I have often welcomed those who have lost 100+ lbs (~ 50 kg , ~7 stone) to “the club” and joked that club meetings were on Thursdays. I recently suggested that we try out having a regular weekly thread to talk about issues that are particular to those who have lost 100+ lbs, those who are well on their way and those who are just at the beginning of a journey this big.
Welcome back to the Century Club! Each week I will provide a topic of the day that has been on my mind or inspired by previous posts. However you are free to talk about any topics you think might be relevant to current and prospective club members.
Previous Topics: Milestones - Seasonal changes - Is it worth it? - Surprising Food Facts - Mistakes were made - Time to Vent - Relief Valves - Seeing Objectively - Tips you hate - Fear and Self-Loathing - Starting - 2020 recap
Today's topic: What didn't work?
Most of us have attempted weight loss many times and either not kept up with it long enough or have just gone back to our "normal" patterns and heavier weights.
In my line of work I'm always trying to document the paths taken that didn't work and not just the one that did. Keeping that present in your mind and leaving yourself signposts along the way that indicate "Wrong Turn Ahead" can help prevent you from going down those paths again and can help reinforce the behaviors you need to follow to stay on your chosen path.
I worked with nutritionists a couple of times in the past and both set out to radically change my diet. It was the late 90s/2000s and both sought to pretty much eliminate all of the fat from my diet. The focus was low fat high volume. Both times this approach worked well enough for a few months, but after I lost 15-20 lbs I ended up not being able to keep it up. I felt HUNGRY all the time and would end up breaking the rules with a large binge.
By contrast these days, I deliberately include fats (both healthy and less healthy) at almost every meal. I found that low-fat high-volume doesn't work for me at all and instead aiming for 20%+ of my calories to come from fat allows me to feel fuller on a smaller calorie intake.
I always thought I would have to temporarily and radically change the way I eat if I wanted to lose weight, but what worked for me was smaller more gradual changes that still preserved the basic structure of how I like to eat.
Another thing that didn't work for me at all were any of the supposed visual cues that doctors and nutritionists like to refer to. Using my palm, fist, thumb, a deck of cards etc... to eyeball portions never worked for me where a food scale is unambiguous. I tried the eyeball method and still always ended up eating more than enough to keep my weight high.
And the last thing that doesn't work for me is "Don't weigh yourself every day". Doing so makes it automatic for me and now in maintenance I need the extra data as my weight trend is much slower than the daily/weekly fluctuations in water weight. "My weight" is an average of all of the measurements I took for a month and the trend is how those monthly averages compare to each other over a period of 3-6 months. If I weighed myself weekly or monthly I would not be able to see that pattern and could easily misinterpret the data and take unnecessary action.
What ultimately worked was also facilitated by technology and tying it all together in my smartphone. Technology makes it easier to keep up the good habits, but wasn't absolutely necessary for maintaining this.
What about you Centurion? What approaches to weight loss didn't work for you?
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