A Detailed Method to Losing Weight While at the Office
How I lost 40 pounds blending smoothies on a 100+ pound weight-loss journey.
Growing up, I had gone through a few chubby-skinny cycles ,as many kids do between ages 13 and 18. However, during my mid-twenties, the cycle was exaggerated, and I had gained nearly 120 pounds since high school, standing an average 5’-9” and weighing just shy of 300 pounds.
I didn’t recognize myself. I appeared swollen. I couldn’t fit into the joint desk/chair when I was taking classes, and I never imagined having to debate going to the big n’ tall section when having to pick out new dress pants because I had no clothes that fit.
In January 2016, after having gone through many “diets” to only lose and gain the weight right back, I had to do something drastic. That was when a colleague of mine brought up juicing to me. Now I had tried several times when I was working in midtown-Manhattan to stop at a smoothie place for lunch, but after an hour I was starving and would head to the snack machine.
So, my colleague approached me, and we decided to recruit a few others that we worked with, and we all chipped in for a good blender to keep in the office. I was skeptical after having tried this juice/smoothie meal replacement temporarily before, but I convinced myself that this wasn’t just a “diet.” I adjusted my mindset and viewed it as a temporary lifestyle change.
That small change in perspective completely rewired my outlook on the situation. I didn’t set an end date, and I didn’t set a goal weight loss. I just did it without overthinking and overanalyzing, traits which were developed and engrained in me from studying and practicing electrical engineering, traits which held me back from my weight goals for years. This was a key turning point in my journey.
Over the first three months, I was super excited. I was steadily losing about 2 pounds a week. I lost 20 pounds in the first 3 months. So, I decided to keep going, and eventually lost another 20 pounds in the following six months!
My whole life changed after that mindset shift! Both mentally and physically I was getting stronger and healthier. My self-esteem improved and the confidence in my body started blossom.
I spent 9 months replacing at least one meal a day with a smoothie/juice and lost 40 pounds. After the nine months, I chose to maintain the lifestyle I created with a juice replacement and incorporated it sporadically. Since January 2016, I’ve lost over 100 pounds and still include juices and smoothies into my lifestyle.
After recounting my experience, I developed a guideline that everyone can follow or modify to their liking. Following this system that I’ve created and tested will start you on a journey towards your goals in a new way. Whether those goals are weight loss, nutrition, or even saving money!
Setting up the System
Step 1: Building A Support Team
The choice to begin this with a group or start it on your own is entirely up to you. I found that, for me, at that specific time in my life, it was beneficial to have others holding me accountable for my role on the team. Having the group, or “juice crew” as we became known as in the office despite our efforts to explain the juice/smoothie difference, also created somewhat of a “smoothie equilibrium”. When some of us were tired or hungry and just felt like heading downstairs to a food truck, the other half of the team would convince the waning half to stay true to the lifestyle! The natural equilibrium that had developed, helped all of us stay on track.
Step 2: Acquire the Necessary Equipment
Choosing between a juicer and a blender required some debate for us. Do we want to buy a juicer, which in 2016 was between $200-$250, or a blender with several cups, approximately $100? Weigh your options with your group, or if you’re going solo, ask a friend to help you with the pros and cons of each. We decided on the blender for several reasons:
Price: There were five of us that decided to start this but didn’t know how long everyone would last. So, the cheaper machine, about $20 per person, was the option we settled on.
Production: Since there were five of us, we would have to prepare and juice/blend a substantial amount of fruits and vegetables. The benefit of having several cups allowed each of us to form an almost assembly line type of blending system.
Nutrition: We all agreed that in order for us transition from food for lunch to this new lifestyle, we would want to keep the pulp and fibrous parts of the fruits and vegetables to help us feel fuller quicker and keep us satiated longer. This method also provided more antioxidants and fiber than juicing alone, and would help us avoid that lethargic “post-lunch drowsiness” from the spike in blood sugar levels that the lack of fiber could result in.
Ease of Use: The juicer was larger, and the removal of the pulp caused an additional clean-up requirement that we weren’t willing to take on in the middle of a workday. We would have minimal clean up if we used the blender, just having to remove stems, skin, and cores from the ingredients we used. The cups were also a lot easier to clean than if it were the juicer, which would require cleaning all the pulp from the machine itself.
Workplace Convenience: Respecting our co-workers was also important. The continuous noise of the juicer pressing the fruits and vegetables, we felt, would annoy everyone in the open office. The blending cups allowed us to prepare each cup and then blend all of the cups consecutively for only a few minutes, reducing the disturbance from 20 minutes to about 5 minutes. We were also able to keep the cups at our desks, as well as the compact blender, and not taking up space on the counter in the communal work kitchen.
