I’ve been running this blog for more than 3 years now and I have learned a lot about losing weight and keeping it off. Yes, I’ve had my share of ups and downs as well as a few injuries along the way, but overall I’ve managed to shed most of my excess fat.

It all started when I lost my first 30 lbs over a 2 month period. The weight came off quickly because I was doing what I knew would work. It wasn’t glamorous and didn’t have a catchy diet name like “The South Beach Diet” or anything like that.

There are 7 important things that I understood which helped me lose the weight quickly. I call these the 7 Pillars To Weight Loss Success and I’ve written an ebook about them. This isn’t a novel and is only about 25 pages cover to cover, but I think it’s filled with quality information that you’ll be able to use right away.

This is available for Kindle and Kindle for PC.

7 Pillars of Weight Loss Success

I want to help people lose weight and that’s it. I know what it’s like to be overweight and it sucks. I also know how great it feels to be successful at losing weight and what a difference it can make to your life.

Once you’re finished it leave a comment and let me know what you think
Steve

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Simply put, weight loss tips suck. They serve almost no purpose and do not provide you with any real direction on how to actually shed the pounds and keep them off.

I’ll give you a few examples of some tips about losing weight that I have read recently and why I think they are useless.

1. How to add more fiber to your diet – “Eat a cereal with more grams of fiber per serving”

The tip above is a no brainer to most people. I mean what actionable advice are you receiving that you haven’t or couldn’t have already thought of on your own?

For a health/weight loss tip to provide any real value it should include at least some specifics or examples that you can put into practice immediately. The “How to add more fiber to your diet” tip above does none of this.

2. How to get more exercise in your day – “Take the stairs” or “buy a gym membership.”

Again this is another pointless health tip. The “Take the stairs” part although vague, does seem reasonable enough but, the “buy a gym membership” part really offers nothing to the reader. Which brings me to my next point.

Wrong Questions

While I think that most of the weight loss tips and advice offered online are a waste of time at best, they are not the real underlying problem.

The problem is in the questions that we ask or the advice that we are looking for. The most popular searches related to weight loss are around dropping weight quickly?, which diet pills work the best? or are questions based around different diets (example HGC Diet, The Mediterranean Diet etc….)

The thing they all have in common is that they’re all looking for short term fixes to a life long problem. If the information you get based on the questions above were actually helpful and useful, you would be fit and healthy by now. Odds are, if you are reading this you are most likely still looking for the real answer, the real solution to the problem.

New Focus

I am out of the “tip” business as I’ve realized that there is very little value in it for both you the reader and myself in writing them.

Instead I am focusing this blog on educating both of us on transitioning to a healthy and active lifestyle. It’s something that I think all of us strive for but don’t know how properly achieve. In my opinion this is Mainly due to the conflicting messages floating around on what we should be eating, how we should be exercising and everything in between.

I hope that I can clear up as much of the confusion as I can and that is part of the reason why I won’t be posting “tips” on this site anymore.

In the coming weeks and months most of my posts will be centered around nutrition and really understanding the importance of certain vitamins and minerals. How they affect us and the best ways to ensure that you are getting enough of them.

There will be more recipes as well. This helps to incorporate some of the ideas and habits that i hope to present. I am a big advocate of home cooked meals as I have seen the results first hand of not following my own advice. Fast food and frequent trips to my favorite restaurants have tipped the scale in the wrong direction too many times.

Getting Social

A major part of educating is making sure that the message is reaching the people that need to hear it. Social media is one of the best ways to achieve that these days. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and other SM sites are going to be part of the mix going forward so I encourage you to spread the word if you can.

Follow me, Friend me, Favorite me, Stumble me and feel free to email anything you find here to your friends and family. I’ll be adding social buttons to make the process easier (hopefully).

Follow Me on Twitter – @Steve_wlw
Friend Me on Facebook – Facebook.com/weightlossweapons

Comments

For the past few months the amount of comments on Weight Loss Weapons has dropped off, mainly due to WordPress making all comments closed on all my posts for the last 6 weeks. I have fixed that now and re-installed comment luv.

I am also planning on launching monthly comment contests and rewards for people that have downloaded my e-book as well.

