Before you read I just want to distance myself from the texts below that I wrote, I am sharing this for authenticity, and not to give advice on how to lose weight. My singular hope is that someone can read through this text and come to the understanding that change is complicated and rough - but you can defeat obesity. It could take four years, could take longer. You are a different person compared to who you were, and this is what it means to change your lifestyle. Your life changes. You change. The texts are arranged from oldest to newest. From 2021 February to 2024 June.
TL:DR at very bottom.
Weight loss diary:
Hi! I made this reddit account due to my concern for my own health. It was when I saw 140kg on my bathroom scale that I knew I had to do something about it. For the record, as of Feb 10, I weigh 130kg. I see specialists for managing my weight and I am currently on a hunger suppressant called Mysimba
Mysimba is also known as contrave. Subreddit r/contrave
(*Sneaky edit from 2022*) I *used to for a time* eat only one meal a day. This is a form of fasting. Subreddit r/fasting
June-ish 2021
I'm still here
just wanted to make a post saying that I am still here. for the past 2 months its been a bit more difficult, and my omad turned into 2 mad which turned into chaos. I'm on a good rhythm at the moment. Unfortunately due to this mishap I am around 123kgs. I have of course kept log of my weight. but I'm going to need a few weeks before I'm back at my lowest weight this year which is around 118 kg. I think it is important to keep perspective. Even if I weigh 123kg, that is still 17kgs less then what I weighed at new year.
Perhaps its worth reflecting on what made me lose my omad streak. I have three contributing factors:
Alcohol. In the beginning of this year I stayed clear of all alcohol. From around March I started to see if I can drink beer, as I like the drink and it makes things like group conversations a little more fun. The issue though is that I have a somewhat addictive personality and have semi-alcoholic tendencies. The two beers that I drank very cautiously - turned into 10 beers in only a few weeks. I think it is very sad that I am programmed like this. I still enjoy some beer nowadays, but I have better control, but I may have to phase it out. There are 200 calories in a bottle of beer over here.
Take-out. I think take-out has a moderate contributing part when discussing the epidemic that we know as obesity. Just like how capitalism exploits and alienates the worker according to Marxian theory, take-out and it's processed components exploits the body's love for energy, despite the body already have tons of energy locked up as fat. It is also very alienating as we forget or don't know the food-making process, I'm not sure how you, the reader, feel about this, but when I make food I am often less hungry after my cooking process. I am also fully aware of what is in my food. Has the food stand / restaurant added in tons of sugar, oils and artificial flavour enhancers? You can't be entirely sure, that is my point. I didn't eat anything that wasn't made from my home until I moved in march.
Sugar+fat. Basically junk food. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pin all sugars or all fats as evil. A normal person can eat fruits and steaks without worrying. A balanced nutritious diet is the ideal. If the reader is a diabetic, you may want to be extra careful with anything that raises your blood sugar and triggers an insulin response. And if the reader is a vegan, I commend you, it is admirable to make the dietary sacrifice for ethical reasons, or perhaps its not a dietary sacrifice. Regardless, you've set your own boundaries, and I will respect it. Back to my point - I discovered chocolate, ice-cream and chips. Mind you it started off as a dessert in my omad, but after I ate the chocolate I would turn more hungry immediately. My body just wanted more and more. Again, I will party blame this on my predisposition of addictive behaviour. A chocolate bar does not last a day in my house once it is opened. It just feels good then and there to keep consuming. I could if unchecked eat many times my daily calorie limit if I had enough sugary chocolate bars, chips, hamburgers, fries, ice-cream and beer. The reason is that it doesn't satiate me as a home-cooked meal would. Okay, I will admit a home-cooked hamburger is probably alright, in combination with all of the reasons I have listed you can see how issues start to develop.
