[TL;DR I changed my flawed perspective on the “right” and “wrong” way to lose weight, and I got to the lowest weight I’ve been in my adult life in one month (and still going strong). Also might have accidentally changed my life.]
Some quick background information. I (22M, 6’1) was 204 lbs (92.5 kg) at my heaviest, because of my own poor habits that I developed in college. After I graduated, I was able to shed 20 lbs (9 kg) of excess weight fairly quickly simply by cutting out unhealthy cafeteria food and snacks. This put me right at 184 lbs (83.4 kg), where I’ve been for over half a year. I consider 184 lbs to be my starting weight for this post since I wasn't really on a weight loss "journey" until this very month of September.
Now here are some even bigger facts about me:
I will not count calories.
I will not go to the gym.
I will not cut foods out of my life that I enjoy.
To be clear, I’m quite capable of doing all of those things, but I just know myself well enough to know that those things make me unhappy and I eventually default to my old ways. But instead of using that as an excuse to stay unhealthy, I decided to finally examine the root of these issues. WHY do I not do any of those things? Without excuses?
I don’t count calories because I am obsessed with numbers. My entire life I’ve been analytical, so if you give me a system, I will absolutely prioritize finding a way to perfect it. That has served me well in the majority of cases, but in the case of calories, it means I have an extremely unhealthy approach to it. I start caring more about the numbers than if I’m actually eating enough food for energy, and I’m tempted to go far under my deficit just to speed things up.
I don’t go to the gym because it gives me anxiety. I work from home (long before the pandemic) and that makes me happy because the fewer strangers I have to see in a day, the better. I adore being physically present for my loved ones and friends, but I can’t function if I feel like my privacy is being invaded by people I don’t know, and that’s how I feel at the gym. I know that literally nobody at the gym cares enough about me to even look in my direction, but it doesn’t change my feelings that fitness is a very personal thing to me and I simply don’t want to do it in front of others.
I don’t cut foods out of my life because I don’t respond well to limitations. If I know in my head that I can’t have something, I’ll make it my priority to find a way to have it. Again, that usually works in my benefit as it’s very useful in my job, but the negative sides present themselves around food. I’m cutting out carbs all week? Then I’m going to have pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the next week. I’m throwing away an unnecessary box of packaged snacks? Then I’m going to drive to the store, buy another box, and eat it. Today.
So knowing those things about myself, this month I re-evaluated my approach and accepted some harsh truths about my unhealthy style of living.
I don’t need to count calories, I need to eat less. So to hell with the food scales and MyFitnessPal! Instead, for the entire month of September, I simply ate less. I stopped eating three meals a day because it’s not necessary for me, and more importantly, I let myself get hungry before eating. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it was actually pretty revolutionary because I had a huge realization: I have never let myself get hungry in my entire adult life before this month. I’ve just always stuck to three meals a day that way I was never hungry, but this month I’ve just waited until I was hungry, and then found food. Suddenly I was skipping entire meals that I didn’t need, which really adds up if you do that every single day.
I don’t need to go to the gym, I need to be active. I have a desk job and none of my hobbies involve going outside. Therefore, my sedentary lifestyle doesn’t really burn much fat at all. So for the month of September, I vowed to do something active every single day (except Sundays). However, I don’t have time to do this once my day starts. It’s not an excuse, it’s just not logistically possible for me to break up or end my day with an hour of physical activity. So I found a solution: get up earlier! Again, this seems simple, but once again it was somewhat life-changing. I now wake up every day at 6 AM that way I can jog (every other day) or do simple bodyweight exercises (every other day). My big realization was simple: I love jogging. Not in a casual way, either. I sometimes even feel motivated to jog on my off day, which is insane considering last month I would find any and every excuse to stay in bed through my entire off day.
I don’t need to cut foods out of my life, I need to eat less garbage. Fat tastes good. Salt tastes good. Grease tastes good. Therefore, pizza is my ideal food. Burgers are my ideal food. Fries are my ideal food. Do these foods do me any favors? Absolutely not. But I simply derive enjoyment from eating them, therefore I continued to do so all throughout this month. But for the month of September, instead of making them “regular” meals, I recognized them for what they are: fattening foods. This was yet again a bit of a breakthrough in my thinking: I’m not going to get fat from eating fatty foods! This definitely sounds counter-intuitive, but the wording was really important to me. I get fat from overeating fatty foods. I get fat from only eating fatty foods. I get fat from eating nothing but fatty foods. So if I have pizza four times in a week, guess what that’s going to do to me? Literally nothing. Four meals is not enough to derail fat loss on their own. My real problem is that I was combining those four meals a week with 10-17 other meals every single week, none of which were healthy. Thinking back on that . . . I was eating. So. Much. Food. And my problem was that I wasn't taking responsibility for it.
So having made these changes for September, my grand result was . . . losing 8 lbs this month. 3.6 kg. 184 lbs >176 lbs. Literally nobody noticed. It doesn’t show when I’m clothed. But here’s why it’s a huge deal to me anyway: For the first time in half a year, I did SOMETHING about my weight, and it worked. And I did it my way.
I’m still losing weight by the way, and it’s not because I tried to force myself to follow my misconceived “right way” of losing weigh; it’s because I actually changed my life. I’m now an active person. I now eat only as much as I need. I now have more energy than I've had since I was a kid. So weight aside, the real victory is clear to me: I’m a healthier person than I was last month.
On to month 2!
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