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Terrence's Vegan Quest Led to 60-Pound Weight Loss
Posted on Aug 19th 2010 3:00PM by Martha EdwardsFiled Under: Motivation, Success Stories
Terrence Before
Name: Terrence Lavin
Age: 42
Start Weight: 302 pounds
Current Weight: 240 pounds
Goal Weight: 225 pounds
My Weight Loss Approach: I have an all-or-nothing approach to eating and drinking, so moderation was a foreign concept to me. After gaining so much weight throughout my 30s and early 40s on a steady diet of steak, scotch and late-night pizza, my efforts to trim back down to my athletic form were constant failures. Healthy efforts never lasted longer than a week or so. Through a girlfriend at the time, I became friends with a vegan activist and entrepreneur named Heather Mills, who asked if I'd go 100 percent vegan as an experiment for six months. I dismissed it as ludicrous.
Being an advertising salesman in New York City, my tools of the trade revolved around dinners at steak houses and late nights at the bar. I could not live in moderation, and I realized that to successfully lose weight I would have to be as extreme in improving my health as I had been in destroying it. My approach was 100 percent veganism and 100 percent abstinence from alcohol for six months. This was a complete disruption of my world, and I had to find a way to accommodate a business life and a social life so dependent on living in New York's finest steak houses, sushi bars and taverns.
Although it was quite painful in the beginning, this extreme approach swiftly eliminated any and all cheating -- I couldn't negotiate with myself or reward myself with decadent food. There was no room for "a little bit of butter to cook the vegetables" or "just a few shavings of cheese for my salad." Extreme faithfulness to this vegan quest was the only way I could turn my life around -- my cholesterol was over 300, and at 227, my LDL (bad) cholesterol was a heart attack waiting to happen.
My extreme approach paid off: My LDL is now at the near optimal 105, and I lost 60 pounds over the six months. I still have 15 pounds to go to meet my goal of weighing the same as my rugby-playing days in college. Even more amazingly, I didn't miss animal products as much as I thought I would. Some of the best meals I've ever had were at NYC's vegan and vegetarian restaurants, and I would pit my special vegetable wrap against any burger in the city for pure taste.
I still entertained clients at steak houses and bars, but instead of a steak dripping in blood and butter and an 18-year-old scotch, I ordered the salad, a side of vegetables and a glass of seltzer. Did I envy my guests stabbing that porterhouse? Certainly! But because I was feeling better every day, I was addicted to this healthy feeling. I found friends and clients would go out with me for the same reason people go to Nascar: to see a wreck. They were just waiting for my resolve to crack, so my competitive nature helped keep me on track, although sometimes I was forced to dig deep within myself to give it just a little more effort every day. The rewards are so worth it!
Staying active was obviously key, and I would go to the gym three times per week. Eating so healthfully gave me the energy and desire to exercise, and seeing the immediate weight loss gave me motivation, so even on days I dreaded going to the gym I would go anyway.
Today, although my personal six-month challenge is over, I find that moderation is now my friend. I loved the vegan lifestyle so much that at least 80 percent of my weekly diet is plant based.
Why I wanted to blog about it: I love to write -- I enjoy describing the food I'm eating, how I'm feeling and where I'm going. When Heather Mills told me she was going to put my blog on her website, it served as a terrific motivator because I wanted as many people as possible to read about my journey. The larger the audience, the more pressure there was on me to stick to it even when I wanted to give up. Plus, writing kept me focused during all the ups and downs of my radically changing life.
Terrence Now
All along, this social community kept getting larger, and I can honestly say that the blog is what made me stay faithful to this new lifestyle. I was also quite flattered when a Tennessee couple who read the blog daily asked if they could meet me when they came to NYC -- it was a great experience that would never have happened to me if I hadn't become a blogger.
Best comment I've received: Receiving all that encouragement has been an amazing feeling. I also loved hearing from the people who bet their lives that I would not go through with my vegan quest writing in to tell me that they were wrong.
However, by far the best comment I got was a personal email from a guy in Ireland I have never met who said he needed to lose 100 pounds. He asked me for advice and wrote back to say he was inspired to start his own journey that day. Now we communicate every week or two about his successful weight loss.
What's next for my blog: Even though my six months are up, I found I couldn't give up the blog -- not only was I just shy of my goal but my new social community wanted the blog to continue. So these days, I'm still writing about my mostly vegan lifestyle, and I'm working on a book about this entire life-changing endeavor.
Terrence's vegan adventures in NYC are well documented in his blog -- check out his tips and recommendations.
Blogging helps -- just ask Cammy, who lost 100 pounds while writing about her weight loss!