You can get the book and enter the contests by entering your email in the side bar ——>

Saving Money?

The last thing I wanted to mention was around losing weight and money. Many people thing that eating healthy, losing weight and getting in shape is expensive. That just isn’t the case or at least it doesn’t have to be. There are many parallels on weight loss and debt reduction/saving money. I will be presenting different options and ways you can lose weight and save money at the same time.

Lets face it, money stress is a major cause of weight gain so getting that under control can help your weight loss efforts.

That’s it, leave a comment, or contact me thorough my contact page and let me know what you think.

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Yeah I know, I wish there was an easier way to lose the weight that quickly too but their isn’t really. I am just recovering from the Flu, which is the first time I’ve had it in about 15 years. That was a great streak I had going of FLU free years but 2010 has been a particularly bad year for my family and I and ending it with the FLU just seems like a perfect fit.

As you have probably noticed already the post count for the year is around 12 which for me is terrible. My goal for 2010 was 52 with at least a new post every week but life happens and priorities change. Weight loss weaponshad to take a backseat to other online projects and offline situations. As a result, posts, comments and readership dropped (surprisingly not as much as I had expected though).

The other thing that happened…weight gain. I managed to pack on a lot of the weight that I had lost over the past few years and am back up to 205 lbs. That has also added to the stress of putting up posts on this site. How could I offer advice about losing weight when I was gaining weight myself. I couldn’t and can’t, not until I start losing the weight again and I get back on track.

For now I will just be sharing my expereinces in what I’m doing to lose weight and get back in shape. I’m not an expert in this, I have no professional training but I do have a lot of expereince which I think is just as important.

I want the weight loss weapons blog to become an interactive place again, I will be responding to comments, linking to other related fitness and health sites and changing the theme back to a more user/comment friendly one I think. After this is the perfect time of year to do it as the rest of the world will be making resolutions I guess you can consider “improving this site” my resolution.

What are your thoughts and what would you like to see on this site in 2011.

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This year I finally got a new car! After 10 years driving my old Pontiac Sunfire I picked up a new Ford and I love it. Paid for in CASH!!! I might add, which was a huge change from 10 years ago when I leased the Sunfire and financed the buyout afterwards ( Never again!). Dropping that amount of money in 1 day is both exciting and nauseating at the same time.

I was able to make the purchase thanks in large part to my online income which has really taken off. I’ve learned a lot about the IM business and all that time I’ve spent creating, promoting websites and services has really paid off. I am now proud to say that my online income matches my offline income which is huge!

My weight has been steady over the last year not great but measuring success isn’t always about the numbers. For example I’ve learned how to properly use herbs in our family dinners to provide flavor without adding sugar, salt or fat. That in it’s self is great but I’ve also learned to cook, I mean really cook not just re-heating. This has been a huge savings to the wallet and the waist line.

Some Failures and Scary Moments

Now for the lows First and foremost my job. The company I work for was hit pretty hard by the recession and was looking for ways to cut costs. Meaning job cuts.
Many departments were affected and mine was no exception. At one point I was offered a package or a chance at one of the few remaining positions. I turned down the money and was offered the job, many of my friends were not so lucky.

This all happened 2 days after I bought my car. Life has a way of bringing you back to reality like that.

Around the end of May I re-injured my knee playing basketball. Not the end of the world but it took a lot of the momentum out of the progress I was making with improving my cardio fitness.

As always though I try to find something positive from a negative situation and I used the off time to develop and very simple and effective workout routine. I will be using it as part of my new 8-week fat loss program, so you can look forward to some progress reports and if it works as planned I may turn it into a downloadable eBook.

That is pretty much it. It’s been an interesting year and I’m looking forward year 33 being even better.

How is your year going?

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I am only accepting a maximum of 5 guests posts so get yours to me quickly.

Weight Loss and Fitness Article Directory

I am in the process of setting up a new weight loss and fitness article directory at weightlossweapons.com. So stay tuned for upates on when it launches and how you can contribute to it. (it will be a do follow directory). There is just too much crap posted out there and this directory will only be accepting high quality articles.

