48M, 5’11”, SW 275, CW 214, GW 175
Warning: Long Post; Just wanted to detail everything for my own records as much as anything else; TL;DR Lost 39 pounds in 40 days with lots of exercise and diet control. Made my wife an I both happy with the intermediate results (still have another 40 to go).
Part 1: Why I Did It
Part 2: How I Did It
Part 3: Data (I have a lot of data from the past 11 years - maybe I need to figure out how to make it beautiful one of these days)
Part 4: Additional Thoughts
Supporting images. https://imgur.com/a/KzAN3XI
Why I Did It
On August 19th I returned from a weeklong vacation to see family and I was at 253 pounds. My wife essentially gave me what, reading between the lines, sounded like an ultimatum- lose the weight or lose her.
Before you get mad at her, let me give you some background. Above all, I take full responsibility for gaining the weight I gained and my own lack of self control led to my gain. I made bad dietary choices over the past 7 years that led to where I was at the end of the summer and she has been dropping hints for a long time that I needed to be serious about my weight and healthy.
With that out of the way, here is some backstory, going back over 8 years. A year before I met my current wife, I was in a terrible marriage (for a thousand reasons). I hadn’t weighed myself in a while and I broke down and bought a “smart” scale. I thought I weighed 250, hoped I weighed 235. My actual weight on May 27, 2013 was 267 pounds. Earlier that May, I was considering retiring from the Army and taking a job with a friend, but after I visited him, I decided that the job wasn’t right and I would stay in the Army for a while longer, but there was no way I could stay at that weight. So I started a diet and exercise regimen that most consisted of running 6 miles a day and limiting my daytime calories, while still eating fairly normal dinners (though healthier than they were previously). Although I didn’t have a specific regimen, a lot of days fit into an 18:6 intermittent fast and once I started logging everything into MyFitnessPal and all exercises in Runkeeper, it was really CICO more than anything else. Over the next 12 months and 8 days, I got down to 196 lbs. I looked great and felt great and realized I didn’t want to be married anymore. Like I said, there were lots of reasons but here is one just so you can see what I was dealing with: in 2008, while in the Army, I served for a year in Korea. I came back and had $80,000 in credit card debt from cards my ex-wife set up in my name. And she cashed $25,000 in savings bonds using the power of attorney that I had given her. And she hadn’t paid the mortgage for 10 months. I didn’t find any of this out for over a year (she always got the mail and this was before online banking so I just never saw the statements). Anyway, I got a divorce and then after awhile, I ended up meeting my current wife when I weighed around 201 pounds. She knew about my weight loss journey and I swore to her I would never get back to where I was. But if you look at the chart of my last 9 years from my scale data, you see a sharp drop at the beginning, then a steady rise back up, followed by years of sharp increases and sharp drops - eventually gaining all the weight back 3 or 4 times. I never really did any “diets” per say (so no Atkins, or Keto, or anything like that, just normally increased exercise and decreased food), but the drops never stuck and eventually I would fall into bad habits and gain back whatever I had lost and then some more.
My wife told me several times that one of the things that made her fall in love with me was that I was athletic and active and that my exercising all the time motivated her to exercise as well. We dated for over 3 years, and my weight steadily increased. I was working my Army job and then driving Uber almost every other available hour to pay off my debts, so I prioritized debt over exercise. Eventually, we got married and moved from Hawaii to Texas so she could do her residency in Internal Medicine. The first year after the move, I was pretty lethargic (or lazy). I had just completed a 23 year career in the Army and a few years of driving Uber for 100+ hours a week, and felt I deserved a break. I have a business that I still run in Hawaii and set up in my new city, but mostly I binge-watched all the shows I missed in the past 10 years. As you can imagine, the weight came back. I was going to the gym and getting exercise, but I was eating a lot of junk food after I would drop my wife off at work and sitting watching TV most of the day. Over the past 3 years my weight went up and down ranging for 245 to a high of 275 on January 1, 2019. I knew 275 was bad — and I know this because I actually took a “before” picture standing in front of a mirror in just a towel. Someday I may post it with the “after” picture, but I don’t think I am ready for “after” yet … when I reach my goal.
During this time my wife told me more times than I can count that I needed to lose weight. What she didn’t explicitly say was that she was embarrassed to be a doctor who had a fat husband, but I should have known that. How could she guide her patients to healthier weights if she couldn’t keep her husband from being fat? We also watched My 600 Pound Life and she told me several times that she would leave me if I got that big. But what I didn’t know was that she was really frustrated that I didn’t take my health seriously.
