At my goal weight after 50 Lbs lost in 10 months. Some things I've learned.

40th Birthday in 2.5 months.

Starting Weight: 229.9 (January). Goal Weight: 185. Current Weight: 179.2 (October). Weight Loss: 50.7 (10 months).

I also wanted to say how much I've enjoyed the community in this sub for the past 10 months. Been very inspiring seeing people's progress, and also been a treat to help others where I've been able.

Maybe some of the things I’ve learned along the way can help somebody else! None of this is in any order.

The Practical:

• Track your food consumption. In order of importance: calories, protein, fiber, water. Get a food scale. You don’t need to use it all the time, but use it for every single bite for at least a couple of weeks. After that, start guessing at the weight, calories, and macros of your food, and confirm your guesses with the scale. When you start to get within +/-10%, feel free to use it less. For tracking, I use FoodNoms.
• Track your activity. Apple Watch, FitBit, whatever you want. I used AppleWatch, and the apps of the exercise equipment I used: Garmin, Strava, Peloton, Tonal, FitBod.
• Track your weight. Weigh yourself every day, same time, same conditions. For most people, I’d imagine that it’s first thing in the morning, after the bathroom, before a shower, and naked. Day to day fluctuations don’t matter. Every week, take each day’s measure and average it. You want to see that weekly average going down at 1% of your body weight or less. Think of weight loss like walking down stairs while playing with a yo-yo. The yo yo goes up and down wildly, but generally slopes downward as you walk down the stairs. Remember, weight loss is not the goal. Fat loss is. For tracking I used a combination of my Withings scale, Apple HealthKit, and Happy Scale.
• When it comes to all of the measurements above, know that they are going to be inaccurate. They are meant to give you *directional* information on how you’re doing. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re “right” about having eaten 1,800 calories, but it *does* matter if you’re right that you ate more or less than yesterday, or last week, or if the amount your eating is materializing on the scale.
• At the end of the say, CICO (Calories In, Calories Out), is all that matters. But just saying that marginalizes the psychological battles you’ll need to win to be successful. CICO is a description of the physics, but not the psychology. In a calorie deficit, you’ll be hungry. Managing that hunger is important. Intermittent Fasting worked wonders for me.
• In my opinion, Intermittent Fasting is the best hunger management technique there is. For my 10 months, I did an 18:6, where I only ate from Noon - 6 PM. No calories outside that window. Not even a breath mint. For the first 2 months, I also did longer fasts where I stopped eating at 6 PM on Tuesday, and had my first calorie on Thursday at 8 AM. These were difficult, but absolutely helped with hunger management during the rest of the week.
• Get shit food out of your house. Literally throw it away.
• Find staple foods that you can rely on. It should be: low caloric density (low calories / high volume), high protein (5-10g of protein per 100 calories), easy to make, fast (able to be prepared in less than 10 minutes), and *most important* enjoyable. For me: Egg whites French toast with frozen berries; Think! Protein Bars; Think! Oatmeal; Turkey Sandwiches; Avocado Toast with eggs; Ground Beef and mixed vegetables with spices; Chomps brand Jerky; Magic Spoon Cereal; Enlightened Ice Cream Bars; Protein shakes; Chicken Breast, Chicken Thighs; Steak; Pork Chops; Pickles.
• “You can’t outrun a bad diet” - “80% of weight loss is in the kitchen”. These things are true, but exercise is important for health, and is part of the ritual that reminds you why you’re doing this. I’ve found resistance training to be more enjoyable than cardio, so I do 2 - 3x per week resistance training, and 1 - 2x per week of cardio.
• Giving up booze (or significantly cutting down) is like playing this game with a cheat code. It reduces empty calories, eliminates an agitator for bad eating, and improves your sleep.

