The Fat Guy Chronicles

So, I weighed myself on Friday and discovered I weighed 403.2 pounds.  Too much.  Way too much.  Time to try and do something about it.  I started today – Monday, June 6th 2016.  What’s my approach?  I’ve tried many things in the past – what worked the best was similar to the following…

For now, I’m:

1.  Weighing myself EVERY day and logging it.

Today, I was 400.2 pounds.  Down 3.0 pounds from Friday – this is not surprising – I’m more physically active on the weekends, eat less, rarely eat breakfast, and also tend to drink less soda.  So I tend to drop weight over the weekend, even when I’m not dieting.  I just make up for it during the week.

I’ve seen it frequently said that weighing yourself every day can be a negative – because your weight will naturally float within about a 5 pound range, so some days look bad, even when you’ve done everything exactly right, and it’s only by looking at the long term trend that you see what’s really happening.  So if weighing daily, it’s important not to be discouraged by the number regularly going up, even if you are doing all the right things.  But you should still see a downward trend.

Having said that, I will be weighing myself daily and logging it.  It’s the only thing that’s kept me going on a weight loss regimen long term in the past.  It’s one of the first things I do each day, and it puts the reminder that I’m doing this and I need to think about what I eat throughout the day into my head.

In fact, even if I reach my goal weight (TBD), I plan to weigh myself daily for the rest of my life.  When I was at my lightest adult weight, I only maintained it as long as I actually paid attention to what I weigh.  The moment I stopped weighing myself, the weight went back on.  So daily weightings are a part of my life now – from now on.

2.  Not drinking caloric beverages.  Right now, my goal takes it a bit further – to only drink water.

Ok, so I’m currently drinking one a day of my current stock of caloric drinks until I’m out, and then no more.  Otherwise, I’m drinking water.  I’ve got about 6 more cans of soda, plus about 6 cans of V8 Vegetable Juice, and a few bottles of calorie free Vitamin Water.  But once those are gone, it’s all water all the time.  In any case, one a day is WAY less than I was drinking.

Of an interesting note, I’ve seen several references that suggest that even drinking diet soda can hurt weight loss, although it’s an indirect harm.  Obviously diet sodas have (nearly) no calories, so they don’t really contribute negatively in that fashion.  But the supposed effect is that sugared drinks make you hungrier, which would be especially bad for me during the first few weeks when the hunger is at the worst.

Previously, I would drink however much diet soda I want (which was typically a couple of cans a day) while dieting and I still had pretty good results.  But I’ve bombed out during the first two weeks of trying to lose weight too many times in the last few years.  So for now, diet soda is off the table.  If I can get to a steady rate of weight loss I’m happy with, I’ll revisit and see if diet soda is acceptable and doesn’t derail me – in the past it didn’t.  And yes, I’ve heard all about how terrible diet soda is – blah blah blah.  I’ll take my vice, thanks.  Weighing 400 pounds is a WAY bigger health risk than drinking diet, thanks very much.

In the past, during my most successful weight loss, I kept a water cup (12 oz) on my desk at work, which I’d refill with ice water about 10 times a day.  I drank tons of water.  I found that when I was drinking a lot of water, I felt better, had less appetite, and lost weight more quickly.  Or as my doctor at the time put it – keep your urine clear.  And believe me, it worked.  Whenever I did that, I lost weight a LOT more quickly, but also felt a LOT better.  Unfortunately, I’ve somehow lost my taste for water – last time I lost serious weight about 10 years ago, water tasted downright delicious.  Nowdays, it does not.  I don’t think the water changed.  I think it’s me, but I can’t really explain it.  So I’m having to push the water in, in any case.

I’m also planning on tracking my water intake, at least at first.  Once the habit is established, tracking becomes less of an issue.  How much to drink?  In the past my weight in pounds divided by two as ounces seemed to be about right.  I was getting about 120 oz at work, and the rest at home.  I did not count the diet soda in this total.

3.  Eating less.  Being hungry.

It’s an unfortunate fact of my life – my hunger cues are broken.  If I strictly follow my hunger cues, and eat only when I’m hungry, and stop when I’m no longer hungry, I will gain weight.  This has been a problem my entire life.  I don’t have an easy solution for it.  I’ve tried eating a variety of different ways – low/no carb, filling up on vegetables, etc.  Some of those tricks do help somewhat.  But in general, either I’m eating the right amount to maintain my current weight and I’m uncomfortably hungry on a regular basis, or I eat enough to not be hungry and gain weight.

This means I have to accept that even if I can get to a healthy weight, I’m going to be hungry at times, for the rest of my life, if I want to stay healthy.  That, honestly, sucks.  It’s not all bad though.  I’ve discovered in past experiments with weight loss that when I’m hungry, my vision of the world is brighter and more colorful, I tend to be more observant, and my brain is functioning at its peak efficiency.  I literally do my best and most prolific work when I’m hungry.  I assume it’s probably some sort of evolutionary trait that would improve my ability to find food in the wild or something.  So tying into that concept…

4.  Keeping Busy

The more I am focusing on completing projects and just generally getting stuff done, the less I think about how hungry I am.  Dieting is just easier when I’m busy.  And why squander the time at which I do my best work (when hungry)?  Fortunately I have no shortage of projects to work on, both at work and in my home life.  I have a lot of exciting ideas and will hopefully be able to execute them.

5.  Staying Accountable

Past experience tells me that I’m a lot more likely to stick with this and do better at it if I tell people what I’m doing – I need my friends to know what’s up, so that if they see me slipping, they can smack me upside my dumb head.  Ok, that’s perhaps a bit dramatic.  But having others who know what I’m doing, and who I give regular progress updates to has been helpful to me in the past.  It’s embarrassing to say, “Well I decided to break my rules because I wanted to, so my weight’s up this week over last week.”  Incredibly so.  This blog is a more public expression of my attempt to be accountable – to myself and those I care about.

6.  Not Counting Calories – Yet.

When I’ve done this successfully in the past, I was counting calories extremely precisely.  Unfortunately, this activity takes a TON of time to do correctly, and so I’m going to try to rely on other cues – listening to my body and just generally looking at portion size without specifically looking at calories.  If I find it just isn’t working, I’m going to find the time to count calories.  But I’m hoping I don’t have to.

Most daily updates will be shorter than this – but I thought I’d try and explain what I’m doing and why.