If my pants are getting too tight, it’s time to exercise more and eat less crap. Vanity and the desire not to have to buy new pants in a two-digit size are pretty good motivators.
Having been told several times that “normal weight” tables don’t apply to me, I can’t use most of the criteria in the OP.
I’m curently working on losing excess weight I gained during six months of no exercise and eating badly, but my objective isn’t so much “losing weight” as “getting my ass in shape”. I, who have been known to think “gee, my calves are kind of sore” after walking around for 3 hours, would get winded from three flights of stairs. If I end up staying at a point where I’m heavier than I was 1 year ago, but I’m stronger, that’s fine. Having found for the first time in my life a gym I actually enjoy going to (I need to tell myself to stop, something which had never happened before), I might actually be able to turn some of my flab of long standing into muscle :eek:
That poll should be written in the past tense. Once you make a change for the positive, you shouldn’t be going back up.
It’s been over 6 years since I was fat, and 8 since I first started getting back in shape. Even when you slack off for a week or two, you’re not going to gain a significant amount of fat. If you binge diet and binge eat, then yeah, you’re going to fluctuate like crazy. If you’re gaining and losing significant amounts of weight on a regular basis, ur doin it rong.
I was up to almost 90 kg (about 200 lbs.) at 175 cm (5’9") which is about 14 kg (30 lbs.) more than my current weight. I’m actively trying to gain weight right now in order to meet some strength goals. I was solidly between 70 and 73 kg for about 3–4 years, with no unusual effort or meal tracking; just my normal workout routine and eating regular healthy food with occasional treats. If I gained more than that 3 kg fluctuation that I consider normal now, I’d look at what I was doing to cause that to change. So my poll answer would be: “30 lbs. of weight gain the first time, more than 5 lbs. of unplanned weight gain in my post-fat-ass period.”
What made me realize I needed to do something about it was actually a lot of little things adding up. I had a duplex apartment with an upstairs and downstairs, and I found myself making excuses to not go downstairs, even to go to the bathroom. My joints hurt. It was harder for me to do things like squat down or get on the ground to retrieve something from under the table or couch. I started snoring a lot. I had occasional insomnia, alternating with abnormal sleepiness where I’d sleep 12–14 hours.
On a visit back home, my sister made a comment that I wasn’t a skinny bastard anymore, and asked my fiancee if it was her fault I’d gained so much weight. I had to stay at an onsen for one of the annual office get-togethers and realized that I had such a big gut that it was actually starting to sag. I was only 30 and was starting to have quality of life problems that were quickly becoming actual health issues.
I got my act together and started exercising again. I’d always been fairly active, but an accident that broke both my wrists had me forcibly inactive for about a year while I recovered, and then I’d started to become too sedentary and didn’t take the effort to work through the remaining discomfort. It took only about 2 years for me to gain most of that weight, since post-accident I’d dropped about 6 kg of muscle. My eating habits had gotten somewhat deranged too, so it wasn’t simply lack of exercise.
What I do now is CrossFit style workouts though I do most of my own programming, biasing toward strength and power. If I’m lucky, I can work out 3 days a week. Sometimes it’s only once or twice. If I’m very lucky, I can sneak in 4 days.
I don’t track what I eat very closely, which works for me. It seems that some people need more structure and accountability, so I’m pretty lucky there. I eat paleo-ish, by which I mean I eat mostly meat or fish, vegetables, and fruit… when I cook, at least. When my wife cooks, it’s modern Japanese food, so fish, rice, miso soup, salad or cooked vegetables, and assorted breaded fried stuff. The latter isn’t healthy, but its what I get sometimes. As long as it’s occasional, it’s okay.