How I Am Doing It

I recently had a meeting with someone I hadn’t seen for a couple of months and when she looked at me, you could see her face grow concerned.

“You’ve lost weight. Are you sick?” she asked.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud because the most reasonable explanation she could come up with for me losing weight is that something was wrong. I love her for being concerned and, if I’m being honest, I get why she felt that way.

She’s right. I have lost weight, but not a huge amount. Enough weight that if you haven’t seen me for a while, you’ll probably notice. If you see me regularly, you might not. I don’t know exactly how much I’ve lost because I didn’t have a decent scale when I started, but it’s pretty close to 35 pounds in the past five months. Maybe 5 pounds more than that, but 35 is a number I’m confident in.

I don’t know what my peak weight was, but it was probably around 210, which is way too much for a guy who is just shy of 5'9". Growing up I was a really skinny kid, so I was never happy about being heavy, but I guess I just got used to it. I like to eat, I like to drink…I like both of those things a lot more than I like exercising, I told myself, so that was the trade-off that I was willing to make.

And that’s how people knew me. I was a guy who liked to have a good time, enjoyed a good meal, etc. That’s why my friend’s first thought was that I must be sick, it didn’t line up with how she thought of me.

The good thing is that even though I ate and drank freely, I mostly ate real food (as in, not fast food, not junk food, etc.). Plus, I was always relatively active, so my weight just sort of stayed where it was for a long time with no change. And I kept telling myself that someday I would get serious about losing weight and I’d do it.

Turns out that someday was this year. Maybe it’s the fact that turning 50 is less than a year and a half away or maybe it’s when my old, junky scale topped 200 pounds for the first time (that stung, but at least its lies cushioned me from knowing that I had probably been above 200 pounds for years), but I decided to be serious about it for the first time ever.

As I said, I’m a food guy, so I’m not great at dieting and I’m not going to stick with any plan if it’s all about depriving myself of the things I enjoy. Most fad diets are either dubious or dangerous (or both), so I just took it right to the basics—it’s all about calories in and calories out. I don’t care about carbs or grams of fat or even calories, for that matter.

When people ask me how I’ve lost weight (I get asked at least once a week), it’s very simple—eat less and move more. That’s it. I don’t really count calories, but as I said, I tend to cook for myself so most of my food starts as ingredients, so I generally have a pretty good idea of what I take in in a day. And if I have a bowl of ice cream (which I probably do 2–3 nights a week), I make sure to walk an extra mile or two.

There are other changes that I have made with the way I eat, but nothing drastic, mostly just cleaning up sloppy eating habits. I’ve always eaten a lot of fruit and vegetables, but I have made more of a point of keeping a bigger variety in the house so that I can mix things up when I feel like snacking (FYI: a couple of celery stalks with a stripe of sriracha sauce is a great evening snack).

It is going to be more challenging to keep it up now because winter is almost here and I can’t be on my bike for ten miles a day. Plus, cold weather (anything below 30˚) wreaks havoc with my asthma, so I can’t take Daisy out for four-mile walks in the morning. And then there are all of the temptations holiday gatherings with food and sweets and everything else.

I won’t keep losing weight at the same pace, but I will be fine as long as I make adjustments to my daily routines. Take shorter, but more frequent, walks with Daisy. Be sure that I’m not just sitting at my desk all day, get up and move around the house (added benefit: clean house).

Somebody recently said to me, “You must feel a lot better after losing that weight,” but the truth is that I never felt bad. I definitely feel better when I look in the mirror, but physically I still feel the same. I did feel pretty good, though, when I had to go out and buy a couple new pairs of jeans because the old ones looked really weird.

But I’m being careful about not letting myself feel too good about it because I don’t want to get lazy. I’ve lost weight, but I have more that I want to lose and I just need to keep reminding myself of that fact. Still…it’s exciting to know that my goal weight is only 10–15 pounds away. It might take me another year to lose those pounds, but I’ll get there.

Related posts:

The Explorers Project is working to change the way we think about mental disability at the “Neurodiversity and Art” seminar this week. It advocates a radical model of understanding mental disability…

Sounds this week were closely related to activities. I realize that while having guests, most of the places I become aware of are where meals are shared. After a week of mostly silence at home…

The benefits of drinking alkaline water are numerous. One benefit is that it’s so pure and crisp, with no artificial flavors or colors added. It has a light, refreshing taste that will make you want…