I'm writing this with the utmost humility and embarrassment.
5 years ago, thanks to tremendous hard work plus support and resources from places like /r/loseit, I lost ~70 pounds in under a year and ran my first half-marathon.
I had been aware of people who had rebounded and gained their weight back, but was pretty sure I wouldn't be one of them. Yet somehow ... I f*cked up bigtime and gained every single pound (plus an extra 15) back. It didn't even take that long -- maybe only 2 or 3 years.
Looking back, I can see where things went wrong:
- I didn't have a sustainable lifestyle. I lost those 70 pounds (in 7 months) thanks to an absurdly aggressive diet and exercise routine. After I reached my goal, I took my foot off the gas pedal entirely instead of just setting a nice maintainable cruising speed.
- No [offline] support. I'm not going to blame others for my failings, but I will say that my wife was pretty ambivalent about my initial efforts to get healthy, which made meal prep and planning activities more difficult.
- No monitoring. Despite not having a sustainable plan or great support, I really should have set a threshold (like gaining 15 pounds or one pants size) where crossing that red line means needing to get my act together. Or, for the sake of accountability, I should have authorized friends or family members to slap me upside the head if they see that I've messed up. I also should have kept up with logging food and weight into MyFitnessPal.
For what it's worth, I'm not blaming biology for anything. It wasn't a rebound because of rapid weight loss, or because of my body trying to get back to its natural weight. It was 100% about me screwing up.
For what it's worth, we started a fitness challenge at work 8 weeks ago. I won't win it, but I did use this as inspiration for improving my food and exercise habits. I've already lost a good deal of weight and am eating very responsibly and exercising almost every day.
If I'm lucky enough to succeed again, I'll be sure not to squander this gift a second time.
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2yw6UVr
No comments:
Post a Comment