Hello you,
It’s you, fifteen months into your future. Time being what it is, I know that you won’t be able to read these words for another fifteen months, but I wanted to get this all out.
You’re about to give the whole “lose weight” thing one more try. We’ve tried before. Three times in the past, we watched what we ate, we got on the bike, we watched pounds come off, but we always lost motivation or discipline after crossing the boundary from obese down to overweight, and the pounds slowly crept back up. Between those major efforts, we’d sometimes pay lip-service to the idea of tracking calories, but we’d never stay on that wagon. Whereas before we started from 270 or 280 pounds, this time we were starting from 320. Before, we hadn’t been happy with our body, but we had finally become large enough that it was negatively impacting the rest of our life.
You wanted to go to Germany to see the Christmas markets. You’ve just decided against that, because you know that you won’t properly fit into the airplane seats. And so, you just made a bargain with yourself to get down to 260 pounds before your planned trip to England in the spring. You want to be able to enjoy that vacation as much as possible. I’m glad that you found that motivation, though for reasons outside your control you won’t be taking that trip either. And yes, I recognize that there were other factors too: the lower back pain that you feel all day, the feeling of being way too big for bus seats, the slow realization that your 2XL shirts are getting too small and that you’ll need 3XL soon, the knowledge that you’re going to need a new belt if you keep gaining weight, that your mother can’t get her arms around you when she’s giving you a hug, all of those things and more. But we both know that the trip was the feather that tipped the scales into motivating you to try again.
I know that you feel hopeless. You think that this attempt to lose weight is going to end like all of the others. You’re going to crack, you’re going to stop tracking, you’re going to backslide, you’re going to fail. I am you from the future, so I know that you’re thinking those thoughts. Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, you’re certain that you’re going to be crushed again before this is over, just like you’ve been crushed each time before. But here’s the best thing about you: like Sisyphus, you’re going to try to push that boulder up the hill anyways, in the hope that maybe this time it might somehow be different.
On November 17, 2019, you’re going to log the following into Fitbit: 1,040 calories from Tostitos Bite Sized Rounds, 450 calories from cheddar cheese, 180 calories from cashew milk, 570 calories from Mini-Wheats, 315 calories from bananas, 100 calories from habanero Salsa, and 240 calories from Apple & Cinnamon oatmeal. It’s going to total 2,895 calories, 121.7 grams of fat, 31.3 grams of fiber, 439.9 grams of carbs, 4,668 mg of sodium, and 78.9 grams of protein. That’s not exactly the most auspicious start to a diet, especially since you almost certainly underrated the calories from the cheese by about 500 or more, but it’s the thought and effort that counts. Trust me on that.
From that point forward, you’re going to be accountable for what you eat every day, over 450 days worth. There will be good days, days when you eat to your goal calorie deficit and feel full and satisfied. There will be bad days, days when you go over your planned deficit. There will be terrible days, days when you eat a surplus of a thousand calories or more. You’ll feel guilty for what you’ve done, but you won’t hide it from yourself. You’ll dutifully log it, and you’ll remember that even a 2,000 calorie surplus will be balanced out within 2-4 days of maintaining your planned deficit.
Today, day 453, will be a fairly typical day for food logging. 300 calories of almonds, 105 calories from ground flaxseed, 144 calories from apples, 241 calories from cherries, 600 calories from Greek yogurt, 520 calories from chicken, 52 calories from maple syrup, 240 calories from oatmeal, 105 calories from a banana, and 174 calories from bacon. It’s about 2,481 calories, 84.8 grams of fat, 40.5 grams of fiber, 304.4 grams of carbs, 1947.4 mg of sodium, 136.9 grams of protein. More or less, give or take, that is a normal day for us. That’s one of the lessons that you internalize along the way: for you, it’s OK not to be perfect so long as you’re directionally correct. Here’s an example of that: you’ll go through about two liters of unsweetened vanilla cashew milk a week, and you won’t bother logging any of it, because it’s literally 25 calories a day and is basically a rounding error on the other things.
