How I Lost 100 LBS in Under a Year as a Busy Entrepreneur

2 years ago I started to gain weight due to injury and thyroid issues. I didn’t know that I had an underperforming thyroid, I thought that the reason for my weight loss was sitting in front of a computer for 14 hours a day and eating whatever I could find.

Last summer I had a moment where I said this is it for me and I transformed my body by losing 100 lbs in 12 months. I will share my journey and how you can hopefully do the same.

It’s good to mention that I didn’t spend every day at the gym as I have a hectic schedule with a lot of traveling. I will give more details later on but I achieved this by going to the gym 2-3 times a week while enjoying my favorite foods everyday.

📗 Who am I?

I am John Ozuysal, a former investment banker and 2x tech founder with one exit. Over the last 7 years, I built 2 tech companies and a productized marketing agency where we help startups grow through content marketing.

Before getting into business I used to play professional basketball, but stopped playing because of serious injury.

Today, I reside in Dubai as an investor, and marketing agency owner, and I also have a few more side hustles.

Connect with me on:

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Linkedin

🔥What Motivated Me to Lose Weight?

I have always been a workaholic but things got pretty intense post covid. My ambition took the best out of me and the only thing I cared about in the world was just growing my business and earning more money.

I thought that it was a waste of time to spend all this energy working out and taking care of myself, instead of working out a few hours I could work more and earn more. I got addicted to buying luxury items and the more I bought more I wanted to buy even more.

I thought that earning more money would make me very happy so I put all my energy into my work and my life became very sedentary.

I had a trip to Bali in 2023 August and this is where I started to play Padel. I have always been athletic throughout my life so I am naturally good at sports. While I was playing padel, I wanted to run and catch every ball like how I used to do it when I was playing tennis.

My mind wanted to run and my body didn’t allow it. I felt heavy, and every time I run and jump I could feel my belly and man boobs fighting against gravity. At that moment I told myself “How the heck has this happened to me”

💡I was 30 but I wanted to feel like 23 again and I made a promise to myself that I would be back to my top shape, and I would feel great again.

I had to remind myself that:

life is a journey and the body is the vassal we travel with. I would rather travel with a supercar than a clunky one

My goal was to return to Bali next summer to be athletic and strong again like I used to be. So I gave myself 10-12 months to lose 100 lbs and become the most athletic padel player in the local club :)

🌯 Pillars of My Diet

If you want to lose weight diet is the most important thing. It’s not about how good you work but it’s all about how good your nutrition is and how sustainable it is.

The problem with most people is that they force themselves to eat foods that they don’t enjoy eating. You can’t sustain a lean body if you don’t enjoy what you are eating.

Flexible Dieting

Willpower plays an underrated role in losing weight. Every time you resist not eating your favorite food, you are depleting your willpower. Once it is fully depleted you can’t stop yourself and binge eating brings you back to square one you quit diet.

I know this cycle because I experienced it a lot in my 20s. I loved eating sweets and every time I did a diet, I would eliminate all the sweets from my life to eat clean. I would stick to this diet for 3 months and go into binge eating, consuming all the Oreos I could find.

I discovered “flexible dieting” and it changed my life forever and allowed me to stay lean all around while enjoying the foods I love eating.

Flexible dieting is eating whatever you want to eat as long as it fits your macros. Losing weight is all about calories in vs calories out. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat less than what your body is burning.

With flexible dieting, I was eating chocolate every day while still maintaining a calorie deficit and still losing weight effortlessly.

It is a great feeling to eat your favorite foods every day and still lose weight, gone were the days of eating only boring chicken breast and broccoli.

Some of my staple snacks:

• Sea-salted dark chocolate

• Caramel popcorn

• Ihop pancakes

I consumed either one of those every single day while I was following a flexible diet.

Intermittent Fasting

I have been fasting for several years. I don’t have a rigid fasting schedule, I don’t even think I follow the 16-hour intermittent fasting rule every day. As a rule of thumb, I will eat my first meal around lunchtime or 5-6 hours after waking up.

Fasting allows me to focus better and be more productive, especially in the mornings when I have to get a lot of work done.

I will usually start the day with sparkling water followed by black coffee. Sparkling water and coffee are a big help in suppressing the appetite.

I am not going to get into the overall health benefits of fasting here, but I will write a whole article about it later on

Eating Big Portions Instead of Small

Most people say you need to eat 5 to 6 small meals a day to keep your metabolism active, but I don’t believe in this. I don’t like to eat all the time, and I don’t have time to eat often during the day, thanks to my busy work schedule.

I prefer to eat 1-2 big meals during the day. I will usually consume a small meal during the lunch time and this meal is focused on protein intake. I save a big chunk of calories for dinner, I like the feeling of eating a big portion in the evening. It makes me feel like I am not on a diet because I eat huge portions.

When I eat 5-6 small meals per day, I never feel full and satisfied. If you are like me and you like to feel that your stomach is super full, I would suggest that you keep most of your calories for dinner :)

Cooking Macro-Friendly Treats

If you eat boring food, you will never have a sustainable diet. You have to replace the word “diet” with “lifestyle” this is the only way of being lean all year round. If you want to turn this into a lifestyle, you should be able to eat foods you love and enjoy.

What I did was to keep the list of high-calorie foods that I really enjoy and cook healthier versions of those. I would go to the grocery store, and look at the frozen food section for my favorite unhealthy snacks and I would cook or bake the healthiest version of the same food.

I cooked a lot of protein ice cream, doughnuts, pizza, pudding, etc.. I will be sharing the recipes in my upcoming newsletter issues.

💪 What About My Workouts?

If you think that I spent every day in the gym lifting weights and walking on a treadmill, I am here to tell you that you might be wrong. In fact I hate steady-state cardio and can’t even stand walking on the treadmill for 5 minutes.

I think cardio is great for your health but it’s not great for fat loss and I will tell you why.

If you do 30 mins cardio treadmill you will burn around 200-250 kcals right? For me, I would rather eat 200 calories less than run on a treadmill every single day. I know that I won’t be able to sustain doing cardio every day, so it’s hard for me to embrace this and turn it into a lifestyle. Eating less is way easier than forcing myself to run every single day.

Instead of running on a treadmill, I tried to walk 8-10k steps every day around the city, which is way more sustainable and fun than doing cardio on a machine.

I went to the gym 2-3x per week and lifted for around 30 mins. I focus on compound movements such as deadlifts, bench presses, shoulder presses, etc… My main goal in the gym was getting stronger every week, so I was focused on progressive overload. I tried to lift heavier every week or do more reps with the same weight to keep the progress going.

Most of my workouts focused on building a great chest and shoulders as I believe that those muscles are the foundation of a great-looking physique.

🚀 Results

• Lost 100 lbs in 10 months

• People didn’t recognize my face

• I started to play professional padel

• I feel very confident and I realized that having a healthy and good-looking body is the best investment you can make for yourself

• People told me that it’s hard to lose weight and because I am 30 and I also underperform thyroid, it feels great to prove them wrong