Some stats before I begin:
6'2 27M,
Today is my anniversary of when I first got serious with dieting and losing weight, so I thought it would be a good idea to share my journey so far and the lessons I've learnt over the last 6 years. Before I saw success though I struggled with losing weight for over 5 years, always having bursts of motivation to act or grand fantasies of impossible situations occurring that would fix my problems. Diets never lasted more than a week.
In March 2015, after some challenging goals in my life turned out not so hard to accomplish, I decided to try losing weight for longer than a week. As each week passed I progressively got more involved in the process; starting using MyFitnessPal, clean eating, no soda and signed up to a gym. It was surreal and I thought I was unstoppable.
In the 8 months of losing 40kg/88lbs I had been extremely strict on myself, so strict that food was not enjoyable. There was no creativity or variance, I was just on the grind waiting to reach my goal weight with weekly weigh-ins and my food logging streak keeping me in check. So inevitably it all started to fall apart.
The first big hit was losing my 180 day streak on MyFitnessPal. Next I was just slowly adding back soda into my diet, not sugar free but the full stuff. After that I stumbled and started to yoyo between 106kg/233lbs and 110kg/242lbs, and slowly and surely the difference got higher and it became harder to bring myself to lose weight again. I eventually stopped weighing myself and started to slowly reintroduce all the bad food I had deprived myself of. It snowballed, slowly undoing all the good that I had done. It then reached a point where I stopped caring and I ballooned to 158kg/348lbs by August 2018. Nowhere during this point of time did I address my core issues with food and what I used it for, nor did I really know at the time what those issues were.
Come one Saturday morning in August after having a 7 day streak ordering takeout I weighed myself and saw 157.9kg/348lbs and I knew I never wanted to see myself ever reach 160kg/352lbs and again picked myself up and started trying to lose weight again. Steeling myself and fought through the inner turmoil and torture of failing at something I had previously succeeded in. Parents were worried as they saw the patterns, this was just another “burst of motivation” and in a week I’d be back to old habits. But I went beyond a week, then it was a month and by Nov 2018 I was down to 144kg/317lbs
However I was just repeating what failed before, I had gone back to old tactics when I lost that 14kg/31lbs. No Soda, No Takeout, No Fun. So when a small vacation happened in November 2018 where there would be takeout, soda and fun I was hit with a dilemma. I came to a decision to just enjoy myself for the couple days away and get back on task after it. However that never happened and I fell again and just like that I was on my way back to 158kg/348lbs. By mid-February 2019 I was 147kg/323lbs, doomed to be in this never ending loop till I had an epiphany; Why was I trying so hard? Why was I trying to be perfect at losing this weight? It was clearly failing. Why don’t I just take it slow?
March and the anniversary of starting this back in 2015 was fast approaching and I had the brilliant idea of competing with my former self but I knew I couldn’t be as strict, I knew I had to take this easy. So I tried losing weight with as little stress as possible. I guesstimated calories, tried to eat within 2,000 kcal a day and never went stupid. Kept a cheat meal once a week so I could still enjoy takeout, started to weigh myself weekly and I still allowed myself to drink diet soda, keeping vices that made each day bearable.
I then lost 20kg/44lbs in a comfortable 23 weeks, losing about ~0.9kg/2lbs each week. My first roadblock was week 24 where I didn’t gain or lose anything, while this deterred me I knew I wasn’t trying my hardest and knew what I could do for results. I double downed, started counting calories again with the LoseIt App and tried to find out what went wrong. Over the next 2 weeks weight loss resumed till I stumbled into another problem. I found I was eating too much of my budget for breakfast/lunch and didn’t feel satisfied with what I had remaining for dinner. This is when I tried out intermediating fasting. I did a 16:8 split and it helped me budget out each meal and allowed me to dip my toes into meal prepping. This roughly lasted 6 weeks before I went on holidays. I was sad to break the schedule but after the vacation I felt I had learnt the lessons I needed and stopped fasting.
After coming back from vacation this time and going overboard with food I expected to see a weight increase but surprisingly didn’t. This gave me some ideas and got me into researching “re-feeds”. The outcome was a refeed once a month where I had no calorie limited, I didn’t count the calories of the day and a day where I could go stupid and try and satiate any of the cravings I had been having the past month. These refeeds aligned with board game nights with mates and made it so I could enjoy good company and good food at the same time without regret. What made me start doing these was realizing that there was no deadline to losing the weight, there was no reason why I couldn’t just enjoy myself for a day. At worst it would set me back a week at most and in the grand scheme of things that's nothing.
By the end of 2019 I had matched my personal best of 106.3kg and was ready to embark into uncharted territory until Christmas holidays set me back 3kg/6.6lbs….however instead of getting deterred I problem solved and saw what I could change or add....I had been squandering my gym membership, which I had been still paying for monthly since 2015...It was then, 5 days out from the new years, where I started a dumbbell full body workout routine. I increased my calories to 2,000/day and every other day I’d workout.
