Lee Geiger

In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

– Erma Bombeck

210…Two-one-zero…two-hundred and freakin’ ten. Really?

That was the tragic number staring back at me last September from the weight scale at my local 24 Hour Fitness. Sadly, it was in pounds, not Euros. There was no getting around it this time. My weight, unlike my stock portfolio, had hit an all-time high.

How could this happen? Easy. Though I workout like Jack LaLanne, I eat like Jackie Gleason.

Being that on a good day I’m only about 5’7”, it wasn’t enough to say I was overweight. I was overstuffed. My body had become bloated, plump, and inflated. Considered more beefy than obese, I had a swollen face, a stout chest, and a butterball belly. I had no clue what my body-mass index registered, but I knew it was more overbought than Amazon’s P/E ratio. I was disgusted with myself. I needed to do something before a heart attack came knocking on my door.

In mid-October I met two former Claremont McKenna classmates for lunch. I hadn’t seen one of them for almost three years, and he had become a shadow of his former self. Over the next hour he told us about a low carb, high protein, and heavy exercise program that helped him lose 44 pounds in a year. I sat transfixed, absorbing every word while noshing on a double-bacon-cheeseburger with fries. And a Diet Coke.

Feeling inspired as well as stuffed, I went home and directed my laptop to lindora.com. The program is called “Lean for Life,” and it’s sponsored by the Lindora Clinic of Southern California, a company that has been in business for over forty years. For the introductory price of $400 I received a variety of Lindora protein bars and shakes, along with ten weekly calls from a Lindora nutritionist. This had to work, I told myself. Otherwise I’d become the poster boy for diabetes.

The Lindora program works like this; get your carbohydrates down and your proteins and exercise up so your body morphs into a state of ketosis. What’s ketosis, you ask? Dumbed down to my level, it’s a natural fat burning process. To get my body into ketosis, I limited my daily carb intake to around 50 grams a day. For perspective, the average daily carb intake of the average American male is over 300 grams. Then I hit the gym at least six times a week, usually killing an hour on an elliptical machine. There’s no way to sugarcoat this, folks. There’s no magic pill to losing weight. It’s hard work.

Pasta? Gone. Bread? Gone. Tortillas? Gone. Potatoes? Gone. Booze? Mostly gone. Ice cream? Well, you still need to live a little. You know what else is gone? My love handles.

Here’s how it went for ten weeks. Breakfast consisted of two scrambled eggs, followed two hours later by a surprisingly delicious chocolate or vanilla protein shake. Lunch was almost always a skinless chicken breast, followed by an afternoon snack of either a cheese stick or a protein bar. Dinner consisted of lean proteins, i.e. fish, beef, or a healthy soup. And if I needed anything else, I fixed myself a cup of tea. As long as I was eating something every two to three hours, the cravings stayed away. Oh yeah, and I drank lots and lots of water. I lost four inches in my waist, mainly due to having to run so often to the bathroom.

Thank goodness for Debbie, my Lindora nutritionist. She educated me and held my hand through the obligatory weight-loss plateaus. After starting the program on October 18 at 210 pounds, I quickly dropped nine pounds in three days. Then I got stuck for a week or so at 195 before melting to 185 by Thanksgiving. Despite a few holiday speed bumps along the way, I managed to weigh in at 177 on Christmas Day. After a short break, I signed up for another ten weeks in January. The last day of that program is today, March 11. Here’s what my scale had to say for itself.

167…One-six-seven…one hundred and sixty freakin’ seven. Really?