So imagine its the weekend, its been a tough work-week, you want to drink a beer with your friends. One beer turns into 5 a day, only around omad time of course. Then you get a bit sluggish from the beer and decide to order a pizza, for good measure you get the delivery person to get you more beers. The morning after you wake up, you should be drinking water. You should always drink water! But, instead you confuse your thirst for hunger, so you order a german-style kebab, but you made the association in your adolescence that when you eat a kebab you have to drink beer to maximize the experience. So now, without much thought being made, you've made your omad at 11 am and are day drinking. Come evening-dinner time, you are hungry again and think that its going to be okay, today I will do two meals a day. But, then two meals spirals out of control. All of a sudden your bedroom is filled with beer cans, pizza boxes and chocolate wrappers. Oh and all this eventually bleeds into the weekdays too! Because of lockdown, you find little reason to leave your room/house other than buying food, so you aren't moving and getting potential endorphins. You get used to the food and instead of feeling amazing when you eat, you are instead eating to not feel awful. Not to mention you see the scale go upwards, defeating your hard work. I don't know what to call this condition I've been explaining, but to me it sounds like self-destructive behaviour and depression.
So how does one get out of the downward spiral? I'm not saying it is easy, but I will make some steps right now. In order of priority (at least to me):
Make a truly delicious homecooked meal. Make it big, make it omad. For me this could be Dwaejegogi-bokkeum and rice.
Drink water. Drink water every hour you are awake, always have a container of water close to you. If you get a little hungry, drink a bottle of water. Most of the time, your hunger will disappear. (make sure you have a good salt-water balance though, you may have to supplement some salt, otherwise you may feel light-headed. This is directed mostly to people who live in places with soft (mineral-poor) water.
Clean your room. The room can sometime be a reflection of your mind and behaviour. Is your room messy? Then your thinking and behaviour may also be messy. Cleaning your room will trick your brain into being more organized - 'if the room is clean, then surely I must be clean'. Its a great trick, plus it is small workout to clean your room. The best would be if you can do this every day.
Go for a nice solid walk. Okay personally I don't walk to much, I like bicycling, so did that too. But walking is just as good. Walk for as long as it takes to completely clear your mind. I bicycled to a local lake, and then walked around it and bicycled back. In total took me maybe one hour and thirty minutes. It may be a point to not bring your wallet as to not be tempted by fast food you may see on the way.
Make it inconvenient for you to eat and drink things you know you will regret. This means that you don't have sweets or junk in the house. Any beer that you have is at the very least not in the fridge.
In combination with 5. I would say when at the store you buy for at least a couple of days worth of meals, but don't buy junk food!!!
Depending on where you are at, all these things could be difficult. You can't change the past, you just can't. But, you can try to steadily work towards a goal that you have made for yourself. For me, that is having a body weight of around 100kg. Just try to change your present and future to make the outcome more likely. But you need to enjoy what you are doing! Omad works for me, find something that resonates with you, just don't destroy yourself in the process! In the end, you are just trying to be a better person for yourself. Don't compare yourself to others! Everyone has their story and everyone is worth something. You deserve be treated with dignity.
It's not easy, but I am still here. Are you?
I'm no longer on omad. Haven't been for quite some time
I still have a lot of respect for fasting but at some point I just couldn't deal with such frequent fasts. I have to go through some mentally tolling tasks everyday and it has been easier for the mind to eat three times a day. I am on contrave and my dietician said in the first place that 3 meals is more sustainable. I kind see that a little bit more now. I'm pretty happy with where I am in life at the moment, in the past year I've been some dark places. Both on omad and off. To whoever reads this, I just want to let you know that it's alright to have your own strategy. Just because someone goes omad doesn't mean you have to, and even if you do and it goes great, you don't have to be so stubborn as to keep doing it despite you feeling lethargic for too much of the day etc. Look out for yourself because there are very very very few people who will do it for you.
Good luck
State of my body
Well I am here to write a little bit about how it is going. To be honest, it's going quite well! Yes, maybe I weigh a little more than what I did in March, but I weigh a lot less than what I was in January. I am about 124.5 kg. I will pretty soon do some blood work to see how the Mysimba has affected me.
