I weighed 185 this morning.
For the first time since high school, I’m not overweight. I have reached normal weight, based on my body mass index (BMI).
Even as recently as last year, I thought this was an impossible goal. I was more-than-satisfied with the results when I finally made it to “overweight”, rather than “obese”.
But “normal”? Not in my wildest dreams.
And now that I’ve made it, it’s kind of an anticlimax, really. As I explain below.
Let’s just get all the standard successful-weight-loss bullshit out of the way.
Based on what I see on the internet, I have to start this post by crowing about my weight loss in as many ways as possible. Show some pictures of me holding up some now-comically-large clothing. Maybe some side-by-sides of obese-me versus normal-me.
Skip that.
I’ve lost 100 pounds, from 285 to 185. I’ve lost a foot off my waist, from 46″ to 34″.
Do I really need to belabor that?
I’ve lost enough weight that I’ve had to adjust not just my clothing size, but a bunch of other things, as detailed in my prior posts on weight loss. Shoes. Eyeglasses. Bed. Patio furniture.
I’ve lost so much weight, I’ve had to reset the suspension on my bike. I went for a long ride over the weekend and thought the air shock suspension on the bike had gone flat. To the contrary, it’s just way too stiff, having been set for a guy who weighed 100 pounds more than me.
Surprisingly not difficult
I’m also supposed to belabor the struggle, how difficult things got as I got thinner, and on and on. Those awful weight plateaus, and the effort it took to break through them. As if it took some sort of super-human willpower to get through this.
But that just didn’t happen. As you can see above, the weight came off almost like clockwork. Even now, I’m pretty sure I could just continue losing weight until I starved myself to death. The point being that nothing about my body’s reaction to weight loss did anything to stop further weight loss.
That’s not to say that this was costless or effortless. I have, in fact, changed more-or-less everything about what and how I eat. Put up with some hunger. And so on.
But the facts are that:
- I proceeded slowly. I didn’t try to jump into some all-new lifestyle.
- I changed my diet, at first, merely by addressing my worst bad habits first, starting with alcoholism.
- I monitored the results and adjusted as necessary.
- As my diet changed, my cravings faded, and my sense of hunger faded.
- And, eventually, I settled on:
- a modest 500-calorie-per-day deficit,
- eating nothing but small meals and snacks throughout the day,
- eating no (or nearly no) starch, “empty calories”, junk food, fast food, or takeout food.
The fact is, although I started off merely trying to achieve sobriety, I ended up with an almost-completely-conventional weight loss program.
In the end, I aimed for very slow weight loss (5 pounds a month). The theory is that this prevents your body from over-reacting to the calorie restrictions. And, near as I can tell, that worked.
I eat a ridiculously healthful diet, but not by choice. Turns out, if you restrict your calories, and you want to meet your RDAs for nutrients, you have no choice but to eat high-nutrient-density foods. Just as a matter of arithmetic. If you only have a limited number of calories, you have to eat foods with a lot of nutrition per calorie. Fruit, vegetables, fish, lean meat, cheese, nuts.
I’ve had to resort to whey protein powder as a protein source. Otherwise, to meet a dietary protein standard (1 gram per kilogram body weight, per day), I’d have ended up eating nothing but meat, all day long. Whey protein gives you high-quality protein for the fewest possible calories.
Otherwise, I eat what I want. For example, I put high-fat blue cheese dressing on my salads. Why? Because I like it. Every piece of diet advice says to use vinegar or some other no-cal salad dressing. But without the fat, my body simply does not register salad greens as food. So I eat high-fat salads. So sue me.
Under my weight loss plan, any food is fine, as long as three things happen:
- I stay within my daily total calorie limit.
- The food is not a high-glycemic-index food or otherwise stimulates hunger.
- The food is not “empty calories” (except possibly in small amounts).
I found that regular exercise, properly timed, has two direct and obvious benefits.
- Sure, it burns some calories.
- But, it also temporarily kills your appetite, and takes up time that you can’t spend eating, or thinking about eating.
Every other day, my wife and I hit the gym mid-morning. The principal advantage of mid-morning exercise is that it resets that day’s “diet clock”. We’ll get back from the gym around lunch time, and at that point, my combined diet-and-exercise calorie total for the day is negative. I won’t hit “break even” until about 2 PM. And so, in effect, I get to eat a day’s worth of food, in the last eight or so hours in the day. Plus, being able to eat a bit more, on gym days, is a great incentive to get to the gym.
The only big downside, so far, is that I have a wrinkly tummy. (And probably ass, but I can’t see that in the mirror, so I don’t much care.) Wrinkly enough that it looks weird. I’ll wear a rash guard when I go swimming, and that’ll cover that.
What’s next?
Not much. That’s what makes this such an anti-climax.
Now that my weight should be stable for a while, I’m going to buy some summer clothes.
I’ll eat maybe another 500 calories a day.
That’s about it.
Conclusion
My unshakeable conclusion is that more-or-less all the standard, mainstream diet advice — such as you might get from a physician or other medical professional — is correct.
Don’t: Be an habitual drunk, eat junk food, eat empty starch calories, eat without limit, be sedentary, eat large amounts of sugars, starches, and other high-glycemic-index foods.
Do: Eat high-nutrient-density foods, subject to a calorie limit, and get regular exercise.
That’s boring advice.
But sometimes boring is good.
