I care - becasue I've been there. . .
Growing up, I was the second fattest kid in my Elementary School, Middle School, and most of my high school years.  Life was living hell for me.  I was always being made fun of for being so fat.  Needless to say, I was the favorite target of many bullies. 

I tried again and again to lose weight using diet pills and whatever poor advice I heard.  But none of it would work.  Once I was into high school I stopped eating breakfast and lunch.  I only ate one meal a day.  After a couple years I was down to a chubby weight. People still called me fat, but to me I seemed quite small. 

Then I signed up for the US Air Force and needed to drop several pounds in order to qualify for entry.  For two weeks I ate nothing but watermelon. At weigh in, I made it with two pounds to spare.  Once I was in basic training, I started eating 3 nutritious meals a day and did a lot of exercise.  I dropped over 20 pounds in 6 weeks.  It is a shame I didn’t get the big picture then-nutritious food and exercise equals weight loss.  But after basic training I went right back to my old habits.  My weight started to creep up until I got so large the Air Force threatened to kick me out.  Fortunately for me I got out on an unrelated hardship discharge. 

After the Air Force I got a job working at a restaurant.  Being around the food all the time, I packed on the pounds very quickly.  I switched careers, but every year I gained more and more weight especially around the holidays.  I tried every type of diet I could find to see if one would work for me.  It was an endless cycle - lose a few pounds, fall off the diet wagon and give up due to frustration and hunger; then only to gain everything back and more. 

My life was very sedimentary.  I worked 40 hours a week in a career with little physical activity and completed 6 years of college in 5 years.  Needless to say, exercise was non-existent in my life.  My weight continued to creep up.  With a high stress office job, I continued to gain even more weight and my health declined rapidly. 

At my peak, I weighed 320 pounds.  My legs had atrophied to the point that I could only walk for a block and a half before being in so much pain, I couldn’t go on.  I was no longer able to walk up a flight of stairs without holding on to the hand rails.  I had to use both arms to help lift myself out of my car. 

I had pre-hypertension, pre-diabetes, high LDL (bad cholesterol) and low HDL (good cholesterol), high triglycerides, asthma and sleep apnea.  My legs were in constant pain. I would have occasional dizzy spells and feel lousy every day.  I also realized that for whatever reason, I seemed to be even more out of physical shape than other people my size.  The desk job and complete lack of exercise didn’t help.

Then one day I started having bad chest pains.  I didn’t tell anyone and I didn’t go to the hospital. But that was the turning point.  My father died at age 62 from complications due to diabetes.  I realized that if I continued on my current course of life, I would probably never make it to even my 50th birthday.  I have seen other super obese people and I realized they typically die young.

I started my weight loss journey by searching articles on the internet from people who lost at least 100 pounds and kept it off for at least 3 years.  The most common factor I found was that they permanently changed their lifestyles; as opposed to rigid short term weight loss.  The second most cited change was adding an exercise routine to that lifestyle. But what do I change in eating habits and what do I do for exercise? 

As I started leaning about nutrition, I also started exercising; an entire 5 minutes a day!  For the first three months I simply walked.  I had worked up to continuously walking for 7 minutes.  Then the company I worked for had a fitness challenge program.  The program coordinator named Augusta set the challenge of doing 30 minutes of exercise five days a week.  My first thought was, “Is she nuts!  Maybe for pro-athletes or semi-pro, but for an average person?  30 minutes?”  Nevertheless I decided to challenge myself.  I worked out for ten minutes, three times a day.  After a few weeks, I started doing two sets of 15 minutes.  A few weeks later, I could walk for 30 minutes continuously!  Now it is not unusual for me to spend 7 to 12 hours a week at the gym simply because the physical activity makes me feel so good.

For me the change took longer than it should have simply because there is so much poor diet information out there to sort through.  I wanted to learn how to live in a way that would guarantee that I would keep the weight off.  I spent a lot of time leaning to differentiate the junk information from the good information.

After I lost 135 pounds (scale weight), I decided to start Diet4Living.org to help people like myself.  I have read that the diet industry is a 30 billion dollar a year business.  Seeing so many diet scams (paid diet info, books, videos, stupid machines, and worthless pills), I wanted to make D4L a free site.  I also wanted to sort out the good information that does work from the bad advice and the meaningless tips. I hope you find Diet4Living.org a great place to go for information to live a healthier life. - Steve Ocvirek

My Favorite Tips:

1. Change:
Make small changes a permanent part of a healthy lifestyle

2. Exercise:
Challenge yourself and do something you dislike but you know is good for you
Learn to live with some exercise the bores you
Enjoy and live for exercise you think is fun (Krav Maga and Weightlifting are mine).

3. Good Nutrition:
A doctor once said, “If it tastes good, spit it out”. 
I say: if it tastes good, make it part of your healthy lifestyle in moderation.
Life is a balance.

4. Failure:
Failure has been my best teacher.  Leaning how to overcome failure and how to go on has been my greatest success

5. What to focus on:
Focusing on the number on the scale has brought me my greatest stress (especially the closer I got to my goal weight).
Focusing on my health has brought me great joy and lowered stress. Focusing on your health and not the number on the scale is liberating and will almost always yield better long term results since your focus is on good nutrition and meaningful exercise.

6. Self Defense:
Learn Krav Maga - it will give you great self-confidence, a good workout, and could save your life.  

Krav-Maga is an Israeli form of self-defense designed for real life situations.  Unlike other martial arts where you earn belts and compete for points against one opponent, Krav Maga has no belts and teaches you to address multiple attackers with weapons (guns, knives, bats, etc.).  Its purpose is not a sport; but rather strictly self-defense.

Want to know more about Krav Maga?  Click below to find out more.  Note: I don’t get a penny for promoting Krav Maga.  I truly feel it is great for many reasons.

Krav Maga Minneapolis - The center where I go to train in Minneapolis, Minnesota

International Krav Maga Federation - The organization overseeing the instructor’s training.


D4L.org