The TARGET

Last September (2025) I hit my all-time heaviest weight of 315 pounds. As I write this in mid-June 2026, about nine months later, I now weigh slightly under 240 pounds. That's 75 pounds gone, and I'm still going strong. My goal weight is 190 pounds, my college weight. At this point I am being asked pretty often what I'm doing and I'm happy to tell you exactly how I'm doing it, because it's simpler than you think and it actually works.

Here's where I think we get stuck: we think weight loss is about finding the right "Diet" — the perfect macro split, the magic food combo, the supplement stack, or the program to buy.

Going on a 'Diet' is temporary. Eating the right way should be permanent.

The Weekly Deficit TARGET system is about eating normal from day one — and changing the way we think about food so that we're still eating the same way after we reach our goal weight.

I turn 57 this August. I'm not some 20-something social media fitness influencer who's been fit their whole life. I actually understand what a slower metabolism feels like, and that matters. If this resonates with you, I invite you to keep reading.

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The WHY

Before anything else, you need to find your WHY.

"I'd like to lose some weight" is a wish. What's the real reason behind the wish? The one you'd be a little embarrassed to say out loud maybe — because it matters that much.

My first WHY: A few years ago, everything came to a head on a three-day hike in the Smoky Mountains. At 280-some pounds, I had no business being out there. I bonked hard — severely dehydrated, heart pounding out of my chest, knees screaming — and I genuinely wasn't sure I was going to make it out alive. My body had become the thing limiting my life, and it had nearly become the thing that ended it.

Which leads me to my second WHY: In my wife's family, the women routinely live past 100. My plan is to be around long enough to harass Rita for as many of those years as possible — not just alive, but still mobile and able to keep up with her.

Both of my WHYs come down to the same thing: mobility and capacity. The ability to keep moving through life instead of watching it from a chair.

There's a Yoda line I think about often: "Do, or do not. There is no try." When your WHY is strong enough, you just do — not because you're disciplined, but because not doing it is no longer an option. So find your WHY. It should be something you'd actually fight for.

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Your Weekly Deficit TARGET

The TARGET is your weekly calorie deficit. The seven arrows represent the seven days of the week.

A bullseye is a great day with a maximum targeted deficit. An outer ring is still a good day — you made progress. What matters is hitting the board. You can even miss the target completely one day and still make progress for the week. As long as you're getting most of your arrows on the board, the math takes care of itself.

What if you miss the TARGET?

• Missed a day? No big deal. The weekly total is what matters.
• Missed a week? Acknowledge it, then get back on track.
• Missed multiple weeks? Remember your WHY and reset.

A miss can come from either side: some days you don't move as much as you planned, some days you simply eat more than your goal weight maintenance. Stuff happens — a restaurant night, a stressful week, a missed workout, a body that just wanted more food that day. None of it matters in isolation. The TARGET was never a daily number to hit perfectly; it's a weekly deficit, and a single day over rarely dents the week.

Hit the target seven times a week, anywhere on it, and the math takes care of the rest. You don't need seven bullseyes. You need seven arrows on the board.

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Setting Milestones

Something I learned early: don't set one giant goal. Set small, rolling milestone goals.

I never set my goal at 190. I set small, rolling milestones — 305, then 295, then 285, then 275, and so on. Small rolling goals beat one massive number hanging over you. Hit one, feel good, set the next. Progress feels constant instead of distant.

245 vs 240: Set the milestone at 240, get under it, and then bounce back up to 242 — you failed. Set the milestone to 245 and bounce to 246 — you're still in the 240s. Same scale, completely different story in your head.

And expect plateaus. Every 10 pounds or so your body levels out for a week or ten days. Sometimes I'd deliberately eat at maintenance for a stretch, still working out, just to let things settle before pushing lower. That's not failure — that's your body adjusting. Let it. (Here's the comfort: those stalls felt very real while I lived them, but on my nine-month graph they don't even show up. The trend line erases them. Live them calmly.)

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Three Rules

This whole approach comes down to three things:

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This Is Not New

I'm not a dietitian or a coach, and I'm not selling anything. This is simply what worked for me.

I had tried restriction diets, brutal workouts, and yo-yo fad dieting. Same cycle every time: lose weight, plateau, quit, gain it all back plus more.

The actual system here isn't new: eat in a TARGET deficit, move more, stay consistent. What's different is the mindset shifts that make the system sustainable.

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Adapt and Overcome

I didn't have this all figured out from day one. This has been a learning process the entire way. Some of what I believed early on turned out to be wrong, and I'm sure some of what I believe now will change too.

But the adjustments have worked. Every course correction came from paying attention to my own data and being honest about what it was telling me.

Don't wait until you have all the answers. You never will. Start with a solid framework, track your own data, and be willing to adjust.

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Adjusting your AIM

From day one, I've been eating roughly 2,000 calories nearly every day. This is the number of calories that I will need to maintain my goal weight of 190 pounds. Yours will obviously be different and you will need to figure that out for yourself.

First Dial (weight loss): At my starting weight of 315 pounds, those 2,000 calories created a big deficit (over 1,000) and I started losing weight quickly — between 2 and 4 pounds per week — even with no exercise. Nine months later at 240 pounds, the same 2,000 calories gave me a smaller deficit (about 400). As the weight came off, I had to "move more" to maintain a steady 1 to 2 pounds of weight loss per week and hit my TARGET deficit. A slow, steady pace is exactly what I want — it's healthy, sustainable, and gives my body time to adapt.

Second Dial (maintenance): AFTER you hit your goal weight, you get to turn the second dial — and this is the part you've been working toward. You're no longer living in a deficit. Now you get to increase your calories so you're properly fueled for the work you're doing. This isn't optional — if you keep under-eating after the fat is gone, your body does not magically stop needing fuel. Severe prolonged underfeeding can cost you muscle, organ tissue, and eventually organ function. So this is both your reward and your new responsibility: eat more, fuel properly, and protect what you've built.