Discipline, Small Goals and Knowing What You Eat

Meet Samuel

Samuel Inzerillo, 57, works full-time as a Director of Product Management at a global HCM provider.  As a software engineer, he spent most of his life sitting behind a desk, which didn’t help much with his struggle to lose weight. “I started dieting in 1999, but was not able to keep it off. The internet was just starting then, and for the most part, I ate meat. Whatever I could find on the Internet that would help with my diet, I just bought and ate it with my meals.” 

He went back and forth on different diets, but eventually lost interest after finding them unsatisfying. At the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, he was at his heaviest at 337 pounds with the weight he hasn’t lost since he was 25. That was until the news of his daughter’s wedding, and he restructured his diet with eating shirataki noodles as a complement for his favorite meals like steak and eggs. “My daughter was getting married — November of this year, and I wanted to fit into a good suit for her wedding.” His goal was to be at 195 pounds by then and as of October 2021, was standing close to his goal at 217 pounds.

“I looked for amore structured approach this time, and with all the resources available, my sources were limited. I stuck with what I knew — eating meat and eggs, but you can only have so much of those. I needed something that was more fulfilling and that’s where I started looking at pasta alternatives.”

In his call with the AMAZING LOKARB team, Samuel shared with us the small things that broke through his 25-year weight standstill. On top of exercising and preparing his meals the day before, Samuel emphasized how important it was for him to have things at the ready. The busy buzz of a work day aside, he said, “I can’t stress enough that if the food's not ready, you're going to grab the most convenient thing that is usually not good for you.”

Tips We Learned from Samuel

1. Track and prepare your meals.

“I'm trying to stay away from just the sugar. It’s hard to stay away from food that doesn't help me lose weight, especially in a household where you’re the only one dieting. Just because it's negative carbs, doesn't mean they'll actually help you. I use an app calledMy Fitness Pal.I’m 380 days straight of logging in my meals, andthat helps me because I know exactly what I'm going to have for lunch and dinner. I usually make them the night before. I eat between meetings and as I don't have a lot of time for preparation, I make the meals the night before. Because of the app, I know exactly how much room I have in my calorie count to snack and I can plan. You kind of set yourself up, you know, to get excited about your next meal, and when you haven’t gotten to consume enough calories for the day, you can grab a snack. Otherwise, I’ll just have to power through it.”

2. All Knowledge is Worth Having.

“Momentum is important for me and one of the hardest things about dieting is how unpredictable it could be. This is why tracking is important. I could have a really good day that I thought I ate not that much; I am under my calorie count, I exercise, then, I get on the scale and I weigh more. That happens and that is so discouraging, but I am of the opinion that all knowledge is worth having. I weigh myself, take note of my ketone levels, and familiarize myself with what I am eating. I do my research. I want to understand what I am doing; I don’t just go over the counter and buy over-the-counter-food that’s prepared for me. I look at the dietary content. Getting the meals in line was important but the snacking was also really important as well. Just like with the noodles, I did a lot of research into looking into healthier alternatives, i.e. low-carb, low sugar. But just because it says negative carbs, doesn’t mean it's automatically good for you.”

3. Dieting doesn’t mean giving up your love for food. 

"When you're on a diet like this, it's about textures and enjoyment. If you can't have those things, you're not gonna last long. I look forward to having lunch, and I look forward to having dinner. I wanted my diet to be something that I enjoyed eating. I was just googling for pasta alternatives and shirataki is what came up. Amazon had a whole bunch of different varieties, and I started trying them. It was rough at the beginning as most shirataki noodles had the smell of seaweed and for me, it was off-putting. You rinse them as best you can, you douse them in sauce and the amount  I had to put on it to overcome the smell was too much. I almost had to stop doing it. It took me a lot of tries to find what I was looking for. I found AMAZING LOKARB around 6 months ago and I have been eating it since. I eat it with little sauce, and since it only has a few calories, I can eat 2 and a half bags in a meal without exceeding my calorie count for the day.”

4. Make bite-sized goals and enjoy what you are doing.

“I started this, in earnest, around the September time frame last year. I wanted to look good in a suit for my daughter’s wedding the next year and at that time, I was around 337 pounds. I am down to 217 now, but my original goal was 195. With the wedding coming close, I decided to rent a tux instead. My progress slowed a little bit, I might have been averaging like 8 pounds a month and now I'm down to 5 pounds a month, but it's still going down, which is good. I haven't claimed victory yet, but I know I can do that. 195 was the goal and my progress is far from perfect. I wouldn't make it to the wedding night. But you know what? When I saw pictures of me in the shower, I was like — who's that guy? I definitely am happy with the results.”

Samuel closed our call with a last piece of advice that most of us going through our own weight-loss journey forget. ”I can say that at the end of the day, it's about motivation and planning the things that you want to do right. Find ways to make it enjoyable, no matter how big or small your goals are.”