On March 29th, 2020, I weighed myself: I was 221 pounds (100+ kilos). I was overweight and on the exact tipping point of being obese.
Some Backstory on My Weight Loss Challenges
As a kid, weight was never an issue for me. My weight loss struggles emerged in my mid to late twenties. My bad diet finally caught up to me.
In early 2017, I went to the doctor with some bodily complaints. At that point in time, I was 223 pounds. My cholesterol was high and I was having serious health challenges. With a wake-up call from the doctor and staring some significant health disasters in the face, I got all the way down to 193 pounds, which was great. The doctor said I was a success story.
I gained seven pounds back and for roughly a year I steadied and leveled off at 200 pounds. My doctor said I would preferably fluctuate between 180 and 190 pounds. In a follow-up visit, I told her I was struggling to stay below 200 but was glad to not be over 200 anymore.
“Maybe that’s where your body levels off at,” she said. And she said that was OK. My cholesterol was back to normal, for the most part.
Towards the end of 2018, I started to work a stressful job at a startup. In fact, I’d been working at a number of stressful jobs in digital marketing across several geographical locations, and this was no exception – but this was particularly insane, and I had the worst boss ever. Work started to take over my life – I had little to no time and energy for things outside of work and my health deteriorated. And I gained the weight back.
I went up to something around 218 pounds. I worked out a lot and I got back to 210 pounds, but my weight didn’t go down as much as I would’ve liked.
By the end of 2019, I had left that nutty job and went to a new job – and the new job was even worse, after having been deceived in the interview (a string of bad luck with some of the jobs I had, no doubt – and that’s putting it lightly. But hey, that’s life for you, and it’s important to keep moving forward – I’m now contracting/consulting in a new field and industry). By that point, I was back up in the 218 to 220-pound range.
In early 2020, starting in late January, I went into a very serious burnout. In February and March I was aware my weight was bad, but I had to focus on doing as little as possible and getting my energy back.
That takes us to the end of March, where I was essentially back to where I started in early 2017, weight-wise.
A Life-Changing Program From Brian Tracy
I was now ready to make some serious lifestyle changes in my life. I was still in my burnout and nowhere near recovered, but I viewed a weight-loss regimen as a part of my recovery (the burnout was far deeper than just about my weight; if you want the full burnout story feel free to check out the link above).
Looking to get some momentum, my girlfriend and I listened to 21 Great Ways to Live to be 100 by Brian Tracy, a 70-minute digestible audio program. In it, Tracy said something I’ll never forget:
Eat most of your calories before 2 pm.
This resonated with me. Many people in our society eat big dinners (I had big dinners throughout my whole life). The challenge with eating a lot of calories closer to bedtime is that it doesn’t give your body as much time to digest the food, therefore increasing the chances it will add to your weight. As I struggled through the years with my own weight loss, I often ate small to medium-sized breakfast and lunches, and then was starving by dinnertime and had a big dinner.
Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
Adelle Davis
After hearing this, I started to have big lunches instead of big dinners. For the first time in my life, I began eating very small, low-calorie dinners after having a sizable lunch.
This did the trick. Together with moderate in-home exercise (three to five times per week for thirty minutes per session) and sticking to 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day, I lost more than forty pounds in a fairly short amount of time. I went from more than 220 pounds to less than 180 pounds. After years of bad weight loss advice and struggling with my weight for a long time, I finally came across a practical tip that actually works. This is my lowest weight in more than seven years. Brian Tracy is the best!
I kept track of my weight loss in an excel spreadsheet. By July 19th, 2020, I was 183 pounds (3+ months after March 29th). Shortly thereafter, I hit 180 pounds, and I’m now below 180 pounds.
Excellent Thoughts From Tim Ferriss
Author Tim Ferriss supports our discussion here, and also touches on what I was doing wrong for so many years.
“Fat loss is 99% diet,” Tim said. “You can’t outwork your mouth, so focus on the food.”
I was always working out so hard – my workout routine at the gym was excellent, stemming from the discipline I picked up from the sports I played when I was younger. The challenge was that for so many years, my diet wasn’t good. I’d burn all these calories at the gym, and then consume them right back in the unhealthy and high-calorie foods I was addicted to.
When you change your diet – what you eat – you lose weight faster and with less required exercise.
This Wasn’t Glamorous To Experience, But It Created Better Health
This wasn’t a glamorous or fun experience, but I knew if I wanted to live longer, I needed to make real adjustments in my lifestyle (it’s better to refer to it as a permanent lifestyle, as opposed to a diet which tends to be short-term). In the first two weeks of having smaller dinners – and fewer calories overall in the day – I was literally going to bed in pain. I pushed through, sick and tired of going through life overweight.
Your body wants homeostasis and will fight to keep you at the weight you’re at. This is a built-in survival mechanism, and it’s something you can override with the right lifestyle, actions, and perspective. Stop buying sweets. Reduce your sugar intake, as sugar is addictive. There are documentaries that talk about how our entire society is addicted to all sorts of sugar and junk food – I highly recommend you watch Fed Up.
The pain will be there for a while, but eventually, your stomach will get used to smaller dinners. For me, the pain was there for months, and even now it’s still there at times, but it slowly got better over time. And every once in a while, I would have a bad day where everything inside me wanted to go back to my old unhealthy ways (in those tough moments, my girlfriend helped me stay on track, so having an accountability partner can be helpful as well). I definitely don’t want to deter you here, as all of this was worth it – I simply want to acknowledge the reality and challenges of the process, as that’s where the core of the change takes place.
I occasionally rewarded myself with some food that wasn’t perfectly healthy, like a pizza or some chicken wings – but the crucial word here is occasionally. I only did it after making some substantial progress in my weight loss, and when I did eat out, it was for fewer calories than I used to. With that said, it’s worth noting that treating yourself every now and then can be helpful. There were moments when I wanted to give up and it all felt like a struggle – by rewarding myself every now and then, it helped me to not feel like life was a never-ending struggle. But you need to be strategic about it and be very careful to not fall back into old habits. In the eye-opening documentary Fed Up I mentioned, they showed people who lost a lot of weight and then put it all back on – it’s incredibly easy to fall back into old habits. Lose the weight and then focus on maintaining the lifestyle.
I hope this post added value to you. You can do it, I believe in you.
Jeff Davis is an award-winning author, most recently publishing The Power of Authentic Leadership: Activating the 13 Keys to Achieving Prosperity Through Authenticity. He’s also an authentic leadership keynote speaker and Executive Coach to leaders and CEOs, offering individualized coaching. Follow him on Twitter.
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