Talk to you soon
Steve

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Follow Me on Twitter

Twitter has been exploding recently and everyone is using it including myself. I mainly use it as a tool for social interaction to ask questions and to find interesting new sites and stories. Most of my tweets are about what I am doing in my daily life as well as my latest posts on weight loss weapons and some of the other sites I run.

I go under the name @steve_wlw and I invite you to follow me. If you are interested in deals and saving money I am just starting to tweet about these exclusively under @debtslaying you can follow that as well.

I look forward to chatting with you

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My Gravatar Image

3 guys with blogs that have heart are Andrew from Andrew is getting fit, Israel from Fat Man Unleashed and John from John is Fit. I aspire to be like them.

This past Fall and Winter have been rough personally for me. I have gained weight quickly and no it’s not muscle. I have a ton of reasons why I’ve gained but they honestly amount to nothing more than lame excuses.

Getting To Know Who Am I?

You know it’s funny, I get about 10,000 to 12,000 visitors a month and only a handful of them really know who I am. My “About Me” page is really nothing special and doesn’t let you know what I am all about.

This is the picture from my about page. (The sun was in my eyes, not trying to look cool) and I would love to post more except I don’t have that many. I am the guy taking the pictures, not in them.

It’s pretty close to what I look like right now and somewhere in between my heaviest and my peak.

My peak being my wedding day about 7 years ago. I worked really hard to get into shape and hit the 175lbs mark the day before. This is what I looked like, not bad eh?

Over the last 7 years I’ve gained and lost more than 40Lbs. In that time I’ve had 2 children (well my wife did) and settled into a nice cushy desk job. A very common lifestyle pattern that has contributed to the gains.

Here is a picture of me at my heaviest or pretty damn close to it.

Vital Stats

Here are some quick “stats” about me:

Age:31
Marital Status: Married
Weight: 198lbs depending on the Scale
Height: 5’9
Hobbies: Spending Time With the Family, Sports, Reading, Making Money Online.

Who I am Online

I am pretty active online and frequent a lot of other blogs and social networking sites. Here are some of my “Ids”

Twitter: Steve_WLW
Stumbleupon: mclintst
Digg: mclintst
Blogcatalog: mclintst

When I comment on other blogs I use the name Steve@weightlossweapons.com most of the time. Feel free to add me as a contact.

Sites I own

I am fairly new at building websites but I’m enjoying what I am learning and it provides some extra income, with the economy the way it is every little bit helps. One of my goals is to eventually earn a full-time income online. Here are some of the sites I own at the moment:

Weightlossweapons.com and Weightlossweapons.com/blog

These are my first self hosted sites that I created almost 2 years ago. They have come along way from the when I started them.

Debtslaying.com

I started this site about 8 months ago when I became debt free and have changed the focus so many times since then it is ridiculous. I’ve settled on it being a place where I can post about deals and discounts that I find online as well as hot topics, financial issues and other related things that I find interesting. I also make money with this site through the adsense ads and my affiliation with Amazon.com (basically if you follow the link and buy items from Amazon I get a commission).

The current Debtslaying theme was inspired by Garry Conn, for anyone looking to make an honest dollar online blogging Garry is definately someone you should be taking advice from. The guy knows his stuff and will even help you set up a free wordpress blog if you open a new hostgator account.

Sealingyourdriveway.com

This is a site I started to post about all things related to your driveway. I was a driveway sealer for a few years and did a lot of sealing, rebuilding and driveway repairing.

Bissell-Carpet-Cleaner.com

I actually bought this from a friend of mine. Since I own a few Bissell products I thought it would be fun to see what I can do with it. So more changes are coming soon.

Contacting Me

If you want to get in touch with me about any of my sites, questions about general stuff or even if you want to send me products to review (which I do from time to time) you can email me steve@weightlossweapons.com.

Now that you know more about me, who I am and what I do. Let me know who you are? Leave a comment and I’ll be sure to reply, going forward that will be my new comment policy.

Take Care,
Steve

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I was reading a post on GarryConn.com yesterday about the new direction he was taking his blog. The post was titled Make Money Online by Shutting Your Mouth This really got me thinking about this site and my attempts to monetize and profit from it.

