On losing weight and keeping it off -- thoughts eight years in
I've lost weight, and regained, and lost, and regained more. Every method, I tried it, succeeding for months until not succeeding anymore and quitting (and regaining). Finally, starting in 2014 at the age of 51, I lost weight and I've kept it off.
In total, I've lost 125 pounds since July 9th of 2014, down from 298 pounds (135 kg) pounds to 171 pounds (78 kg). I'm male, 5'11 (179cm). I had a semi-desk semi-field job during most of this time, working as a jack-of-all-trades "IT guy" for a hospitality company with spas and restaurants and hotels in my region.
Today in The Daily Stoic book, I read from Epictetus, “In this way you must understand how laughable it is to say, ‘Tell me what to do!’ What advice could I possibly give? No, a far better request is, ‘Train my mind to adapt to any circumstance’….In this way, if circumstances take you off script…you won’t be desperate for a new prompting.”
In weight loss, I think it's a given that the most important step is to start. But after that gets going, to stay started and to adapt as you learn more and figure things out. Don't quit, even after caving in to a big eating day or weekend. Shake off the mistake and keep going. Don't quit in a plateau. Don't quit thinking you don't need to diet anymore or that your diet is too weird or untenable or that your body just won't ever lose weight. Instead adapt and continue.
Ultimately, Epictetus is right that this becomes not a diet with weird rules and tight restrictions, but a way to gain the training about how and how much to eat as ourselves. Not following a script but gaining the skills and second nature habits of living a healthy lifestyle. Ultimately, we have to keep off the weight we lose and still be eating the foods we grew up with, the foods our family and friends share, what was and will likely still be our long-term forever diet -- but tuned and tweaked so that we keep off the weight. If we start on keto or IF or cabbage soup, at some point transition to your regular and normal foods and figure those out. Those foods and food situations are in our future, so that's the puzzle we truly need to solve.
Even if we calorie count (and I do), the calories are just our data -- they're helpful to see the way but calorie counting itself is not the way -- the things we do, perhaps measured by calories, is what causes weight loss/gain to happen. A focus must be on shaping the internal long-term habits -- Train my mind to adapt to any circumstance -- so that the natural thing to do when life gets rough and distracting is going to keep us from gaining weight. We don't just eat healthy and light out of intention but also out of thoughtless, automatic "in the zone" or "flow" habit.
I'm still at the beginning of my journey, but by far my biggest revelation has been cooking healthy food I actually enjoy eating. Learning how to cook has been an adventure.
Turns out, if I have roasted vegetables and chicken enchiladas on hand, I don't crave frozen pizza.
This is good advice. I remember seeing a nutrition seminar in graduate school on dieting and it boiled down to the only successful programs for losing and keeping weight off were ones that involved a diary, I. E. Calorie tracking. This is a good reminder that as life changes, one needs to adapt what works for you to maintain progress and further work towards your goals.
That was my realization ... all of my successful weight losses of any amount were losses I had while logging. After quitting logging for various "reasons" (rationalizations?), my effort would soon entirely stop and my weight would regain.
This time, I committed to create 52 weeks of logs -- as best as I could given the situations I'd face in a year -- and in a year either I would have lost major weight or have 52-weeks of logs proving that it was my family genetics and not my behavior. Result: it was my behavior. I lost 105 pounds that year.
Amazing, congrats on sticking to your goal and seeing the results!
Y'know, I skimmed this and thought you said it was ones that involved dairy... lol. I was gonna be like "I know it's a great protein source, but those poor lactose intolerant people!"
I've had moderate success with intermittent fasting. Early on, I was pretty hard core, trying to eat only one large meal a day, or at least, only within a small window in the 24-hour clock. What I've settled on by now is having a larger "can eat" window (8 to 11 hours). During the work week, I only eat lunch socially, which turns out to be maybe twice a week. On weekends I skip lunch on Saturdays, but each lunch socially on Sundays, which turns out is "most Sundays". I haven't had breakfast in 4 years, and I am a firm believer that breakfast is highly overrated, and, like diamonds, is mostly just successful marketing. A little bonus you get from intermittent fasting is time savings. I get things done in the lunch hour, instead of using it to go get and consume a meal. This doesn't necessarily mean work. It could be a leisure activity like exercise, reading, or surfing the Internet.