I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I have a treadmill installed at my desk, which I can set the height to. I am writing this post at the same time as I am going a very relaxing 1 km/h tempo. I do notice that it is way more comfortable to walk on the treadmill with some running shoes, as I suppose the cushioning just makes the entire experience more enjoyable. I have been on the treadmill for 2 hours everyday since I started last Tuesday. It will probably not last, and today my speed has been significantly less intense. But I would say being consistent is the most important thing.
I hope the reader has a nice day, and I wish you the best.
June-ish 2022
I finally understand, and I'm so annoyed that I didn't realise it sooner
I have gout. I've had gout for atleast five years. Everytime I've tried to lose weight I would lose my ability to painlessly stand which I used food and alcohol as something to deal with the pain, its been a vicious cycle.
Things are finally kinda going better
So I don't deal with stress all that well. I have had a mental block for quite some time. I tried a medication and its helping a little, not a lot, but its better than nothing. Also I feel like daily consumption of coffee is quickening me up a bit.
I am around 124 kg. I've been going on long walks trying to have a minimum of 10 000 steps. Ever since I decided to do this its been going well. I've gotten myself a hair-cut, and my skin is clearing up. Basically I haven't looked this good in like 8 years, I've been told I look 10 years younger.
But I still haven't been able to handle my academic duties, and is a constant source of stress for me. As I have elevated levels of uric acid in my blood I've been careful with consuming high purine foods. Its been okay, I don't really miss red meat all that much. Yes I still go on mysimba, its okay, I don't see why I wouldn't use it.
I'm going to lifestyle rehabilitation
It is currently in the very early morning, I haven't been able to sleep yet, not because I'm nervous about the fact that I'm leaving my family home into a rehabilitation institution, it's more likely because I slept in too late today, and because I have been packing. Also I didn't get to tire my body enough.
But yeah I'm going to lifestyle rehab not because I live such bad lifestyle, but I want to give my family a break from living with making food and cleaning, I have sort of short circuited the productive side of my brain. So hopefully I'll learn some discipline. Buuut I'm starting to suspect that I have adhd which would explain why I am so dopamine starved and have trouble focusing. But who knows. I weigh around 122kg and after my rehab I am pretty sure that the 120s will be a distant memory. We've come some way from 140 kgs of regrets. Learned a lot as well, from gout to mental struggles (adhd?) I really wish I could focus more maybe the routine will be easier that my institution
December 2022 update
So my rehab is almost at its end. And I have so far conservatively lost 13 kgs. That is 121.5kg to 107.8kg. I haven't weighed this little since I was 15 maybe even 14. Which is crazy cool. My body is pretty tired though, it's Saturday and I do something everyday with hard work outs in the weekdays so it's not that odd. Better portion control and eating fruits between the main meals is my way to go for sure. We'll see how well this goes when I travel back home and try to live more independently. I hope the reader is doing well.
March 2023 Update
I am currently drinking coffee in the morning, I suddenly thought about this reddit account. I figure I would put in an update. I weigh somewhere around 109-110kg. When I was back from lifestyle rehab I weighed 106.8 kg. It doesn't bother me that I gone slightly up in weight, I have some hard stuff going on, and weight is not always the focus. What is important though is that if this was 3 years ago, I wouldn't have gone up a modest 3 kg, it would be more like 10 kg.
I eat many fruits throughout the day, mostly though its clementines, apples and bananas. I tend to make a lunch salad consisting of iceberg, tomato, red onion slices, salt, pepper, balsameco (vinegar) and olive oil. I eat two slices of bread with low-calorie plant-oil butter, ham and cheese for breakfast. And the same for lunch but with three pieces of bread. Between every 'major' meal I eat fruit. I eat a low-calorie yoghurt every day along with one of my 'fruit mid-meals'. Dinner varies, luckily my house-hold fixes dinner.
