This is my first post anywhere about my diet, which I've kept up for a year on the 21st of July, so, 2 days to go.
As I approach the year mark I've been thinking that sharing my experience may help others and as I'm not a fan of self promotion, I figure this would be a nice anonymous way to go about it.
For some background info, I'm a 37 year old man about 5'9 who has been big my whole life, when I was a younger man at high school, college etc I weighed 16-18stone with a 56inch chest and 44 inch waist and had a very negative view of my body, I thought I was massively obese, though, looking back and at photos, I wasn't, I was big, sure, but healthy.
I cycled 10-20 miles a day, spent an hour in the gym lifting weights daily and played rugby, I was capable of benching 180kg and leg pressing beyond 500kg, but I had this mental image that I was just massively fat and this, looking back, is one of the key reasons that I fell apart so badly after a bad accident in my 20's, in which I very nearly died, my brain "broke", I fell into a massive bout of depression and anxiety, to the point that I could no longer leave the house, the mere thought of it had me breaking down in tears. This, obviously lead to me not being able to work, as I stopped moving my weight began to increase, I didn't notice it as I always thought of myself as being very obese, after several years my weight was around 25 stone, I pulled myself together as I was approaching my 30's, started going out again, working out and even got my HGV licence to try and start a new career, then, things fell apart again.
Skip forward a couple of years, and I was house bound once more, I was eating junk food for every meal, pizzas, burgers, kebabs, ice cream, chocolate, loads of snacks etc, it got so bad that at about 32 years of age, my retired parents intervened and took me to live with them in Spain, I was around 30 stone at this period and actually looked how I had always seen myself.
Moving was difficult, but, as they had a pool, I started to make progress, I lived there for about 18 months, and got a bit better, I moved back to the UK and started out eating better, weight wasn't going up anymore I was around 28 stone, but then I developed a lymphoedema on my leg, which made walking difficult, I fell back into depression and started eating junk food again, my weight ballooned to in excess of 40 stone, I don't know exactly how high I got, I didn't have any scales that went that high.
I could barely walk, I was housebound and knew I needed to make a change, but couldn't, pizza was my comfort food, while I was eating it I felt better, until I finished.
On December 17th 2018 when my father was visiting me, I had pizza for dinner with him as a final treat, I had made my mind up, I was cutting out junk food, and as such, since that day, I have not had a single pizza or takeaway since, I started cooking my own meals, not all that healthy admittedly, but, they were a lot better than takeaways, I still had snacks, ice cream and diet fizzy drinks though, but, it wasn't as b. I was still eating 2-3000 calories a day easily though, but, less than the 15 inch pizza a day with chips and ice cream I had been gorging myself on, the lymphoedema on the inside of my leg was the size of a basketball, I could barely walk, life was awful.
Then, when I was due to do my shopping for the 21st July 2019 I found myself in a good place so I made a decision, I was going to diet and if I was going to diet I wasn't going to do it half heartedly this time, I decided I would drop down to roughly 1200 calories a day, this still wouldn't be overly 'healthy', I find I cannot eat a lot of foods due to the texture, but I would stick to a schedule along with a set calorie count.
So from that day nearly a year ago now I've all but cut sugar from my diet, having only a few grams a day in food as it naturally occurs, opting for very low or no sugar options where possible.
I've not had any fizzy drinks, diet or otherwise, replacing them with low sugar squash.
No snacks, be it biscuits/ cookies, chocolate, sweets, crisps etc, I've had very little milk (there is a lot of calories in it, maybe a couple of pints total in the last year, where I would of had 1 to 2 pints a day), no milkshakes, fresh fruit juice, ice cream, lollys etc either, I'd already given up drinking any alcohol a year or more earlier (I stopped drinking outside of my birthday / Xmas and new years anyway when I realised I was suffering from depression years back). I cut out peanut butter and cheese apart from a very rare occasion (and then I would use pre sliced cheese so I could keep a close eye on portions), replacing them with either a small amount of marmite or just plain butter.
So, with all the fun, comfort foods gone from my diet and dropping from 2000-3000 calories daily to 1200, maybe 1400 on a rare cheat day, what do I eat instead?
