Before/After Pics/Weight Log. - https://imgur.com/a/EeHwvjd
So I've been meaning to post here at some point but always felt like I hadn't really lost enough to warrant my own post. 50 feels like a nice round number and is pretty substantial so here I am. When I started out my eating habits were pretty terrible - drinking soda like it was water, fast food every day, and effectively 0 physical activity daily.
After my long distance boyfriend came to visit me in March and had lost a substantial amount of weight while maintaining or building muscle something just snapped inside me, in a good way. I've always really hated my body and had a lot of negative self talk while also always harboring secret desires to have a really good body. The body standards among gay men are generally insane and it has definitely done a number on my self confidence. Anyway, after this visit from my boyfriend I made a mental promise to myself that I would make a radical change to improve my body in a way I have never been able to muster. 50 lbs later I feel like I've finally gotten started on a multi-year journey to get to where I really want to go and I still have lots to learn, but I've finally proved to myself that I can actually do it and have learned some techniques to continue to achieve my goals (to be ripped by gay standards lol).
It was easier than I expected in some ways and harder in others. My first project was to stop drinking Mountain Dew and to achieve this I was extremely forgiving with myself and allowed myself any indulgence as long as it wasn't soda of any sort. I started drinking coffee and one night ate basically an entire bag of Tate's chocolate chip cookies (~900 calories if I remember correctly lol). My singular goal was to stop drinking the soda and only allow myself water to drink. My last non-water/coffee drink was on March 25th. After around a week of eating insane foods to offset my soda sugar cravings the worst pangs were over and I could start to moderate the other sugar laden things I was eating that I wasn't as profoundly addicted to as I was the Mountain Dew. This one thing at a time approach has been really useful and I've slowly been able to add more and more complexity to what I'm doing by focusing on tackling only one problem at a time and sticking with it doggedly until I have it nipped in the bud. This may entail a couple of failures in whatever I'm trying to take care of but as long as I am ~85% competent then I feel good.
At the same time that I began to attempt to quit the soda I also began to log my calories using MyFitnessPal. Not at all with the intention of cutting anything out other than the soda for the first 10-14 days, but just with objective of building the skill of weighing and tracking. I bought a cheap food scale on Amazon and started the process. When I started I was probably eating something like 2600-3100 calories per day, more or less. After consistently avoiding soda for water for a week or so, I began to cut down on my food intake and replace my staple foods with less calorific and healthier alternatives.
The process of changing my diet has been the most complex and difficult part of the process, and a key has been patience with myself and being comfortable with the error part of a trial and error approach. I make liberal use of prepackaged meals and similar products (I eat probably 10 lean cuisine frozen pizzas a week). I am not overly concerned with macros outside of hitting my calorie goals and eating ~1 gram of protein per lb of lean body mass (for me something like 135-155 lbs based on a semi-accurate body scan). I try my best to keep salt under 2300 mg per day and am able to do so probably 80% of the time. Using products like lean cuisine meals and protein bars (shout out to think thin brownie crunch bars) supplemented with fresh fruit and veg I was able to take my daily calorie intake first to around 1800 and then 1500 for a time (maybe 1.5-2 months) and settled into a range between 1600-1800. After finding a baseline of staple foods that worked for me to get me into deficit, I tried to take an additive approach instead of a restrictive approach. Instead of totally denying myself foods I found palatable, I have been trying to add foods I haven't usually eaten and broaden my palate. An example of a goal I might set myself is to eat a piece of fruit and two servings of veg everyday for a week. Maybe I'll achieve it or maybe not but it's getting me closer to my goals. Eating enough veg, particularly green roughage is still one of my biggest diet weaknesses and I'm definitely still working on it but I am doing much better than when I started. I have been pretty ruthless about weighing every single ounce, crumb, or drop that passes my lips - even weighing prepackaged meals and adjusting the serving size based on actual weight. It's a bit annoying at first but it definitely gets easier over time. I foresee myself continuing to meticulously measure and weigh for the next 12-24 months but not forever. I am still in the process of developing an accurate internal sense of the caloric density of the foods I eat and what proper portion sizes are. Eventually I hope to have this aspect of things internalized to a point where explicit tracking isn't as necessary.
The final part of my strategy was to move meaningfully for at least 30 minutes a day every day without fail. Some days I'll do exactly 30 minutes and not a second more if I have social or work obligations but there are also days where I have gone for as long as 5.5 hours of moderate speed walking. I have an Apple Watch and the gamification aspect of closing rings is incredibly gratifying for me, and it is nice having (relatively inaccurate) feedback on what calories are being burned during exercise. My two main modes of exercise were Dance Dance Revolution and walking in the evenings. I was always a nerd growing up and as a gay kid traditional sport culture was always a bit intimidating to me. The only physical activity that ever truly clicked with me was DDR during the early 2000's arcade revival. When I received my Biden stimulus check earlier in the year, the idea of fitness was already swirling in my head so I used a portion of that money to buy a pretty nice DDR pad. It sat more or less unused for two months and I definitely felt tons of guilt about that fact, but I'm glad I had it when the time came. I went really hard on the DDR for the first few months and still play it regularly but I have dialed back its prominence in my cardio routine. Once I had been in a calorie deficit for a good amount of time, the really explosive energy needed in DDR was a bit harder to come by. Walking and listening to podcasts/music is the other physical activity I've learned to love. The Apple Watch has been a great little tool to keep track of my progress and it has been very gratifying to watch my V02 fitness go from low to above average or my average mile time come down by 3-4 minutes. I have balanced my desire for rapid weight loss with trying to listen to my body and not stress it too hard. A really hard day of an hour plus of DDR will probably be followed by a leisurely 2.5 mile walk as exercise the next day if my legs are telling me not to go too hard for example.
