Hello. Just passing by. I wanted to share my story of how I lost 55 lbs in 4 months.

Hi. My name is... well, you can call me Pixel.

I'm 27 years old, I'm a man from Brazil and I currently weigh 281 lbs (127.4 kg). Aprox. 4 months ago, I weighted 336 lbs (152.5 kg). My target weight is 220 lbs (100 kg).

I lost 55 lbs (25 kg) by sitting around all day in front of my computer browsing social media, watching youtube videos, chatting. You know, the usual. My point is, I didn't do an ounce of physical exercise. Not one minute of cardio or weight lifting.

What I DID do was take care of my mental health. Not coincidentally, 4 months ago I started seeing a new psychiatrist, who updated all my medication. He took away outdated meds, prescribed new ones for different aspects of my psyche. I won't go into much detail, but let's say I went from constant mental breakdowns to complete self-control. But most important of all, he made me recognize that I had an eating disorder.

I was a compulsive eater. And so he did the "unthinkable": He prescribed me a medication for migraines that had the side effect of being an appetite supressant. It's called Topiramate, and in the first month, it made me literally reject food.

But that wasn't all I did. I knew simply not eating would have the opposite effect. And in a strike of luck, I ended up seeing an ad for weight loss from a celebrity personal trainer on youtube. I won't go into detail, but in summary, I took 2 important lessons from him:

1 - do not under-eat;

2 - do something called a "carb-cycle".

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. That sounds like a solid plan.

The first couple of weeks were easy. The topiramate made sure I could control what I ate, since I could just force myself to eat more. And Carb-cycling is just that, eating more carbs on certain days and less on others.

Then I decided to make a decision. My mom offered me some chocolate icecream. and for the first time, I rejected it. Ever since then... I never ate icecream again. In fact, I never consciously ate any processed sugar again.

I know what you're thinking: That's an extreme decision. But I was emboldened by the appetite supressant, and I knew that. And I made the decision to "ride the wave", to take advantage of the medication to ban sugar from my life indefinitely - just like I had given up cigarettes and alcohol before that.

For two weeks, I suffered from withdrawal symptoms. Irritability, sadness, lack of motivation. After that, I was back to normal. And I don't miss sweets anymore.

Right now, my only source of sugars are fruits and starches, or flours on high-carb days depending on the carb-cycle. I refuse to eat any kind of sweets, including but not limited to cakes, pies, candies, icecream, sodas, cookies, you name it. I don't know if I'll ever go back to eating them when I reach my target weight.

Am I advocating for those sacrifices? Maybe. For the use of Topiramate, I think that's up to professionals to decide. But I hope my story can give you some perspective on things.

Thank you for reading.

Edit: I can't stress this enough: do not self-medicate. Topiramate worked for me, but NEVER self-medicate. I'm serious.

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