June 2019 ~ 395lbs / Jan 2021 345lbs. I'm 6'5"
I wanted to post about my journey, because it's a little atypical of what I see here, but I think it's a perspective that could help some people that are overwhelmed by the idea of losing. I haven't lost, you know, a ton, and it hasn't been fast, but it's been steady and it's been easier to keep off than ever, so I thought I'd share.
When I started eating better around mid / late 2019, I didn't really have a goal. I had been diagnosed with mild type 2 diabetes, I was basically as heavy as I'd ever been, and I was looking to make some changes. I had tried things in the past, but I just couldn't get over the hump. I would stay on things for a few weeks, fall off the wagon, and then stay off. I'm definitely an emotional eater, and when things got hard, it was easy to try and feel better with some awful eating, and then once I had diverted from the plan, it was easier to stay off.
I have had the help of my fiancée, as she's done a lot of the suggesting of substitutions / good healthy ideas and virtually all the cooking.
I'll give a little analysis on the overall small changes and how I've made them stick.
The first thing we did was stop drinking so much. We were going out a lot, having a bunch of drinks, eating a bunch of food, and doing it all the time. Drinking is fun, and I love good cocktails still, but the sheer volume of empty calories in booze is astonishing. Also, what you do during / after the drinking adds up quick. 3am burrito to soak it up, hungover brunch on Sunday to feel better, etc all was taking a toll. Dialing it back quite a bit, to a drink or two sometimes (2-3x a month instead of 4-5x a week) really started the weight loss change for me.
The 2nd big thing we did was start intermittent fasting (loosely). We've basically stopped eating breakfast, and eating lunch around 1pm, so we have from dinner (7-8pm ish) to lunch time (1pmish) every day. At first this sounded insane to me, especially because I was a big breakfast person, but it's worked out and I'm definitely happy to do it.
We also cut out a lot of bread. We eat keto meals a lot, but not all the time. I need (and frankly want) to eat vegetables and fruit and it seems like most keto recipes are just deep fried bacon cheese bites, and it just wasn't going to happen. That being said, reducing bread reduces calories, and it's easy. There are absolutely some things I prefer to the carb filled substitutes (lookin at you spaghetti squash and cauliflower wings), and some things that are fine in context (cauli rice fine with a curry, but I don't really like it stand alone as a plain side). We also ordered Green Chef and made their keto meals for a while. The main thing it helped with is PORTION SIZE, which has been a big learning curve. I think the most important thing I learned during that time was what a normal portion size of food looked like, how I felt when I ate that, and how it felt better to feel good from eating healthy foods in the right amount than it did for stuffing myself full of foods that were making me feel bad.
After learning portion control just a bit, it was easier to listen to my body. Do I really need a 2nd plate of food? Do I really need to eat at all? Are there times that a spoon of peanutbutter or some celery and home made ranch (Greek yoghurt, ranch seasonings, etc) is enough and we don't need to have a full meal? Learning to figure out when you're hungry and when you're having an emotional response to food was a big thing for me.
I think the biggest thing for me was learning to have balance, and what balance actually looks like. Sometimes we want to get carry out thai food. Sometimes we want to have a pizza. That's, you know, fine. I know that if I perpetually deny myself food, I'll just get upset and jump headlong off the wagon. The difference now is that if we're going to eat thai food takeout for dinner, maybe we have a light lunch (or no lunch). A modicum of planning goes a long way in watching out for calorie traps.
I think overall my goal now is to keep going on this path, eating relatively well, but most importantly not pressuring myself. I've been a fat guy my whole life. The pressure to lose weight so you can accomplish some goal that's only mildly related (find love! find a better job! do some activity!) can be a giant mental weight to bear. It's hard to feel like you've let yourself down. It's hard to feel like if you don't adhere to some strict plan that you'll never make some made up goal by some made up timeline in your life. My suggestion is to be easy on yourself, because life is hard. Make some small, manageable changes that you can keep. If you fall off the wagon, there's no reason to set the wagon on fire and piss out the flames. Allow yourself some grace. This has really been the only thing that has worked for me, and I hope it works for others, too. I'm sure other things worked for other people, and this certainly isn't the fastest way to lose weight, but I feel nice that it's worked for me and continues to be easy to maintain.
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