TL;DR at bottom
I don't really know how to start this so here goes.
In 2016 I got a new job. This job had an industrial scale that about 6 months into my new job, I stepped on one night while nobody was around and it was zeroed out. I was appalled. The scale immediately jumped to 438lbs. I was in disbelief, enough so I bought a scale and it showed a true value of 423lbs when I stepped on it.
Let's go back to 2011. My daughter was born, I was a new father and I weighed 320lbs. I have been big my whole life, as long as I can remember. I remember being told when I was 10 or 11 that I would grow into my weight, except I kept gaining weight and height so ya. Anyways. Between 2011 and 2016 I didn't use a scale and didn't know my weight. I could see myself getting bigger. I had broke up with my daughters mother 6 months after her birth and I knew I was in a pretty deep depression but told myself it didn't matter because I'm a man and don't care. I was very focused on working as a single father. I knew I ate to much, food was a comfort. 100% a comfort. Nothing felt better than getting 2 huge burgers, some jalapeno poppers, a huge Dr.Pepper, large fries and some spicy chips on the way home from work. I worked nights so I would get home, everyone in my home was asleep, so I would go in my room and watch YouTube and eat.
Around 2015 I started having to go to the bathroom pretty frequently. Peeing every 2-3 hours. Around 2016, it got worse. If I had to pee, I HAD to pee. It wasn't a slow come on either. It was one minute, nothing, the next, I HAD TO PEE. Progressing further, until about 2 weeks ago, I was peeing literally ever 40 minutes. I was also consuming about 16 ounces of liquid every hour or so because I would feel hugely dehydrated. When I say liquid, I mean on average, a day for me consisted of about 4 Rockstars, 2, 1 liter Dr.Pepper bottles, 2-3 32 ounce cups of ice water, and 2-3 small cans of soda from the vending machine at work. I would eat a huge amount after work, get up, eat breakfast that was always either leftovers from whatever was made by the others in my home, in large amounts. Then I would get Taco Bell or something before work. I was spending such a stupid amount of money on food and at the store during work on lunches and breaks.
Anyways. When I saw my weight of 423lbs on my scale at home, I was sad. Even sadder than normal. I threw a bunch of food away in shame and bought salad mix and the lowest calorie dressing I could find and chicken. That is what I ate for a month, with many slip ups in between. I would still drink soda and energy drinks, just less. At the end of the month I stepped on the scale and it said 385lbs. I was excited. Stupidly I called up my friend and we went to a Chinese buffet to celebrate. Yes. Eating to celebrate weight loss in copious amounts. It was the trigger. I literally just went back to my old ways, just in LESS quantity than before. This was now the beginning of 2017. Feb. Since then I have maintained a weight of 370 to 390. I had bad days where I would just eat and eat and eat, and then days when I would be motivated to change, but not do anything.
The last 3 years or so I have had problems with the bathroom to the point that I set alarms for every hour while I sleep because if I don't, I will wake up having to go to the bathroom so bad that I can't make it in time. It's hindered my sleeping for years now, I slept about 4 hrs a day after working 10 hr shifts every day on average throughout the year.
Over the years too I have sat in shame in my room watching YouTube in the middle of the night on weight lose. I understand CICO, meal prepping, macros, all this, I just have been so lazy.
Jan 21, 2020. I woke up and felt different. I felt like if I didn't make a change I was going to die. I went to my grocery store and purchased Chicken Breasts, salad mixes, dressings, applesauce, eggs, brown rice, vegetables and a food scale. I weighed myself and weighed 370lbs. I went home and had 15 meal prep containers from Amazon that I had purchased 5 years prior to use as lunch containers for work and never wound up using. I cooked the chicken and weighed out a 400 calorie salad(including dressing). It contained 1oz cheese, 4oz baked chicken, 35grams of carrots, 150grams of salad mix. Each salad would be accompanied with a hard boiled medium egg and an apple sauce container. Total calories came to about 430. I knew I couldn't just eat salads, so I made a huge amount of rice, as well as some more chicken to accompany it.
I decided to quit all liquids except water.
I joined a gym. This part seemed very typical of "I'm going to lose weight" mentality I felt people get. I'm a very self aware, dry person and felt dumb for doing this but hey, whatever.