Affiliate Sales

Many bloggers are making money from affiliate sales. Basically they recommend a product or service and if someone makes a purchase using the bloggers affiliate link, that blogger gets paid a percentage of the sale.

I promote healthy weight loss without using expensive pills or programs as well as posting my own personal successes and failures. Almost every affiliate program related to weight loss or dieting etc.. promote the very things I speak out against. So trying and sell you a diet pill or a weight loss plan/program would completely contradict the purpose of this blog. The only exception I’ve found so far is P90X which I honestly believe lives up to the hype.

I’m sure there are products that I could find that would be useful in your weight loss efforts, Whey protein, scales, running shoes etc… but you’re not going to buy those products off the internet from non reputable sellers.

Adsense

I also use adsense on this blog as well as the main site Weightlossweapons.com. I’d say 95% of the money made comes from the main site. It gets quite a lot of search engine traffic especially the weight charts.

The money made is enough to earn a monthly paycheck but not nearly enough to allow me to make a full time income online, yet

Bloggers are also notorious for being ad blind so adsense isn’t really effective with them. (If your reading this that means you).

Money is not my main motivation

I have come to the conclusion that barring a major change in the way I blog, I am not going to make any substantial amount of money from this blog. I’m ok with that because making money blogging in not my sole intent.

I try to teach and share what I’ve learned about weight loss. I know what it’s like to be overweight as well as how it feels to reach my goals, so I think I can relate to a wide variety of people. Help them is my main purpose and goal of this blog and website. The money is just a bonus.

How I will profit from this site

I’ve heard of people clicking ads as a way to support the sites they like. J.D from getrichslowly.org had a great post that discourages this and really nailed how you can support the sites you like called Ads are not the new online tip jar definitely worth a read.

As mentioned most of the money made is from my main site, so that is where the majority of my efforts will be directed.

How you can help

There are a few ways that you can help. One is to have a look at weightlossweapons.com and read what I have written. If you like it or find anything useful I’d ask that you share it by linking to it or telling your friends.

The other is by letting me know what needs to be fixed, improved or if there is something I am missing. I did this with the blog a little while ago and I had a ton of really helpful and useful emails.

Finally, leave a comment here and let me know what you’re doing to make money from your site(s) and what kind of success or failures you’ve had so far.

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I am now just at the point of getting back on track and being able to start a regular workout routine again. Over the passed 2 months I’ve gained 12 pounds. Not a huge deal but definitely a set back to my plan.

It’s not all bad though, it could have been worse. I could have been more seriously injured or gained 20 plus pounds. I did manage to get some exercise in, walking mostly.

This whole experience has really drilled home 2 important points.

1. Poor diet mixed with little or no exercise is a recipe for disaster. It’s not just the weight gain, but also the feelings of laziness and the negative thoughts that come with it.

2. Don’t plan too far ahead. Life has a way of changing those plans weather you like it or not. I had planned to run my first half marathon this spring and be at my goal weight by mid summer. So I’ve had to adjust my goals according to my current physical condition.

My posting frequency has dropped off during this time mainly because I really didn’t have anything interesting or motivational to say. That will change as I become more active and resume my weight loss plan. My next post will be on something that I’ve found to be very important that too many people don’t take advantage of when it’s offered.

Thank you for continuing to post your comments on my previous articles. They have been very encouraging.

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I’m sure you have noticed that over the past few weeks the quantity and quality of my posts have been dropping. This is due to many factors. I have been working on a book with some trainers as well as many other new projects.

I am changing the frequency of posts and purpose of this blog. I will be posting 1 high quality post per week. These posts will be focusing on really helping you to lose weight as well as hopefully start some meaningful discussions (via comments).

Remember that this blog uses the top commentator’s plugin as well as the dofollow plugin. So comments are encouraged (and moderated)

If you would like to contact me about anything weight loss related you can also email me here.

Finally, don’t forget to signup for my RSS subscription. You can do that at the top of this page or here.

*note – weightlossweapons.com will be updated frequently with fresh new content *

I’m looking forward to helping,
Steve

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