The Psychological:

• Think hard about why you’re doing this. The harder you think, the more you’ll have invested in your answer. Remember that answer as you go along. For me, it was about family. having Having more energy and more confidence helps me show up better to my kids, to my wife, and to my career. On those days you lose motivation, this will be your rock.
• Figure out what motivates you, and what scares you, and use those to your advantage. For me, seeing the “scoreboard” motivates me. I’ve tracked as much as I possible could, even if this information was practically useless. Can I take any specific action knowing my breath ketones, for example? No. But having the information is a powerful motivator for me. Especially the rituals: Entering the data, looking at it in the morning and the evening, seeing the progress over time. It gets you committed to your project. Key Apps I used: AppleWatch, HealthKit, Withings HealthMate, Peloton, Tonal, Strava, Happy Scale, Biosense, Zero.
• Find content online that keeps you engaged with your goals. Listen to heath and wellness podcasts, watch fitness YouTube videos. Having that “background noise” in your life will ensure your brain doesn’t get distracted, and that you’re constantly reminded about your priorities. Stuff that I like: Mind Pump, Greg Doucette, Peter Attia, Andy Galpin, BioLayne, The Move.
• Discipline > Motivation. Motivation is a great catalyst to get one to act, but do NOT depend on it being there for long. Motivation fades quickly. When it does strike, use some of that impulse to create discipline. It may seem like a waste, but it’s not. Discipline you can depend on, motivation you cannot.
• Take a multivitamin. Drink tons of water. I’ve learned that some hunger is actually just thirst, or a micronutrient deficiency, or simply a craving. Craving does not equal hunger.
• Achieving your goals will take a lot of sacrifice, but does need to take a lot of suffering. It’s OK to deviate from your plan when a higher order value calls for it. I had impromptu ice creams with my family sometimes that I didn’t budget for. Enjoying time together with them is more important than hitting my day’s calorie goal on the button. I can go a few hundred calories over my budget now and then.

The Interesting:

Learning about physiology has been truly enjoyable, all the way down to the atoms. I posted this as a comment to a post by /u/Calepria, and people seemed to like it:

“Your body is a machine. It’s input, or fuel source, is carbon. Carbon is in food (carbohydrate = carbon and hydrogen). It can do two things with that carbon you eat:

1). use it immediately (break apart the carbohydrates (C & H) and combine it with the oxygens you breathe (O) which creates energy (ATP), and converts it into CO2 which you breathe out, and H2O which you pee or sweat or soak up)

2). store it as fat. All those carbons get put on a big chain and 3 of those chains are attached to a glycerol molecule. That’s what a triglyceride is. Then that triglyceride is stuck in a fat cell for a rainy day (or a workout more accurately).

When you eat more carbon than you use, it gets stored as fat. That’s called a calorie surplus. Yes, you’re still breathing out CO2, but you’re eating more Cs than you’re breathing. You could eat less (less carbon coming in) or breathe out more with activity such as exercise (more carbon going out).

When you eat less carbon than you need (a calorie deficit), your body needs more carbon to function. Where does it get it? It liberates the carbon it has stored in your fat cells, and treats those liberated Carbons as if you ate them. This is called lipolysis. You’re literally eating yourself and breathing yourself out. It only works in a calorie deficit. If you need 2500 calories, and you only eat 1500, the other 1000 calories come from your fat stores. You ate carbons months or years ago, and your body is now getting around to using them.

The cool part is when you breathe out those CO2 molecules, where do they go? They literally become plants. The plants do the exact opposite. They take in CO2, combine it with water, and store it. The source of energy for this process is sunlight, and that’s what photosynthesis is.

The circle of life!”

So the next major step in my plan is to keep my weight between 180-189. You’ll notice my goal weight was 185, but I’m currently at 179. I intentionally overshot my goal, knowing that the next phase for me is to maintain my weight in a slight deficit, and do recomposition. I’ll be focusing more on resistance training, and hope to add some more muscle mass, losing fat, while staying the same weight. Formal goals: Maintain 180-189. If ever over 189, immediately cut back to 185. Increase strength and muscle mass. Increase athletic endurance. <— these goals aren’t S.M.A.R.T., and they need to be. Going to smarten them up in the next 2 weeks and kick off phase 2.

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