Something else I've been looking into is the topic of cravings. Some sources suggest that eating more of certain foods or certain kinds of foods makes your body crave them more. i.e. you're giving yourself a bigger challenge of trying to avoid those foods. I don't have a lot of solid facts yet on this, but I've been experimenting with cutting down on "empty" carb foods (sugary, or highly processed carbs) and fried foods (including oily junk food like chips).
I think this is great advice. For a while I had a dietician and a nutritionist (both provided by the U.S. Olympic Committee). They suggested two things: no sugary drinks--I'd been addicted to Coke for years--and intermittent fasting, but this was 1998, so it wasn't really well known. I quit drinking coke and forced myself to become addicted to water. I also had two roommates from the Ukraine who convinced me that moderate amounts of beef and plenty of fish (which I'd never liked) would give me a lean physique. It worked. 20 years later, I still snack on fruit and nuts throughout the day, then have a Steak and Eggs dinner, or pasta with homemade sauce (my college roommate went to the San Francisco Culinary Institute and shared some secrets with us)…cheap, delicious, and nutritious.
I have a jar of homemade pasta sauce that I'm about to heat up and pair with some cheese ravioli and Italian meatballs and a side of sourdough bread with garlic and basil infused true butter. Not sure if that sounds good to anyone else, but it's a go-to, simple meal.
Point of the story is that I've maintained my college weight for 20 years by following the suggestions of my dietitian and nutritionist. Eating well has served me better than lifting heavy weights, which I've also tried.
I've been trialing roughly a one-hour eating window for the past week and a bit, and it might be a honeymoon period, but I'm really enjoying it.
One thing I've struggled with ever since starting 9-5 work is maintaining my energy throughout the day. At it's worst (when I have a carb-heavy lunch), I have hypoglycemic tremors and irritability by 5pm. I moved to having carb-free lunches back in February and that improved things massively and now with OMAD, I don't even really miss it.
It's too early to tell for sure how much effect it's going to have on weight, but I very much hope that this will do the trick - if nothing else, I feel a lot better and just wish I'd had the motivation to get to the bottom of why I was feeling so rotten sooner.
I've always been overweight to some degree - not massively, just slightly over the healthy BMI for my height. I had previously made attempts that failed. I started running in 2017 and went too hard too fast and hurt my knees a bit. It wasn't until my stepdad passed away due to lung cancer after years of smoking that I made a conscious decision to change my habits.
In 2020 I managed to go down from 95kg to around 80kg in the span of a few months. Then I lost steam. It felt boring to count calories every single meal and I started to be more lenient with myself. Evidently the shorter period of counting them had led to me being quite adept at keeping my weight around 80kg. But then you have holidays where you eat more and I went up to around 84.5kg as of a few weeks back.
Now I am back on track and down to 81.8kg as of three days ago and I am motivated to get down to 75 for now.
It is as you say a constant one has to be aware of, and that sucks. I am resigned to the fact that I will probably bounce up and down a few kilos between periods of tracking vs. not tracking. I think that will be fine as long as I don't gain too much.
Overall though I am much more healthy in my habits than a few years back. I regularly walk 8-10km per day and I go climbing 1-2 times a week. Recently I started trying to run again, but once more I was too fast so now I am on a week or two break and after that slowing my pace. I have also started a bodyweight routine to strengthen my leg muscles to avoid knee problems as much as possible.
I've never been able to get my mind to adapt to a healthier way of eating. My brain is very good at making excuses on why its not a big deal to do any particular action that in moderation would indeed not be a big deal. However done often enough it creates a problem. At my worst I have been 220 pounds (99kg), at 5'10" thats not the worst, but its for sure well beyond what I should be.
So I only really have success with a rigid guidelines for what I should and shouldn't do. I decided to be healthier a few months back and since then I've lost about 20 pounds (9kg). Two weeks ago I started working out in the mornings with some light workouts as well, to try to improve overall health. That change I think is where your experiences and mine match up. For daily exercise I have to change my mindset or I'll not be able to keep to the routine.