Well, its pretty boring and very repetitive and I find I need to stick to a schedule far stricter than I ever had in the past, lunch is between 12 and 1, dinner between 7 and 8pm,with no breakfast, but, it's worked for me.
Lunch time is a simple small roll, usually around 150 calories with the lowest amount of sugar possible (from what's available to me, it's about 1.5g), a bit of butter (low salt anchor spreadable) and a 125g pack of Tesco finest ham for about 180 calories, so around 400 calories, I'll have it open in 2 halves as it at least appears to be more food and I'll eat it slowly, as I find this helps with at least tricking myself into thinking I'm eating more.
For dinner, it is the best proper beef burgers/ pork sausages I can find, though in the past few months due to Covid, this has become 'skinny' sausages at only 100 cal each, or some chicken.
Dinner is then usually 2 quarter pounders or 3/4 sausages (around 4-500 calories depending on which I have) or 4-6 pieces of crumbed chicken breast, which works out at 5-600 calories (once or twice a week) alternating every couple of days, along with the meat is between half and three quarters of a pack of Bachelors super noodles, which works out at 2-300 calories roughly, for a dinner around 800 calories giving me my 1200 calories a day. To help with things I'm lacking I take a vitamin and minerals tablets daily.
So while sticking to this diet for a year, I have dropped from 40 stone plus (over 560lbs / 250kg) to as I weighed myself this morning 25 stone 10lbs (357lbs / 162kg), my goal is a fit and healthy 18 stone. As of 9 days ago I have began doing light weight lifting daily for the first time in nearly a decade.
It's not been easy, I am always hungry and I've craved pizzas, ice cream, sweets, hell, sugar in general. What has helped me, I think is that, as I've always been hungry, regardless of what I eat, I could feel stuffed after eating an enormous pizza to myself and yet I'd still feel hungry, when I was younger and active, this wasn't an issue, I was always busy and exercising so my weight was controlled, but, when that all stopped with depression, the weight piled on, so, realising I'll be hungry if I eat 5000 calories or 1200 calories, with the right mindset, I simply chose to eat less.
I have tried dropping down to 1000 and even 800 calories a day, but found that, while I didn't feel much hungrier, I simply had no energy, so moved about less, my mood suffered and I didn't lose as much weight.
A big thing for me was documenting my weight loss and sharing it with my family as a way to hold myself accountable, so I would photograph the scales 3 times and take an average if they were fluctuating and share these with my family, I'll be honest, if it fluctuated up some times, I deleted those, there was no point dwelling on it and it would only hold me back, despite keeping the same diet for a year, there were weeks where I didn't lose or even gained weight, I discarded these as they were not helpful, I'd advise everyone else to do the same.
I feel 'cheat' days don't help (when I said cheat days earlier I referred to that I may have a second roll or an extra sausage, not a snack), what keeps me going and avoiding all that food is that it's been so long since I last had it, at first it was great, I've gone a day, then two, three days without anything extra, days quickly became weeks, then months and now it's nearly been a year and over for some (pizza etc) and that helps to keep at it, as it's not just been 3 or 4 days since I had some chocolate, which is easy to dismiss and give into, no, if it has been weeks or months, breaking this would be letting myself and yourself down, so, stay strong and avoid them.
At the end of the day, if I can do it, anyone can, don't cheat and find a goal you want more than that pizza or ice cream etc. Save up and buy yourself something you'll be able to use when you reach your goal, don't put it off to buy until you reach it, buy it to use as inspiration to keep going, for me, I want to get back into cycling and Airsoft, well, I have a bike already, so I decided over the last year to build myself an Airsoft gun, it sits across from me in my lounge. It helps me when I'm craving food to see the object I'll be able to go out and enjoy using when I make it there, I've still got another 7-8 stone to go, but having it slowly being built as I lose weight has really helped me keep on track (even if it may look like a waste of money to others, if it helps you, it's worth every penny).
So, I think that's about it, I just thought that by sharing my story, it may help others to see that it can be done and they can too.
If how I've gone about it and what's helped me helps or inspires others to try or continue to lose weight and get healthier, then great, if it doesn't, never mind, it's worked for me and I'll be keeping it up into year two in a few days time.
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