40's with 10-25 lbs to Lose

I'm 45 years old married man with two children living in British Columbia, Canada. I'm in fairly good shape (no major health concerns, my most recent physical gave me a clean bill of health (BP is normal, if a little high, colesterol is normal, if a little high, etc.).

I'm a good cook and love to make all meals from scratch. I like to bake bread and eat good cheese. I drink fairly heavily (1/2+ bottle of wine, a few beers and a scotch or two would be a typical daily intake). I cook with a lot of locally raised meat with plenty of pasta, potatoes, rice etc. We have a fair amount of seafood in our diet. We always eat lots of vegetables with meals and have plenty of fruit as well. I don't drink any soda.

My family is out-of-town visting relatives, so this gave me the perfect opportunity to go on a radical diet (for me) starting about 12 days ago. I've cut out booze, candy, highly processed carbs, (white flour, white rice, potatoes, etc.) meat, dairy (except goat cheese and goat yogurt) and started exercising like crazy. My first week was amazing (I went down from 207.6 lbs to 197 lbs)...but now I seem to be stuck at about 197 lbs. I figure that I'm not ingesting about 1,000 calories a day I used to get from wine, beer, liquor, candy, chips etc. (I'm a fairly heavy drinker and like to eat chocolate) plus I've started burning off between 600-1,000 calories in extra exercise...so I should have stripped almost 2,000 calories a day...but maybe it doesn't work like that.

I just started keeping exact track of all I eat and all the exercise I'm doing to see if measuring my performance can help me reach my goal of getting down to 185 lbs. I'm hoping that being in a forum of similar people can motivate me to keep going dieting, exercising, and avoid the temptations of overeating.

Thanks,

Tim

1st CONGRATS on losing 9.4 pounds your 1st week!!!
I don't know if you are still on your radical diet or not. If you've ever seen the TV show The Biggest Loser (popular here in the U.S.), you'd know that the 1st week of any radial diet/exercise change yields miraculous results but the 2nd week most folks FALL FLAT. Your body kind of goes into starvation mode b/c of the massive weight loss from the previous week. 1,200 to 1,500 calories should be the LOWEST you should consume for a day to prevent your body going into starvation mode (during which your body will hold onto every calorie it can). If you feed your body, it won't do that. Just go for nutrient-dense foods like broccoli, spinach, kale, chia seeds, hemp seeds, berries, spirulina, etc.
Also, don't do the same exercise routine every day. Not only will you get bored but so will your muscles. Change it up; work the same muscle group in different ways, from different angles, with different exercises with different intesities.
I may be slightly overweight now after having 2 babies but I used to be a body builder for 8 years & am on my way back to a better body after babies (7 months & 3 yrs/7months).
Good luck on your journey to a healthier body!

Hi Cindaian and thanks for the advice.

I'm still keeping my food intake up...just lots of fruits, nuts, veggies, salad, and fish (tonight I had some wild salmon filet, feta, tomato and black olive salad, brown rice and fruit (delicious and just under 800 calories).

The big difference is no snacks (except some fruit), no booze and no sweets. Plus, I'm doing lots of different exercise (today it was boxing boot camp first thing, some treadmill, weights and elliptical at the gym, and then a quick hike up a hill with the dog after work).

Week 2 is tougher...and I'll be happy if I loose 2-3 lbs this week...after that I figure I'll try and loose between 1-2 lbs a week. We'll see...maybe I'm being overly optimistic...but at least I'm having fun!