tldr; Born ‘91, male, always overweight. At the end of 2020 above 185 kg/408 lbs (not sure, scale doesn’t work after 185). Nearly choked to death twice in my sleep, got scared.
Now down to 141,3 kg/311,5 lbs. Started with 16-8 IF and 30 min fast walking 2-4 times per week. When frustrated by a plateau, gradually added full fasting days to the regime. Now fully fasting three times per week, fast walking 1.5 h 2 times per week and walking more generally, with a little bit of interval jogging at the end. My advice at the end.
Hey everyone,
I started my weight loss journey one and a half years ago and just reached one of my personal milestones. I am about halfway to where I want to be, so I thought it would be a good thing to write up a little summary and talk about my experience!
I am a (nearly) 31 year old man from Germany (born in ‘91), currently working on my PhD in theoretical chemistry. I was always overweight, mostly because most of my hobbies are sedentary and I suffer from depression, which caused me to develop eating as a coping mechanism. I know this now, but these things were never really discussed back in the days so most doctors tried to find a physical reason for my weight (hormonal, etc.).
Anyway, my eating brought me to way up above 185 kg/387 lbs. I can’t say exactly how much I weighed at my ‘peak’, as my scales don’t go above 185. This climb was gradual and I know that I gained around 7 kg per year most of my life. I have blood pressure problems and take meds for them and for my depression.
I tried more or less any diet out there. Low carb, low fat, counting calories, cabbage soup, you name it. Most I could manage was about a month before my depression hit me again and I lost any motivation to continue. I even went to a center for obesity at my local clinic to look for help, but was told that the only thing they do is either an operation or a Nestlé funded food substitute program. I wasn’t ready to commit to the operation, and, well, fuck anything to do with Nestlé. Didn’t help that this program wasn’t covered by my health insurance, and would have had me paying over 3k per year, which isn’t really something that is feasible on a PhD (50%) salary.
The Covid pandemic happened and I was doing Homeoffice for about a year. This meant even less moving around and more depressed thoughts as I live alone and had next to no face to face social contacts for most of the time. Which led to more coping, eating and gaining even more weight.
Then, at the end of 2020 (around November) I nearly choked to death in my sleep.
Something got into my windpipe and lungs while I was laying on my stomach, causing me to wake up, panic, and having to focus really hard to force my lungs open. After this happened a second time, I got scared and at the same time too embarrassed to talk about this with my GP. But, well, the reason was most likely my weight. So I decided that I will try one last time to change my lifestyle, and if this doesn’t work, I will get the operation.
But what do I do? It was clear to me that any change that I would have to do would have to happen slowly, so that I can develop it into a habit, and not just a quick fancy which I will drop immediately.
Moving more was one thing that I had to do. I couldn’t run with my weight, my social anxiety prevented me from going to the gym and public pool and my bike also couldn’t really handle me anymore. So I did the next best thing. I started walking. For about half an hour, two to four times a week I tried walking as fast as I could.
The other thing I needed to do was to change my diet. The ‘only’ thing you have to do is to reach a caloric deficit, however, this is easier said than done. Depending on your metabolism and your mental health situation, this can be incredibly difficult. I knew from previous experiences that the constant pressure from counting calories always leads to me dropping the diet, so I needed something which reduced my caloric intake without much bookkeeping.
I chose intermittent fasting for two reasons:
One, I never really felt good after eating breakfast anyway, a problem I had since childhood. With everyone always blaring about the ‘most important meal of the day’, I never really thought about ‘officially’ skipping it. But if I always had a problem with it, why not?
Two, from my observations, most of my superfluous caloric intake was a result of late night snacking. I always had a problem with this, but my stressful ‘job’ (chemistry student and now PhD candidate) meant that my coping mechanism often resulted in ‘rewarding’ myself after a bad day with a packet of chips or some other high caloric food.
This didn’t happen constantly so I never realized that this was exactly where the problem lies.
