How I Lost 130 Pounds Without Being Miserable

1. How I Lost 130 Pounds Without Being Miserable A mixture of math, science, and personal motivation.

3. About me • Jeffrey Quesnelle • 25 years old • Software engineer at automotive supplier • Developer of popular Nintendo DS emulator nds4droid • Born, raised, and lives in Macomb County, MI • Weighed 286.6 pounds on July 20, 2009 • Website: http://jeffq.com • Facebook: http://facebook.com/quesnelle • Twitter: @jquesnelle

4. Basic agenda • Why should we lose weight and get healthy? • How should we lose weight? • How can we actually do this day to day? • Closing thoughts • Time permitting: Q&A / Discussion

5. Why should we lose weight and get healthy? • This is an important question! • If you are significantly overweight, one year of losing weight can add ten to your lifespan (especially if you are young). • Leading causes of death in America (2010) • Heart disease: 599,413 • Cancer: 567,628 • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353 • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021 • Alzheimer's disease: 79,003 • Diabetes: 68,705

6. Don’t die. • More than half of all deaths every year are directly attributed to unhealthy lifestyles. • No one is perfect, but let’s do what we can to mitigate these. • Beyond death, being overweight makes you unable to enjoy life to it’s fullest. • But as everyone knows, “deciding” to lose weight is the easy part.

7. My story • Gradually gained weight throughout middle school and high school. • Food became central to my life. • Emotional factors unique. Generally high self-esteem. • Underneath, ashamed. • Vicious cycle. • “Come to Jesus Moment” – July 20, 2009.

8. How should we lose weight? Eat less, move more.

9. How should we lose weight, really? • Calorie – amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius. • In food, each calorie is actually a kilocalorie (1000 calories). • Gives us a way to measure foods. • Activity

10. Precise calorie counting • What does this mean? What are we looking for? • BMR – basal metabolic rate. • Can we reduce everything down to a single formula? • Starting points: • Harris – Benedict (1919) • Mifflin – St. Jeor (1990) • Body mass based forumulas: • Katch – McArdle • Cunningham • Given these choices, where do we start? • Frankenfieldet al. (2005) showed Mifflin – St. Jeor best general-case forumula.

11. Mifflin – St. Jeor • m = mass in kilograms, h = height in centimeters, a = age in years, s = gender offset (5 for males, -161 for females) MS-J for 5’ 10”, 24 year old male MS-J for 5’ 1”, 47 year old female

12. Considerations • Mifflin – St. Jeor calculates BMR – what you get if you were in bed all day! • What are we trying to calculate? • Activity scalar (1.2~1.9). • This leads us to the One Golden Rule of Weight Loss

13. Golden Rule of Weight Loss The only way to lose weight is to expend more calories than you consume.

14. Predicting weight loss on a fixed-calorie diet • Using a fixed calorie diet, we can formulate a differential equation to predict our weight at a given time. • First, start with a modified M-SJ equation. • Here, f is our activity factor and m is expressed in pounds (dividing by 2.2 converts to kilograms). • The RHS is how many calories we need. Subtracting this from our intake will give us the net calorie difference (how much we’ve gained or lost).

15. Predicting, continued • d is our daily calorie intake. • 3500 calories = 1 pound! • m replaced with some function w(t) which gives our weight at time t. • So, this is the change in our weight we expect to affect by eating d calories when we weigh w(t). • But this is precisely the derivative of w(t)!

16. Predicting, continued • This is a first-order linear ordinary differential equation. • The general solution is pretty messy and being a 7-dimensional surface won’t offer much in the way of visualization. • But, for each individual person, f, a, h, and s are constants.

17. Predicting, continued • This is the weight function for a 24 year old, 5’ 10” male with a 1.2 activity factor (desk job). • c1 is the difference between our starting weight and final weight (since the derivative only gave the change in weight). • The right hand side is our final weight (our “plateau”). • If plug in a starting weight, eliminating one free variable…

18. 24 year old male, 5’ 10”, low activity, starting at 300 lbs

19. 36 year old female, 5’ 1”, light activity, starting at 135 pounds

20. Fixed calorie diets • Even with “only” three dimensions, that’s a lot of information to take in. • Eliminate one more axis by fixing d. • Weight loss game plan: commit to eating a fixed number of calories. • Benefits: easily measurable, easily predictable. • Downsides: hard! No “freebies”. • We must understand that there is no way to make this painless. • Fixed calorie diets give us the best long-term weight loss plan.

21. 24 year old male, 5’ 10”, low activity, 1900 calorie diet, starting at 300 lbs,

22. 44 year old female, 5’ 5”, light activity, 1700 calorie diet, starting at 190 pounds

23. My personal progress (first 100 pounds)

24. How can we actually do this day to day? • How many calories are here?

25. 4185

26. Secrets of the trade • Low calorie density foods • Eat without feeling like you’re not getting anything • AVOID: High calorie density foods • Good low calorie density foods • Grilled chicken breast • Normal (unfried) sushi • Salads with basic dressings • Fish • More or less all vegetables

27. Secrets of the trade, 2 • My rule of thumb: never ate anything unless I knew how many calories it contained. • Many, many restaurants post their nutritional information online. • Before going, look it up! • Aim for around 600 calories/meal. • Avoid spoilers: appetizers/bread often contain as many calories as the main course. • Self-control exercise: always leave some food on the plate. • Meal plan: Breakfast, dinner only? • Create a routine in which you’re not miserable!

28. Secrets of the trade, 3 • Go to bed somewhat hungry – spend the time sleeping burning fat • Success will become it’s own motivation • Example: • 10:00am – Protein bar (300 calories) • 2:30pm – Banana/apple (150 calories) • 7:00pm – Grilled chicken entry with small salad (850 calories) • Keeping (mentally) busy helps avoid “idle munchies” • Don’t tempt yourself – clean house of all snacks!

29. Closing thoughts

30. You have the power to dramatically improve your life, starting today.

31. The End! • Q&A / Discussion (time permitting) • I’m around all weekend!