris: “Jay, you just need a framework you’re accountable to”.
The simplicity hooked me.
Using a BMR calculator, we measured my starting point, i.e., how many calories I burned daily, given my age, weight and height.
We got to a figure of 2,500 calories.
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) say using a BMR calculator is the most accurate method for estimating the number of calories your body burns over 24 hours. It’s like the dial on the fuel gauge.
You have to get this.
It’s like figuring out how much gas you need in the tank to keep the engine running. Once you grasp your basic calorie needs, you can figure out how much energy you need to shed, pack on, or maintain your weight.
Bear in mind it’s not set in stone and is a moving target.
We agreed that I’d follow the usual 20% rule and cut my daily calorie intake to 2000, slashing 500 each day, which, according to experts, is pretty standard.
It equates to a deficit of 3,500 weekly, typically resulting in between ½ a Lbs and 1lb weight loss per week with an exercise plan. I was losing one pound weekly.
At 37, my weekly activity schedule helped me lose 33 pounds in 8 months.
Here’s what it included.
10,000 daily steps
Three, 5KM runs
Three 45 minutes weight session
A quality diet is simple with the proper knowledge.
Tired cliches get under my skin.
There’s no getting away from the fact that your diet is the thing that significantly impacts getting into shape (the most).
Eating like Bruce Bogtrotter negatively affected working out, keeping active, and making better life choices. It was a cornerstone habit I was screwing up royally.
Refrain from skim-reading this part.
At its core, regulating your weight is just calories in vs calories out.
The counterargument to calorie counting always goes to the extreme, like, “Well, you can’t just chow down 2000 calories of sugar.” Thank you, Captain Obvious.
It clicked for me that it’s about “calories in vs. calories out,” but caveated with the following — If you’re even slightly mindful about the quality of fuel you’re loading into the tank, you’ll torch excess weight like nobody’s business.
Say it with me, “Macronutrients.”
Speak to a dietary expert if you are unsure, but what worked for me was including macronutrients, or “macros,” into my diet. These are foods that provide us with energy, commonly measured in calories.
Experts say you should include three macronutrients in every meal: protein, which has 4 calories per gram — carbohydrates, which have 4 calories per gram — and fat, which is dense at 9 calories per gram.
I try to achieve an even split (recommended) of all three macros in each meal with slightly lower fat, i.e., 35–40% Carbs, 35% Protein, and 25% Fat.
When I started including all three in at least two of my three main meals, I consistently had more energy, fewer afternoon slumps, didn’t always feel starving and recovered quicker from exercise.
It’s not ambiguous, either. The change was noticeable.
A food scale is a weight loss secret weapon you should invest in because eyeballing portion sizes is a lottery.
Let’s dive into the meat and potatoes.
My typical daily diet.
Remember my daily limit of 2000 calories?
Well, here’s a breakdown.
I eat around 500 calories per meal, giving me 1,500 calories in the bank for three main meals.
It leaves me 500 calories in reserve for some snacks, which I use for a cappuccino almost every day from a coffee shop down the road, a Protein bar (cut in half and eaten in two portions), and a hot chocolate in the evening.
My typical day isn’t fancy, and it’s not written in stone—I try to keep it as flexible as possible.
Breakfast: Two tablespoons of Peanut Butter (188 cal) on two pieces of toast (160 cal) with a protein shake (130 cal)
Snack: Half a Grenade bar (110 cal)
Lunch: 150 grams chicken cooked (250 calories) + one and a half fajita wraps (150 calories) sprinkled with 30 grams light mature cheddar (100 calories)
Snack: The other half is that Grenade bar (110 cal) and a cappuccino(130 cal)
Dinner: Half a cup of Basmati Rise (83 cal), Half a cup of Lentils (115 cal), Broccoli (15 cal), Chicken/Yellow Fin Tuna/Pork/ Steak (150 cal) and one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil (120 cal)
Basmati rice and veggies are like a golden trick for bulking up your meals without packing on the calories.
I eat rice most nights and swap the meat—some nights, I cook chicken and others, it’s steak.
I’ll have a diced apple with peanut butter and a protein shake instead of the Grenade bar for variety and to save money. I also enjoy a good mango as a sweet treat (sporadically).
It works for me because I genuinely enjoy eating these foods.
Find what tantalises your taste buds, and I bet you’ll sustain it.
Success always stems from a balanced approach.
If you’ve read my stuff long enough, you’ll know I’m a bit of a GaryVee disciple.
My favourite response from him to any question that’s typically met with a partisan view is simply — “Both.”
I was making the most common mistake people make — and it was choosing one over the other.
