Welcome back to the Century Club!
The Century Club is a regular weekly thread that I have been hosting since mid-2020 that started as a bit of a running gag. I often welcomed those who have lost 100+ lbs (~ 50 kg , ~7 stone) to “the club” and joked that club meetings were on Thursdays, and that joke has evolved into this regular weekly thread to talk about issues that are particular to those who have lost 100+ lbs, those who are well on their way as well as anyone who is just at the beginning of a journey this big.
Each week I will usually provide a topic of the day that has been on my mind or inspired by recent posts or comments. However you are free to talk about any topics you think might be relevant to current and prospective club members.
Previous Topics: 2021 recap - 2020 recap
Starting 2022
It's a new year at the Century Club! I started this recurring thread a few months into the pandemic and sadly it's still with us. Happy New Year! Welcome to any new Centurions who are just starting out in their journeys, Centurions in the middle of their journeys and of course also to those of us who have completed our 100+ lbs journeys.
With the new year, come new beginnings. Such as u/mortisterrore777 who posted earlier about starting their own 100 lb journey.
Why the Century Club? There's a bit of a hole between folks who have 20-30 lbs to lose and those of us with a lot more to lose. In very rough terms, our 100+ lb journeys will almost always take the better part of a year to complete without resorting to a medically supervised VLCD. Losing at a maximum recommended rate of 1% body weight per week or 1-2 lbs per week means that for most of us it will take a year.
Many of us can't or don't achieve those maximum rates and will thus take even longer to complete our journeys, either by choice (as for me) or by necessity. I planned my journey from the outset to last 2 years and be all about maintenance. So I targeted my behavior to be close enough to my maintenance behavior that I wouldn't have to learn new patterns or routines to maintain rather than lose.
Four years ago around this time as my 3 decade relationship was crumbling around me I found this community and started reading everyone's story and started to formulate a plan that could work for me and began my journey in earnest on Feb 12, 2018.
The "Aha!" moment for me was when I realized that it didn't have to be about intensity, but rather endurance. I wasn't trying to do a 2-3 month weight loss sprint, and then slowly float back up to where I started I needed to find a pace that could be sustained for over a year and probably longer. I had done that many times over the years, lost 20-30 lbs then gained them back and often more.
Many of us have started on the path to lose weight many times before. What made (or makes) this start and this journey different for you?
Last year I focused my New Year's Century Club post on the data aspects and those remain a core part of what keeps me grounded. My weight, calories in, activity and sleep are tracked and logged into my phone with very minimal effort and that gives me something objective to look at.
However this year I want to focus on another important aspect of that helped me on my journey. Forgiveness/flexibility. I realized that my 730 day planned journey wasn't likely to take place without surprises and detours and that that was OK. I could easily tolerate some number of higher calorie days even if that meant delaying the end of my journey by a few days. (Narrator: "It didn't!"). Making my goals easier to achieve meant that if I "slipped up" and overate or couldn't work out for a week I could still easily slip into my baseline habits. Detours are OK. We just have to forgive ourselves for them and get back moving towards our destination.
And so, here I sit at the beginning of my fifth year on this journey, roughly where I started 2020 still slightly above my desired maintenance range of 155-165 as I have been since mid-December. So I'm starting again. Tightening things up just a bit. Drinking less alcohol, logging my dinner and any evening snacks quantitatively in MFP rather than just qualitatively in Ate. I'm once again enjoying a nice warm cup of herbal tea before bed. This time of course I'm only aiming for 5-10 lbs in the next two months and doing so with limited exercise due to the weather here in the Northeast and the current Covid surge. So that gives me a bit less latitude for "bonus calorie consumption." Come March, I'll hopefully be training for road races again and will be able to make some more small adjustments.
What about you Centurion? What makes this start different for you? What was your "Aha!" moment? What new challenges are you taking on for 2022?
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