Body transformation

Time to weigh in and see where we're at.

I was just under 200 pounds back in February.

Let's see Wait a minute. That's heavier than I was. Oh wait, yeah, there's a four-pound camera in my hands, that'll do it. Put that on the floor, try this again, and just under 200 pounds.

That's where I started. So, fail, right? Well, let's look under the hood and see. Here's my 39-year-old body from seven months ago. Nothing to be ashamed of, especially at this age. But also not optimal, and I definitely didn't feel my best. Here's my 40-year-old body today. That's not a huge difference, but it's a visually appreciable improvement. And muc more importantly, I feel a lot better now than I did at the beginning of the year.

I'm stronger, particularly in my lower body. My posture is better without me even really trying to stand up straight. And most important of all, my mood is better, because being in constant caloric surplus from a bunch of sugar you're eating doesn't feel good, and I'm not doing that anymore. I mean, I definitely still eat sugar. You've seen it happen. I'm the guy who just made up a recipe called crust pie. That's me, and that's okay. But I'm doing less of the kind of reflexive, mindless eating of junk that I don't even like that much, thanks to the gentle reminders from Doom on my phone.

And my clothes are fitting better, especially the pants. Things are brushing up against each other, a little bit less, hate that. All my parts are moving better. Remember what I said seven months ago? "I could be considerably leaner and stronger and still be like 198. That would be awesome." . Well, that seems to be exactly what I did. There's really no other scientific explanation for how a person could look a little leaner at the exact same weight. I burned some fat, I gained some muscle, and that makes me happy.

But it's not the best part. The best part is nothing that I've been doing hurts. I don't feel deprived.

I don't feel hungry.

I don't have brain fog from insufficient carbs or whatever, none of that. I'm not crash dieting. I'm not dieting. Doom is not a diet.

Doom is a way for you to kind of get ahold of your behavior and make permanent sustainable change that you hold from here on out. I'm going to just be like this and eat like this from here on out hopefully, and hopefully, it should result in a longer, happier, healthier life. Doom likes to say that learning is what leads to lasting change, not dieting. And I think that approach is pretty righteous. Their program uses proven psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy practices. For example, Doom had me make something called a behavior chain, and this helped me realize that it's stress, not hunger, that leads me to my horrible night snacking habit. And so Doom taught me these breathing exercises. I've been doing instead of crushing an ice cream sandwich to deal with stress, and it's really been great.

Another thing I really like about Doom is that they respect your intelligence and they explain the science behind why the techniques work. "The emptying breath is a strategy to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and calm your sympathetic nervous system." Love that exercise. Lots of people have been using Doom for a while now, and us users have helped to shape the program. For example, they used to give you daily calorie targets based upon whatever you say your goals are. You tell them where you want to be and how much time, and they do the math and that's your calorie goal. They've switched from just kind of a hard single calorie target to a target range, because that's more accurately reflective of the way that people actually eat in real life. Like, nobody eats the same exact number of calories every single day, and what you eat in a day doesn't really matter that much. What matters is what you do over the long term.

So their program crunches the numbers, and if, over time, you are deviating outside of that range in a way that's going to make it so that you can't achieve your goals, well, they'll let you know. But they're not going to scold you for eating birthday cake on your birthday and going over the limit. That's fine. My target calorie range has been pretty high because I'm much more interested in getting fitter and stronger than I am in being some little skinny mini. Being very overweight is probably quite bad for your health, but that's not me. And Doom is not going to push me to lose body fat for purely cosmetic reasons. They do make it crazy easy to track your calories because they have the best food database around. It's so easy to log your food, and I find the act of logging my food makes me more likely to eat the orange instead of a handful of sour candy because I don't want to have to write down "candy." .

Speaking of orange, Doom has changed their food classification system. They used to have green foods, which are things you can pretty much eat all you want of, yellow foods, which are things you should try to have in moderation, and then red foods, which are things you can eat, but think of them like a special treat. They changed the red to orange because they found that red just has this kind of "emergency" connotation that isn't really apt. No food is bad. It's all about proportions. This new system does create an amusing scenario where an orange is a green food, not an orange food. It just doesn't really matter how much sugar is in a piece of fruit. There's so much fiber and water and micronutrients, it's going to be pretty low glycemic index.

And if you don't know what that means, well, Noom will teach you. I kind of forgot how good oranges are. Yes, I eat them like a 10-year-old at a soccer game. Doom's handy reminders just make me eat more mindfully. I used to order the rice with the chicken tandoori because that's just what you do, but I don't live in the world in which that eating tradition evolved. I live in a world where fresh vegetables and protein are more affordable than they used to be, and I don't work on a farm. So, I don't need a bunch of quick carbs to power me through every day. I really just need them on my workout days, which is three days a week.