My weight loss and what has been working for me

tldr: calories in < calories out is how weight loss works, if you aren't interested in changing how you think about food then stop reading. Eating less is how I lost weight.

I turned 30 this past year. I also weighed 280lbs in July of last year. It was the heaviest I have ever been, and I wanted to make a change. I was eating 3 meals a day, and large meals too. Having seconds and thirds at a given meal happened all the time. I now weigh 249 with a goal weight of 230. Here is what I did and some rules I am following.

1. 96oz of water minimum, aim for more
2. Water, Coffee, Tea (no sugar) are only drinks allowed. (I occasionally have a few beers once a month or so)
3. Aim for 1 helping for meals, 2nds is fine some days depending on the meal, 3rds is never an option
4. No deserts (not a problem for me because I don't have a sweet tooth)
5. No snacking (this was harder but not impossible since I would normally just eat huge meals anyway, leaving not much room for snacking)
6. If I am struggling with hunger, I drink coffee or water depending on the time of day/night.

I just started thinking about food differently, food is fuel not entertainment. Not going to lie, the first 60 days were brutal and I went to bed hungry for 60 straight days. My savior is proteins based foods, I love tuna fish, lunch meat, protein bars. I have been leaning on those heavily. I also stopped eating 3 or 4 sandwiches at a time. That is like 8+ slices of bread per meal, sort of crazy to think I used to eat like that. Having a 0 carb diet is a special type of impossible for me, most of what my wife cooks our family for dinner involves bread and pasta, but my thinking is that if I can limit the "carb meal" to one of my meals each day, then I am better off then I was. Diets put a lot of stress on me to have a diet that I don't see as natural or easy to maintain. I am not sure if what I am doing could be called a diet or not, but I do think about every food item before I eat it, and I ask "is this worth it". Here are some examples, Oreos have a serving size of 3 cookies and total 160 calories (no one every just eats 3, cmon now), most people, I imagine, will eat at least 8 at a time which would total about 426 calories. Insane! Especially when they don't even fill you up. Pair that with a can of coke at 140 calories and now you are almost 600 calories for a non-meal. There are calculators you can find online that tell you the approximate number of calories per day to lose weight. Most of those land you somewhere around 1500-2000, depends on your weight. So the question is, "is 8 Oreos and a coke" worth 1/3 of your meals for the day or 600/1700 calories or whatever for the day. Answer is no, and it makes it easier to avoid. Just yesterday I found myself staring at the open pantry, and I wasn't even sure what I was looking for. So I asked myself, do I need more food, or do I just want it? The answer was that I just wanted chips, so I just walked away.

The last thing that has stuck with me is when someone said "if you want to lose 50lbs, you do it by losing 1lb a week for 50 weeks", maybe the weight loss graph isn't as linear as that, but the idea that it is not a destination, but instead a journey. It is a change in your day to day lifestyle that is sustained over a long period of time. It took me 6+ months to lose 30lbs, and I have 20lbs to go with half of the year left. Eat less, have more meaningful calories, and drink more water...and coffee, lots of coffee.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

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