Mid-30s Male 6'2"
I've been a member here for multiple years. I've had the intention for the past 15 years to lose weight, but it was never serious. More of a "that would be cool if I could take a pill and lose all this weight" fantasy than any concrete goals. That was my opinion on it until it wasn't. Here is a little about my journey.
I've hit one of my small goals so I wanted to post. I've finally hit Overweight in my BMI (28). Just CICO, nothing fancy.
I "started" in January 2022 at ~380 (lbs.) though In 2021 I was over 400 but I don't know the exact weight. I started having massive health issues like legs swelling and sleep apnea getting so bad I had to sleep sitting up which caused issues with the leg swelling worsening. Bad sleep led to other issues both emotional and cognitively.
You know that "rock bottom" moment people have to hit? I was at the point where I would sleep in a chair for a couple hours, but then my legs would swell so much I would move to my bed with my legs elevated to help reduce the swelling and then wake up choking in an hour. To give a more concise reasoning, my stomach and chest had gotten so big that laying in bed with my legs elevated was shifting my weight towards my head and my fat was compressing my chest and neck compounding my apnea issues.
So I just made the smallest change to start, and it was just to stop drinking soda as much. I still drank it with meals, but not when I was just at home. That's all I did from January till July. I lost 30 pounds in that period.
In July 2022 a content creator I follow talked about his diet at the time since he was losing weight as well that he gained during COVID. He mentioned he is brain-broken and able to eat the same thing every day which honestly resonated with me massively. For reference I was 354 when I began my "diet".
I had used MFP time and again trying to lose weight but it never stuck and felt like more work for nothing gained. Like I tracked my meals but I didn't get the next step. So my TDEE stats said I needed over 3k calories to maintain my weight. I thought about reducing it a little, but honestly I didn't want to measure it all that close. So I just set a soft limit of 2k calories a day. I began tracking and then just waiting for hunger to happen. If I hit my limit I wouldn't satiate the craving I'd just wait till the next day.
As time went on I started to see "Ok, wasting 300 calories on a Mtn. Dew really doesn't help with my hunger. Let's stop drinking them." Then I started realizing a lot of the food I eat doesn't satiate me much or for as long as it should compared to its calorie amount. "What if I eat this and this, its the same calories but I feel full way longer."
Using that I finally found my "anchor meal" as I've called it. It's a burrito bowl from Chipotle. It's 1200 calories (give or take who is working that day) and very filling. So now I always eat this bowl as either Lunch or Dinner, and then eat whatever I want for the other 800 calories in my day. I technically do intermittent fasting but not by choice, just honestly by coincidence.
You see since I don't cook, I can only go to places that are open. I also am a night-owl so I inevitably wake up in the afternoon. So I've essentially only been eating between 12pm and 10pm through a confluence various quirks. Lately this has changed slightly but half my days are like this.
So once I found my anchor meal I eat it every-single-day. The only days I don't is when they are closed, or holiday meals with family. It has worked magnificently.
The other major change I did was job related. My previous job was driving for the railroads. I picked crews up off their trains in remote locations and brought them to the train yards. So 40 hours a week literally sitting in a van down by the river. The company I worked for lost their contract in December 2020 so I went on unemployment in 2021 and lived off that and my savings till November 2022. In November I got a new job working at a factory, just a regular ol' line worker.
So for those keeping track I have been on my "diet" for the past four months and I was at 318 my first week. This job was a massive change from my previous 8 years. It's 12 hour days, two on two off, every other weekend.
6 AM - 6:10 PM Week 1: Monday - Tuesday - OFF - OFF - Friday - Saturday - Sunday Week 2: OFF - OFF - Wednesday - Thursday - OFF - OFF - OFF Repeat
Conditioning through a job is awful. You have to realize aside from my weight I was just completely out of shape overall. I got winded going up 10 stairs. Now I'm going up and down multiple stairs (100+) and on my feet the majority of my shift while weighing over 300 pounds. For 6 hours of my 12 I would work at a spot where I literally walk back and forth 5 steps non-stop for 2 hours at a time. My legs and especially my feet would be so beat by the end of the day I had to sit in my car in the parking lot at work for 30+ minutes before I could drive home. Why would I put myself through this? Health insurance. That's the only reason.
Now to normal people this wouldn't count as exercise but to me it was like running a marathon. While my weight loss stayed consistent from before I started this job my endurance skyrocketed as time went on. Now I can walk for miles and not get winded. Stairs still suck but that's due to my knees being terrible not due to exhaustion.
