Five Lessons I Learned on the Path to Weight Loss

On November 24, 2013, I hit a wall. Like, not literally hit a wall, with my fists or my car or something. But I came to an important realization. That realization was that I wanted to make a change in my lifestyle. At the time that this occurred to me, I did not own a scale, and I am abysmal at estimating the weight of anybody, but I would estimate that I weighed at least 260 pounds. Whatever my precise weight was, there was no denying that I was considerably above what my weight as a 6'0, 24 year old male should have been.

This afternoon, I stepped on the scale that I now do own. I weighed 199 pounds.

Now, the scale I use was the cheapest one I could find at Target on the day that I happened to decide that I wanted to buy a scale, so I'm not taking the results as gospel truth, though I have enough faith in the scale to assume that it is providing me with at least a decent estimate. Regardless, this is the first time since God knows when that my weight was under 200 pounds. Again, weighing myself has been an irregularity for my entire life (I suspect this is about 75% shame and 25% pure and adulterated laziness), but I do remember how much my weight was when I had a physical done before my senior year of high school. And it was more than 199 pounds.

But enough about me. You don't give a shit about that (and if you do--have you been on the internet before? Go to YouTube--you have access to pretty much every non-Prince song of the 20th and 21st centuries. It's fucking excellent. It's way better than me talking about losing a bunch of weight). Plus, it's not like I'm exactly an Adonis physique-wise anyway. But I figure that I can at least share some advice for people looking at methods of weight loss. I'm not an expert (important disclaimer: This is just based on my own experiences and not based on any kinds of extensive medical research) but I do know that there was an awful lot I picked up upon that would have been nice to know about and brace for in the process.

5. Weight loss goals are arbitrary and stupid

As I said, I hit my breaking point on November 24th, which was a Sunday. On Monday, November 25th, I contemplated what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to make a change, but I really hadn't extensively researched what I was going to do. I wanted to lose weight. I didn't have any idea as to how much weight. And this was probably a blessing in disguise. 

I didn't tell myself "I want to lose five pounds a week." I didn't tell myself I wanted to drop down to 220 pounds. I just told myself I wanted to lose some weight. In some cases in life, you want to set specific goals, but it's not like the process for weight loss really differs depending on your specificity.

So rather than setting my diet at a certain number of calories, I just decided to consume fewer of them. That simple. I didn't decide to eat 1500 calories a day because if I had done that, I'd be damn sure that I would be eating 1500 calories a day, whether I wanted to or not. And throughout the last several months, I've had days where I ate way fewer than 1500 calories and I've had days where I ate more than 1500. Fewer of the latter than the former by a wide margin, but I wasn't beholden to any specific threshold. And I didn't buy a scale until a few months into the process so I didn't worry about how much I lost. If you're 260 pounds and not, like, a center in the NBA, I can pretty well guarantee you will notice if you're losing weight. It's abundantly clear.

4. Getting complimented about weight loss is always fun

Let me be clear about this one: There is a difference between getting complimented and being put into a position where you're bragging about your own accomplishment. This post is far and away the most that I have expounded upon losing weight because, frankly, it's a kind of boring story. God bless you if you do, but I cannot even fathom somebody who hasn't gone through a similar experience and has no intention of going through a similar experience caring about any of this.

But compliments about it? I can't get enough of that shit. People will lie to you and say that they do not like receiving compliments, but they are goddamned liars.

And it doesn't matter who the person giving the compliments is. They are all fantastic. Co-workers? Friends? Family? Love it. Pretty girls? Guys? Don't care. Now, if you try to compliment me, I will brush it off and act cool about it, but it's all a lie. I suspect it's a lie for everybody.

3. Not eating is deceptively easy

Perhaps the strangest thing about my current diet is that, between the time that I wake up and the late afternoon, I generally consume more calories than I did before.

