Hello, Infographics fans- once more we're concerned about your health.
Obesity rates are finally starting to come down across America, but while the Battle
of the Bulge may have started here in the USA, it has spread around the world.
Today modern nations are all battling obesity as our overprivileged first world lifestyles
make life easy and convenient.
All that convenience comes at a cost though, and while the world may have laughed and snickered
at the US's weight problems, now it's them eating a double-serving of humble pie as populations
all over earth are having to add a few extra holes to their belts.
But what can you do to help keep your weight down, and what if you want to start losing
weight?
Once more we're tasking your favorite, and our least important guinea pig with finding
out in this special Challenge episode of The Infographics Show: lose ten pounds in one
month!
Day 1: It feels so bizarre to say this, but thank God for a normal challenge for once.
I mean by comparison losing ten pounds in one month is a cakewalk- or a... healthy-alternative-to-cake-walk
rather.
At least compared to wearing makeup in public, telling absolutely zero lies for a week, or
walking on your hands for thirty days.
And no, that last one isn't some secret challenge episode the Infographics Show is waiting to
release, I'm just making a point about the level of insanity the producers over at Infographics
Central have been cooking up for the last year.
Not gonna lie, this challenge even feels a little necessary.
As most of you know by now I run some of these challenges concurrently because the Infographics
Show sadly realized that there just isn't enough months in the year to torture me with.
Typically the challenges don't overlap as far as their effects, but let's just say that
the last few challenges have had me vegging out a lot and well, the pounds have crept
up on me.
That probably doesn't make any sense for our younger Youtube audience that routinely sits
on the couch playing Fortnite and devouring sodas and bags of chips all day long without
gaining a pound, but just wait until you approach your late twenties and early thirties.
Oh man, you have such a rude awakening coming up.
Enjoy your blissful ignorance of calories while you can.
So even though this challenge seems pretty easy, it's going to hit me hard because if
there's one thing I hate it's dieting.
I don't eat terrible food all too often, but when I get a craving, I want it and I want
it now.
And for the next thirty days I'm not allowed to touch anything that will add a single extra
calorie to my diet.
I decided that I would try four different meal plans for the next month, one each week,
and record my weight loss and maybe get an idea of which worked best.
For the first week I'm going to go on a largely liquid diet, which means a lot of juices and
smoothies and as little solid food as possible.
That's going to make for some fun poops- he said very ironically.
For the second week I'm going to go all-vegetable, and right now I'm going to tell you that I'm
considering this my hell week.
It's not that I don't like vegetables, it's that they are C-Span level boring.
For the third week I'm gonna try something a little less drastic and instead stick with
fish, vegetables, and fruits, limiting the bread and pasta that I eat- and I'm a big
fan of both of the latter.
Finally for the fourth week I'm just going to let the girlfriend cook her heart out and
eat whatever she makes.
I can tell this challenge really excited her and as I was making up my plans she looked
about ready to burst, practically begging me to let her take over one of the weeks.
I'll be recording my weight loss, how I feel, and my thoughts about what I'm eating.
Spoiler alert: I'm probably going to hate all of it.
End of Week 1: This was the juice and smoothie week, and when I weighed myself tonight I
found that I lost 2.9 pounds.
I've read that weight loss and dieting is more a state of mind than a physical act,
and individuals who stick to a plan where they lose one to two pounds a week tend to
continue successfully dieting.
I guess that's because whatever plan they are on, it's one that they can live with as
opposed to something really drastic and flat-out unbearable.
In that regard, I guess I'm pulling slightly ahead of the curve.
I mostly drank juices and smoothies, but I did have a few regular meals in between because
I'm not an animal.
On date night I had a pretty big dinner, and halfway through the week I made pasta for
both me and the girlfriend so that definitely pushed the calories- but I guess all of that
juice and smoothie drinking paid off and counteracted the weight gain.
As far as doing this long-term, unless you're a big juice person I'm not sure that it's
totally realistic.
I tend to get very bored with juices, and when I make my own smoothies I always get
yelled at by the girlfriend for adding way too much sugar- she says I'm making milkshakes,
not smoothies, but I've just never been a huge fruit person myself and I need something
extra to help it along.
Physically I feel... fine.
Although I'm not going to lie, liquid diets really leave me craving solid food.
The first few days it was all I could do to keep myself from rushing to the nearest burger
joint and eating myself into cardiac arrest.
One week down though, see you guys in seven days.
End of week 2: Several special operations military training programs have a period of
time referred to as 'hell week'.
This is typically close to the end of your training and its when you are pushed to your
mental and physical limits, and then right over them and far beyond anything you thought
you were capable of.
Or you just get washed out, one of the two.
This last week was my hell week.
Vegetables are my Everest.
