Getting healthy is as much for my mental health as it is for my physical health

While I'm not diagnosed with anything as of this post, I have had dark moments and thoughts due to a lot of self-innflicted low confidence, and this spiraled into weight gain during my University years up until last year. I had no motivation to work on myself because I didn't feel like I deserved the care, and my wardrobe growing tighter had me reaching for greasy snacks that wouldn't help the problem I didn't want to face. Even when I tried dieting myself with cico and the like, I ended up miserable - it wasn't for me.

Fast forward to April, where I got really fed up with 2 of my favourite pants tearing at the hips. I was at work and completely embarrassed and frustrated with myself. I even measured my body fat percentage band it floored me how far I had let myself go. I had to change something, and fast. I turned that frustration on myself and my bad habits.

If I felt myself reaching for chips, I'd down a bottle of water to fill myself. If I craved a big mac, I'd think about that wireless charger I was saving up for and turn around. If I had some crappy customers at work, I'd strap on the boxing gloves at the gym. If my thoughts turned dark and I felt like I didn't want to live, I'd run until my lungs burned for air again.

A big part of this was working with a personal trainer at my gym. Yes they're expensive, but I was at a point where I was spiraling and I lucked out with my trainer because she cares about my mental health (we talked a lot, she's been a great confidant). I'm not at 100% worth my mental health, but I'm never at 0 anymore. My weight loss has not been huge (30 pounds since I started) but my lifestyle has improved. I've put hard work into myself, and have started to care about myself more.

I have days where I love my long legs, and other days hate my thunder thighs, my perspective on my body will flip flop but I will never make my body pay the price for a brief respite. Like my muscles, my confidence was broken so that I could build it back up even stronger.

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30 pounds down... SW: 195 G1W:175 G2W: 165 CW: 164.6

Starting in the beginning of August:

Starting Weight: 195 Pounds

Height: 5'2 Age: 36

First goal: 10% of my weight, so about 20 pounds to 175 pounds.

Second goal (set by a different doctor): 165 pounds.

Triglycerides and liver numbers were high and very outside of normal ranges; these were the main reasons for the need to lose weight. Because of the various numbers, and having a family history of liver issues, my gastro doctor referred me to the hospital’s medical weight loss clinic.

This has been the most difficult thing I have done, but I do feel it has been worth it. The clinic started me on 1500-1800 calories a day diet, with moderate protein and lower carb. After losing 9 pounds, they changed the diet around, and this was the hardest part of adjust to. I’ve had digestive issues since I was born and as a result, eating is my least favorite thing to do. I can’t eat certain things. I have to maintain a low fat and clean cooking method diet due to my condition, so most of my intake was carbs. The new change had me limit my carb intake to 160g and my protein intake to 120g. Eventually, after getting used to it, I continued to lose weight. I feel mentally this was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome.

After losing more weight, they changed the diet again. This time 1400 calories per day, with 40% carb, 30% protein. When this change came into play, I found it was much harder to keep to the percentages and the calorie in take at the same time. Asking the clinic nutritionists didn’t provide me good insight as to what to do. So I made an executive decision. I adjusted my diet to stay at 1400 calories, but adjusted the carb level to 45% and protein to 35% (the closest %'s to the 160g carbs, 120g protein). With the new %’s, I was closer able to hit 1400 calories, and I was able to continue to lose weight. Prior to the % change on the 1400 calories, I had plateaued.

Throughout this process, I was not alone; my fiancee helped. She helped with preparing lower carb meals, meal prepping in general (going out for food has always been an adventure), or listing out any ingredients and their upc codes so I could save them into myfitnesspal/loseit apps. Her help allowed the various transitions throughout the diet to be easier on me. I am extremely grateful to her for the help and she is well aware of it.

Somewhere between the first and second goal, I retook the test to check triglycerides and liver numbers, and those numbers dropped more than half and fully returned to normal levels.

As of today, I surpassed my second goal weight. It’s not the end though. I need to maintain a healthy weight. I don’t want those numbers don’t go back up. there are some other personal health goals I want to achieve. Long term, I plan on achieving them.

Thanks for reading,

-B

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Photos: time comparison photos

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X/post from ask_relationship_advice: How do I support my morbidly obese friend in her weight loss journey?

I have a good friend (39F) who has been morbidly obese since high school (I've only known her in the last 7 years). I've never commented on her weight to anyone other than my husband because I figured she already knew she was overweight and doesn't need people pointing that out to her.

