Hello Everyone,
I’ve been a long-time lurker and decided it was time to share my lifelong yo-yo journey with weight loss. Long post up ahead so brace yourselves for a history of my relationship with food and the realizations and epiphanies that helped me change my behavior and weight.
I’ve been some form of obese or overweight as long as I can remember. As a child, I was the fat kid but the sunny happy kind with a kind friend circle, so I got through school fairly unscathed by bullying and barely noticing I was fat. My mom and older relatives brushed off my weight as puppy fat and told me it’d go away as I grew taller. Cut to 17 years old and still 5’2”, my weight wasn’t going anywhere. I was just under obese so while doctors encouraged me to lose weight, it was never stern warnings or ultimatums. I was active, energetic, but boy did I love food.
Gary Chapman listed 5 love languages in his book, but he should have honestly added a sixth because that’s the love language I speak. My mom would reward me with food, console me with food, celebrate with food and punish me by depriving me of it (I was never starved, it was usually treats and sweets that were taken away). To this day, when my 28-year-old, barely awake grown ass plods down to the kitchen at 10 am, my mom greets me with “Good morning canifixyousomething?”
It’s the only way I know to express love. Every guy I’ve dated has had me making him cookies or some other baked good. Need to apologize to a coworker? Here’s a donut. Want to thank a friend for checking up on me? Let me buy you lunch. I have realized that I express myself through food and my life revolves around it. A couple of years ago I visited my aunt in a new city and she asked me if I had scoped out the area for restaurants we should try. It was her city but she just new I’d know the food scene better than her. I was offended but of course, I had indeed scoped out the area for restaurants we should try.
Being Indian, I lived at home for way longer than what’s expected. I studied in a college and university and worked my first job while living with my folks, so by the time I finally had to move for my second job, I was 24 and kinda chubby. I had a major weightloss breakthrough at 21 where I used a combination of starving myself and running 5Ks 4 times a week to drop 25 kgs (55 lbs), which I promptly gained back in the next year after slipping back into my old habits. I gained about the same amount back but I realize I was lucky for not gaining double the amount as I see happen so often.
At my new job and living by myself in a tiny apartment some ways outside the city (cheaper rent), I pretty much stuck to my old habits but within a couple of months, colleagues noticed I was losing weight rapidly. The combination of not having enough money to buy myself junk and the daily long commute which left me too tired to eat anything after work left me noticeably slimmer. I’d still eat whatever was available to me at work, I’m talking birthday cake twice a week and after meeting donuts nearly everyday.
I hated living alone so the next year I moved in with my aunt for company and to save on rent and guess what piled on again, and fast! That’s right, about 20 pounds of weight that had fallen off effortlessly the previous year. That coupled with one of the worst breakups I’ve ever had left me emotionally eating and drinking my way into full throttle obesity. I dieted on and off for a couple of years with little success. I was active throughout as I genuinely loved exercising so that perhaps saved me from completely ballooning.
At 27, I finally decided it was time to get my act together. I realized jumping on to diets and giving up (and I give up, so easy!) wasn’t working so I would be absolutely low-key about it. Let’s start with skipping breakfast and eating only 1 dessert a day (that’s right, I was eating dessert multiple times a day), let’s start with eating lunch in my office cafeteria instead of ordering pizza or Chinese with my lunch group. I started eating lunch with a friend who brought meals her mom packed her everyday. I’d eat a simple lunch of rice and lentils with whatever protein they had that day, chicken, cottage cheese, or fish, and then do whatever for dinner.
It went on like this for a couple of months and the weight was creeping off. I say creeping because it was imperceptibly slow but it was happening. A clear sign was that I was now able to take over my aunt’s closet and wear her clothes, when I very clearly could not before. It didn’t show much on my face but my arms and chest slimmed down and I dropped a size or two.
Then came 2020 with all her fury and I moved back home to my parents house. My mom, accustomed to not cooking for me for the three years I’d been away had redirected her attention to plumping up the dogs. Animal abuse, yes, pretty much. We had long talks and arguments about how she was basically doing to our dogs what she did to me. Overfeeding us thinking it was love. Doggo now gets more protein and less cream rolls.
I was determined to keep up my streak of low key weightloss. At this point I think I would have been happy If I simply didn’t gain anything. I kept missing breakfast, and would occasionally fast the entire day if I wasn’t hungry.
I looked up whether fasting for prolonged periods was ok and came across books and lectures by Dr. Jason Fung which convinced me I’d be fine. I realize this isn’t for everyone, and is probably unhealthy for someone with medical conditions or a tendency to develop eating disorders, but for me, slipping into moderately long fasts of a day, or two, or three was easy and the weight came off fairly quickly. If I had a binge day, nothing changed, if I had a binge week, nothing changed. Most interestingly, December with the holidays and my birthday, was an entire binge month and….nothing changed. That’s right, an entire month of hot chocolate, birthday cake, cinnamon rolls, egg nog, fruit pies, roast dinner, and nothing changed.
To be clear, I am aware that most of what you lose on a fast is water weight. It's not a magic pill, it takes three days for you to lose half a pound of fat from eating absolutely nothing. But I choose to do it because the effects on my sugar cravings are far reaching. I go from having no control over needing a sugar fix to being able to walk away from a cookie, or worse, eat half a cookie and leave the rest (I've seen family and friends who could do this and couldn't wrap my head around how it was even possible).
I didn’t even realize how much weight I’d lost until I ordered myself a skirt for my birthday in a size 32 and it fell right off. Not kinda loose, completely loose. I had to exchange it for two sizes smaller. I went down an entire shoe size, I needed new underwear.
I am by no means done, I'm still not halfway where I want to be. I’ve lost around 10 kg this year but it’s been nearly painless and easy to manage so it’s what I’m sticking to. Most people can lose 10kg in a month or two but I'm happy for it to have taken a year. I still have another 14 kilos to lose till my goal weight but I’m going to take my time and let it be as slow as it needs to be.
The weightloss method for me that finally clicked was several tiny epiphanies of why I was gaining weight and realizing what were sustainable practices for me.
I learnt how weight works from observing my skinny coworkers and coworkers who were bigger than me (shows like supersized vs superskinny are also great for observing these trends). Skinny people don’t have supercharged metabolisms, they just take 4 hours to finish a caramel Frappuccino and will only have the Frappuccino. I’ll down that in 30 mins and have a muffin along with it, then watch my obese colleague have the Frappuccino in the largest size, and also get a sandwich and cheesecake. Technically we all had Starbucks but consumed vastly different amounts of calories. I know I’ll never be the sort of person who takes 4 hours to finish a drink and make do with nothing for the rest of the day, but I'm no longer the person that can't sleep if I know there's a pint of ice cream in the fridge. Healthy eating is a scale and every inch matters. Too many people give up because they don't want to eat salads for lunch and give up sugar entirely. You don't have to, eating salad once a week helps, giving up sugar in your coffee helps.
If you made it to the end of the post, I hope you found something you could relate to and inspire you to stick to your journey. Weightloss is a long-term journey and I’m finally seeing it as one. Fingers crossed I stay on my path and can put up another post 6 months from now with pictures!
Much love,
RM.
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