The Diet Thread

Holy crap Yoda, that's amazing in one year-awesome job!

Did you use the same gauge, I mean scale before and after?

Yup. I weighed myself on a second (physical) scale most of the time, too, just to make sure things made sense (there was always a discrepancy between the two, but usually just about a pound).

Most of the weight (about 62 of the 66 pounds) I lost in the first 9 months, but when softball ended and the holidays kicked off, I ended up more or less treading water for the next couple, before really making a push this last month.

Going forward the plan is to have a cheat day every two weeks or so, and to mostly eat the same diet but in slightly larger portions, with a little more leeway during the softball season. We'll see how that goes. The tricky thing, I think, will be having to measure progress over longer periods of time, since in the short-term the weight lifting could add weight even if overall I'm healthier for it.

I think the only thing that will help me lose weight is exercise, because not eating food makes me feel physically light-headed for some reason.

Yoda, I don't know how you did it, but I'm super jealous.

This is tricky, because what you're saying pits two common diet maxims against one another. The first is that "weight loss happens in the kitchen, not the gym." It's incredibly hard to exercise enough to offset loose eating habits. Walking a mile burns, like, 100 calories, which is basically a stick and a half of string cheese. But your body burns a couple thousand calories (more, if overweight) just functioning throughout the day, so it's usually way easier and less time-consuming to get a bit under that and just keep doing it. Especially since exercise can make you hungrier.

But the other maxim, which I mentioned earlier, is that the "the best diet is the one you'll actually stick to."

That said, there are lots of things that I did at first that felt like I could absolutely not do them the whole time, but it turned out that was just the initial difficulty of changing. It's totally to be expected that in the beginning your body might throw up a lot of hurdles to such a significant change, and if so, maybe you should ease into it more (eat a bit less each day until you're at a good calorie count). But barring some underlying condition, your body will adjust. It has the calories right there, on you, it just wants to save them at all costs.

Well, having a sport to play, that I knew I would be worse at and would take its toll on my body if I didn't lose weight, helped a lot. Having hard, physical goals with clear benefits and penalties is a big deal.

Barring that, I think the main thing is committing to writing down your results no matter what. The only reason most of us get to the point we do is because we stop thinking about it, stop looking at it as it happens. If you make yourself look every day, it's a lot harder to keep doing it. Related to this, having someone who knows you're doing it who you talk to about it sometimes (in real life, or on here, even) helps. The more public and transparent the whole thing is, the more you cut off the ability to just quietly stop and give up.

You need to eat. Not eating will actually make you retain weight.

What you need to do is eat more often, but in smaller quantities. And do that in addition to the exercise.

__________________

Yoda, you have done brilliantly! You should feel very proud of yourself

Thanks guys. Celebrated by visiting a couple of food trucks. Good stuff.

Anyway, if anyone thinks they might benefit from the spreadsheet I made for this, I've got a basic template for it here:

https://www.mediafire.com/?kbwahbggudvlm1x

Just put your weight each morning in the yellow column, and the other columns will calculate your loss from the previous day, your total loss, and your loss over the last 3, 7, and 30 days. There's a chart on the right that'll auto-update. Starts off covering 3 months, but you can easily add more days. I hope it helps some people.

So I am finally down to the 221 I wanted to be down to on Feb. 1 Since weighing 241 back in October or November. I haven't gained but certainly haven't been doing what I needed to to get down to 190 until the last three to four weeks. I keep it pretty simple, eat less calories and exercise more. I am up to two miles jogging three or four times a week. I will keep it at cardio till I lose at least another 20. We have a lot going on at work right now around fitness and I think that is helping as well. We will actually be getting a $600 reduction on health insurance yearly if we meet certain goals. The idea is to get a set amount of points. You get points for things like going to the gym, eating fruits and vegetables, logging a certain number of steps per day. There are also challenges and nutrition classes. Pretty cool program that I think will only get better as they keep tweaking it. A few of the people at work are involved and we have been doing step challenges. Definitely think it has been part of what got me kick started.

Anyway, that is where I am at. Hope to keep checking back with positive results.

__________________
Letterboxd

Been a little over five months since my last update, at which point it had been a year. Here's where things are:



I'd expected that bounce in the Spring, because when I hit around 180 I wanted to experiment a bit. It was quicker/longer than I expected, but otherwise no big deal. I'm not quite back down to my low from February, but I'm close, and I've been exercising more the whole time and am still lifting weights (albeit not strenuously), so I assume I probably have less fat on me than I did even at that low point.

Found some old shirts in the attic. Most of them fit again. Out of all the cool things that happen when you lose a lot of weight, that might be the coolest. Especially when those shirts are awesome band shirts from your early 20s.