I formerly would always skip lunch and would often skip breakfast. The problem is that, pretty much as soon as I got home, I would fucking BINGE. I would eat a ton and often would rationalize how much I was eating, as well as rationalizing future snacks (which occasionally evolved into all-out meals), by reminding myself how little I had eaten before. 

There was a logic to this, and there still is, but the problem is that there is a degree of diminishing returns while eating a meal. For instance, I start my morning with a 200 calorie Slim Fast chocolate shake (which, if you've never had one before, is DELICIOUS--I would drink these things for pure leisure if it came down to it) and it satisfies my hunger for a few hours. At dinner, let's say hypothetically I go to Taco Bell (which I haven't done during this diet, but hear me out here) and order a Crunchwrap Supreme with a Crunchy Taco.  710 calories, according to their nutrition guide. Now, this meal will keep me full for longer than a 200 calorie shake...but not 3.5 times longer, as the math would imply.

So while I am forced to abide by a slightly regimented meal plan during the day during the week (constraints of work and shit), I otherwise have a pretty simple philosophy: Eat when I'm hungry and stop eating when I'm not hungry. For instance: Lean Cuisine has turkey dinners that are about 200 calories. Plenty filling for the time being, though not quite a Thanksgiving feast. Now, eating one of these babies at 5 p.m. may not satisfy my hunger for the night. Kind of depends. But they will, every single time, satisfy my hunger for the moment. Maybe later in the night I'll pull out some cereal (Kashi with Vanilla Graham Clusters is excellent and absurdly nutritious for a cereal that genuinely tastes good) and have a little bit of that. But I'm not eating it right away after the turkey dinner because 1. I'm not sure if I'll need the extra food; 2. I'll probably end up hungry for one reason or another later anyway.

2. Clothing become an obnoxious situation

This sounds like the most unsubtle humblebrag ever recorded, but this is a legitimate nuisance.

Now, my weight pre-dieting wasn't some sudden uptick that came out of nowhere--it was a gradual process and I was very much familiar with my relative size. And thus I owned a bunch of clothing that fit me comfortably.

A couple months in, my blue jeans were getting obnoxiously large (they were kind of big on me from the beginning, and then it got absurd) so I bought a new pair. Fine, no problem. But then that pair got too big. And what am I going to do? Buy a couple sizes lower? Eventually, I will stop losing weight, but I don't really know when I will stop losing weight. I don't know what size to buy. So in the meantime, aside from the one pair of jeans, my clothes are the same clothes I was wearing before. And since I kind of liked loose fitting clothing before...I all of a sudden look like a slob. Not that I was especially debonair before, but previously unheard of levels have been reached. The struggle, man. The struggle.

1. It turns out that eating a lot is really, really boring

So on November 24, 2013, I ordered and ate a medium Papa John's pizza for dinner after having eaten a not-insignificantly sized lunch. And I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? Was I really hungry, or was I just bored?" And the answer is more the latter than the former. Maybe I was a little hungry, but I wasn't so hungry that I needed to eat a whole damn pizza.

When I started dieting, I did okay up until about 8 p.m. Around that time, I would think to myself "Hey, I'm kind of hungry." But rather than eating something, I pulled a bottle of water out of my refrigerator and started to drink out of that. And then I'd head back to my couch and watch TV or play video games or do something else. And I was good. As it turns out, I just wanted something to do. Even if "something" was something as boring as drinking water. Literally, that was it.

Now, sometimes this doesn't work. I'll start drinking some water and then I'll realize that I actually am genuinely hungry. And then I'll eat something small. And then I'll move on. You see, I live alone, so I'm bored A LOT. I'm not looking for sympathy on that count: I like being bored. I like being able to relax. This is just a drawback--that without considering the ramifications of my actions, I might continue poor habits. But these were habits I was able to break.

And if I fall back on these habits, send me a link to this post because then I will remember that these habits can be avoided. See, I had a reason for writing this all along! It just so happens that the reason wasn't particularly to entertain you. Sorry.