Hi. I’m new to this forum but your post struck a chord with me because I’ve been overweight my whole life and like most people have yo-yo’d up and down, with the almost inevitable gradual increase over time. Firstly, I wanted to offer you an e-hug!
I hit my heaviest ever weight in summer 2023. My wife had been trying mega hard to lose weight in the previous 6 months and at that point had lost around 10kg whilst I managed to gain 6kg…which, on reflection wasn’t very supportive of me.
In the last six months I have lost over 15kg and she is about 18kg down overall. We both have a very long way to go, but she did her first park run a month ago and another yesterday (I can’t run due to a dodgy leg). Everyone is different but I do know that appetite isn’t something that can be ‘beaten’ by will power, although when you’re overweight you are made to feel like you are somehow weak. This is not true. I’m still finding things out about my own problems with food, but I thought I would share some of my current thinking (and observations about my wife) in case you find any of it useful.
1) There is too much confusing and conflicting advice out there on food and weight loss, and if you try to make sense of it it’s very hard to know what is right or the best course of action. This is partly because it’s a huge industry and people are trying to make money out of you.
2) There is no cheaty way of beating this thing. It took effort to gain weight and it will take the same commitment to lose it. I realised that I actually had to work reasonably hard to maintain my weight and put quite a lot of effort into eating the wrong stuff, too much stuff etc.
3) You have to stop beating yourself up about whatever habits you formed that contributed to your weight gain and accept that this doesn’t define you as a person and that you can start to change things if you do it bit at a time.
4) Seek progression, not perfection! Stop focussing on the end number and start focussing on one or two small changes. For me this was setting a couple of rules such as almost no fast food (which was actually really hard at first because I travel a lot for work), but every time I chose sushi over Macdonalds or a Diet Coke over a milkshake then this was a big victory. With this small change I started losing half a pound every other week. Previously I would have been unhappy with that, but actually, that’s exactly how the weight went on! I did really ‘go for it’ for two weeks after Christmas and managed to drop more much quicker, but I know that sort of thing isn’t sustainable). Another example is my wife’s running: the idea of running was actually laughable a year back, but she’s a stubborn bitch (she’d agree with this description) and so when she decided to try the couch to 5k app then her one rule was to get up at 6am and get out the door three times a week…nothing else and no other pressure or expectation. She made this promise to herself and tiny bit by tiny bit she ran a little, walked a lot, ran a bit more etc. I couldn’t do it, even if I could run, but that was her rule. She didn’t start by saying “I’ll never run 5k because I can’t even run 100m”, she just did what she could and looked for small progression and never perfection. Perfection doesn’t exist after all, so stop being unreasonable with your expectations. She can now run for 5k without stopping. She also says that she doesn’t care if she looks fat and sweaty whilst doing it because she’s doing it for her.
5) At the risk of being horribly patronising, there is something you can take that will improve and maybe even cure many ailments and health issues. It’s called food. Food is fuel, but it’s also poison or medicine, depending on which you choose. My big motivator is that I’m rapidly approaching 50 and I’m worried about my family history of heart problems and my previously stratospheric cholesterol. In fact, at first I didn’t even set out to lose weight, I just set out to stop poisoning myself, to eat more healthily and concentrated on eating ‘heart healthy’. I didn’t limit what I ate at all, but I did limit saturated fat and concentrated on eating things that help lower bad cholesterol such as unsalted nuts, good fats, much less red meat and going for food that would give me more fibre. Without trying or ever feeling hungry (and still with the occasional slip) I dropped 5kg in 3 months.
6) Shitty carbs can be reduced. A few months back I had a blood test that suggested I might be diabetic, so I actually started to consciously loose weight. This involved heart healthy food (much of which was now habit), but also making an effort to avoid large amounts of carbs, and if I did eat carbs stuff then try to eat lower GI carbs. I also cut out almost all sugar (I do use sweetener currently), though a bit of dark chocolate still features. You don’t have to be a prig about this, and I still had cake at my youngest’s birthday last weekend (but I had less than I would have normally done), but I try to eat a lot less bread, potatoes and rice. This did take effort, but…Do you know what? After a couple of weeks it’s not that big a deal.
