Wednesday, December 11, 2019

30/M/5'10, 210lb to 175lb - Work-in-Progress

First post here for about five years, throwaway because it's the internet.

Tl;dr: 210 to 175 in about 3 months. I was a skinny adolescent, imploded in college, spent the majority of this decade overweight or a little obese. My solution has been to eat less extra junk, and get moving more.

Pic: https://imgur.com/a/gQSEG3N

Yes, this is the most unflattering but useful pose I could strike at the time. I can actually suck my belly in to look pretty fly rn.

Put it this way: I've been doing a slow, dirty bulk for nearly 8 years. Treachery brought me to it, but the blood is on my hands. I think that the acceptance of responsiblity is one of the important skills that we have to practice on our journey. There are many reasons for your weight to get out of control, but the one person who can get it back into control is you and the one who will suffer most if you do not, is also you.

As pounds go, you can hit a number that is just too high. 200 or 210 or 220 are all unsuitable weights for someone who is just 5'10. But one of the worst parts about the slow descent into blubber is that your perception changes over time: I cannot accurately guess what I weighed for most of those years. I will assume I was five, or even ten pounds heavier than I really was at that time. That's why I suggest that you do better than I did in not having some PoS family member delete all your computer data.

I moved to a new place this year; no job or friends or anything. Weight went from around 195 to 210 as I found that fast food coupons to the closest restaurant were the perfect way to feel good. 210 pounds does not look good, but it's still a bit better than the 219 that was my all-time high. But I kept going for about a month or two. Call it a learning experience...learning to hate yourself all over again. A birthday came and went. The isolation makes things worse, but I guess it also gives you a lot more time with yourself.

Diet: The first thing I did was to make a spreadsheet of all the food options at the fast-food place - protip: drinking gravy may be better for you than a burger, and is probably better than fries. But what I did is I started ranking things based on calories and protein content. Found out that I could get a lettuce wrap that would save me about 200 calories per burger. I ended up eating about 3 lettuce-wrapped burgers from this place in the past 73 days. It wasn't the burgers but how I was eating them that was keeping me fat (although I believe that food companies do mix their recipe up to make fast food more addictive). Diet is still the most important aspect of weight loss for me, but I feel that the attitude we hold towards food determines our main patterns of eating. If you can change those patterns, things become easier.

Exercise: I would probably be considered to have a fairly decent build and amount of muscle mass. My initiation into exercise was pretty simple: 1-2 hours of moderate activity every day. This was not to burn calories, but to get my body back into fighting shape. We all evolved to be functional and I believe that the body needs to be put into that functional state in order for us to recover a healthy weight balance. If you are trying to burn fat, I would not worry about what kind of exercise you are doing. I swam or walked at least once every day for about 2 months. Always stay moving, but never push yourself to the point of injury.

Fasting: I started doing intermittent fasting, and some longer fasts after I had reached 190lb, so most of the "hard work" in terms of self-image and habit was already done. You could think of it as introducing a new trick after the old one was mastered. IF has been working for me since then, and I think there might be some value to the idea of insulin response and non-stop eating wrecking some of us. I think anyone who has issues with blood sugar should look into IF.

Supplementation: I would take multivitamins, creatine, and protein powder (whey) on most days that I need them. Generally, I would only go for one scoop of protein a day unless it was a lifting day.

My ideal weight, before the sky started falling, was 168lbs and that was pretty good. But that was 9 years ago and I would drink 3 cans of Pepsi a day... so I am actually excited to see where I will end up. I hope everyone is still staying strong. Sorry if this is too brief or disjointed but whatever, there's a lot to be said.

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