(For reference: I’m 40 years old and I’m 5’9". I’m a really stocky, broad guy, so even when I was a super-fit guy in high school, my lean body mass was about 160.)
On July 25, 2013 (day 0), I weighed 253 pounds and was on three prescription heart medications: a blood pressure med (lisinopril) for high blood pressure; a beta blocker (metoprolol) for tachycardia; and a cholesterol med (gemfibrozil) for…well, cholesterol.
On November 4, 2013 (day 100), I weighed 202 pounds and the strongest thing in my pill box was flax seed oil. I lost 51 pounds in 100 days.
This morning (day 292, though I’m not really counting the days anymore), I weigh about 200 and am still Rx-free.
. . .
(Pardon the recording studio photos, but this is what I have in my Flickr.)
I’ve lost a little over 50 pounds and kept it off for going on a year now. It’s made a marked difference in my day-to-day life. While 50 pounds is not grounds for a TLC miniseries, a magazine cover, nor even an ad campaign for a diet pill, I’m proud.
Questions, comments, or snark welcome, or this thread can sink to the bottom of IMHO like I would sink to the bottom of a pool right now.
Curious did tour doc drop your meds or did you decide to do so on your own?
I’m still on lots of meds but my numbers are all back to normal. I have unrelated stuff going on too though so there are other reasons to keep me taking some of them probably forever.
Right now I’m stalled, but still hanging in there, just inching along.
I’m in the club too. I weighed 283 in February of last year and went down to 225 by walking a bunch, plotting my weight in Excel and pretty much just staying hungry and active enough to lose a half pound each day.
“pretty much just staying hungry and active enough to lose a half pound each day.”
Agreed cornflakes. When I lost weight, “just staying hungry” was key. I got used to it after the third day, but it was a struggle. I need to get back to that place.
Cornflakes and Little_Pig, when you say “just staying hungry”, does it mean (A) hunger for food or (B) desire to keep losing weight? Just want to clear things up.
I’m interested in reading more about your experiences. Thanks.
Put yourself in the mind set that, ‘Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.’
It won’t be easy and some days will be harder than others, but once you begin to see real results, you won’t want to overeat or miss a workout ever again.
I went from 245 to 179 last year, in about 10 months. I’m about 6’4", though, so I’d consider the OP’s accomplishment more impressive than mine.
Like a few folks above, I embraced hunger. It feels great to be legitimately skinny again, not just “Oh, look at you, skinny. You lost 10 pounds!” It’s been a few years.
I also started a new job with crazy hours, which means I never worked out a single time. I’m back to it a little bit now, though.
Thanks! I started out mostly by watching what I was eating, and not terribly closely at that; I just cut out fast food, junk food, and alcohol, and that was good for the first 25-30 pounds lost. I also started walking: 4-5 miles of brisk walking 3-4 times a week.
Now I go to the gym four days a week (stationary bike and a little strength training, 45-50 minutes total in the gym), and I do a ballpark calorie count in my head, trying to stay between 1800-2100 kCal a day. So far that’s been good enough to keep me on track.
Thanks! See above for how I did it. No real secret: I have an inherent mistrust of diets with names, and that goes double if the name is trademarked.
However, I definitely did cut way back on refined carbs - starches, sugars, and alcohol, especially in the early going. I eat a ton of veggies and legumes, a good amount of fruit, and controlled (but pretty big) portions of leanish protein. My diet honestly looks a good bit like Phase 2 of the South Beach Diet.
I did not decide to cut back my meds on my own. I had been put on those by my (now former, as he sent me back to a GP) cardiologist, as I had been complaining of a fast hammering heartbeat. Once my weight hit about 215, I started complaining of orthostatic hypotension (i.e. got dizzy upon standing up), and my wife, who is a nurse, took my blood pressure and found it to be dangerously low. The doctor had me first cut my doses in half, then cut them out completely.
Frankly, that was one of the best, most accomplished feelings of my life. I had a kind of unspoken expectation that I would have to take those medicines for the rest of my life, with their expense and annoyance (beta blockers make you feel shitty and lethargic). I thought of myself as a fat unhealthy guy, and I had the sneaking suspicion that doctors, especially ones like cardiologists, were in the business of keeping you chronically ill and on pills. So to realize I no longer needed the meds, and to have that borne out by a doctor who appeared legitimately happy to take me off them and discharge me from years of his care, was a great day.
I plot my weight as well, in a Google Docs spreadsheet. It’s been enormously helpful.
I input my weight each day, but what I graph is the 7-day running average. That way I don’t get overly excited over a sturdy dump, or discouraged over a salty meal that makes me retain a pound of water. It smooths out the day-to-day variances and gives me a better idea of how I’m really doing.
I’ve embraced hunger in that I no longer eat dinner by default. I eat if I’m legitimately hungry, but I don’t just eat because I’m home from work, it’s 6PM, and “it’s time for dinner.” I think “three square meals a day” is usually too much food for a sedentary person to maintain a healthy body weight. So I eat a decently sized and usually very low-carb breakfast, pretty much whatever I want for lunch, and often just a snack for dinner - and by snack I mean a handful of carrots or a bag of microwave popcorn, not a plat of nachos.
Thanks! My skin seems fine - no stretch marks or redundant flesh, if that’s what you mean. I’m doubly blessed in having really good skin, and in the dubious blessing that when I gain weight, I gain it all over evenly. If you look at my “before” picture, you can see I didn’t have a huge beer belly; just fat face, fat arms, barrel chest, etc. Now, I don’t look like a person who’s lost a lot of weight.
I did something similar but I cut out breakfast and lunch entirely. It’s been 10+ years since I’ve had three meals on any given day. Hell, two is a rare treat for me. Cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe another cup through the day. Balanced dinner in the evening - and not one that’s 5,000 calories. A normal dinner like any healthy person would want to eat with some protein, vegetables, grains, carbs, etc. I do lean towards proteins because I’m a carnivor, so that helps avoid empty carbs.
Oh, and there is nothing like the feeling of walking by that pizza slice shop or donut shop without breaking a stride. Smells like victory every time.
Fear not. Someone will be along any minute to tell us that we’re doing it all wrong and that we should be having 5-6 small meals through the day to maintain our blood sugar levels and avoid craving or some such nonsense. <shrug>
For me, yes, it was about food, at first. You eat just enough to keep the “edge” off, and you are picky about what you consume. Its like you nibble with purpose.
Yes on the desire to keep losing weight, to a point. Again, for me, after getting through day 3, a new mind set began to slowly appear. Very very hard to explain. The strength to fight urges somehow increased.
I trust some other Doper will come along to explain this, maybe. Its kind of like you experience a moment of clarity. You see the pizza, and all of you wants the pizza, but you walk away from the pizza, and you get into the fact that you were able to walk away from the pizza. This becomes your new hunger, your new power. And you begin to want more of that. Its a control thingy. You are (finally) in control of… you.
I don’t mean to be all spooky about this, but if you can ride this crest for a few weeks, it’ll definitely put a dent in your world.
You raise a good point. I should make it clear that what I did here is what has worked for me. I wouldn’t presume to prescribe it for all people everywhere, but I think one could do a lot worse.
I’m fortunate in that I actually like healthy food: I’ve always enjoyed veggies, lean meats, legumes, as much as I like cheeseburgers and pizza. So dieting, for me, has been simply a matter of cutting back on the more indulgent foods, controlling portions, and stopping what I call “recreational eating” (women eat when they’re depressed, men eat when they’re bored), rather than trying to force myself to like a bunch of new or hated foods.