Recently, she broke down in tears and confided in me that she was the highest weight she'd ever been. She also told me she's started going back to the gym and doing weight watchers with a friend from work. She was clearly distressed about it, and I've never seen her cry before, so I felt privileged that she trusted me enough to open up about it.

I'd like to support her on her weight loss journey, but I also don't want to patronize her. I know how difficult it is who lose weight when you're morbidly obese. I have several relatives who have done the whole song and dance of losing 75 pounds and then gaining it back again and then losing it again. It's such a vicious cycle to break when you're that overweight.

Plus, although my husband and I aren't exactly the most svelt of people, our weight problems fall squarely into the vanity category. I feel as though it would be disingenuous to talk about my own weight issues and trying to lose the extra 15lbs of pregnancy weight I'm holding onto 4 months post partum when she's got a completely different battle to fight.

What are some ways that I can encourage her and support her along her journey? I want her to succeed but I also don't want to put pressure on her either if she fails or doesn't meet her own expectations. I'm her friend, not her doctor or nutritionist or physical trainer.

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My father seems to think my weight loss is his accomplishment... and I hate it...

I have lost a bunch of weight since July and my father keeps telling me, that he had told me to stop overeating earlier this year. And it's really bothering me. It feels like he either thinks that he was right and me being happier and healthier is a confirmation of that or that it's even something he had a positive influence on.

The truth is as long as I know him he has been gaining and losing constantly 20kg, my whole life he was overeating and than reducing in quite unhealthy ways. He starved, he took appetite suppressants, he even wanted me to take those. It wasn't a good relationship between us my whole childhood. My parents are divorced and I was happy about it. I would consider him more a root cause for my unhealthy relationship with food than anything else. My sister is obese, too. When he told me that I shouldn't eat so much we were visiting him and if we are honest he was just upset that I took the last dish because he wanted it. It was so ridiculous. He eats at least 4 or 5 pieces of cake whenever we visit.

I don't like that he thinks that he is right in any way or has accomplished anything. It's my battle, I am the one fighting it - despise my upbringing, despite him, not because of him.

He now wants to "educate" my sister. I told him that, even though I'm worried about her, too, he has no saying in her lifestyle anymore and that it will if anything make her more hesitant to change something. As we all know the motivation has to come from within and that just isn't the case with her. And I'm quite sure it will hurt her if he talks to her as it hurt me when he did.

Does that make any sense?

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Maybe it's not just a marathon? Or, what I've learned so far

I started writing this post when I finally hit a groove with weight loss last year. I planned to share it once I hit my goal weight, but I fell off the wagon for a while. Thankfully, I'm now back where I was before I fell off, but I'm still not at my goal. But I started thinking to myself, why should I wait to share what I've learned? People often say, "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon" as a way to emphasize weight loss as a long-term process, but as I started planning for maintenance I realized that the work still won't be over once I hit my goal weight. I'll need to adapt and use the same strategies I've been employing throughout the loss if I want to keep the weight off forever (sure, some people fall into maintenance intuitively--I'm not one of those people). We love these analogies because they're easy sound bites to illustrate a more nuanced reality. But that's just it--it's not easy. You can easily imagine running a marathon and then just going back to sitting on the couch every night eating bags of crisps. It's not just about running a marathon; it's running that marathon and staying in marathon shape for the rest of your life.

So here are a few lessons that I'm learning and relearning all over again:

1. Let go of the need to tell a story. When I started writing this, I thought I needed to start with an abridged autobiography detailing my issues with childhood obesity and poor nutrition, emotional eating, sedentary habits, etc. I don’t need to narrate how I wound up overweight. You already know the answer: I consumed more than I was burning. The specific reasons for why I did so have not mattered at all to my weight loss. Of course, it's important to think about why you're making decision that aren't giving you the results you want, or what your "triggers" are, but think of them as helpful lessons and not things that make up who you are. There is no yesterday. What matters are the decisions that I make in the present. Once I was able to divest from the emotions that come along with my fat narrative— disappointment, guilt, shame, and regret—I was able to develop concrete strategies to maintain a calorie deficit. I practice mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to manage the emotions that inevitably do come up. Those feelings don’t go away, so there’s no need to get too wrapped up in them. Learn to live with them like a roommate who just makes you feel indifferent.
2. Leave the motivation to people who charge hundreds of dollars for people to pack into a convention center to be yelled at by folks with dubious job titles. It doesn’t matter how motivated or encouraged I feel about sticking to my weight loss plan. I made a goal and I know that steps I need to take to achieve it. I can either do it or not. I do lots of things I don’t particularly enjoy doing—washing dishes, doing laundry, paying bills—but I know that I need to do them. My enjoyment is completely irrelevant. What’s important is building strategies, habits, and processes to help me meet my goals. Instead of motivation, I've learned to tap into my sense of curiosity. What would it be like if I were to hit my goal weight? How would it feel to log all of my food for 60 consecutive days? Would anything be different if I work up to running 50 miles a week? I can't know if I don't give it a try!
3. Unplug from the matrix. For those of us in the United States, at least, we live in a consumption-driven society. Weight loss has become about marketing. Buy this book, subscribe to this meal service, order this supplement! Also, don’t forget to listen to my podcast and click on my blog! This mentality is reflected in a question that gets asked around here a lot: “What should I eat to lose weight?” Is it clear what’s wrong with that question? It implies that there’s something you should be consuming more of to lose weight, rather than consuming less of everything. It suggests that the answer to weight loss is one of addition rather than subtraction. Everyone wants the quick fix solution, the pill or tea or meal replacement shake or tailored meal plan that’s going to give them fast results. No one wants to hear that it’s really about what you should STOP doing. In reality, this process is about hard work, persistence, trial and error, and educating yourself about what does and doesn’t work FOR YOU. And, yes, it’s about denying yourself for delayed gratification.
4. Leave the dogma at church. I spent a long time trying out different ways of eating: “clean” eating, paleo, primal, slow carb, keto, etc. It was useful in the sense that I learned a lot about nutrition and how food affects our bodies. It was less useful in the sense that I’m going to continue to eat cupcakes (the kind with regular all-purpose flour and butter and eggs and sugar!) from time to time for the rest of my life because they’re fucking delicious. Yes, my diet primarily consists of whole, unprocessed foods and meals I cook myself, but I also prioritize the things that I enjoy. I don’t assign any moral value to food or my individual eating choices. Donuts aren’t bad; they’re actually pretty fantastic. Deciding to eat one doesn’t mean I’m being bad; I’m enjoying myself in a moment of glazed ecstasy. I just have to make sure that indulgence is moderate enough that it doesn’t get in the way of my overall goals. Even if moderation of "trigger foods" won't work for you, try to find things that you can really enjoy eating without falling into overconsumption. I had to get rid of my baking habit because it's easy for me to mindlessly whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. That doesn't mean that I can't keep a bar of 80% chocolate around to nibble on, or schedule a visit to a high quality local bakery into my eating plan.
5. Begin with your "post-marathon" life in mind. Do you know why people so often regain the weight they lose? Because suddenly “dieting” is over and it’s back to business as usual. I’ve made this mistake before: lost some weight, felt happy with how I looked, and then went back to eating like I had before. Eventually, I decided that I wasn’t going to do anything to lose weight (besides eating at a deficit, of course) that I wasn’t willing to continue doing during maintenance. Everything doesn't have to be a struggle. I learned to embrace effortlessness as a practice. This is what it means to create a “lifestyle” change--not the polished, marketable type of "lifestyle" you see on Instagram and Youtube, but the gritty, challenging kind of lifestyle we all have that's full of ups and downs but ultimately sustained by our priorities, practices, and persistence. There's nothing remarkable about failing. It's commonplace, mundane, boring. The exciting part is having the resolve to recommit yourself to your goals, figure out what didn't work, and make the necessary changes.

Concrete strategies:

1. Align your plan with your goals. A lot of people seem to have very precise goals (30 lbs by a wedding in 3 months), yet they’re unwilling to adopt fine-tuned strategies to reach those goals (i.e., a carefully monitored caloric deficit that will get them an average of 2.5 lbs a week lost). Sure, feel free to just “watch what you eat” if you just want to “slim down a bit,” but especially as you approach/enter a healthy weight range/BMI and start to envision more specific body composition goals, you need to be much more precise with your plan.
2. Start simply and progress from there. Gradual changes. Try just tracking what you eat for a week without making any changes. Don't even count the calories--just keep a list. Or just try cutting out soft drinks first. Then decide you're going to have dinner at home twice a week and make enough for leftovers that you can have for lunch. Making abrupt, big changes often leads to fatigue because each change requires more effort.
   
