This is quite long, but I've recently started writing more and am wanting more practice. So, I wrote the story of my 100 pound weight loss:
“Holy shit. I’m the fattest person in this photo.” That’s what I said to myself when staring at a photograph of my sister, father, and myself from Thanksgiving 2011. I was 24 and 240 pounds. My 38” waist pants were straining at the clasps but I couldn’t bear the thought of jumping to a 40” waist. “I think it’s time I do something about this.”
By all accounts, I’m an average guy. I grew up in the midwest with divorced parents. I went to college. My maintenance calories are right at 2,000. I have an average incoming, live in an average house, in an average subdivision, and an average job. I even drive a black car—nothing exotic like, you know, red! I always heard these stories of folks losing lots of weight, but their stories always were of some exceptional, extraordinary circumstance that made them decidedly not average. How in the hell would an average, middle-of-the-road guy like me ever hope to accomplish something like losing 100 pounds? I don’t have any special motivating circumstances! I didn’t grow up with some special family or destitute, or rich, or with challenging diversity, or any other “something” that makes me special. I’m your average person.
As children, we always had three (or two during school days) home-cooked meals that I always thought were balanced. My mother was adamant about us eating our vegetables. But, I never recall anything about portion control. As a child, I never recall being larger, but I was outside quite often and was kept rather busy. As I grew, the stresses of school and a strained social life took their toll. I found myself rarely involved in any sort of physical activity. If something involved anything more than a brisk walk, I probably wasn’t going to do it. You’d better be a really good salesperson to get me off the couch.
In high school, I noticed my weight pick up. I became more sedentary. I spent significant time working on school work, I took a job as a radio board operator, and interned with the district’s IT department. Notice nothing with activity? I didn’t think anything of it. I graduated high school and moved off to college; to be under my own recognizance with a meal plan. Oh, the campus meal plan. What a wondrous creation. I know many complain about their school’s cafeterias but we had one that was especially good. And I made sure I frequented it.
During college, my social life took off a bit so I was out often with friends, eating, partying, and usually sitting around. I enjoyed the friendship and time we spent together. I took a job on campus with the IT department and continued to sit. We ate lunch out often and my choices were never the best—if it wasn’t fried I probably didn’t eat it. I also developed a penchant for sweet tea. As much as I love my grandmother, I will blame her for my sweet tea addiction. Nectar of the gods, I tell you. After four years of college, I was probably close to 220 pounds. I still had more to go.
Once I graduated, I moved back to my home town to take a job in IT. It was a bit stressful adjusting to full-time employment, the stresses of work itself, and dealing with all that comes with adjusting to being a “real” adult. I ate my feelings. I also found McDonald’s had what was the closest analog to my late grandmother’s sweet tea that I could get as conveniently. I was up to three large teas a day by the time “the photo” was taken. I would get out of breath walking up two flights of stairs, I had absolutely no interest in doing any sort of physical activity and I was feeling like I would never be able to date anyone because of my appearance. I was by no means horrendously large, but it took its mental toll on me. Strangely, that had been building for some time, but I never felt the gumption to actually do something about it. Why? I don’t know. Fear of getting started? I was missing out on some of my goals. I wanted to get my scuba diving certification, but there was no way I could pass the swim test. I wanted to get my private pilot’s certificate, but I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the physical. There was no way I was going to try dating anyone. That was just not going to happen.
The day after “the photo” was taken, I was in the shower and remember looking down at where my feet should have been and couldn’t see them for my stomach. Something clicked. I was done and I had to do something about it. I had this overwhelming sense that my life was slipping away and that I was going to miss out. What in the world do I do first?
I’m a pragmatic, logical person (IT guy here, remember?). I knew that, at its root, is a matter of calories in and calories out. Mathematically speaking, to lose weight, calories out had to be greater than calories in. Simple, right? Hah. Not so fast.
How do you go from consuming 3,000+ calories a day to under 1,500? How do you develop a habit of physical exercise when you’ve not practiced it in, well, ever?