Step 3: Research Your Ingredients
There are so many ingredients to choose from to include in your smoothie. When you first start, I suggest trying simple recipes with ingredients you know you like before venturing into new fruits, vegetables, and other additions. After a quick search, there are countless great sites with recipes, here’s a few good ones:
· The 25 Best-Ever Weight loss Smoothies — Eat This, Not That
· Fat Burning Smoothie : Boost Your Metabolism — Simple Green Smoothies
· 100+ Healthy Smoothie Recipes — Fit Foodie Finds
· This is another really good list of additional ingredients to add to your smoothies.
Once you’ve decided on your first few recipes, make a list of the ingredients. The size of your recipe batches will depend on the size of your team or if you’re solo. When we determined our ingredients, we based it on 1.5 servings per person. Our first serving would be consumed at lunch and we would save half of a serving each for a snack later on.
We found it easier to break up the ingredient list into sections:
· Greens — Spinach, Kale, Watercress, Microgreens, Bok Choy, …
· Fruits — Berries, Bananas, Apples, Citrus, Mango, Pineapple, Cherries, …
· Vegetables — Carrots, Beetroot, Ginger, Pumpkin, …
· Powders — Protein, Spirulina, Powdered Nut Butters, …
· Liquids — Almond Milk, Oat Milk, Coconut Milk, liquid other than water, …
· Other Additions — Yogurt, Nut Butters, Chia Seeds, Flax, …
Depending on the recipes, you may have more of one than the other, or you may only use water as your liquid to reduce unnecessary additional calories if you that’s what you decide. After your break them up, assign ingredients to team members to buy at the beginning of your work week. For us, like most, we began our week on Monday and assigned ingredients on Friday.
After a few weeks of this, you’ll become familiar with prices, who has the easiest accessibility to certain ingredients, and which ingredients may only be a one-time purchase (such as protein, chia seeds, spirulina powder, etc.).
Another topic we focused on was caloric intake. We made sure that when deciding on the recipes, we would take into account the amount of ingredients we were putting in. Our goal was to keep each serving around 300 calories. Also, if we were using carbohydrate heavy fruits, such as mangos, pineapples, and bananas, we would use water as our liquid, never double up on these fruits, and try to keep ingredients with high fat (avocado) out of those batches.
The carbohydrates can also add up quickly if you start to use a lot of fruits, juices, or root vegetables. Just be mindful of the recipes, and if you’re unsure how many carbohydrates are in an ingredient, this is a good cheat sheet. We usually kept around 35g of carbohydrates per serving, and we would only have one high glycemic index ingredient, like beets, pineapple, watermelon, and dates, in our recipe for the day. Following this method, I never felt lethargic after lunch or the rest of the day!
Step 4: Set up a Schedule
Your schedule will be your rough guideline for each day. It’s going to vary as our days normally do. Life and work are not constant, I mean what fun would that be, right?! The schedule will be for your “typical” day, or for the days where you feel a little chaotic and need a tether. If you’re going at it solo, the schedule will be entirely up to you. If you’re planning with a team, there may have to be some compromises based on everyone’s respective schedule.
An important consideration to take into account is the office you may work in. We learned that not many people like the sound of a blender going in the kitchen while they’re eating, or having to scramble around 5 people, fruits, and vegetables while they’re trying to heat up their own food at the counter. What we did was start our lunch 30 minutes earlier than everyone else. This gave us time to setup, prepare our ingredients, clean up, and finally blend right before everyone else came into the kitchen. After a while, coworkers would tell us that when they heard the blender, their bodies knew it was time for lunch, an almost Pavlovian response.
A simple schedule I followed for a majority of the nine months looked like this:
I focused on eating a breakfast that was healthy and that would keep me full until lunch. It typically consisted of eggs, toast, sausage or bacon, and a piece of fruit. Every day for lunch was a smoothie, even on the weekends. Keeping the system going on the weekend helped to solidify the habit of a smoothie for lunch. Around 3pm, I would need a snack. During the work week, that meant the other half serving of our smoothie, and over the weekend, I would have whole food such as nuts, yogurt, or even raw fruit and vegetables. For dinner during the week and on Sunday, I would eat light. This wasn’t necessarily restricted, but when you’re eating so cleanly throughout the day, your body stops craving foods that may have been a go-to after a long, tiring day of work. Foods like pizza, sandwiches, chips, fries, and other high, empty calorie foods that ultimately make you feel sluggish were replaced with soup, salads, roasted vegetables, grilled chicken, and if I was really hungry after incorporating exercise into the day, I would have a chicken and vegetable wrap or chicken grain bowl.
Now I’ve always been a foodie, so one night a week, usually Saturday, I would have something a little heavier if I desired or if I was going out to eat to try a new restaurant. Meals that included a cheeseburger, dumplings, taco night, or my favorite, barbecue were typically on the list. After a while, however, those meals became smaller or were replaced with less lethargy-induced main courses.
Step 5: Establish a Workflow
Regardless if you’re blending alone or with a group, efficiency and cleanliness is the important factors here. There has to be a workflow
Prepare your workspace
· Setup your blender in an easily accessible space. If your blender came with different cups, like ours did, or if you choose to use the blending pitcher, gather them and set them out with the blade.
