This morning I reached 205 pounds. In my underwear, admittedly. But it still counts. So I’m calling it 80 pounds lost, since September 2023. BMI is now just under 28. If I can lose another 20 pounds, I’ll finally make it to the upper limit of “normal” weight. Something that I honestly never thought I would ever see.
This post summarizes a few more things that I didn’t expect from losing that much weight.
And, while I’m at it, how helpful or not Google’s AI would have been, in dealing with these changes.
They are, in order:
- My mattress is too hard.
- My sneakers are too stiff.
- My balance is much better.
- My weight loss remains on trend.
My mattress is too hard
Google AI score, 50%. Good solution, totally wrong reasoning.
I never considered body fat to be part of the overall mattress-comfort equation. But apparently, this is well-known, at least in the sense that Google’s AI knew about it.
After a couple of months of waking up with numb patches of skin on my hips and thighs, it finally dawned on me that, together, my mattress and I have lost a lot of padding. And, as if the AI read my mind, the addition of a 2″ memory-foam mattress topper has solved the problem of a too-hard mattress.
That said, the rest of the AI’s “reasoning” was wrong. The problem has nothing to do with firmness — the tendency of the mattress surface to sink downwards with weight. The firmness of the mattress is just fine. And putting a mattress topper on doesn’t affect the firmness, and can’t fix a mattress with the wrong level of firmness for the sleeper.
It’s the level of padding on top of that structure that’s the problem.
I give the AI partial credit on this one.
My sneakers are too stiff
Google AI score, 0%. (I’d give it a negative if I could). On this question, Google’s AI hallucinated the reasoning and offered really bad advice.
You expect to buy new clothes when you lose a lot of weight. And I have, right on down to my underwear. But I didn’t expect to have to buy new shoes.
For the past couple of decades I’ve worn Nike Air Monarch shoes. These are plain-Jane sneakers with lots of padding, heavy construction, and very thick soles with the Nike Air technology.
These were, effectively, the perfect shoe for an obese-but-active person. The thick air-cushioned heel was more-or-less exactly what a fat person needs.
As a bonus, buying new sneakers was a no-brainer, because Nike kept these in production for decades. I think that’s because Nike has a steady market of devoted wearers consisting of a) heavy people, and b) people who spend a lot of time on their feet, like nurses.
The thick soles were comfortably flexible for my old, 285-pound self. But at 205, they’re like walking on padded boards. To the point where it became almost comically difficult to, say, run on a treadmill while wearing them.
Though, to be fair, I don’t think the average purchaser of Nike Air Monarchs does a lot of running.
So, for the first time in two decades, I bought an actual running shoe. One with lightweight construction and flexible soles. I’ll never be a graceful runner, but running feels a lot better with a more flexible shoe. At least I no longer have to hear “slap-slap-slap” as I plod along on a treadmill.
My balance is much better.
Google AI score: 33%. From what I can tell, the only point it got right is that it’s easier to maintain control when you have less mass. The rest of it appears to be imaginary.
My balance is vastly better than it was.
To test your static ability to balance, just stand on one foot. In medical parlance, this is the “single leg stance” test. Health care providers assume that this measures something about your neurological health. Eyes open, hands on hips, standing on one foot, if you can’t count to five before you fall over, you’re at enhanced risk of falls. But if you get past ten seconds, apparently, you’re good to go (reference).
Near as I can tell, at 205 pounds, I can stand on one foot until I get bored. That was not true of my 285-pound self, to the point where Wii Fit always told me that, physically, I was ancient, because it could sense how much I wobbled around when standing on the Wii Fit scale. At any rate, I just now stood a minute, on one foot, and while it requires concentration, it seemed like muscle fatigue would set the limit there, not balance per se.
But I think this is entirely explained by physics, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of my nervous system or musculature.
First, fat people — or at least those with a lot of belly fat — have a higher center of gravity. Most of the weight I lost was from the waist up. That, for the simple reason that I never had much fat on my legs (or arms), typical for “central obesity” in fat males. And I had a big gut. This means that my center of gravity is now lower. That by itself, makes me more stable. (Apparently, the whole story is more complex, and involves both lowering the center of gravity, and moving it closer to the spine.)
Second, I now have a better power-to-weight ratio. By reducing my fat, the ratio of muscle mass to total weight has risen. This means that for any given off-balance situation, I’m more likely to be able to bring myself back to an upright position. (Crudely, 40% more power, reckoned as 285/205=~1.4. That assumes neither loss nor gain of strength, for the muscles used for balance.)
In any case, it’s not rocket science. Consider loading a backpack with 80 pounds of bacon, putting that on, and trying to keep your balance. That was more-or-less the situation when I started on this course back in September 2023, compared to where I am now.
Improved balance is no surprise. And it required no improvement in nervous system or musculature to achieve it. It just required taking off the backpack.
My weight loss is on trend.
Google AI score: 100%. Google simply repeats the conventional wisdom, which is that long term weight loss inevitably proceeds by fits and starts, not smoothy.