I knew I was motivated by goals in the short term, and I love data of all sorts, so I started using a calorie counting app on my phone. I set my goal of 1,500 calories a day and tracked every morsel of food I ate. I missed the mark wildly as I learned what I could and couldn’t consume. Over the course of a year, I started getting a sense of how many calories something might be. During that time, I also started jogging on a treadmill first thing in the morning for 20 minutes. It was slow and not much, but it was something, right? Something is better than nothing, right?
Remember I started this journey the end of November. What holiday is up next? Christmas. What does my family do on Christmas? Eat. A lot. Of everything. I was doing so damn well. I was proud. I cut my daily caloric intake in HALF just *snap* like that. I was jogging 20 minutes a day and had the courage to join a local gym so I could use their cardio equipment after work. I added 20 minutes on the elliptical. I was down a few pounds already. But, December 25 came, and so did the food. And so did the guilt. I fell back into my own habits and found myself eating anything I could get my hands on. Unfortunately my family is nearly all good at cooking and baking. At the time, the endorphins of eating outweighed the tinge of guilt I felt. The next morning, though, when the fun of family was gone and I was lying in bed miserable, I was depressed. In my head, I couldn’t believe I had just ruined three plus weeks of hard work.
I sat at home that day, sulking; feeling guilty for myself. Conveniently, a Facebook photo of me from Christmas popped up and it shook me again. That same existential dread from the shower after Thanksgiving crept back and I knew I couldn’t let one setback ruin what could be the rest of my life. I made it to the gym that day to do my elliptical work and added 20 minutes of jogging. I felt that rush of endorphins of the post-cardio high and felt like I was making progress again.
Over the course of the next six months, I lost nearly 40 pounds. I had to buy an entirely new wardrobe. I was proud. As. Hell. Folks at work and friends noticed, friends noticed, and I was feeling great. I knew I had a long way to go, but damn if I wasn’t making progress. This was motivating. It felt like a snowball rolling down a hill. At first, it was gradual and almost seemed purposeless. When I started noticing I had to notch up my belt, I felt a little spark. I didn’t need to buy size 40 pants after all! It was another little spark, a little goal achieved, that kept me motivated. All along my journey, I have had these small goals, these happenstance incidents that have kept me motivated.
At this point, I was down to around 200 pounds and it was summer 2012. I started doing some jogging outdoors and found the fresh air wasn’t so bad! The sun felt nice! This whole outdoors thing wasn’t so scary after all. So, I switched my morning jogging to outdoors when it was cooler and at that point was up to 40 minutes on the elliptical and 20 on the treadmill at the gym in the afternoon. I was finally feeling like I didn’t need to track every crumb of food and had a sense of how much I was really eating. I seem to develop habits easily (good and bad) so it wasn’t too difficult to adapt to my new diet.
At this point, I also started watching what I was eating as much as I was watching how much. I started using the counting app to track macros. I wasn’t going to get into heavy resistance training, but knew there was probably some science to that. The progress I saw already was motivating and I wanted to see what else I could do to improve the efficiency of my weight loss. I ate more greens, changed how I prepared my food, and started to get into meal prepping. I found portion control was a significant contributor to my sticking to the diet. If I could pre-package my food into containers and reheat/eat in pre-measured amounts, I wasn’t as tempted to pig out on a week’s worth of food after a hard day at work.
November of the next year rolled around and I was down to around 160 pounds. I had lost 80 pounds in a year. I didn’t feel that was a significant accomplishment—it was what I needed to do for myself. It was what I had to do for myself. I also began to learn during that time that I didn’t get fat in a day and I didn’t lose weight in a day. So, I let myself enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas though food. I had to fight back feelings of guilt, of shame, and that I was going to ruin what I worked for. To this day, I still fight those feelings occasionally. I’m much better at coping with them, but they’re still there. I have to be conscious and remind myself that nothing like this, gain or loss, happens with one or two meals. Of all of the things I have done, this is probably the most difficult to remember.