In October 2020, my blood pressure got up to 163/96, so my PCM prescribed 50 MG of Losartan taken daily. My blood pressure was then normal through February, but in March, it started to go up, and went to 154/99 on May 11th, at which point, I was increased to 100 mg. I was also pre-diabetic, and pretty close to my PCM prescribing Metformin, and for the first time in my life, my cholesterol numbers were getting to a point where they were close to being high. Oh, and apparently I had developed “severe” sleep apnea and was given a CPAP. Ugh!
I’m 11 years older than my wife and I really don’t want her to think of me as an old man, but here I was, fat and on BP medication because of it. I did drop 20 pounds between May 16 and June 22 (from 266 to 246), but by the middle of August I was back to 253. The good news was my BP was 115/73 (on medication) and appeared to be stable.
So, I when I returned from my trip I had already decided that something had to be done after seeing how much weight my brother had gained since I last saw him, and seeing how bad of a shape my dad is in (75 years old and easily over 320 pounds). But the talk I had with my wife essentially put the fear of god in me. I don’t know if she would actually leave me, but I could tell in her tone that she was serious.
How I Did It
So, I set out to do what I had done in 2013. Run more and eat less. I again put everything I ate into MyFitnessPal. I swore off fast food. Eliminated almost all carbs and fat, going largely plant-based (though I would eat some lean ham slices if I really wanted some meat). I kept my calories below 1200 everyday, with many days around 800-900. I cut out of my diet almost everything that was over 200 calories per serving. I know there are some people who may say that 800 calories a day isn’t healthy and isn’t sustainable, but essentially I pushed through those days to get through the initial sharp hunger that I’ve gotten before when I cut back on calories.
And I went to the gym. Every day for at least 3 hours. During this time, my wife is now in a pulmonary disease / critical care fellowship and she has essentially worked in the ICU from August 22nd until the end of the September, so I had a lot of time every day to go exercise. As for me, I’m a doctoral student using GI Bill. This gives me a lot of time and access to a very good university gym. Before I get into what I did, you have to know that I have exercised a lot over the past 30 years. Being in the military meant semi-annual physical fitness tests and I really enjoy exercising. So, what you have below isn’t starting from the couch — even in some of the months where I gained weight in the past, I still exercised, just ate poorly. I looked at my Runkeeper data today, and I have logged nearly 4400 activities since I started using that app in July, 2009, so I am not starting from zero in terms of having no exercise discipline at all. In the year that I lost the 71 pounds (it was actually a 375 day period), I ran 257 times for a total of 1207 miles, which is 4.7 miles per run. The most I ever ran in one month before was 152 miles (April 2014) and I had run more than 10 miles twice in my life (once in 2010 and once in 2014).
OK, so what’s my routine. Here is my every day routine for days my wife works.
6:45 Drive my wife to work and come back home. 7:15 Walk the dog for 2 miles - normally 40-45 minutes. 8:30 Eat something (could be 3 scrambled eggs with just salt and pepper, or a 160 calorie protein shake). Drink 500 ml hydrogen enriched water (more on that later). Drink an amino energy drink that has natural caffeine. 9 AM practice guitar 10 AM go to the gym 30-40 minutes of weights (alternate arm day and leg day; abs every day). 60-120 minutes running (started less but once I got up to 90 minutes, that became my norm) 30-65 minutes on elliptical. 30-60 minutes swimming laps. 3 PM (give or take) arrive home, shower, and weigh. Drink another 500 ml hydrogen water. 3:30-7:15 study doctoral program classes (2 of them are online because of COVID, only one meets in person, one day a week from 6-8 PM). Eat some fruit. 7:15 pick up my wife 7:30 65 more minutes of elliptical with her 9 PM Eat something for dinner (normally just veggies). 10 PM in bed.
Some days I would run a little more. Some days maybe a little less on the afternoon elliptical or afternoon swim, depending on how much energy I had. For the first 2-3 weeks were difficult finding the right amount of food to eat before working out. I also started to feel very dizzy when I would stand up, and a few times during the middle of a run I’d have to pause because I would get lightheaded. My wife told me to check my BP and on Sep 1 (12 days in), my BP was 111/69. After consulting my PCM, I reduced my Losartan to 50 mg. Then on Sep 18, my BP was 98/60, so I talked with my doctor and stopped taking Losartan (but increased the frequency of checking my BP to 3 times a day). Sept 25, on no medication, my BP was 105/66 (with an average of 112/70 over the course of a 7 day, 3-times a day measurement schedule.