7) Don’t get hungry. Hunger is not something that you can control…hunger controls you. Hunger is hormonal, it’s chemical, it’s emotional and our bodies are good at responding to it. Once you are properly hungry then if you’re anything like me then you just go for it and eat, eat, eat. This isn’t you being weak, this is you being normal. Most people do that when they are ravenous, but most people don’t let themselves get really hungry because their urge to eat isn’t wrapped in all sorts of guilt and shame they don’t deny them selves so much…so they don’t then risk gorging. I have been teaching myself to eat when I feel hungry, or at least to schedule sensible mealtimes and snacks (it’s ok to be a bit peckish in between). This has been quite hard to do and has taken a bit of thinking about, but I now make sure I eat three meals a day, snack on nuts or beef jerky or fruit (yes, I’m now enjoying fruit), and if I’m craving something sweet then I mix full fat Greek yoghurt with sweetener, a few blueberries or grapes, a tablespoon of low sugar muesli and a tablespoon of rolled oats (it’s like an amazing dessert…especially if you leave it to rest for half an hour, cause then it tastes like something that is really bad for you). I have also replaced most chocolate cravings with a cup of cocoa made with sweetners (or that Options stuff is good too). Anyway, if you’re hungry then eat, but eat well. Good food.
8) Develop a dislike of ‘bad food’. I don’t mean that you should never eat cheese again or that you can’t occasionally get drunk and have a kebab, but those foods are not good for your heart, so learn about bad fats or what sugar does in large quantities and scare yourself off it. Make them a rare treat. Seriously, I now look at the cheese in our fridge as if it’s trying to kill me (which it eventually will if I keep eating loads of it). I love the taste of cheese, I love the taste of dinner meat…it’s just that I know that it ain’t good for me. Not from a ‘makes me fat perceptive’, but from a ‘it blocks my arteries’ perspective. There’s loads of other good tasting stuff anyway.
9) Control your drinking. My wife likes a drink more than is good for her, whereas it doesn’t bother me at all and I can god a week or two without. If she drinks a bottle of wine (or two) then that’s a huge amount of calories. She doesn’t want to stop drinking, so she’s made a rule that it’s Friday and Sat night only. There’s about 600 calories in a bottle of wine and 1lb in weight is 3500 calories. It’s calories you can do without most of the time.
10) Exercise. It take a lot of exercise to burn off the calories in one apple, so weight loss is more about food than anything, HOWEVER, do not let this mean you should avoid exercise. Strength training will help your muscles work better and will contribute to using more calories. Walking lowers those nasty blood sugars and makes you feel happier. Small steps etc, but I now excercise regularly and feel loads better for it. It never really gets easier because you gradually raise your expectations/goals and you just have to make yourself do it. I also know that if you’ve made the effort to exercise then you don’t want to waste that by eating crap, so use it to motivate your food choices as much as anything else. Also, do something that is slightly fun or social.
11) You will have ‘bad days’ where your food choices slip. You will gain weight at times even when you have been ‘good’, especially if you’re female, because of those pesky hormones. That’s all part of the journey. The important part is that it has a downward trend overall.
12) Fit trackers are worth it. I like my Apple Watch because the health app lets you focus on health, but other ones do the same. I enjoy seeing my resting heart rate gradually go down and my weight gradually go down on a graph. They let you track fitness too and mine bullies me when I haven’t stood up for a while etc.
I have another load of kg to go (about 40) and my wife (about 50) but I’m not even thinking too much about that…I’m just focusing on eating good food, fewer carbs and making myself move a bit more. It’s going to take me years, but I’m ok with that.
I don’t know whether any of the above was useful, but I felt it therapeutic to write.
Hope you find a way to move towards where you want to be. Xxx
