This post had been in the works for a few weeks because I've seen it coming for a while. For the last month it's kind of felt inevitable but at the same time it's still pretty freaking unbelievable.
No baseball cards today. I don't share really personal stuff very often. Except for when I announced moving to Arizona I have never made a post without cards until today. Today is all about me and this post is going to be really long.
I have never really thought of myself as having a weight problem. I've been a bigger guy sure but I've never been a candidate for Biggest Looser or anything like that. When I would go to the doctor he would tell me everything looks good but you should lose some weight. I considered myself fat but it's not like I wasn't getting sideways glances when getting on a ride at an amusement park or anything. I was just bigger, I would see dozens of me every day.
In March my pants got feeling a little tight and it made me think I should probably make some changes that were not just buying bigger pants like the least half dozen times my pants got tightd, so I came up with a goal for myself. (That goal has changed like five times over the last 7 months.) My initial goal was to go down one pant size. Not just make my tight pants not tight anymore but go down a whole size from 44 to 42. It took me a month and a half but I dropped that pant size. In that time I learned a lot, things about myself I didn't know.
That first month and a half I took Ozempic (generic Ozempic) and with that I lost 30 pounds and dropped a pant size. I was told that stopping the prescription I would gain most of that weight back, however I didn't because being on the medicine taught me the cheat code(s) that I needed. The drug doesn't just make you loose weight, it makes you not hungry. That time of not being hungry all day every day was a real learning experience. I could not have lost all this weight without learning those things about my self.
I was addicted to food. Headache - some food will make that feel better. Stomach hurts - it probably just needs some food on it. Can't fall asleep - a full stomach will help. Tired - I probably should get a snack to keep me awake. Food was my answer to just about any problem. It's way deeper than that though. On the meds I found myself getting up in the morning and eating breakfast even though I wasn't hungry. Wake up get dressed and eat breakfast was so ingrained into me that I would robotically do it even when I wasn't even hungry. Breakfast was just one of the things I instinctively did in the morning to get really for my day no different than brushing my teeth.
The really big thing I learned and one of the hardest to overcome was learning to stop eating. My whole life I was told finish your food. No matter what I had to finish that plate every time, can't waste the food. That in itself isn't so bad just put less on the plate to begin with, right? Well not for me. One, you can't at a restaurant, you get what they serve you and you have to eat it all, every bit of it. I can't tell you how many times I was at dinner with someone and watched people ask for part of their food to go and just thinking, what is wrong with these people, how can they not finish their food? Because it was every day worse than the restaurant was having a family and eating at home. Not any of their faults, all my own. We could finish eating dinner at home and there be two scoops of mac and cheese left that nobody wanted. Well I couldn't let it go to waste, so even though I was full I would finish it off. And there usually wasn't just some mac and cheese left, there was always a extra piece of chicken, or two, maybe even three and none of those could be wasted either.
Finishing all the food was just the beginning of my not being able to stop eating problem. When you stuff yourself full every meal your body eventually says, unless I'm stuffed I'm still hungry. So I would eat every meal, three meals a day (sometimes four), seven days a week like it was Thanksgiving Dinner. And then I would finish everyone else's food so it didn't go to waste. Looking back, so stupid, but it was a part of me and I didn't even realize it was happening like that. Of all the changes I made this was the hardest, don't listen to your stomach, eat one plate and stop.
Those were the cheat codes that I learned that first month. I was told I was going to gain some of that weight back and I didn't want to so I implimented all those things I had learned about myself plus some other changes. Salty snacks are my kryptonite. Chips, crackers, pretzels, Chex-Mix (man I crush some Chex-Mix right now!) anything like that was my go to. It was quick and fast to just grab out of the pantry, instant gratification. That stopping eating when full thing always got me with snacks too, chips aren't really supposed so be a single serving size but they were for me. So I got rid of all that kind of stuff and replaced it with nuts and dried fruits so I could still have my snack and still have my salty and it not be so carb heavy. Once I stopped the meds I didn't gain any weight back like they said would happen I was actually still slowly losing weight for a while. So I changed my goal, no more getting a pant size back I was gong to just keep going. Everything was great for a bit and then I got stuck not losing anything for two weeks.
Something had to change for me to lose any more. I remembered taking a health class in school where they taught that to lose weight you just had to limit yourself to a certain amount of calories per day. I went searching for that number and how I could do that and you know what I found out, just like everyting else they have an app for that. You plug in what you weigh, you give it your goal and it tells you how many calories to limit yourself to so you can reach your goal. Plus it tracks them for you. So I started logging in my food. All of it, meals, snacks, drinks everything. You know what it was that was stopping me? The kinds of foods I was eating. Those nuts and dried fruit they had to go. If I had a snack it had to be less that 100 calories. Spagetti is my all time favorite food but pasta had to go. Once I started counting the calories the weight really starting coming off.
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| This is the app I used. |
Then I hit that brick wall of life I posted about a few months earlier. Everything was in chaos. Things at work, things at home, everything was changing. I needed something I could control, something that no matter what was happening around me I had something steady and constant. That became my calorie count. I couldn't control the people around me but I could control my calories. It was my lifeline while my whole world changed around me. So I changed my goal again. I was gong to get down to 190 pounds by October.
The calorie count was a huge difference maker. I couldn't have done it without first learning my overeating tendencies but I wouldn't be here without counting calories either. I hit my 190 goal on August 19th. I was still counting calories and still loosing weight so I changed my goal again. I wouldn't change anything I was doing but I was now going to try and get down to 175. I thought if I can get to 175 by Thanksgiving I'll give myself a cheat day because I haven't had one since June.
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That was October 13th. I haven't weighed 175 since my early 20s. I was down 90 pounds and Thanksgiving was still over a month away. So of course I changed my goal again, 100 pounds by Thanksgiving. And let me tell you those last ten were tough. There were a bunch of times I doubted I could make it.
I started my journey at 265 and today I hit 165. That initial goal of going down one pant size got blown out of the water. I went from a 44 waist to a 34 waist and lost 100 pounds.
So what now? I'm done loosing weight but I'm still going to count calories so I'm changing the app settings from lose weight to maintan weight. Thanksgiving will still be my first cheat day where i ignore calories but since my calorie count is 600 higher today than it has been in going to tray myself to an ice cream this evening.
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