Other medications I take: allopurinol for gout, levothyroxine (for hypothyroidism) vitamin D, vitamin C, daily multivitamin, turmeric, ginkgo, ginger, fiber gummies, and apple cider vinegar gummies). Those gummies and the vitamin C add some calories so I’ve been thinking about eliminating them, and I really don’t know if there are any benefits at all to the other supplements I take, but they don’t seem to harm. I have an appointment with my PCM to get bloodwork and talk about my medications at the end of October. I may be able to reduce my allopurinol and levothyroxine.
So, as my BP came down, so did my weight. I weigh myself twice a day, but only allow one to record (I don’t want it jumping back and forth and my weight fluctuates up to 6 pounds a day based on sweat loss). So, I step on the scale first thing in the morning, but not long enough for it to register, and then again after my workout at the gym, which is my lowest weight of the day.
Data
Here is my weight loss in 5 day increments:
​
| Date | Weight |
|---|---|
| 8/20 | 253 |
| 8/25 | 245 |
| 8/30 | 241 |
| 9/5 | 236 |
| 9/10 | 228 |
| 9/15 | 224 |
| 9/20 | 222 |
| 9/25 | 220 |
| 9/30 | 214 |
Incidentally, my wife (a petite Thai woman) has also lost around 10 pounds and a couple inches off her waist putting her around 105 lbs - her lowest since high school. Unfortunately, (or maybe not) we just had to buy new Figs scrubs for her because the ones she bought in February no longer fit. So she is also in this — and has been really committed to go to the gym even after her 13 hour shifts in MICU dealing with COVID (she works 6 days a week, 13 hours per day - she should get a bit of a break with a different rotation in October, but will still be working 6 days a week).
I also had my wife start measuring my waist (at the belly button):
​
| Date | Measurement |
|---|---|
| 8/21 | 47" |
| 8/29 | 44" |
| 9/5 | 42" |
| 9/12 | 40.75" |
| 9/18 | 40" |
| 9/25 | 38.5" |
| 9/30 | 37.75" |
An interesting aside from this loss in inches is that the other day I was going through clothes that I packed away after I regained the weight before, and my size 34 pants fit perfectly now (I was wearing size 42 in the summer), but my size Large shirts don’t fit yet. So, my legs are back to where they were when I weighed 200 or so pounds, but I have some belly fat that I didn’t have then so my shirts have a bulge in the middle that I think will disappear in the next month of training. Also, because I have been lifting weights every day, I have much more muscle on my arms and chest than I’ve ever had (and I think my ab muscles are as strong as they’ve been since I was in college - just covered with belly fat that still conceals what I think is a nice six-pack underneath.
So, most of this is from running. My style of running is to run to my desired heart rate for the duration I predetermine. Typically on a “fast” day, I’ll run, keeping my heart rate between 161-164. A medium day, my goal is 151-155. An easy day is 145-148. As I get in better shape, this is getting harder to do because there are some days where I want to run at a higher heart rate but I also don’t want to speed up so much that it blows up the run (or risk injuring myself). I normally set an amount of time I want to run and run to my desired heart rate for that time. Sometimes I will run a little longer if I am close to a mile marker, or to finish a song, or if I don’t realize I past my time. I rarely intentionally run longer because I “feel good”, and only one time this month did I stop a run shorter than I planned, and that was because I was simply out of energy that day. One of the hard parts when I first started this current quest was deciding what to eat and drink before the run. At first, I was just eating a 150 calorie protein bar, but that didn’t seem like enough (and I was having to work through the problems of still being on blood pressure medicine that was causing me lightheadedness). Eventually I settled on normally drinking a 160 calorie boxed protein shake and having a serving of nuts (peanuts, walnuts, or almonds), which seems to be the right amount of food to give me the energy to get through my workout (though my stomach is often grumbling while I swim).
