Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

When I was asked to share my weight loss journey for this blog, I thought it would be a fairly simple task. I started seriously tracking my weight in April when I was 270 lbs and 6 months later am at 220 lbs. This weight loss was achieved largely through diet changes using a nutrition system. My wife had lost a lot of weight by eating clean but was coming up short on energy and we decided to get on a protein shake based nutritional system which helped her with her energy, and me with my weight. 

On the surface, that is what has happened. If you are a facebook friend, that is what you could see from the various pictures and status updates shared over the last few months.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, you were probably like me at one time. I would always try one diet after another and never get anywhere. If I lost weight, it wouldn't last and I would have to find another diet that worked.

So how did I finally lose over 150 pounds and keep it off for almost three years now? Well, believe it or not, I didn't focus on losing weight when I finally succeeded.

Well over a year ago I was fed up with my weight.  I had grown fat and lazy.  Laziness was further perpetuated through the programming my brain had undergone with the years of poor eating and neglect.  I was addicted to sugar and fatty foods and eating the way I did sent me spiraling into depression which often then made it easy to be lazy. It ensured a self fulling prophecy of health failure since like any addition the substance (food in this case) tricks the brain into satisfying itself but with destructive results.

I woke up to what was happening and decided to try and lose weight.  Knowing well it was going to take a lifestyle change I cut sugar out of my diet and ate a high protein / low carb diet and lost over 40+ lbs.  However with the rising costs of food, having a family that has no dietary restrictions and having a disposition that proved to be weaker than I first thought, I fell back into my old routine of addictive sugar/fatty diet and gained my weight back.  Cost of food was really the breaking point since it is very expensive if you want to move completely away from eating processed foods.

I wrote about a friend a few weeks ago who wants to get his weight down to a certain number, despite already losing over 100 pounds. Recently, he told me he wants to cut his calories in half. To me, this is dangerous, not just because of the potential for developing an eating disorder, but because cutting calories will not result in sustainable weight loss.

Too many people think that by not having enough calories, they will lose weight. Well, all that will happen is that the metabolism will slow down to a crawl. Do you want to feel tired and have no energy? That's what happens with calorie restriction.

I remember when I first started losing weight a little over three and a half years ago. I would feel somewhat embarrassed with all the attention and would sometimes understate how much weight I lost. But, eventually I had to admit my weight loss to others. I was always afraid of people's shock when they would hear the number... 140 pounds, Oh My God! Of course, now it's been over 150 pounds lost, but anyway... 

Personally, I have no desire to get to a certain number. I'm very happy with my weight... in fact, if it goes down a little on the scale, I get nervous as I don't want my weight to go lower. I judge by how I look... despite the sagging skin on my abs, I know that I don't need to worry about my weight. I'm proud of the weight I lost and have no interest in losing anymore. I know I have an athletic body fat percentage and that my waist circumference is considered healthy. For me, it's all about being healthy. But there are other people I've talked to that obsess about getting to a certain number on the scale.