Similar. 5’10” at 205 and decided that mid-30s is the time to get back to normal BMI. I know many people would say that exercise should not be used to “increase your eating allowance” but since I love eating, that’s exactly what I do. I’ll make sure I go for a semi-high-intensity workout first thing in the morning to “earn” my allowance. And then I just count my calories, not even very detailed but rough estimates. Down 40 pounds in 4 months and have been maintaining 165ish and keeping up with my cardio to keep myself at the same weight for 3 months. It really is about the habit. I hope my habit stays!
Thats awesome, I hope to get to exactly where you're at by the end of the year! Keep at it!
Very insightful, and I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusion that if we don’t change our habits then we’re doomed to fail. I want to say that this is true for all things in life, not just losing weight. Want to learn a language? Become an artist? Run a marathon? Unless you make a habit out of achieving these goals then as you said, you’re likely to lose any progress you’ve made given enough time
One helpful thing is to make rules that are easy for you to follow. One reason losing weight is hard is because we have to eat, unlike smoking which can just be stopped entirely.
So a rule can be “Just today, I’m not eating anything between meals”. That can be a habit.
Probably the most important habit is to stop eating processed foods. If you eat fruits and vegetables, it is actually a bit difficult to gain weight because they aren’t as calorie dense. If you want a snack, have an apple. It sounds lame but it works. Processed foods often have ingredients that are harmful, or are intentionally created to be addictive. Let’s say that you want to eat a cookie. It would be way better to make your own than eat some from a package.
I did carnivore for 3 months, I could have lived happily eating eye of round(cheapest real cut) all day long, but I quit my anti psychotics to lose weight, and that worked but I went into psychosis for a few months, I quit carnivore because I thought God told me to eat with my parents what they eat(and the eat very unhealthy) so I stopped carnivore, I never went back on it cause I'm trying to save money in my retirement fund, but that leaves me with only $200 a month for food, not enough to eat carnivore, so I eat a lot of cheap foods, for instance I just bought 4 presidents choice TV dinners, because I had a deal to get them for $3 each
Coming in here as someone who used to be severely underweight (professional ballroom and folk dancer) and is recovering from disordered eating, but is now severely overweight due to injuries/illness and chronic pain:
I have been told multiple times by doctors to lose weight and the pain will go away, but the reverse has been the case for me, the pain caused the weight gain and any time I exercise, even for small amounts of time, the pain is severe (not soreness, I wish I was sore!).
I started Noom and it worked for a while, but then it stopped and I started gaining weight again. It's been a yoyo and no matter how much I try to change my habits, my body doesn't like it and the chronic pain gets worse. I'm still looking for something to do that won't aggravate my body (you can see, I started a thread on geocaching, and as much as I love it and went away for the weekend, I'm now paying for it by being in bed all day from the pain) so I can have a regular exercise program that isn't just my PT exercises that I can do in bed each day. Every little bit helps, but it would be best to be able to do something that isn't counting calories so I don't starve myself like I used to.
I'm proud of everyone here that has managed to lose weight in any way that works for you. It's a hard battle to be healthy.
I think my sister's body is like your body, it's a strange and non-intuitive balancing act for her. I can't relate other than to sympathize and to let you know that you're not totally alone with that struggle.
For some people, counting itself is triggering so if you know that you're one of those people, you should not follow this advice. But if you can count, perhaps this different view can help:
I view the goal as a target -- like a bullseye. Picture that round dartboard in your mind, with the bullseye in the center. If my goal is 1500, then 1450-1550 is a bullseye. The next ring is 1350-1450 OR 1550-1650 and that's good but not a bullseye. The next further ring is 1250-1350 OR 1650-1750 and that's still on the target board but it's not close to the bullseye. Example: Imgur
While the bullseye is the aim, anything on the target is fair game. If you've done archery or played darts or whatever, it's all a "score" and even when you miss, the right thing to do is to throw the next dart a little better. Hitting the bullseye is not critical, but the more darts you throw or the more arrows you shoot, the better your skills over time.
