Roughly two years ago, I was over three hundred pounds. I felt sick, tired, and miserable, and decided to change that once and for all. I've written about my weight loss journey in detail, where small and gradual mindset and lifestyle changes over the course of a year led to dramatic weight loss. When I began to share my story, I mentioned that my journey has no end, and so I'm writing once again about where my journey has gone this year - my fitness journey. Because of the amazing reception I received last year and the kind words of all who said I was an inspiration to them, I wanted to share my new story - how gaining 30 pounds felt better than losing 160.
Fat: https://i.imgur.com/1O9IWgX.jpgg
Sick: https://i.imgur.com/zqhPvXE.jpg
Happy: https://i.imgur.com/Gx3gFb8.jpg
Original Thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/9ycemb/my_incredible_journey_300lbs_to_150lbs_in_13/
Let me get back to the basics, real quick. I'm of Italian-American descent, from suburban New Jersey, and first started lifting weights in the early 2000s. You already see where this is going, I'm sure. Bench and curl is a program. Chicken, broccoli and rice are food groups. "Starting Sylvester Stallone" is motivational material. And you know what? It was pretty damn fun. I remember tons of good times in the garage and basement gyms with my brother and friends, miserable hours on the treadmill and epic cheat days with no shortage of pizza.
When I began my weight loss journey, I emulated what I had known from my youth - basement gym, meal prepped tuna, and "bro split" workout routines. But as I neared toward my goal weight, a new and, in my opinion, sinister influence began to creep into my life - "Instagram fitness". If you've even glanced at one post of someone squatting before, you know what I mean. "Full for minutes, full for hours", people rolling around on the floor with kettlebells, and jacked Bart Simpson. Seriously, why do they all use Bart Simpson fanart?
I can't sit here and blame a piece of software for my own faulty programming. Maybe it was the stress of being a new parent, or the abhorrence of the lifestyle I once lived and the way I once felt. Regardless I was primed and ready, and as these new voices spoke to me, as I'm sure they do to countless others, I began to listen. I abstained from sweeteners, followed the plant based diet, ditched the weights in favor of daily calisthenics, convinced myself that lettuce tasted great and that cheat days were for fools. I ate nothing unless it came off a scale - not even unweighed cucumber. I stopped salting my food and did the daily calisthenics, no matter how sore and tired I was. After all, you don't need rest days, you just need "rehab" stretches like the countless accounts insist.
After less than three months, I became so skinny that my feet hurt when I walked, my hip bone hurt if I lay on my side, and my tailbone hurt if I sat for long. I could barely sleep more than a few hours, I was intense and irritable around the clock, I felt cold no matter what, and I was constantly urinating. I would later learn these are all symptoms of malnutrition. But I told the world I felt great, and even made an incredibly cringey account (now since deleted) of my own to share how great I felt and how awesome I was - complete with thousands of paid fake followers. Weekly weigh ins became daily and sometimes I would even work out twice a day. The stress mounted and my family and coworkers became distant from the way I was acting. To say my home life suffered greatly would be an understatement. I measured my worth 100g at a time.
One icy, rainy night in January I decided to brave the fire pit in the yard for a few minutes, and asked my wife to bring me a coffee. Instead I was handed a spiked mug, offered a walk to the bar, and then gorged an entire bag of junk food from 711. The next morning, I woke up not feeling awful as I'd feared - instead I set a new personal record on my Airdyne. Something clicked, finally; I was doing something wrong. I was subjecting myself and everyone around me to misery for nothing. What good is such a rigorous routine if there isn't even a benefit from it?
Over the next month or two, I began to undo what had been changed over the last few months. I deleted the Instagram account and picked the weights back up again. I went back to the drawing board with my program and began a more balanced version of the bro split I had always known (lower, back, chest, arms, off). I stopped weighing my food unless a recipe required it, I started guesstimating calories, and I stopped weighing myself. Instead, I'd take some photos every month or two to track progress. My feelings would guide me now, and once a week or two they'd lead me back to the Chinese buffet.
Fitness should be fun, engaging, and inspire confidece and happiness. For me, that's heavy weights and heavy metal. Maybe for you it's crossfit or yoga or long distance running. I know now the human body is not so rigid that it can be completely measured and calculated so easily. You need rest days because your body needs to rebuild and also because you're working late and have a lot of errands to catch up on. I know that a balanced and well rounded diet is essential to healthy living, but if we're being honest here, chicken breast and broccoli will never taste good. We enjoy eating it all week because it has been broscientifically proven that after 9pm on a Saturday there is no such thing as a calorie.
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