So for the entire week I ate nothing but vegetables, just to see what the difference would be between
the different diets.
I included fruits in there as well because I'm not a total maniac, but for the most part
lunch and dinner were vegetarian.
It's not that vegetables are terrible tasting, they really aren't, it's just that they're...
well, vegetables.
I mean, I don't know, there's something deep in my programming that says vegetables don't
compute- I don't need to eat meat all the time, but my brain refuses to believe that
vegetables alone are enough to satisfy hunger.
I can literally fill my stomach until it's bursting and my brain will absolutely not
acknowledge the fact that hunger has been full sated.
But if I eat even just a moderate helping of pasta or something... non-vegetable, then
my brain is like, “oh ok cool yeah that's enough to fill us up.”
I lost 3.5 pounds this week, but the entire week I felt physically weak and emaciated.
Vegetables are amazingly nutritious and full of vitamins and energy and all that crap-
but as far as my body is concerned I might as well have been eating cardboard.
Even my performance during my regular work outs was far worse than before, and I'm starting
to think it was all mental.
It's like a car with a governor on it that keeps it from going faster than 55- green
beans are my governor, and keep my physical energy in the pits.
Or maybe it's just that by feeding it nothing but vegetables every day, my body simply found
no reason to continue living and wanted to throw in the towel.
I don't know, but I do know that going strict vegetarian is impossible for me.
Two weeks down, two to go.
End of week 3: I guess this week I was what you would call a pescatarian, or someone who
adds fish and seafood to a normal vegetarian diet.
Of the three diets so far, this was the most palatable, and I actually feel pretty decent
after losing 2.1 pounds.
I've never been a huge fan of seafood, but fish filets is pretty close to real meat and
I think it really helped make the entire experience more livable.
Then there's the fact that I was allowed to eat shrimp and clams, and while I'm not a
big fan of seafood overall, I love shrimp and clams.
On date night me and the girlfriend went to eat sushi since it was one of the few options
that are allowed in the rules and everything else was just basically fried fish or shrimp
or whatever.
I happen to like sushi, which is weird because I know it's starting to sound dubious when
I keep saying that I don't like seafood, but I really don't- yet sushi is... different.
Maybe I just don't like cooked seafood, which would make sense considering my brain's very
weird positions on different foodstuffs.
Tuna steak?
No thank you, gross and fishy.
Tuna roll?
Yes please, straight into my tummy.
Anyways, this week wasn't so bad, but it was by no means enjoyable.
I miss desserts, and there's literally nothing that makes you want a nice big piece of cake
less than after-dinner fish burps.
But I guess maybe that's the point.
End of Week 4: Hallelujah the end is here.
Four weeks of insane diets finally done, and with this week's weight loss of 1.8 pounds,
I've officially hit the goal of 10.3 pounds lost.
So this was the week that I let the girlfriend take over my meal planning, and I really hate
to admit it but she made this last week the most bearable of all.
There were no gimmicks this week, instead I basically just ate what she already eats
on a daily basis.
The focus was not on sticking to specific foodstuffs or not eating groups of things,
but rather on portion control.
We ate pretty much the same things we would normally eat- with the exception of breakfast.
Typically she eats bowls of fruit and I make myself a bowl of sugary cereal or scrambled
eggs- but this week she had me eating fruit one day, and then a moderate portion of what
I wanted the next.
For lunch and dinner we stayed away from red meat and ate a lot of chicken and pork, but
the difference is we focused on smaller, more appropriately sized portions.
I even got desserts!
Within reason of course, and all of them low-fat or sugar-free, which is fine because after
weeks of hell even sugar free ice cream tastes delicious to me.
My mood was pretty good the whole week, probably better than it's been all month to be honest
because I wasn't focused on some gimmicky diet that was making me miserable.
Instead I got to eat things I legitimately enjoy, even if the portions weren't quite
as satisfying as I wish they would have been.
I think that's the hardest part about portion control- having the self-control to limit
yourself to only eat what you should, instead of stuffing your face until you burst.
My weight loss this week was the least of all the weeks, but I feel like it was the
healthiest, and it was definitely the most satisfying.
Realistically speaking, I could see myself doing this successfully for weeks at a time,
but eating nothing but fish or vegetables or juices is all but impossible.
It might not have gotten the biggest results, but it was definitely the diet most likely
to stick.
And it left me feeling the best afterwards.
For anyone following at home, I highly recommend portion control- and of course, exercise.
You’re just not going to lose much weight on dieting alone, and I wouldn’t have hit
my goals without it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to physically dive into a man-sized chocolate lava cake
to celebrate the loss of ten pounds I'm about to immediately put back on.
What kind of diet do you think would be best for you?
What crazy diets have you tried?
Let us know in the comments!
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