Hi! I've never posted here before, so none of you know this, but you helped me lose 80 pounds. I’m not big on attention so I wouldn’t normally post a thing like this, but I felt like I had to pay it forward. Maybe reading this will help someone the way the things I read helped me.
I'm a 42 year old 6’3” male, SW 273lb, GW 200 (BMI 25.0/normal), CW 191. Today is the 1 year anniversary of hitting my goal weight, which I guess is why I’m posting this today. Obligatory pic & cat tax.
/r/loseit has a ton of info about how to lose weight, so I’m not going to go there. Instead I want to relate some things nobody told me, or that they did tell me but I didn’t understand. Some are supposed to be illuminating; some are for encouragement or fun.
Some are rephrasings of things others have said. For instance, people commonly say “After losing weight I have so much more energy!” But that’s not how I experienced it, and for a while I wondered if I was weird, or doing something wrong. So maybe my experience in my words will save someone else the same angst.
“Energy Level” Is Subtle
I’ll start with this since I just mentioned it. For rather a long time I was worried that I didn’t feel like I had “more energy.” What does that even mean, seriously? I didn’t need less sleep. I didn’t spontaneously grow an extra battery. I couldn’t fly or throw ki blasts. I secretly felt like I’d failed in some way.
Until one day I mentioned this to my wife. And she said: “Dude, you seem like you have way more energy. You do all these things you didn’t used to do. You do stuff around the house, you are trying new hobbies...” (Which was true.)
Before, if I was sitting on the couch playing a video game and thought, “I should probably go tidy up the kitchen”, it wasn’t that I didn’t have the “energy” to do that. It’s that it was physically uncomfortable to get up and do it -- so I didn’t. It was 80 pounds easier to stay on the couch.
Today, I don’t feel more capable of doing things, but I do feel more likely to do things. “More energy” is not how I’d describe that, so it took me a while to recognize it as the same thing.
Losing Weight Isn’t “Hard” At All… But...
People say losing weight is hard, and for sure it isn’t trivial. But since it’s about not eating as much, losing weight means not doing something, which is the easiest thing in the world. So I didn’t find counting calories and so on hard -- but I did find it damned tedious.
You can’t lose weight without feeling a bit hungry, and you have to accept that sensation for an extended period, with the knowledge that it will one day be over. It was so obnoxious and frustrating: get up in the morning, feel hungry, remind myself of my goals and motivations, start showering and forget about it… until lunch. Still hungry after my salad, gird my mental loins again, it stops. Until dinner. Over and over, every day. Ugh. Not hard, just tedious.
But that’s okay: there are ways of dealing with that. I expected weight loss to be some kind of endless, herculean grapple with a hunger beast, but it turned out to be more like flies buzzing around my head constantly. But that’s good -- it’s much easier to deal with waving away some flies every little while than having to go mono a mono with a colossal food demon.
I think this is probably what /r/loseit folks mean when they say “it’s not about motivation, it’s about discipline.” That particular formulation didn’t get through to me. But maybe mine will help someone else.
Hunger Is a Suggestion, Not an Imperative
I used to think things like, “That was a good breakfast, but hmm, it’s still 3 hours to lunch. Better grab a bagel so I don’t get hungry.” Feeling hungry before my next meal was a failure of planning. It meant I was bad at adulting.
I came to realize that hunger is like feeling sleepy. If you yawn in the middle of the afternoon, it doesn’t mean you have to immediately drop everything and take a nap. It means maybe you should plan to sleep an extra hour tonight -- or it might just mean you’re bored. In the same way, feeling hungry also means that maybe I should plan for a few extra calories tonight -- or it might just mean I’m bored.
It got a lot easier when I understood that hunger is like sleepiness: it’s a suggestion, not an imperative.
I Had to Mourn
There’s no use lying: it’s pretty awesome to eat delicious food constantly. Man, double cheeseburgers are so good, and with a milkshake… Delicious food is delicious, and that lifestyle is a thing of value, however dire its health consequences. And like anything of value, when it’s gone, you feel loss.
This probably sounds foolish to anyone who hasn’t been obese, but you can’t just give that up without having to grieve for it. For me, losing weight wasn’t “hard”, but mourning and acceptance was. Especially since this loss was something I was doing to myself. I wonder if this isn’t actually what derails a lot of people, and if it is, I absolutely understand. I still to this day get a little sad when I remember the old me who could eat whatever the hell he wanted. I had to accept that this thing I loved was gone, in order to move on.
People Gonna People
I was extremely fortunate to have a supportive wife, and coworkers who minded their own and stayed in their lanes, so I have no advice for coping with toxic people. But one thing that surprised me was this: people don’t react the way you think they will.
My best example is doctors. I went in to see my primary care physician for an annual checkup after I’d lost around 50 pounds. She noted I’d lost weight, and after I confirmed it was intentional simply said “okay good” and moved on. No congratulations, not even really interest.
On the other hand, not long after that I saw a specialist about something unrelated, and she was absolutely over the moon. She happily told all the other staff in her office who I’d met and they all came in to see and congratulate me. Absolutely unexpected since this wasn’t her wheelhouse.
I spent a lot of mental energy worrying and trying to predict how various people were going to react so I could prepare for it. But you can’t predict it. I wish I’d just saved that energy.