Only thing I'm really struggling with is when, if ever, to just try to maintain where I am. Part of me wonders if that's even really an option, or if that really just means "start to gain back slowly" so that I'm always either actively losing or actively gaining. I definitely know a lot more about what I can or can't do sustainably than I did just a few months ago, but there's still a lot to figure out.

If anyone else has lost some weight, I'd be grateful to hear about your experiences in keeping it off. Specifically, whether or not it was a steady, ongoing effort for years after, or if changing a few habits allowed you to ease up off the pedal a little eventually.

Would love to hear where everyone else is at, too. I know a few of you were having some success, or just starting. Which can be the hardest part, so it's arguably the part where you want to be out and talking about it as much as possible (creates a big social incentive compared to keeping it to yourself).

Bump: don't forget to share what you're going through. It helps. A lot!

Minor update here: new low this morning, 180 even. One would hope with the exercise that a lot more of my weight is muscle these days, which makes new milestones a lot tougher than they used to be, so this is very encouraging.

Was tentatively planning on having a cheat day today and I really wanted to finally get into the 170s right before, but not quite. As close as you can come without getting there. Gonna make sure I'm lower than this when I fly to Seattle at the end of the month, though. I should be going to PAX about 15 pounds lighter than when I went last year. Still not sure how this winter will go, but I'm gonna try to build in a bit more leeway. I think with softball sitting on the other side of it I have a natural mechanism to stop any bad habits from taking hold for long.

I've started blending a lot of my food. It is hard to choke down handfuls of spinach and black beans, but when you make it into baby food .

Close to living by the 80/20 rule. Maybe cutting it back to "Super Saturday" instead of the weekend. I have noticed my Mondays seem to be affected by food hangover.

Finally broke into the 170s. I got super close back in February but eased up off the gas, but this morning it finally happened. Woohoo.

Last year I wanted to clear 200 before the Seattle trip, and I did it with about a month to spare. Same basic thing this year, except with the 180 mark. Tentative plan is: drop a couple more in the next week and a half, have birthday donuts to celebrate, and then make another push before the trip. 175 is probably a stretch, given the aforementioned donuts, but we'll see.

I'm going to keep making myself post in here every now and then even if there's not much to say/nobody's reading. Just a good habit.

Had lots of special occasions and sporadic cheat days lately, so I haven't hit any new lows. But I'm still bouncing between 182-184, so things are good. Haven't had any problem getting back on the wagon each time.

Softball ends in about a month, and both Thanksgiving and Christmas follow, and after that it gets much colder and harder to walk the dog as often or as long, so I'm not sure how tough things'll be then. Tentative plan is to ramp up the weightlifting (I've been doing it for 11 months, but never with great exertion) and have a weekly cheat day, and actually try to lose a little over the winter rather than just limit the increase.

I don't know how tall you are, but do you have an target weight? Seems like you have to be pretty close.

I'm right between 5'10"-5'11". I dunno about target weight, because obviously if I'm gaining muscle that's going to complicate weight loss. I think I'd be okay around this weight with a better muscle/fat ratio.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to top out, both physically and psychologically, around 170. It's pretty hard to imagine getting lower than that without dedicating a huge amount of time and effort to it, especially if I'm going to get any stronger. And it's more important that I be 175 sustainably than 160 with great difficulty, I think.

I don't have a firm goal because I'm still figuring out what's possible or reasonable with my body type, what each combination of weight/muscle will look or feel like, etc. But if forced to choose a target, I'd like to be in the low 170s with a moderate increase in muscle mass by next Spring, and then just stay around there.

I remember when I lost aslot of weight for the first time. I was .....quite lanky. Not as athletically coordinated as if Id been that weight range my whole life. Rather than targeting anything in exercising, if I did it all over again Id do Yoga. It can give you an overall strength, coordination, and conditioning that I think could only be achieved thru extensive swimming. It will put muscle throughout your body, but in a toned way to where distribution looks balanced.

Last time I got measured, I was 5' 10" and 3/4. My dream of being 6 foot prolly never gonna happen.

In a perfect world, I would like to be around 170-180. I also rationalize that it is more work than I care to commit.

Yeah, I'd love to be an inch or two taller, but we're both a little above average male height in the U.S., I think, so hard to complain.

Re: weight/work. Yeah, I hear ya'. If it helps at all, it's not really that much work in the long run, just a bit up front. In other words, changing bad habits can be hard, but it's not that hard once you've changed them.

It really is worth a fair bit of effort, though. Just day-to-day living feels a lot better, even without accounting for any specific motivation. We like to think of our physical state as only tenuously connected to things like mood and attitude, but they're linked pretty closely, I think.