I do daily evening walks. To make the evening walks work I will sometimes smoke (not tobacco) on the walks, so that it doesn't become too mundane. After my evening walks that I do after dinner, I try to either relax playing computer games, or clean my room or take a shower.
That is what works for me. Or at least, it works better than what came before.
I will soon go back to life-style rehab. Which is good because then I can focus on more physical exercise, my work is so much that I can't afford to exercise otherwise. But come summer, I hope that my work will significantly drop.
***
It is seven days later, and I noticed that I am now 2 kgs heavier. This is really not good, things started to get pretty bad with binged eating after I talked to my supervisor. I only heard positive and good-willed suggestions from him, but after that I could not work, and did a lot of the things I try to avoid doing.
It is only now the day before I go back to lifestyle camp that I truly understand the gravity of what I have been doing the past 4 days. I could have made much more lifestyle choices. I need to wake up at 7 or 8 am for real, again. Thank god for lifestyle-rehab.
I had a half-ways good working session yesterday. But nothing compared to before my supervisor meeting.
May 1st update
I thought about this profile again and thought it would be cool to add another update.
I was inspired partially because someone in my household wanted to take a picture of me due to, what I assumed to be, the fact that I've dropped down in weight. I currently weigh 104.8 kg. It is passed my bed time so I will have to make it quick. I think I am in a much better place than I once was. But im looking at this picture and don't know what I am anymore. Am I fat, obese, overweight, normal, skinny, muscular? I just don't know. So I am considering posting the picture on a subreddit where I could ask.
Its quite amusing to look back on previous posts, it really shows how much I've wanted to succeed with my weight loss. But I have a looming master thesis so I really shouldn't be spending my time staring into a laptop in the middle of the night. So, uh. Good night!
December 2 2023 Update
Once again, I just randomly thought about this account and thought enough time has gone to warrant an update. I am no longer a student, I work for a living trying to live modestly and to keep the good habits that I have formed in my weight loss journey. I was out with some colleagues, to be honest I felt a little unwelcomed, I suppose it had to do with the fact the rest of the group were all from the same country. I only had a beer yesterday, which is quite incredible when thinking about how I could down a six pack daily. I stepped on the scale today and saw 102.00 kg which is the lowest I have ever seen in my adult life. I've seen 102.xx kg a couple of times in the last few months, but I would go up in weight quickly after for the one reason or the other. I am still on all the medications that I have previously said I was.
So I'm writing this on a Saturday night. I don't really feel like going into town, but I was planning on going to the store, buy some fruit, and go for an extended walk. Gotta get those 10,000 steps in, y'know?
I feel like I don't get the time to do things like what I've done today, like looking over finances and how much money I have, or reflect on the weight-loss journey that I've been through. Because the fact is that I do not give myself enough credit in how far I've gotten in a relatively short time. Two years ago I was living the life of a junk-food addict/alcoholic with no real purpose. And the thing is, I loved it. It is a fear of mine, that I might lose it all once again because I could see myself doing it again. The only reason why I am the way that I am is because I can sustainably do what I do. I replaced my alcohol consumption with a thc-extract that I smoke on my daily walks. I wouldn't have been able to reasonably do this if I didn't have something else that I knew I could fall back on. I am a type of person who kind of needs to eat 5 times a day. I spent way too much time trying to be the person who could only eat once. What did I get to show for it? Gout and lethargy.
I still have areas in my life I would like to improve on, of course. I want a job that is better fitted to my education, I have to say though, the job I have is quite nice, albeit doesn't pay as much as I feel like I probably deserve. I want to be a person who has a spotless room, but I haven't even vacuumed in like 3 weeks. I also really want to work on my charisma, I feel like Data from star trek in that one scene where they have a reception. You know, the one where he ends up like talking to a guy who is super into small talk so they small talk all day long. So before Data gets his groove into that, that is what I feel like in most social group interactions.