I continued to lose weight and finally landed at 140 pounds in the summer of 2013. At this point, I was a bit too thin. But, I had lived so long on this caloric deficit I didn’t know how to transition to maintenance. I was afraid I would slip back into my old habits and I’d wake up the next day at 240 pounds again. So, I had to remind myself of the whole “calories in versus out” thing and work out a new normal. I continued my cardio routine and noticed my resting heart rate was in the low 50s, which was absolutely incredible for me. I slowly adjusted my caloric intake up to come close to matching my output. I had a goal of getting up to 150 pounds, hopefully though weight training.
I had no idea what I was doing in the gym, but managed to struggle through bar-weight exercises, using the free weights, and the resistance machines. I didn’t relish the idea, but tried eating 500 calories above what I felt was my maintenance and slowly gained a few pounds here and there. Strangely, I began to obsess with calorie tracking. I really got obsessive with macro tracking. It got to the point of becoming frustrating that I wasn’t seeing progress any longer in the gym, I had gone upwards of 145 or so pounds, and just got discouraged and quit—I cancelled my gym membership. This was going to be a test of my resolve.
I managed to maintain the 145 pounds through outdoor running and watching my diet. I’d yo-yo five pounds here and there. I’d notice my pants would feel a bit tighter around the waist, so I’d cut back calories, step up running, or both. I’d notice they’d get too loose, and I’d cut back the cardio. It was a bit of a reversal of what I thought, but this taught me a way to monitor myself without having to watch the scales so closely. I also learned to let myself have a moment of enjoying a food like a slice of apple pie, a few cookies, or a donut every now and again.
It is now the summer of 2019 and I’ve managed to maintain my weight loss. I’m around 155 pounds now—mostly the weight gain has been the result of muscle mass from cycling so frequently. I was starting to see knee pain from running and with the advice of a few friends, switched to road cycling. I found I absolutely loved the fact that in a few hours I could see 30 miles of scenery and feel the wind. It helps combat the stresses of life, maintain cardiovascular health, and still realize the goal I set out back in 2011. Just last year, I cycled across Indiana (160 miles) in around eight hours. That’s something 2011 me would have never thought possible sitting in the recliner at Thanksgiving. I would have laughed if you suggested I would do something like that in seven short years. I will say I’m pretty damn proud I was able to do that and still feel human afterward.
In the summer of 2014, I obtained my open water diving certification and over the next year worked my way up to rescue—the highest non-professional certification offered by my certifying body. I don’t have my private pilot’s certificate yet but I still have that on my goal list. I need to get over my fear of visiting the aviation medical examiner and what they might find. It’s a bit of an irrational fear, but a fear nonetheless. I also have a goal of getting more heavily into resistance training. I’d love to see myself around 200 pounds again, but muscle and not fat. A part of me believes it would be a test mentally of crashing through the mental barrier that I can gain weight the right way. It’s also another major accomplishment test to pass, even at the not-so-ripe-old-age of 33, I’m not 20. It is more difficult now to accomplish such a goal than it would have been 13 years ago.
I think the keys for me to losing the weight itself was setting extremely short term goals (I’d be under 1,500 calories daily), slowly changing my diet, and leveraging what I knew about myself (develop habits easily) to integrate exercise and other healthier habits. I had to change my mind as I was changing my body. It couldn’t be one or the other—it had to be both. Along the way I’ve had my share of personal struggles, battles, and emotional upsets. I took hits to the diet, I had setbacks, and still to this day live with the 240-pound-me mindset. I still live in fear that someday I’ll regain that weight. I’ll wind up “fat” again. As much as I have found a “groove” I’m afraid that something will change it. It isn’t debilitating and isn’t all-consuming but there’s a little voice in my head that occasionally pipes up. I suppose, in part, it serves as a reminder to watch the diet, keep up the cardio, and remember that I was able to accomplish what was probably my biggest life challenge to this day. One lesson this journey has taught me is that with proper work, motivation, and realistic expectations, we truly can achieve our goals. It’s not just one of those stupid things we hear from our parents or from school. We have to be present, we have to be realistic, and we have to know ourselves in order to change ourselves.