Let me expand on that: As I have previously said I noticed over the years that I gained around 7 kg per year. However, It took me a long time to finally do the math. With around 7700 kcal per kg fat, I had a caloric surplus of about 150 kcal per day.
That was… actually not so bad? So the reason I was fat was NOT that my diet was really bad, but that it was consistently, slightly, bad.
I can’t tell you what an eye opener thiswas. For years I felt defeated at the thought of changing my diet. Because everyone always talks about diets in superlatives. ‘You have to fully restructure your diet and forgo any comfort food if you want to achieve anything.’
This is a herculean task for many, which is why so many of us fail their diets constantly.
The thing is, however, you don’t need to change that much. My 150 kcal basically amounts to an apple and an egg too much per day. If I cut out 300 kcal per day, I would lose weight at the same rate as I used to gain it. That was it. I only had to do this, and do it constantly, to win. And to do it constantly I would have to implement changes gradually, so that they develop into habits easier.
So I started with what I was told was the easiest intermittent fasting method, 16-8. I skipped breakfast (which was nothing new to me) and only ate between 12 and 20 o’clock. This got rid of my late night snacking and gave me the caloric deficit I needed.
But man, even just that was fucking hard. The first couple of weeks were bad. Like, really bad. Cranky mood, constant cravings and a lot of hunger pains. If you want to do this too, please plan to do it for at least (!) a month. Because after that, it gets much, much easier.
Doing my ‘sport’ was bad too. I started walking to improve my cardio and stamina, because I often felt winded in my day to day life. But the bad part was to keep at it. Because being consistent is what really counts here, everything else (how fast you walk, how long, how far etc.) doesn’t matter. You have to understand that your first job is to establish a habit of being active, everything else is secondary. And if you think ‘Well, 30 min of walking doesn’t burn much calories, does it?’, then you are correct. Generally speaking, if you start from a similar point to mine, no sport that you will be able to do constantly will help you much with your caloric deficit at the beginning. For that you have to change your diet. You have to realize that you have to do this not to directly lose weight, but to prepare for down the line when you can start doing more taxing stuff. But before you are able to move around a lot, you have to be able to move around a bit. Start slow and be consistent. This is all that matters.
So, I had made my changes. But how did that affect my weight? Well, I didn’t know, for two reasons. One thing that always frustrated me during my previous diets was that weightloss was never linear, plateaus etc. are a thing. So I tried to minimize the risk of ‘seeing them’. The other reason was more practical: I couldn’t find a scale which was rated above 185 kg…
I didn’t weigh myself for three months, but I stuck to what would become my new routine.
Dec 20’ was hard, Jan 21’ was much, much easier. However, scared that I haven’t lost any weight yet, I added another change in the beginning of Feb 21’: I added a full fasting day to my schedule. This meant no calories, at all. The idea behind it was that it would increase my caloric deficit (as my BMR is high) and it would minimize the weight fluctuations once I started weighing myself, if I do it directly after a fasting day.
Sounds good on paper, but man, this was hard. Probably the worst period of this whole journey. Not eating for a day meant I was out of it often, I was freezing often, hungry, aggressive. I am lucky that at that time one day of getting no work done per week wasn’t catastrophic (thanks to an awesome boss and homeoffice), otherwise this would not have been possible. I know that many are not so lucky to be in this position. And honestly, I don’t know if I would recommend full fasting days for other people. But I wanted to see positive change so desperately, that I did it anyway. Also, I take a nutrient supplement tablet on my fasting days, to not fuck over my body.
On the first of March ‘21 I weighed myself for the first time, directly after my fasting day and morning routine. And luckily, the scales worked. I was at 180.6 kg/398 lbs. I lost at least 5 kg/11 lbs. Most of this would have been water of course, but now I had a good starting point to compare to. So I continued on, weighing myself once a month directly after a fasting day.