My running style is like a freight train, slow and steady for as long as I keep my heart rate in my zone. I have found one song that has a consistent beat and if I want to push myself, I’ll play that song on repeat. My runs have all been on an indoor track (never liked treadmill and it’s hot here in August). In 2020, I ran 196 miles. Before I started this segment of weight loss, I had only run about 125 miles in 2021. On August 21, my first run was 3 miles at a 16:30 minute per mile pace (someone passed me speed-walking). By the last week of August, I was consistently running for 90 minutes and between 6.3 and 6.7 miles at a 13:30 pace. I ran 45 miles in the last 11 days of August. Then came September. My 90 minute runs started to be 8 miles, not 6.5, at the same heart rate. I pushed a couple of runs out to 105 minutes, and even ran over 2 hours on 4 different occasions. The 253 miles I ran in September is by far the most I have ever run, and is impressive compared to the 196 in 2020 and 63 in 2019 (though I did run 422 in 2018, 337 in 2017, and 556 in 2016)
I’ve run almost every day since August 21st (took 2 days off running on 8/28-29), and every run except the first 4 at the beginning and one in the first week of September were over 60 minutes. In September, 23 of my 30 runs were over 90 minutes.
​
| Date | Average Run Distance/Day |
|---|---|
| 8/21-8/27 | 4.6 miles |
| 8/30-9/5 | 6.6 miles |
| 9/6-9/12 | 8 miles |
| 9/13-9/19 | 8.7 miles |
| 9/20-9/26 | 9.24 miles |
| 9/27-9/30 | 9.55 miles |
| Total: 299 miles (39) | 7.65 miles per day |
| Total September: 253 miles (30) | 8.45 miles per day |
​
As an aside, I have no idea what “runner’s high” is, because I run a lot and don’t feel anything that I would qualify as high. Do I need to run more than 12 miles?
Here are my year over year run totals since 2013:
| Year | Miles |
|---|---|
| 2010 | 226 |
| 2011 | 171 |
| 2012 | 272 |
| 2013 | 684 |
| 2014 | 809 |
| 2015 | 608 |
| 2016 | 556 |
| 2017 | 337 |
| 2018 | 422 |
| 2019 | 63 |
| 2020 | 196 |
| 2021 (so far) | 425 |
For what it’s worth, I walked 703 miles in 2019 … that coincides with getting a dog and walking as many as 6 miles a day in July and August. Add in 1024 miles walking in 2020 and you can see that I have always been active, even in the years that I gained weight, so my problem wasn’t necessarily exercise, rather it was diet.
#Additional Thoughts
What has surprised me has been that I am not sore the next day — like, at no point during this past 7 weeks have I had real muscle soreness. Now for my tale of the hydrogen water. So, I started investing in the stock of a company whose first product was hydrogen infused water (they add extra hydrogen molecules to very clean spring water). I read a bunch of medical research on hydrogen water and it shows promise with it’s anti-oxidation properties for recovery, but every study I read had small effects because the population was small (n=30, n=24, n=42, etc.). My wife, an actual doctor whose been to medical school and completed an internal medicine residency, said it is impossible that it works in the manner I summed up from the research. Still, I bought 24 cans of the water when it first became available. It was expensive ($3 per can, plus expensive shipping) and I went into it thinking it was probably a scam, but wanted to support the company and try it out. I started drinking 1 can (12 oz) a day before going to workout. 20 days later, I actually felt like it was helping me stay alert (one of their claims) and my muscles felt better the day after working out (another claim). This was in April. My weight went up, but that wasn’t the fault of the water, that was me eating too much fast food. When I ran out, I didn’t think much of it but I was a little more tired (this coincided with the end of my spring semester and previously I was also drinking a little more caffeine than normal (I don’t drink much in the first place) and my lethargy was probably due to a break in the semester where my caffeine dropped). I kind of knew this, but before I started with the hydrogen water I was having to take a nap every morning for 2+ hours. So I ordered more and I started to feel great, though I think back and this may have just been placebo effect. It was too expensive to keep ordering cans so I actually bought my own hydrogen generator that adds 4.4 ppm hydrogen to water (I actually have my own spring water from our spring in Tennessee). Again, as I was using this twice a day, I noticed I wasn’t experiencing soreness at all and attributed this to the hydrogen water. Then, at the beginning of August, I did have soreness, and I was feeling a little tired. I racked my brain trying to think if I had changed anything and then I realized I forgot that there was one big change. In April, the VA diagnosed me with TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint disorder - essentially pain in my jaw that may be related to PTSD from my time in Iraq). They prescribed me cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) to take at bedtime to relax my jaw while I slept. I ran out of my prescription in August and while I was waiting for a new prescription to be filled, that is when I started to experience the soreness. It turns out that, at least for me, it appears that this helps me workout every day. It could be because, taking it at night, I’m more relaxed and get better sleep, which helps, or perhaps it works on those muscles to somehow relax them for the next day’s workout. So, I still drink the hydrogen water from my generator, but don’t have any confidence it works. As for the stock, I made around $8000 from my investment and pulled most of that out, only leaving in around $1000 … which has dropped precipitously in the last 2 months).