If you read about people who’ve lost a lot of weight, all you seem to hear about is how hard it eventually gets, how they plateau, how tough it is to keep the weight off.
For some reason, none of that seems to apply to me. I have lost weight at a weirdly steady rate of 5 pounds per month.
I can only guess why I’ve had this unusual experience.
- As I’ve lost weight, I’ve lowered my daily calorie target.
- I monitor my diet, separately from counting calories. Simply put, if I don’t wake up hungry, I know I ate too much the day before.
- I eat a very simplified diet, so “cheating” isn’t really possible.
But at this point, I think that’s mostly due to having an incredibly simplified diet. This makes it easy to keep track of how much I’ve eaten each day. And, more importantly, it keeps me away from food that gets me off track or amps up my sense of hunger.
Breakfast is a cup of coffee with a serving of protein powder in it.
After that, I eat five (or so) 300-calorie (or so) meals a day. Typical meals include:
- A garden salad with a nice high-fat salad dressing. (Without the salad dressing, my body does not seem to register salad greens as any type of food, hunger-wise).
- A bowl of frozen berries, topped with “protein pudding” (Jello no-sugar chocolate pudding mix made up using whey protein powder). Tastes like ice cream, gives you as much protein as a quarter-pound hamburger.
- A bowl of home-made soup of some sort.
- Peanut butter sandwich on a “slider roll”.
- A breaded fish filet on a slider roll.
- A 300-calorie piece of cheese.
All of that is fine, tasty food. None of it is stuff that leaves me begging for more. Some of it is from-scratch cooking, some of it is disgusting mixes of chemicals (no-sugar Jello). None of it includes a large amount of carbs at one time.
Anyway, after a lifetime of obesity, this is what works for me. I eat a very limited diet, the upside of which is that I never have to think much about what I eat. And, after a year-plus of this, it doesn’t even occur to me to eat something outside of that narrow range.
Nor do I crave the foods I used to eat.
Weirdly, it now feels wrong to eat a full meal, as one might at a restaurant, or over the holidays. And from the standpoint of weight loss, that’s a really good thing.
Interestingly, when I deviate from this — over the holidays, say — it takes me the better part of a week to get back on track. I think it’s the combination of readily-available calorie-dense foods (e.g., stuffing from the turkey), and a lot of foods rich in simple carbs (e.g., desserts) that disturb blood sugar and insulin levels and set off a fresh bout of hunger a few hours later.
Conclusion: My diet and my new tastes evolved together.
Here I am, where I thought I’d never be: Within striking distance of having a “normal” weight.
If I can achieve that, it’ll be for the first time since I went off to college.
I cannot say, exactly, why I’ve finally been able to lose weight.
But in the end, now that I know what it takes, I think that in the past I just under-estimated what it took to undergo sustained weight loss. It more-or-less required a complete revision of lifestyle. Giving up alcohol was a big part of it. Giving up refined-carb meals (e.g. spaghetti and meatballs) was part of it. Finding a convenient fat-free protein source (whey powder) helped. Giving up all pretense of “normal” eating patterns helped.
But the bottom line is that what and how I eat now bears almost no relation to how I lived in the past. And, apparently, for me, that’s what it took, to get significant, sustained weight loss.
Let me emphasize how this is not like I’m a different person. I still find all that stuff appealing. (“That stuff” being “all those yummy foods I used to eat”.)
Hand me a Dorito right now and I’d snarf that down. No questions asked (other than those directly related to hygiene.)
But it’s as if I no longer find that stuff compelling. Or something.
In any case, I never even consider buying a bag of Doritos.
But that’s been gradual. A few months into this weight loss, I might stroll the chips aisle at the Safeway occasionally, to pick up something. But to dole it out. By the countable-small-hundreds of calories.
Later in the process, I’d stroll the aisle and buy nothing.
Now? I never go down that aisle. Never think to do so.
Never’s a strong word. Maybe one of those single-serving size bags at the 7-11? There’s another habit that I’m out of. Gotta be a couple of years since I visited a 7-11.
My change in diet and … tastes? occurred gradually. And to some large degree, mutually.
If I’d gone from my previous diet, to how I eat now, in one step, I don’t think I could have stuck with it.
It’s very much that when I gave up my excesses with drink, I gave them up for food as well.
Either that, or I felt so crappy being sober all the time that I didn’t eat as much.
Take your pick.
The only real point here is that I didn’t clean up my act all at once. I never “went on a diet”. It’s just that the longer I was on this track, and the more weight I lost, the narrower and more simplified my diet got.
The bottom line is that I didn’t intend to get to this point. Things just kind of evolved. And what you see above is (so far) the final product of that evolution.
The nice thing is that it’s not my tastes, by my cravings, that have evolved over this diet. I progressed more-or-less by tossing the worst offenders out of my current eating habits, metabolically speaking. And then, just vowing to drop the weight and clean my diet up further as I went a long.
I still like all that stuff I used to like. I just don’t eat it. And I’m fine with that.
How screwed-up is that?
If all goes well, based on the graph, I’ll achieve “normal” weight sometime late this spring. We’ll see how it plays out.
