Joseph - ITG Operations Director

     Olive oil is full of heart-healthy unsaturated fats. Heart disease risk can decrease when using a monounsaturated olive oil instead of saturated fats, like lard. When frying foods with olive oil, the process may take away the health benefits of the oil when it forms other less healthy types of fats, which usually takes places in restaurant and commercial kitchens rather than typical home cooking.

     It’s been three months since I started on the ITG Diet. Back at the end of August, I weighed 217 pounds, had a 36 inch waist, and felt generally unhealthy overall. I didn’t eat well, sleep well, and my body didn’t feel so great day to day. I was getting tired of buying large shirts and wearing baggy clothes all the time; nothing seemed to fit right on me. I didn’t feel good about myself or the way I looked anymore. There were many times I would glance at my reflection in a store window or a mirror and think to myself, “who is this guy? What happened to the old me?”

  It’s 9am Friday, and today is my check-in day. I just stepped off the TANITA scale in the office and I’m holding off on looking at the little slip of paper that the scale prints. It gives you a read-out of your weight, calculates body water and fat percentages, bone mass, visceral fat (the kind that wraps like a band around your organs and can be hard to get rid of), and BMI. After a less than perfect week, I was really hoping I had turned things around and made some progress this time.

During the second week of my ITG Diet I didn’t lose as much as I was planning on. I was down 1.2 lbs in 6 days. It’s still a loss, yes, but I could have done much better than that. Even though I stuck to the diet just about every day, I went out and had a few items I shouldn’t have eaten over the weekend. I also did not drink nearly enough water, and I found myself not feeling very hungry and skipping some meals altogether. I was out late over the weekend, which threw my entire meal schedule off. On Friday, Tina (wellness coach at ITG Diet) and I talked about the upcoming weekend and how hard it is to be at home or go out and stick to a plan at the same time…boy, did I experience it! We are kind of lucky here at the office…you see, during the week while we’re working at the ITG Diet office, we are a great support system to each other. We have veggies for snacks, we talk about healthy food and recipes all day, and of course no one is bringing Burger King or pizza in to the office for their lunch break! During our days off, we all need to find that same motivation and have a plan in place.

I’m getting ready to start the ITG Diet next week…and even though I know I’ll be cutting out some of the things I love to eat and drink, I’m so excited to see how well this diet works for me! I was in the restaurant industry for quite some time, and as a manager, we were allowed to eat whatever we wanted, every single day…for free! It sounds like a dream, but in the past 4 years, I have gone from a 32” waist and 175 pounds to a 36” waist and 225 pounds.