After gaining 20 pounds since the pandemic began, today - since the end of October - I've lost 25 pounds!

Stats: 40'sM | 5’11 | SW: 310 | CW: 285 | GW: 170

About a year ago, after getting diagnosed with a few conditions related to my weight and general diet, I began a journey to health. I made two dietary changes at the time - reducing weekly alcohol intake and cutting out refined sugars - which made an immediate impact on my health. At the time, I lost about 10 pounds. I was off to a great start.

And then the pandemic hit. I got lazy with limiting alcohol and the refined sugars made their way back into my diet. Slowly, I gained the 10 pounds I had lost back. And then, before I realized it, I had gained another 10 pounds. I had started at 300. Dropped to 290. And within 7 months, I had landed at 310.

What was driving the overall weight gain was primarily consumption of red wine. A glass of wine with dinner turned into a bottle. A bottle on Friday night turned into two. Two bottles of wine in the system led to ordering in delicious but unhealthy food at 10pm on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night.

While I didn't and don't consider myself an alcoholic, I was definitely abusing alcohol on those evenings and they led to making other poor decisions for my health. There ended up being a reckoning moment, which I won't go into detail here, but it resulted in deciding to walk away from alcohol over night at the end of October. I haven't had a drop of alcohol since.

The immediate effect was lower blood pressure and better sleeping. Through November and December, I lost 10 pounds. Then, at the end of December, seeing that I returned to my starting point from a year ago - 300 pounds - I was inspired to transform my entire diet.

Since the end of December, I've lost another 15 pounds!

While I can get into the philosophy behind it, ultimately, I've made the following significant changes since the end of December:

• Remaining alcohol free (as well as other intoxicants like cannabis
• Cut out refined sugars and wheat-based flours
• 20 out of my 21 meals each week are plant-based
• I allow myself one cheat meal every week - usually Friday night (you really need to give yourself this break!)
• Breakfast is a green smoothie (I use a variation on this one with unsweetened almond milk instead of coconut water, blueberries instead of pineapple, and a tablespoon of this vegan protein powder)
• Lunch is a leftover from dinner - typically a nutrient dense curry like this (I almost always add a 1/2 cup of spinach to it and sometimes a 1/2 cup of cooked quinoa since rice takes too long to cook at lunch, unless I made leftover rice)
• My favourite regular dinner is this sweet potato miso macro bowl
• Outside of the almond milk in my smoothie, I only drink water and I drink it constantly throughout the day
• Finally, I walk 5-7km everyday

I'm using Happy Scale to track my weight loss. I measure daily. I love it because it shows your overall trend line. So even on days when your weight fluctuates up, it gives you reassurance that on the whole, you're trending down.

I'm using AutoSleep to track my sleep health. The difference in quality of sleep between when I was drinking / eating poorly and now is nothing short of jaw dropping. My heart rate dips so much lower now and I have hours of deep sleep and little light sleep, whereas before it was the opposite.

Philosophically, the one thing I'll share is that I fundamentally have changed my relationship with food. For so long, it has been about hedonism. I never wanted to spare myself the opportunity for 21 moments a week (and then some) of joy. Now, I look at food as fuel for a healthy body and medicine for undoing 20 years of incredible abuse I've done to my body.

It ultimately took me adding up how much life I could expect to lose by not addressing my dietary choices. The number was staggering when I subtracted it from the average life expectancy. At that point, it really came down to choosing to die young and unhealthy by maintaining my habits of 20 years or choosing to live long and healthily.

I couldn't be happier with the choice I've made. There's a long journey ahead of me still, but my motivation is strong and am confident about navigating obstacles and setbacks as they arise.

Thanks for reading. Keep you posted!

submitted by /u/WeisGuyCAN
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