Faster is not better, as my OP suggests the real deal here is habituating yourself to the healthy portions and patterns that represent you living at a healthy weight. Do that for years and your body should respond by losing whatever excess weight it has. It does this practically as a side effect -- the goal weight comes to you gradually instead of you chasing it with an app or a lower calorie target.
Again, use with caution if you have disordered tendencies.
This is actually really helpful advice! and actually sounds like it could work. I struggle with seeing the numbers on the apps themselves when they show it like a stoplight in terms of colors. I'm also sadly a very competitive person. But I absolutely love this idea and I'm actually talking to my nutrition therapist today, maybe she and I can discuss something like this. I wish there were a calorie-counting app that could do this type of bullseye/target counting for you. maybe that's something I should look into, even though I'm not particularly tech-savvy.
Thank you for sharing this idea. and if anyone out there is interested in doing something like this, I would be super grateful to you for making this an app!
I spent most of my teens and early twenties morbidly obese, peaking at around 365lbs at 6'3". Started counting calories and reducing intake, eventually started going to the gym and doing resistance training. Right now I'm at about 205lbs, my goal is to hit down to 200 and then start bulking so I can build muscle and my lifts can start going up at the gym.
For me, I did try IF for a while, but what worked better for me was just casual calorie counting. It does feel weird to consider I might not be I intentionally eating at a deficit soon, after years of actively trying to lose weight. As is I don't worry too too much about hitting my calories - if I go a little over, no biggie. If I go a lot over... well, I know in the long run it doesn't matter at all. I have been using Mactofactor more recently which has a weight graph but also one that normalizes the extremes on it which helps make me feel less bad when I eat too much and weigh in way heavier the next day.
I know counting calories can be a form of disordered eating for a lot of people, but for me, with how my brain works, it's perfect. I cook most of my own food and it's second nature at this point for me to weigh everything out and know exactly what I'm putting in my body.
I've been using the Adaptive TDEE Calculator which does the same thing. It really helps to see a big date or a big weight in the context of a longer period and averaging. I haven't tried Macrofactor but I've heard nothing but praises about it.
My issue is I'll do good all day, and eat healthy... but then at night I start craving junk food and can't sleep. Any advice on how to prevent that from happening? I usually just try to drink water, but if I go in the kitchen I am done for.
A few years back, I had a ritual around 7:30pm. I'd do the dishes, clean the counters, set up the coffee maker to start making coffee tomorrow morning, move a chair conspicuously into the center of the kitchen, and then turn out the lights. The day's eating was done and the kitchen is officially closed until tomorrow.
It helped! Even if I went in there on autopilot, I'd see that chair which would break the spell of whatever angst was suddenly driving me (usually something upsetting that I saw or read on a screen) and it would turn me around.
Pre-plan your after-dinner snack now, while your intentions are in control. Make it something that you'll enjoy, not generous or austere, a fair and nice last snack in a right portion. Set it aside if you don't want it right away and then close the kitchen. Pre-planning really helps us from "shopping" later, and that we're already emotionally "bought in" will help keep us from feeling deprived or restricted later.
One way that I do this is to remind myself that the convenience store has these things, so I'm not missing out by not buying them. But when the snack-attack hits, the convenience store is just inconvenient enough to limit my immediate choices to healthier options instead of grabbing a high-calorie, low-nutrition option.
I've gained and lost 50 pounds twice now (more like lost 50, gained 30, lost 20, gained 40).
I lost the initial weight in the lead up to my wedding. Then COVID and lockdown happened almost immediately afterwards. Then I started losing again, but then I had my first child. Then I started losing again, but now my wife is pregnant.
Basically, the more stressful and time constrained my life is becoming, the harder it is to stick with it. Sometimes it's that we simply don't have the energy to cook so we order a pizza. Sometimes it's that food is one of the only rewards we can really give ourselves after a hard day. It's demoralizing that I'm right back to where I started. It feels like I will need to be vigilant for the rest of my life if I ever want to be a healthy weight for my family.
I'm just hopeful that things will get a little easier in a year or two (toddlers are a good workout at least)