You’ll mostly stop eating burgers and nachos and pasta and bread. They’re just not filling enough, which makes it hard to keep to the calorie plan. Your diet these days is mostly some combination of chicken, pork, Greek yogurt, fresh or frozen fruit (blueberries/blackberries/raspberries/cherries/bananas/apples/kiwis), dried fruit (dates, dried cherries, raisins), seeds and nuts (cashews, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, ground flaxseed), oatmeal, and cheese (cheddar, Havarti, brie, camembert). You’ll eat other things as well of course – you’ll go through a phase of eating a lot of carrots and hummus, you have dark chocolate fairly frequently, and things like ramen noodles, popcorn, rice pudding pepperoni, eggs, jerky, veggie burgers, and protein bars are going to show up in your grocery bags every so often. You are going to make a FANTASTIC fruit cake in December 2020. It’ll be like 500 calories a slice, and totally worth it. You drink a lot of coffee and Diet Pepsi.
Some nights you’ll lie awake in bed, aching for a burger. You’ll hear and read other people talk about how much they get grossed out by the things that they used to enjoy, and you’ll envy them. In September, you’ll go to the Five Guys downtown and get a burger, and it’s going to be heavenly. You’re going to have a bag of chips on Super Bowl Sunday this year, and they’ll be incredibly tasty. And Lindt milk chocolate will literally bring tears to your eyes at how good it tastes. I’m sorry. The only small consolation I can give is the thought that perhaps those sorts of things taste better because of their rarity in your diet.
Now, here’s possibly the most shocking thing: in April, down to 260 pounds, you start a Couch to 5k plan. Yes, you, running. You, who hasn’t run more than a kilometer in his life. You who probably haven’t run a total of five kilometers in the past twenty years. It’s going to be hard. But seven weeks into the eight week program, you’re going to push through and do it. You’ll then start increasing distance by about 10% per week. In July, you’ll run 10k for the first time. And then you’ll build on that. You’re going to run over 250 kilometers in the month January 2021. And no, you’re not going to move somewhere warm and dry. You’re going to be putting in those kilometers outdoors during the Canadian winter. You’ll eventually find yourself on a three day cycle. Days one and two you’ll run 10k+. Day three, you’ll go for a much shorter run, typically only 2k, and then you’ll walk to get the rest of your 10k steps, and then you’ll lift weights and do a bit of bodyweight fitness with push-ups and squats.
You’re going to reach your weight loss goal in February 2021, and you’ll weigh 190 pounds. At least, you’ll weigh that for a day, and then the natural fluctuations of your weight will pop you back up to 192 or 193 for the rest of the week. And that’s OK! You’re going to see much larger and far more discouraging day to day weight fluctuations over the next fifteen months. Trust me on that. Now the maintenance begins, and we’re going to try to keep between 185 and 195 pounds.
At the age of 38, you finally have something like the kind of body that you wanted to have when you were 18. It’s not perfect. There’s some loose skin. You’ll still have a bit of stubborn belly fat. In spite of your efforts, you’ll almost certainly lost some muscle mass, particularly in your legs. But we’re working on it. The back pain is gone. You’ll be wearing large sized clothes – not 2XL, not XL, L for Large. You'll need to get new notches punched in your belt. And mom can put her arms all the way around you when she hugs you – she just about cried when she realized that she was able to do that again.
I know you, since I was you, and I know that you’re looking at that 2,895 calories in that you’ve logged and thinking that this time is doomed to failure like every other time before it. I wish that there were ways to get this message to you, to tell you that holy cow, we did it, at least for now. But ultimately, I don’t need to tell you that, do I? I know that you’re going to figure it out for yourself. Your good choices will outweigh your bad choices, and every month you’ll shed a few more pounds and get into a little better shape. This time, you’re going to succeed in getting that boulder to the top of the hill.
With love,
Future You
P.S.: The hair and growth in the picture? That’s a long story that’s not really about you at all. You’re not going to make it to the barber much in 2020, let’s just leave it at that. . .
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