Well, I fast forward to Feb 3rd, 2020. 12 days since I started this journey. 12 short days. Not long, which is key. Short. I started at 370lbs. I weighed today on the scale, 335lbs. I'm not even that shocked at the weight loss, since I know how CICO works. I'm eating at a HUGE calorie deficit. 1300-1400 a day. What shocked me when I took a step off the scale and thought about the last 2 weeks was this;
I feel like I have made an actual change in my brain. Something clicked. I just don't want to be the old me. Not fat, yes, I want to be skinny, but I want to be healthier. I want to not be so angry and aggressive because I'm fat towards people. I want to be fit, so I can go outside and not be stuck sitting all the time. The one singular thing that I know is different than any other time I have attempted to lose weight is that I don't feel like I'm eating less, I FEEL like I'm eating the right amount. What I was eating before was NOT normal. It was gross. I was so hungry last night at around 4pm, but I KNEW I was going to eat my Spicy Chicken and Rice bowl that I made, that was 400 calories, at 6pm. I sat down and ate it and it was great.
Another thing that has happened in these last 12 days, that actually happened literally like day 5. I sleep now. As of today, I drank a pretty normal intake of water and I went pee 4 times. That's from 8am this morning until now. I'm up so late tonight because I go back to work tomorrow and work nights so I reset my sleep schedule after a weekend with the family. But 4 times, at normal intervals. It's been like this now for a week or so and my god, it's great. I woke up the other day before work and had to go to the bathroom, but I was still tired, and this was after 6 hours of UNINTERRUPTED sleep, so I just stayed in bed, slept another 2 hours and THEN got up to go pee, and was totally fine. That amazed me.
We have a flat bed at work that every time I have to drive it, the seat doesn't go back because it's old as hell and the steering wheel is gigantic and my stomach made it so hard to fit in and be comfortable at all. I got in last week and had so much room it felt like.
I got a Team Member of the month Jacket in 2017 that my company provides if you win, but it only goes up to 3xl. It never fit and has been hanging for 3 years on my rack. I put it on today and it zips up now, still too small, but it zips. I tried this thing on a month ago and I couldn't even get both arms in without being the T position lol.
The most important thing though is I don't feel like I'm being deprived. I always felt in the times I did this before that I was depriving myself of the things I wanted, fast food, greasy foods, etc. Now though, I just feel, I don't know how to explain it, fine. Like year, a huge hamburger sounds delicious, hell ya, but do I want one? No. I'm starving right now, to be honest, but I'm not going to run out and eat. Right now, if I was going to "binge" eat, it would be to go in the kitchen and eat some Oatmeal, track it in my phone, and then still eat my normal calories tomorrow, and be over by about 300. I'm not going to because I don't feel weak.
I'm on a 11 day streak on the App LifeSum(MyFitnessPal knockoff) of 1400 calories or below and I love looking at it. I just switched to MyFitnessPal because of features it has over the other so I'm back to a zero streak in-app. Regardless though, tracking has made me so much more aware of the sodium I was in taking, literally thousands of mgs a day. And the sugar. So much. Calories too. I added up the food I ate on Jan 20th and it came to 6900 calories. That's not right.
Also, the gym, it's great. I honestly could probably do without it, but I want to get into weight lifting like I was in high school, only not a 300lb man benching 300lbs, but a 200lb man benching 300lbs. Because of that, I'll keep going.
I am fully aware by the way that I WILL have loose skin. I know. I'm not stupid, but you know what. I can lay in my bed that I have made for myself, but I will do it on my own terms. I'll have loose skin, but you know what's worse than having loose skin? Dying at age 30(I'm 29) from a heart attack and leaving my 8 year old behind.
Anyways, it's 1am, and I just wanted to rant. I've been subbed to this place on my OG reddit for literally years, but today I posted. I'm a little shy of pics but my goal weight is 200lbs and when I hit that(not if, when), I will post some pics of me before and after.
Edit: I would also like to mention that I am just now getting into backpacking. I've done 2 hikes so far with my friend, who is much fitter than I am, but we hiked 5 miles round trip twice on a trail and it was so awesome. I'm already what people would say a hick or redneck, I guess, I love the outdoors, I carry a fixed blade on my belt, I own guns, I drive a truck, all the stereotypical stuff, but I've been so fat that the most outdoors I get is going to the outdoor rifle range, or camping, which even that has been really NOT fun since I got so big the last 5 years or so.
TL;DR
I'm fat.
Not for long.
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