Your Vitals May Not Change (and it doesn’t mean you failed)
One big reason to lose weight is to lower blood pressure. Mine did go down a little, but it’s still hypertension, and I’m still on meds -- same dosages, even. In hindsight, this isn’t surprising. My grandfather has high blood pressure and has always been rail thin, so I simply won-lost that genetic lottery. I also still have sleep apnea.
In the end, I am okay with this, since so much else is so much better. But in the beginning I pinned a lot of my motivation on lowering my blood pressure. I wish I’d been able to understand how many small improvements would come together to make life so much lighter, so that I wouldn’t focus on just one thing that wasn’t meant to be.
SVs Are Emotionally Confusing
I swear my state of mind is unique every time I step on the scale. At first when I hadn’t seen much progress yet, each new low seemed unreal, and scary. For a while it was making me anxious. I had to force myself to only weigh in once a week, until I could internalize that it was real and I could weigh in daily again.
Weigh-ins close to scale victories were sometimes exciting, sometimes frustrating, sometimes weirdly boring. Actually reaching milestones has meant relief, pride, satisfaction, disbelief, often all at once. The morning I hit goal weight was deeply confusing more than anything else.
I don’t know if this is this fraught for others. But I think for me this was the sensation of my identity changing. The scale and the mirror were showing me evidence of a body that didn’t match my sense of self, and that was disorienting and distressing. Fortunately adjustment just took time (though I still have the occasional wrong-body-image moment.) If this is you, it’s fine. It’ll be fine. You just have to ride it out.
No, They Didn’t Steal My Gold
I didn’t get my wedding ring resized until long after I should have, because I was afraid I’d gain it all back. When I did, the ring was not accompanied by the piece removed, which I was pretty upset about (because of the symbolism, not so much monetary value.) So I called to ask about my missing gold.
I was delighted to learn that they didn’t remove material, but instead compressed it to the smaller size by hammering it on a bench tool thinger. So by losing weight I literally made my wedding ring denser, which is super badass.
I Do Less Laundry
This would never have occurred to me, but now I can wash my entire wardrobe in about half the loads. Much of this is because I used to always wear a button down over a t-shirt as a way to conceal my actual size, where today I mostly wear printed t-shirts. But it turns out a lot of this, weirdly, is the amount of cloth: I dropped from a 2XL/3XL shirt size to an XL (and possibly even L at this point.) My pant size is now 30, down from 40. I was amazed how significant this is. I pack much lighter when traveling, too.
I Enjoy Food More (Including Vegetables?!)
Until I started grudgingly skipping unnecessary toppings, I never realized how little I was tasting the food beneath. Take shredded cheese. I used to put that shit on everything. But when I tried skipping the cheese, tacos were like a whole different food. Suddenly I was paying way more attention to the spices, the tomatoes in the salsa, the sriracha… Same with chili, and today I even appreciate a good hamburger. I rarely use shredded cheese anymore -- it just seems like such a huge waste of calories that I’d rather spend on high-end eating cheeses, or true indulgences like mac-and-cheese.
There’s No Such Thing As a Diet, or, Everyone Is Dieting Always Everywhere
One day I was bitter. I was transitioning to maintenance, and for a couple days I’d not been successful at eating without thinking carefully about it. I’d clearly gone overboard. I had not developed magic automatic food habits. Meanwhile I’d been watching some naturally-skinny colleagues at lunch buffets, and it wasn’t encouraging.
“This sucks,” I thought. “I am going to have to continue to eat carefully even on maintenance. Like look at Mike, his plate has a mix of veggies and grains, and he -- oh I guess he decided not to take that second piece of steak. Ugh. I’m going to have to do that too. Forever. Pay attention to what I eat, just like… the skinny…. people………..”
And in this way I became Enlightened.
Maybe Read This Book
This is totally mundane, but here’s a book that helped me a lot: The Beck Diet Solution. Despite the title, it isn’t a diet. Instead it’s a self-help sort of book that teaches you the skills you need to stay on whatever CICO achievement method (aka “diet”) you like. Things like, how to practice being hungry in a way that doesn’t freak you out. Or, ways to cope with how long-term weight loss is, and not give up. For whatever reason, I didn’t pick these skills up as a kid, and this book helped me learn them.
I Wasn’t Expecting Inner Peace
I guess mindfulness is all the rage as a weight-loss technique. I started doing this too (via the Headspace app), and have found it extremely helpful -- but not for weight loss. For me, mindfulness helps much much more with maintenance, not so much weight loss.
The weight loss phase was about routine, and coping skills. This was an acute thing. But maintenance is about vigilance, moderation, and awareness. This is a chronic thing.
Mindfulness helps me a lot with the chronic, not so much with the acute. This is probably an area where your mileage may very much vary. But if you try mindfulness and it isn’t helping you lose weight, don’t give up; it might come in handy when you reach your goal.
You Are Heard, & Thanks
So that’s what I wanted to share. Hopefully someone out there gets something helpful out of my wordsplat. Two last things before I go.
First, enormous thanks to the moderators here. You’re doing god’s work, and against all odds this is a place on the Internet that is actually helpful and useful. I don’t know whether I could have hit my goal without /r/loseit, but it is amazing that I didn’t have to find out.
And finally, thanks to everyone who posts here. I’ve never commented or posted, and I probably won’t again, cause that’s not really how I roll. But that doesn’t mean I’m not here following along, and witnessing your achievements. Keep posting your SVs, your NSVs, your tips, your progress pics... You literally have no way of knowing how many people you’re helping. There’s more of us than you can see.
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