Whenever I tell people I lost a lot of weight they always make the same joke, “Oh, looking at you I can see you’ve gained it all back.” Then comes the argument about how I must have due to me denying it. Eventually I dig up old pictures of me and people are surprised I kept the weight off. I am still fat, but I am now losing weight again. People are always impressed with my weight loss journey and will ask me what did I do. Every time I tell someone what I did to lose weight and keep it off no one thinks it works. They either ask how I really did it, or they think I am making a joke. However, I am always telling them the truth. I think I’ve written a little bit about this before on here, but I don’t think I’ve ever told the full story.
In college I gained a fuck ton of weight. I went from super lean to my ankles are constantly hurting due obesity. I can’t stress enough how much weight I gained. In the span of 3 years, I gained 150 LBS. I used to be 140 LBS and I am now 204 LBS. I lost 90 LBS in the span of 2 years. I have kept this weight off. I just stopped losing weight due to me no longer doing what I did to lose the weight in the first place. So, how did I do this?
I took baby steps. People used to make fun of me for doing things that “did nothing”. What do I mean? Well, at work I would park my car on the opposite side of the building as far away as I could. This not only made parking faster, since no one wanted to park that far away from the building, but I now had to walk further to get to my desk. Everyone made fun of me for this. They said this was doing nothing. That I was just tricking myself into thinking I was doing anything for my body. However, after 2 weeks I lost half a pound. These pounds are not part of the 90 I lost. The pounds I’ve lost here stopped me from hitting 300.
When I told people I lost half a pound no one cared, and some even made fun of me. I had no support during this time. However, these small steps kept growing. Soon, I was parking far away when I went to Walmart. Then I was parking far away when I did my laundry, went to the arcade, or even went to my friend’s house. Eventually everywhere I went I was parking as far away as I could. Now these extra 50-200 steps were no longer just 50-200 steps. Now they were an extra 1000-4000 steps a day. Being close to 300 LBS those extra steps helped a lot. Eventually I dropped down to 290.
At 290 I decided to actually make some change. After I saw how much adding a few steps helped me lose weight I decided to do the same thing elsewhere. I started to log everything I drank and ate. I noticed I was having more than 3 liters of soda a day. I was shocked at how much soda I was drinking each day. I was drinking just cans and bottles; they weren’t 1 or 2 liter bottles either. Wondering if I could do the same thing I did with walking more, but with soda. So, I sat there thinking for a few days. I decided to cut 1 can/bottle of+ soda every 2 weeks. Not 1 a day. Not 1 a week. 1 every 2 weeks. I got this idea because I was doing research on addiction at the same time. They say if you go cold turkey you are more than likely going to fail. All studies I could find showed you had a very high chance of relapse if you just stopped your addiction. Looking into why we relapsed I found out it’s because your body is addicted to the substance. Since I was worrying about relapsing I decided to cut 1 soda every 2 weeks. Everyone made fun of me again. However, at the end of the second week I had lost a bit of weight, not a lot. I also had a little bit of extra money. I then cut another soda. This time I had a little bit more money and I lost a pound. I kept doing this until I was down to maybe 4 sodas a week. I wound up losing a lot of weight like this, and saving a lot of money. People used to ask me where I got the money for my video game collection. Right here. This is how I saved enough money to buy some rare games. Since I was spending that money already on soda I could just budget it elsewhere.
I also didn’t cut out sugary drinks. I switched from soda to juices, or other flavored drinks. Then I started to cut those out and switch to mostly drinking water. Which is where I am at today. I mostly drink water, I aim for 2 liters a day, and a few juices a week. Cutting out soda helped me lose a lot of weight, and cutting down sugary drinks made me lose more. I did the same method as before. I trained my body to slowly get over the caffeine from soda and the sugar rush from juice. At this point I have lost tons of weight. I am down 20 LBS and I haven’t even started to exercise. This is the part people have the hardest time believing. I lost 20 LBS from dietary changes only. Not even changing what I am eating, just what I drank.
Now there were two things left for me to do. Exercise and change how I ate. I started to go for small 20-30 minute walks after work and change my diet. Looking at how I was eating I noticed I was eating out a lot. I decided to cook 1 meal at home a week. Boom, repeat what I did for the sodas. Now, I am cooking at home and I am losing more weight. Now that I know what is going into my food I can control it. I was eating more veggies and grilled chicken. I made hamburgers at home and beef pasta. This is where my next big change happened. I was buying the fattiest meats I could get. I decided to buy one small tube of ground lean beef and didn’t get a new one until I used it all. I hated the taste of it. However, eventually I started to like the lean beef. Soon I went from buying 1 quarter pound tube every 2-3 weeks to every week. Then it became I was buying a half pound of lean beef and half of fatty beef. Then it became pound of lean and a quarter pound of the fatty beef. Soon I was buying the fatty beef every 2-3 weeks. I never stopped buying it because you need to eat fatty meats, but I was eating it less. This caused another massive weight loss.
By this point I have fixed my diet, I am walking more, and I am saving gas by parking far away. I now have a lot more spare cash because I am cooking at home and no longer buying sugary drinks. What’s left for me to do? Go to the gym. By the time I decided to hit the gym I lost 50 LBS. My brother and I went the gym and he started to train me. With his help, and the dietary changes, I wound up losing another 30 LBS.
“I thought you lost 90 LBS?” I did. Just I lost the 80 LBS while I was still in America. When I moved to China I wound up losing the other 10 LBS, despite no longer going to the gym. Just from walking and dietary changes again in China. Down to 200 LBS I keep fluctuating between 198 and 205 LBS. This is where I am at today.
So, why did I fall off of these good habits? It was mostly due to work and stress. See, I worked odd hours at my first training center. This made getting a regular eating schedule impossible. It also made getting healthy food impossible. So, I wound up ordering more food and drinking sodas again. However, I still walked everywhere, or I took the subway. I also isolated myself due to stress and stopped going out. Then COVID happened and I was locked in my tiny Beijing apartment forever. Eventually I emerged from it gaining a lot of weight. So, I started to just explore Beijing to lose the weight again. However, I randomly hit bouts of depression, or stress, and just stopped. Now, I am living in a small city with a much less stressful job and I am doing better at sticking to a schedule. I just gotta fix my choices again.
Lately I have been drinking more juices, and no more soda! I am eating out a lot. I am not walking or exercising as much as I should. So, what will I do? I am going to make sure I am drinking enough water. I find I am drinking less than 1.5 liters a day, not good! I am not moving enough, so I will move more! I am now walking to and from work every day and getting 4.95 miles a day, according to my fitness watch. I am going to get down to 160 LBS! I know the way I did it is very slow, and I have to do some of it all over again. However, slow and steady wins the race. Remember, you need to make slow changes for them to be permanent to your life style. I hope by reading how I did it will help you lose weight too! I didn’t do any crash dieting. I just fixed how I ate and drank, slowly. I wish I had tracked how much weight I was losing each week and month to help give you an idea, but sadly I didn’t. I do know in 2 years I lost 90 LBS. At first it was a few LBS a month then it just snow balled into more and more.