In June, my boyfriend and I decided to reschedule a trip to Italy we had planned for last year now that we were both vaccinated and Italy was allowing foreign entry again. This definitely gave me a huge external motivating factor and the month of June saw my exercise levels skyrocket and my average caloric intake plummet. This was not at all sustainable and I was having brain-fog, irritability, and general malaise that kinda scared me. I took a week eating at just a bit under maintenance(maybe 1900-2100 cals) after this to kind of recenter myself and refuel my body after ~3 months of pretty high calorie deficits.I eventually settled back into ~1600-1800 cals per day for the final stretch before the trip.
The trip itself was fascinating. I had done all of this work to trim down in anticipation of all the wonderful Italian food while on vacation, but when the time came I couldn't shake a slight feeling of guilt/anxiety when I was eating mind blowingly delicious food. The fact that I wasn't tracking every gram stressed me out a bit, and I felt sure that I was overeating and undoing all my months of handwork. This seems like the kind of thinking that is a precursor to disordered eating and that's not a place I really want to go so I told myself that I would eat what I wanted when I wanted without binging and deal with the consequences when I got home, using the system I know works. This helped me let go of some of the anxiety, and the amazing Italian gelato and pasta did the rest lol. I had kind of come to the idea that if I could keep the gain to under 10 lbs I would be doing very well and just didn't worry about it. Well after an amazing trip where I had whatever I wanted more less exactly when I wanted it and in the quantities I wanted I came home and weighed myself. Despite the pizza, the pasta, gelato and pastries and all the rest I had actually lost 3 pounds!!! It is easy to walk 5+ miles a day when on vacation in Europe and I suppose that offset all of the extra food I ate. I studied abroad in Italy in high school and have been back a bunch since then. I was lucky enough to make a pretty cool before and after photo in the colosseum that's in my photo album. The first pic is from 2017 and I'm not sure of my exact weight but it may be as high as 240 lbs. The second is from this year and I weigh somewhere between 175-172 there. I just got home from this trip and I'm convinced I was retaining a pretty good amount of water when I arrived home because the scale has gone down 3 pounds since I got home. Even though I know it's not true fat loss when it comes off that fast, this is the first time I've been in the 160's in my entire adult life so I'm taking the 50lb win :)
What I've learned: consistency is king. 80% competence every day is far more powerful than 100% competence intermittently over any significant stretch of time. There will be times, especially at the beginning where you are hungry af and feel like you are fighting your body. Drink your water, eat a piece of fruit or some carrots and then if you can't fight the hunger anymore its ok to eat a little more. Going to bed knowing I had tried my best and left everything on the field was empowering and positive for my mental health, even if I wasn't perfect. Also regular exercise has had a very good effect on my general disposition. I almost find it annoying how well it works after resisting for so long, but everything your doctor tells you is true - moving your body makes you feel better. It's a subtle effect that builds over time and I have never really gotten the cardio high others have discussed but the effects are marked and noticeable. Macros are important but calories are king - CICO is really powerful and flexible and while I know that as I advance more, macros and micro nutrition will become more important if you are just getting started, calorie counting is the most important tool. The rest will come with practice, research, and time. Don't rush yourself and learn to do one thing well at a time.
What's next: I want to get down to 155-160 and then do a calorie surplus and begin serious strength training. This is one huge mistake I've made which is not immediately beginning resistance training as a part of my workout routine. The benefits are insane and it is absolutely a necessary part of achieving the body type I eventually want to get to. I would encourage all men and women starting out to get into basic resistance training as soon as possible. According to the two body scans I've done I've only lost around 1.5 lbs of muscle mass during this fat loss phase but I wonder how much more dramatic my first before and after would have been if I would have put the time in to get that started near the beginning. No use crying over spilled milk though, the next best time for me to start is now so I am researching a basic PPL beginners protocol and setting up my caloric intake targets now. Once I drop just these last few pounds its time to start working on getting extra thicc :)
One last note for full disclosure - I am on ~180 mg weekly of testosterone cypionate and have been since September. Because I am so inexperienced with fitness and weight loss until now I don't have a lot to add in terms of what kind of difference this made but I definitely think it had an effect. This is my second or third attempt at weight loss and the deficit aspect feels more sustainable than ever before, though still difficult at times. I would also add that I actually started pursuing TRT as a treatment for depression. On its own it had small to moderate effects, but coupled with better(but not perfect) nutrition and exercise I feel like I am finally exiting a fog that I had been in for basically 10 years. I was tested multiple times and showed very low levels - I would only recommend doing it in consultation with a doctor and as a kind of last resort. There have been improvements but also drawbacks - my skin is hella oily and more clogged up than it was before, I have hella bacne, and I am balding faster than I was before (but that was happening either way lol). I am interested to see what effects the TRT will have when I start lifting.
Didn't really expect to write so much when I first sat down to make this post but I've basically done a medium sized essay at this point but yeah that's my story. Hopefully it's got something useful for you in it and feel free to let me know any tips for beginner lifting. Next stop muscles I hope! Excited to be done with a deficit its driving me slowly insane lol.
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