It isn't a cakewalk living life with regrets of what I could have done to really capitalize on the privileges that were given to me. I suppose everyone feels this to a certain extent.
Okay, time for me to go outside, eat some fruit, drink some water, get stuff back on track. I hope the reader is doing well.
2024 June 16th - I have conquered my Obesity
I am very happy to share that I weighed in at 92.0 kilos this week. When I weigh 90.5 I will have a BMI less than 25. Less than 25! To give you some perspective of the life that I have lived through, 4 years ago I had a BMI of 38. But now, not only am I not severely obese (35+), not only am I not moderately obese (30-35), but now I am actually getting out of being overweight (25-30) entirely!
Let's not get it twisted, I may no longer look obese, but I still feel obese, in different ways. My mind and thought patterns are destructive, and I have to follow strategies that I need to not go into a binged eating episode, My perception is so that when I look in the mirror I still see my old self (obese body)- people keep insisting that I look nothing like how I looked at my heaviest. So I have some body dismorphia.
I would like to stress that I go on the following medications:
Mysimba
Alopurinol
Lamictal
Vitamin D
And that I eat breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. That is 5 meals a day. The snack is most often composed of a banana and an apple. The breakfast and lunch are a ham and cheese sandwhich with margarine. The dinner is a chinese-korean stir fry composing of carrots, mushrooms, onion, garlic, ginger, spring onion, meat, gochujang, toban jan, lao ganma black bean in chili oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, rapeseed oil. This is eaten every week day, on the weekends I get take-out pizza (pepperoni pizza with jalapenos). This is my diet. I walk for about 100 minutes every day.
This is the lifestyle that has gotten me from 120 kilos to 92 kilos. I am pretty sure this would have worked when I weighed more, but would probably need to add 1 or 2 more snacks, like between breakfast and lunch, and one more snack during the night.
So this is really just a great place to be for me, I might chime in every now and again to update if there is an insight I think others would like to know.
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TL:DR I ask ChatGPT:
This text is a personal account of an individual's weight loss journey over three years, from February 2021 to June 2024. The author starts by acknowledging that they are sharing their experience not as advice but for authenticity, hoping to show that significant lifestyle changes are challenging but possible.
Key Points of the Journey:
- Starting Point:
- The journey began with the realization of weighing 140kg.
- The author sought medical help, taking a hunger suppressant called Mysimba.
- Initial Struggles and Adjustments:
- Experimented with One Meal A Day (OMAD) fasting but faced challenges leading to fluctuating weight.
- Reflected on factors contributing to weight gain: alcohol, take-out food, and junk food.
- Coping Strategies:
- Made home-cooked meals, drank plenty of water, kept the environment clean, and engaged in regular exercise like walking or bicycling.
- Focused on removing temptations by not keeping unhealthy food or drinks at home.
- Progress and Setbacks:
- Noted various weight fluctuations and the impact of emotional and mental health issues like stress and depression on eating habits.
- Discovered health issues like gout, which complicated weight loss efforts.
- Lifestyle Changes and Rehabilitation:
- Attended a lifestyle rehabilitation program, leading to significant weight loss.
- Adopted new eating habits, such as having multiple small meals a day and incorporating fruits and vegetables.
- Reflection and Continued Efforts:
- Emphasized the importance of sustainability in weight loss methods.
- Highlighted the need for individual strategies that work for one's lifestyle and mental well-being.
- Recent Updates and Milestones:
- Documented reaching the lowest weight of 92kg, close to a normal BMI.
- Continued to manage weight with a structured diet, regular walking, and medications.
- Challenges and Mental Health:
- Acknowledged ongoing struggles with body dysmorphia and the psychological aspects of weight loss.
- Emphasized the necessity of treating oneself with dignity and not comparing oneself to others.
The overall message is one of perseverance, self-awareness, and the complexity of significant lifestyle changes. The author stresses that while physical weight loss is achievable, mental and emotional challenges require continuous management.