Let me explain.
I experimented with creating a calorie deficit strictly through diet, without exercise, or, on the flip side, solely through exercise without adjusting my diet.
I tried to compensate for a poor diet with intense exercise, and when I did the intense training, I rewarded myself with more shoddy foods that lacked nutritional quality.
It was like emptying a flooded boat with a teaspoon and would often lead to overeating when I was on a health kick.
Whoever said, “A bad diet will always have the upper hand”, hit the nail on the head.
This magical compounding effect happened when I simultaneously exercised and ate well by tracking my food.
The two beasts fed each other.
You’re giving too much leeway for things to go wrong.
Tracking is like a compass that keeps on course.
It’s the cornerstone of every part of my progress because tracking becomes addictive. When I saw progress unfold for the first time, it had this reinforcing and motivating effect.
Before using tracking Apps like MyFitnessPal, I underestimated my calorie intake. Sometimes, I was off by thousands.
Research shows that a significant contributor to obesity is the misconception that people eat healthily when, in reality, their estimation of what they consume is way off.
A National Health and Nutrition Survey of 11,288 adults aged above 20 found that 63% of obese adults thought their diet quality was excellent, while 70% actually had diet quality grades of F.
These people, grown adults, could not accurately assess diet quality because only 15% returned accurate diet quality assessments with 96% accuracy.
In a similar study, they concluded that:
“Underreporting of energy intake from foods is a frequent finding in patients with disturbances in body weight regulation who are referred for obesity evaluation”.
Follow these two steps to tie it all up.
Before my body transformation, if anyone asked me how my fitness was going, I’d say:
“I eat well, I cook at home, have protein after workouts, and I’ve been trying to drink more water instead of Sugary soda”.
That was my typical response.
I was under the delusion everything was hunky-dory.
But in reality, I was peddling snake oil and talking right out of my clenched butt cheeks because when I tracked my first week on MyfitnessPal, it showed that I was consuming 3000 calories a day.
My diet was in a different zip code to reality.
Once I tweaked these two things, it ditched all the guesswork and kept me consistent.
I made tech work for me:
Your iPhone or Android has this cool health app that counts your steps. With MyFitnessPal, you can track every meal, gulp of water, calorie, and macro by scanning barcodes.
I got a buddy to check on me:
Find someone in the same boat as you — a friend, a pal, or even an online coach — who can keep you honest and on track.
like they say:
“If it can’t be measured, it can’t be enhanced”
It’s another truism you can take to the bank.
One study measured the weight loss over an entire year of three groups of people: “rare trackers”, “inconsistent trackers”, and “consistent trackers.”
Folks who stuck to tracking their habits consistently maintained weight loss and continued to shed pounds, even during periods when we typically indulge, like the holiday season.
In Week 9, Thanksgiving is marked in black. While the other groups saw weight gains, the “consistent trackers” continued downward.
Final Thoughts
When I sat in that office chair, clutching my overhanging belly, I wish someone had just said, “Jay, don’t overcomplicate it”, and then walked me through the steps in this blog.
Here’s one final ingredient I’ve been holding back, and it’s the most profound.
Accept that you will screw up.
You’ll have days when you eat terribly or forget to track your calories. But the key is not to batter yourself like some KFC chicken drumstick.
I realised that if I was going to do this for life, the skill I needed to master was to A: accept that falling off the horse was a part of the process, and then B: become an expert at getting back into the saddle.
It comes down to a mindset of showing yourself some compassion.
You’re not a failure for binging one day a week or a month, missing a day of tracking, or skipping the gym for one day. The skill, then, is to pick up where you left off.
Too often, I’d kick my routine in the gut when a lousy choice interrupted my winning streak. It’s not a school report card. Just start again.
It’s a simple formula, but it takes some discipline at the start.
Eat less, move more.
Prioritise diet quality.
Keep tabs on your macros — carbs, fats, and proteins in every meal.
Don’t rely solely on diet or exercise to achieve a calorie deficit — success lies in a combination of both.
If you’re not shedding pounds in a calorie deficit, you might need to double-check your tracking, as research suggests.
Utilise technology and a buddy for accountability to stay on track consistently.
As a writer, I still sit at a desk for my work, but I’ve dropped my weird habit of grabbing my belly — mostly because there isn’t anything to cling to.
What was once a sinking feeling of broken promises laying heavy on my conscience is now “a stack of undeniable proof that I am who I say I am.”
I’m sitting here grinning from ear to ear, feeling more energetic, mobile, confident and alive than ever.
It’s all a gentle reminder that if I can do it, you can too.
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