The next months were hard. I lost weight, but not as much as I should have on paper, because my body decreased my BMR in response to the caloric ‘draught’. Beware, this will happen to you too. However, I did lose weight. I reached my first plateau at the end of July ‘21, with 167,9 kg/370, losing only 700 g compared to the previous month.
At this point I got scared again. I wanted everything but seeing the number stay the same on the scale. The weeks were hard enough and I feared that my mental health would not manage the disappointment, leading me to dropping everything again.
So I started introducing another full fasting day. At this point, I had increased my activity to 1 hour of fast walking 2 to 4 times per week, 16-8 IF on normal days and two full ‘no calories’ days per week. I had gotten used to the one fasting day by then, and besides a slight dizziness and hunger in the evening I could manage them well enough (bad mood notwithstanding).
Introducing the second fasting day was as bad as the first time around. I was freezing once again, my mood dropped and my work suffered. But losing weight was my priority and I was scared that I would fail again. I told myself that this was it, this was as far as I can go without dropping my body into a full hunger metabolism. And it didn’t save me from the dreaded plateaus.
At the end of Oct ‘21 I was at 160 kg/353 lbs, having gained 300 g since the last month. This was soul crushing. But thankfully, I carried on with my routine. I had increased my walks to 1.5 hours over the months, with my stamina improving.
Weight loss however slowed down. This is to be expected, especially compared to the first couple of months. Sad, but true.
At the end of April ‘22 I ran into another plateau. I was now at 149,3 kg/329 lbs, having gained 700 g since the month prior. My fasting days were manageable again, so I increased them once again. I am currently fasting 3 full days per week, with a day (two on the weekends) between, doing 16-8 on the other days. I do 1.5 hours of fast walking two times per week, with a little bit of light interval jogging at the end for the last half an hour, as much as I can.
This month I hit my first milestone, 141,3 kg /311.5 lbs. With this I am now weighing less than when I started going to university, which was my big goal I wanted to achieve before finishing my PhD.
I will be continuing my regime, but I am thinking about reverting back to only 2 full fasting days again, as I do not see much of a change in weight loss and not eating every other day is really taxing. I have seen clear changes in my diet on the ‘regular’ days, even without planning for it. As my body craves nutrients I often revert to salads and healthier options. After all, I only have 2 meals before a new fasting day. I was also able to reduce my blood pressure meds.
However, there are downsides. On my fasting days I sometimes feel a bit dizzy and it becomes hard to concentrate. I also have to be careful with my first meal after a fasting day, as I sometimes tend to eat a big portion, which first spikes my blood sugar, then crashes it down, leaving me totally drained. And I still deal with my depression every day. But I try to manage.
My next goal is 130 kg/286 pounds, which is the upper weight limit of my bike. After that 120 kg, and finally, dropping below 100 kg. I know that this will likely take two more years, probably more as I won’t be as free in the future while (hopefully) being fully employed somewhere.
To all which are one the journey or about to do so, let me summarize my advice for you:
- Check in with your GP before making any major changes to your diet. If you live in a civilized country with socialized healthcare, or if you can afford it, let your doctor check your blood count once a year.
- Realize your situation, problems (both physical and mental) and numbers. Look at your weight progression over the years and figure out what your caloric deficit is.
- Be a little bit more active, but be consistent multiple times per week.
- Change your diet gradually, starting small. Do not count on your activities for the caloric deficit. Plan your diet around it.
- After any changes, continue them for at least a month before changing anything else. Look at the data that you accumulate to judge if you need to change anything.
- If you can’t handle disappointment, weigh yourself no more than once per month. Weight will fluctuate. There will be plateaus. You will go up slightly sometimes. The trend is the only thing that is important.
- Establishing habits beats everything else. Start small. Do it consistently.
- Realize that this is going to take months, or if you are as heavy as I am, years. This will become your new life.
Thank you for reading. Stay motivated, stay strong.
Cheers,
B.
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