I’ve done my best to work out at least 3 times a week and all I can think is I should have started earlier. Working out has been incredible. Between the post workout feeling, being able to eat more, better quality sleep, waking up being easier and just feeling better has been so surreal. Watching my arms get bigger, feeling stronger and seeing my man boobs transition from saggy tits to actual pecs has been insane. I made an incredibly smart decision by buying adjustable weight dumbbells and a bench before the pandemic hit that allowed me to explore the wonders of weight lifting. Right now I’m enjoying low weight, high rep push/pull body workouts with low rest time and doing my best to avoid leg day due to working in a job that has me on my feet for 6hrs at a time. I won’t get too into what I do for exercise besides that due to how limited my knowledge is, but will list some books and resources that helped me at the end of this post.
Covid finally caught up to me in mid-2020 when I went for a holiday at home during June, I was at my lowest ever of 97.6kg before this and just lost motivation and sight of my goals (mainly due to losing myself in a mmo). History was repeating itself and what unraveled my success back in 2015 was going to happen again as I ended the year at 106.6kg, this terrified me. To combat this I used the power of a new years resolution to kick myself back awake and I attempted a 30 day challenge to remain on task. This involved daily weigh-ins to keep me accountable, a new gym workout routine and being back on a 16:8 split intermediate fast. The 30 day challenge only lasted 22 days due to a holiday but it was enough to get me back on task.
Currently I’m back on being relaxed about dieting. I’m not tracking my calories but generally know how much I can eat a day. Speaking of eating, I despise food prep. I hate having to think about what I have to eat, spend time acquiring the ingredients and cooking it up. The early parts of dieting was all about finding quick things to make but even that got tedious. I solved this by paying the premium and have a weekly subscription to a meals service (mymusclechef) that gives me 12 meals/week, 2 meals/day and a day off for a cheat meal, these meals cost around $10 AUD each and average around 550 calories per meal. Breakfast was solved with a 300~ calorie breakfast bar and then later replaced with oats. I still have my vices of too many Pepsi max cans a day and 1 250~300ml can of full sugar energy drink. I then augment my day with a whey protein milkshake and some packaged snacks, usually aiming for around 160~180g total protein/day.
Example Day:
Breakfast: 450 calories~
- Protein Bar/Cooked Oats with milk + Energy Drink
Lunch: 500~600 calories
- My muscle chef meal
- Can of Pepsi max (1~3 calorie diet soda)
Dinner: 500~600 calories
- My muscle chef meal
- Can of Pepsi max (1~3 calorie diet soda)
Snacks: 400~500 calories
- Whey protein shake
- Cheese and Crackers on the go/assorted packaged snack
- Can of Pepsi max (1~3 calorie diet soda)
So this is about 1850~2150 calories, maybe peaking towards 2300. With how much I exercise I could probably get away with eating more. Ideally I should be cutting out the soda and energy drinks but I keep my vices to prevent myself from going insane, I don’t drink alcohol so I have room in my health budget for things that aren't good for me. In addition I have a Vitamin D, Omega3 and multivitamin supplement. What I listed here is what I found best works for me after years of experimenting and now I have a diet that I enjoy, can consistently do every day and is malleable for change. A cheat meal day usually replaces the two muscle chef meals and the rest is the same.
In closing, the real challenge I faced losing weight is the mental strain and burden that one goes through when losing weight. To me, food was an avenue of escapism, when life got too hard to handle, food was there with its warm embrace to make me feel good even if temporarily. It got to the point where I even started feeling at ease after I ordered takeout. While what I’ve written are the things I did to help lose weight it hasn’t expressed the mental battle within myself that has taken place and still takes place to this day. I’ve been to the darkest parts of my mind twice and managed to pull myself out of it, the second time was a damn miracle but that inner voice inside my head wouldn’t shut up about wanting to keep trying, and that’s what I did. I kept trying. I took 12 years of trying but I eventually found my way.
Rules I've incorporated into my life.
- Don't view dieting as punishment. I still have vices such as an energy drink and a couple cans of Pepsi Max a day.
- Strive for consistency over perfection. Don't let a bad weigh-in day halt or revert progress, same goes for blowing your calorie budget or moments of weakness. A 1-day set back is nothing. Don’t be defined by the mistakes you make.
- Think about it everyday. Meal prep, gym, logging. I weigh in daily now to always keep myself accountable.
- Make time for cheat meals (1/week) and cheat days (1/month). Allow yourself to enjoy all types of foods.
- Don't set deadlines for goals: Losing weight is already stressful as is and if you find yourself not on "schedule" to be a set weight at a set point in time it just leads to unnecessary stress or worse, punishing yourself to try and reach that goal. Making your goal weight a week or two later isn't the end of the world.
- Diet is forever, what you are doing now is what you’ll be doing at your goal weight. So find something that works, is comfortable and malleable.
- Make time to workout, it's literally the greatest thing ever.
I did a lot of research on working out and read a few self-help books. The following helped me achieve what I did:
- Jeff Nippard’s youtube channel
- The Ultimate Guide to Body Recomposition by Jeff Nippard
- ATHLEAN-X Youtube channel
- Subtle Art of not giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
- Everything is f*cked by Mark Manson
- Burn the Fat, feed the muscle by Tom Venuto
- TDEE calculator
- LoseIt Calorie Counting APP
- Libra Weight Tracking APP.
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