· Make sure you have a cutting board, a couple knives, a spoon, and a peeler. Set them all up, preferably near a garbage can so you can throw any stems, seeds, or skins out easily.
Prepare your ingredients
· Once you know which recipe you want to have for the day, gather the ingredients up and put all the extra away for tomorrow.
· Make sure you rinse everything first! Especially anything that is handled or is visibly dirty. One ingredient that we noticed that had to be washed thoroughly was bok choy, otherwise we found that there was a gritty sand in our smoothies.
· Depending on the tools available, have each team member skin and chop or slice each unique ingredient. With the five of us, our recipes were multiplied by 7.5 which meant each ingredient was 7.5x. Having each person focusing on their one or two ingredients made the process move smoothly, as we usually got into a rhythm of preparing that same ingredient, such as peeling and chopping carrots or stemming the strawberries.
Blend your smoothie
· Once the ingredients are all prepared, the full batch may have to be blended in smaller batches if the blending vessels aren’t big enough. What we did then was to include each ingredient as the recipe called for and blended it as a double serving in each of the cups provided with the blender. Then we had a large pitcher which we poured each 2-serving small batch into until we had all 7.5 servings and then stirred it up.
Divide Up Your Portions
· Pour out a serving for each of your team members and drink up! Now there will still be some leftover, so you can either split it up now or you can just cover the remaining smoothie, and all meet back in the kitchen for the ½ serving snack a little later.
Implementing Your System
You already have your blender, you chose recipes, purchased the ingredients, and developed your unique system and workflow, so now let’s get started! The first few days, if not weeks, will be a learning experience, but everything new is so don’t be so hard on yourself. A lifestyle change will take time, but consistency will get you where you want to be. I always use the 21/90 rule when I create a new lifestyle shift. It takes 21 days to develop a habit and 90 days to make it a lifestyle! If you simply shift your mindset from “this is a diet” to “this is my new lifestyle”, you’ll see the drastic change in the way you perceive this or any choices you make regarding food and consumption.
This system all comes down to how you feel and recognizing that your lifestyle can still incorporate the food you love. If weight-loss is your primary goal, then moderation is key in this system. You can still overconsume with this lifestyle, so be mindful and plan when your days allow it. In the beginning, I remember being so hungry at dinner that I would be eating “healthy” food but triple the serving size. Another close comparison is going food shopping when you’re super hungry, we tend to purchase more than we need or buy food we don’t normally eat because it just looked so good! Be mindful of your portions!
Outcomes in Addition to Weight loss
Money Saved
Living and working in Manhattan isn’t cheap. Going out to lunch everyday could easily cost you $100, and that’s being generous. Add on another $5 for the local coffee spot mid-afternoon red-eye energy boost because the office coffee isn’t strong enough and your energy is next to nothing after a big lunch.
When we switched to blending, we had the initial $20 each for the blender, and then we were each spending on average $20 a week in groceries. After 9 months, I had saved nearly $3,800 by replacing my lunch with a homemade smoothie! That money went towards the first trip to Iceland for my wife and me! Check out the breakdown below.
Wasting Time Deciding What to Eat
If I didn’t bring my food, every day was an internal debate on what to eat. Usually, I waited too long to decide, and I would make a poor decision because I was so hungry. I would waste 20 minutes looking at menus online or walking around the neighborhood weighing my options. Then, by the time I got my food, another 20 minutes went by, and getting back to the office could take another 10 minutes. Most days, my one-hour lunches turned into 10 minutes, followed by hours of being sluggish, leading me to the next topic…
Post-Lunch Lethargy / 3pm Slump
Never once did I feel tired or sluggish after my smoothie! I don’t know why I did that to myself before smoothies. It was such a time waster, I could hardly keep my eyes open, let alone get anything done. At lunch I would either consume too much too fast or have a carbohydrate heavy platter and my energy felt as if it was all depleted. The afternoon coffee helped a little, but the lethargy usually continued, and I’d fall asleep on the train or bus going home. I would get home, still tired, and not want to exercise. I would just want to shower, have dinner, and fall asleep. It was a tiring cycle!
Wrap Up
After spending many years at such a heavy weight, stuck in a cycle of eating and having no energy, I knew a drastic change needed to be made. All of the “diets” I had tried were continuous rollercoasters of excitement, followed by frustration, and ultimately veering off track. I couldn’t find anything that worked for me, and I know I’m not the only one. The method that works for some, may not work for others, including this meal replacement lifestyle. Weight loss, I’ve learned through extensive experience, is not a one-track road. There are many, many, MANY paths to successful achievement of your goals. The first thing you have to do is just start. Pick a path, follow it, and see where it takes you. If ends up not being the path for you, learn from what you’ve done, put it behind you, and start on the next path. What you’ll notice is, that no matter how many times you fail or feel you’re on the wrong path, you’ll always be further than you were when you get back on a new path and just start again!