3. Have your toolkit ready. MFP app, food scale, body scale, groceries, food prep containers, whatever.
4. Track your progress. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Also, have multiple measures of progress so you don't get preoccupied with the scale. Observe how you’re feeling in addition to how you're looking.
5. Plan for every scenario. Throw some protein bars in your desk for when everyone is still munching on stale Halloween candy. Keep a bag of nuts in the car for emergencies. Prep your freaking meals, people. This doesn't have to be the standard "meal prep Sunday/whatever day" where you cook everything at the same time. It might just mean making a calendar of what you'll have for a week without actually cooking it all at the same time, or keeping a list of rotating meals that you have the staples for on hand at all times. The point is to make it as easy as possible for you to make choices that are in line with your goals.
   
6. Eat good food. Don't be intimidated by cooking (there are plenty of youtube channels like Brothers Green Eats, The Domestic Geek, and Mind Over Munch that have approachable videos about everyday cooking). Eat simply and repetitively most of the time, but shake things up every so often. [Note: I really want to expand on this more in another post where I tackle the trope of "boredom" when it comes to eating, so stay tuned for more on that]
   
7. Don't forget the "small" stuff that's not so small: water, electrolytes (esp if you're keto or fasting for long periods), sleep, stress management.
   
8. Get active, but don't think you need to become an athlete. You don’t have to sign up for a gym or adhere to a workout plan. I think that just walking or other sustained low-intensity exercise goes a long way towards making you feel better mentally and physically.

Methodology:

1. 11,200 calories per week (1600 calories per day). I found it useful to adhere to a weekly deficit because I noticed early on that my calorie intake would naturally fluctuate anyway. I would eat over my daily goal and then balance out the average over the next few days with no issue. There was no need for me to feel like I wasn’t meeting my goals because I didn’t eat under 1600 calories every single day. I just focused on the 7-day average. This rendered worrying about things like maintenance and cheat days irrelevant for the most part.
   
2. Pre-logging. Besides mindfulness, this has been the most effective step in curbing my binge eating. If I feel like I want something, I don't automatically say I can't have it. I just ask myself, can we fit this in today?
   
3. Intermittent fasting. It's not necessary it's suited to some of my natural routines. Once I realized that calorie cycling was more intuitive for me, I decided to just make it more regimented through modified alternate day fasting (ADF), which is a type of intermittent fasting. I'd basically alternate lower and higher calorie days. Now I've switched to OMAD (one meal a day) because I found prepping all of my meals at the beginning of the week
4. Some rough guidelines for what I eat. While I railed against diets that eliminate entire food groups above, I have found it important to have some guidelines for how I eat. I use a combination of macronutrient goals, an appreciation of Michael Pollan’s “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” (ie, minimizing convenience foods), and a modified version of Alton Brown’s food lists (foods to eat daily, foods to eat three times a week, foods to eat no more than once a week, foods to eat only occasionally). These are more aspirational than compulsory. I have also revised these guidelines constantly throughout the process because what works best for me has changed over time based on what's going on in my life. I've learned that I find more enjoyment in eating whole foods rather than playing macro tetris with packaged foods, so I have some rough templates for meals that I can always modify for variety by switching up various aspects.

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I am Chael Sonnen, author of The Four-Pack Revolution, ask me anything...

Six-packs are for teenagers and drug addicts! If you're tired of failing to live up to unrealistic expectations about weight loss, start here - https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pack-Revolution-Lower-Cheat-Weight-ebook/dp/B06Y1QFFDP

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I'll be around for the next few hours to answer any questions...

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How to balance weight loss and relationship?

So i am a 23yo guy and have been losing weight for about a year now came from 310lbs to 235lb. As of this morning i am 250lbs i gained 15lbs because i stopped going to the gym and eating junk. I started dating my current gf 2 months ago and i wanted to spend time with her so i stopped going to the gym. She is 90lbs and can eat whatever without gaining weight. She likes to eat and share junk food with me all the time, im too weak to say no. Due to all this i have gained 15lbs back instead of lossing weight. How can you manage the gym and a relationship?

I work 12 hour shifts from 6am to 6pm so i only got a few free hours each night and I feel like i gotta pick between her or the gym for those hours. I tried to get her to go gym with me but she is lazy af lol.

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