One other possible explanation for not feeling sore is swimming. I typically swim laps between 30 and 60 minutes a day and I have noticed in the past that getting in the pool after a hard workout has decreased the recovery time. On days that I don’t swim, I have mild soreness, but in this iteration of exercise, it has never stopped me.
In the past, I have also had lots of problems with joints and muscles. Some of the reasons for my weight swings have been that I overdid it and would continue to run through pain. Carrying that much weight and running put a lot of pressure on my knees and ankles so there have been weeks in the past where I had to stop running because of pains. This time around, I was running slower and I cut my stride down to an “Airborne Shuffle” style run at the beginning. And whenever I started to feel any pressure on anything, I would slow my pace and stride, which seems to work for me. I have had a few moments of trepidation with a pain behind my knee, or my achilles, or my groin, or hamstring, but on each occasion, I would slow, prepared to stop unless it went away. And I use an exercise roller when I get home on my hamstrings and calves, which seems to help.
When I posted about my progress in r/applewatchfitness some people said that what I am doing is not sustainable. I don’t think it’s sustainable to lose 1 pound a day forever (because I would be down to zero pounds by this time next year). So, my intention isn’t to sustain this forever, but I do want to continue to do what I’m doing until I get to my target weight, which is between 175 and 180 pounds (want to get to 175 and then as I maintain, accept that it can jump to 180 if I relax my diet, but at that point I’ll work to keep it below 180). So, to that end, it may be sustainable for me to restrict my diet and continue to exercise a lot every day for the next couple of months. What it’s not, though, is necessarily repeatable for everyone reading this. Most people don’t have 4-5 hours a day to exercise, even if they were physically able to. Most people are not going to be able to run 6-10 miles a day, every day just because they decide to lose weight. Still, I will be in my current city for another 2 and a half years and will have access to the gym the entire time. I’ll start on my dissertation in the summer, but even that isn’t going to take too much of my time (4-5 hours a day will be sufficient … I did a different PhD program while I was in the Army and I know what it takes to write a dissertation).
So maybe there will be a point where I will reduce the amount of running and time at the gym, but what I’ve really developed is discipline in my diet. I no longer eat when I’m not hungry. I also no longer eat junk - not even a nibble. I haven’t had any fast food during this time. I only had a piece of bread last Tuesday when we went out to a cajun restaurant and used some bread to sop up the gumbo I got. On my wife’s day off, we like to make something for her to take in for her ICU crew the next day. I made my favorite cookies and didn’t eat any. I made Oreo balls and didn’t sneak an Oreo (or 5 or 6 like I would have done before) and didn’t eat any of the Oreo balls. Twice I’ve made cookies and cream brownies, and only ate one small square because it was the first time we made that and I wanted to know how sweet it was (it was perfect). So my dietary discipline has really changed my outlook on food. I do crave junk food still, but I don’t give into those cravings. I’m looking forward to the day I can eat a little more normally, but I’m committed to this weight loss. I read somewhere that “nothing tastes as good as feeling skinny”. When I lost 70+ pounds in 2013-2014, I felt great and liked how I looked in the new clothes I bought (going from size XXL to M). Now those M and L shirts (and size 33 pants) are in storage boxes, waiting for me to get back to that weight, and I can’t wait. The big difference between my weight loss in ‘13-14 was that, then I was really restricting my calories from the time I woke up until the time I got home (normally eating 500 calories between 6 AM and 6 PM), but then eating regular dinners that included some fast food, but also some restaurant meals that were healthier. This time, I’ve largely cut out those dinners and replaced them with vegetable dinners. The results are that I’ve lost in 41 days this time the same amount that it took me 145 days last time. 2 years ago when I was 275, if you would have told me my goal would be 175 and that I was confident I would make that, I would have laughed at you. But, today, I really believe that’s possible - and even possible to get to by the end of the year.
TL;DR; wife was disappointed that I gained all of my weight back, so through diet and exercise I’ve dropped 39 pounds in 41 days.
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