I weighed 297 pounds to start the year. Blogged about it. Decided I wasn’t going to weigh 300 pounds, and resolved to back away.
I did, but not nearly enough. Worse, I didn’t make a lifelong commitment. I hope I have now. I’ve been solidly engaged daily in changing my eating habits for almost two months now, and as I type I remain delighted and enthusiastic about it. I feel better, and I have more energy. My clothes fit better, and actually dropping a pants size is imminent. Lea sees a difference, and I can see a difference in the mirror, but I’m really only just now to the point where it’s going to start becoming apparent to the casual observer.
So I wanted to get under my previous starting point of 279.5 before I blogged about it this time. Today I weigh 277.5. I haven’t seen the 270s in quite some time, so that feels good. I have set a goal weight of 175 pounds, but I have no calendar-based deadline to get there. If it takes five years, then it takes five years. I’m only making it about continuing to move in the correct direction. Right now, because I’m obese and shall remain so for a good while longer, that’s easy to do week to week, and you can follow on the right sidebar if you’re interested. When I’m much lighter than I am now, with much less to go to reach my goal, I may have to measure progress month to month. We’ll see.
There is no trick to what I’m doing. We all know what we have to do to lose weight; it’s just the discipline of actually doing it that’s the hard part. I’m eating low-fat, with very low saturated fat. I’m avoiding huge servings of simple carbs. I’m choosing high-fiber options when I can. I never skip breakfast. I’m eating a lot of Campbell’s Healthy Request soup for lunch, and there’s enough variety there to keep it easy to enjoy. I pack a couple of low-cal but satiating snacks for the day (a single hard-boiled egg sits in my stomach marvelously). I’ve seriously reduced empty evening calories, most notably alcohol. Portion control rules the day.
Most days I’m hitting in the neighborhood of 2400 calories, and for such a high number to be working as well as it does tells you a lot about just how atrocious that number was before.
Physical activity is, of course, the other side of this equation. I’m not doing anything organized that could be called a workout right now, because I don’t like regimented exercise per se. In fact, I really hate it. There is no more rapid way for me to build a lot of resentment very quickly than demanding of myself that I treadmill, exercise-bike, or whatever x number of times per week for y minutes, and I really don’t ever see that changing.
Instead, I am looking for opportunities to increase my activity level in ways that already fit with what I want to do. Saintseester and I have periodically, during periods of mutual discipline, taken long lunchtime walks together. Still haven’t gotten back to geocaching as much as I’d like. I carry a pedometer everywhere, and look for opportunities to increase steps when I can. I enjoy Wii Fit enough to get a bit of that in from time to time.
I can also see some time in the near future in which I lose enough weight to resume some other activities. Bicycling doesn’t feel like punishment to me, for example.
But my diet has easily been my larger problem, and I’ve been delighted in how effective my changes have been so far.
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