My eating has changed since July 2023 also. When I began my diet I would eat Chipotle for lunch then figure something out for dinner. At work since I can't leave campus all day I ate lunch at the cafeteria (whatever looked good, or a sandwich) then ate Chipotle for dinner. On my off days I do like I did before work. The recent change is at work now I eat breakfast and lunch. I was having issues with keeping awake at work before lunch. I think I've lost enough weight that my body isn't burning my "reserves" enough to keep me awake before I eat lunch. So now I just eat like a breakfast burrito or sandwich around 9am and reduce my lunch at 12pm. As you can see below my weight is still going down.
A few goals I set for myself at the start. So my target weight is... well I never had a specific one. One goal I had was get my BMI below Obese, then below Overweight. Another goal was lose weight slowly for two reasons. The first was I didn't want to crash diet, all my decisions were with lifestyle changes in mind and not getting a goal weight. I know myself pretty well and if I hit my goal by any means necessary I'd be all "Alright that's done now, lets order pizza" and go right back up in weight. The second had to do with loose skin. I do have loose skin right now but it's not that bad considering I've lost 150+ pounds. I just wanted my body to gradually adapt to the new normal as my habits slowly adapted as well. I also heard losing gradually will help with stretch marks but my stretch marks are there for a different reason so it wasn't really a contributing factor more like "that would be a nice bonus". I did the math a month or two ago and I'm around 1.5 pounds lost a week. I was aiming for 2 but this is still great.
The only weight goal I've toyed with is 215, since that was the weight I wrestled at in high school. The penultimate goal is 180 and jacked. Specifically I want an "Adonis belt" even if it's for like a week. I want to get ripped and pay hundreds of dollars for a professional photo shoot where I remake my Facebook account and post the pictures to brag about myself for once. Yes I want to use my goal for spite and self-aggrandizing, sue me.
I have stretch marks, but actually it isn't from my weight. In 2006 I was in a very bad car accident in which I was ejected through the windshield into the median of the interstate (grass thankfully). I was fat back then also (~240) which made me bouncy I guess. In my multiple bounces/rolling I landed on my right abdomen and had a massive hematoma on my "love handles". The comparison I've always used was the smallest pumpkin you could reasonable carve, or 2 and a half softballs. So that ripped my skin over and gave me my stretch marks. Getting fatter didn't help for sure but didn't make more, just widened the valleys.
The final goal was strengthening. You'd think a guy with my stats (6'2" 224) is pretty strong, and man would you be wrong. I am objectively weak. I mentioned my car accident, aside from the hematoma I also had some disabling injuries as well. This image is a good example of my hip. My cartilage was compressed and pushed out from the hip joint like play-doh. I also had two discs in my spine compressed and almost herniated. Thankfully I was rag dolling due to being knocked out by the initial collision. I walked with a cane for over a year and essentially accelerated my age when it comes to hip and back issues by a few decades (I was in the accident two days after I turned 19). I did some physical therapy but wasn't able to finish it out due to issues with insurance. So half-fixed and gaining weight while never working out it's more surprising I can walk let alone lift.
I wanted to lose weight so I can focus on strengthening my back muscles to help alleviate my back pain and posture. I initially planned on doing it when I hit 300, but I pushed it back till my endurance improved. I was just so gassed from work on my days off I'd spend them just getting back to normal before going back to work. In May 2023 I started taking online classes so I'd be at work for 12 hours then on my days off I'd be studying/working on homework for 12 hours and didn't plan any time to starting working out. I've since finished half my classes but now I'm just anxious about starting in general since I have never done weight lifting.
Anyways all that is to just give you an idea of my own journey with weight loss and I hope it can give some insights for anyone else looking to start (or continue) their journey as well.
Here is my weights since I started tracking it weekly when I started my "diet" in July 2022. I will only post the weight at the end of each month:
Jan 22: ~380 July 22: 350 Aug 22: 340 Sep 22: 332 Oct 22: 324 Nov 22: 317 Dec 22: 305 Jan 23: 296 Feb 23: 282 Mar 23: 275 Apr 23: 280 May 23: 269 June 23: 260 July 23: 255 - One Year Mark Aug 23: 248 Sep 23: 242 Oct 23: 235 Nov 23: 224 - Current Weight
