Weight Loss is Hard

"The scale doesn't lie... and I wish it did (credit to u/ModernCaveWuffs)"

Ah… weight loss. It’s a very popular New Year’s Resolution to make. People go on diets, the gyms get flooded every January. But give as time goes on, more and more people begin to drop off and give up on their resolution.

It’s because weight loss is pretty damn hard, and I have first-hand experience to back it up. You have to make all these lifestyle changes like going to the gym, walking, making your own food, or choosing to eat only two two-bite brownies instead of three. It all stands in contrast to the easy option: just sitting on the couch and snacking on chips or chocolate without watching how much you eat.

My goal is to get below 200 pounds, which as of writing is eight pounds away. That doesn’t sound too hard except for the part where I’ve been above the 200 mark for a whole decade minus one day (where I forgot to eat dinner). I’ve lost a few pounds here and there over the years from passive calorie tracking and exercise, but I’ve also gained them back by overeating through takeout and snacking. It’s one thing to reach that goal, but it’s another thing to stay there.

But it’s not just “go on a diet and exercise” and boom, you’re done. Weight loss to me is not just a test of physicality, but a test of discipline, patience, and motivation.

Discipline

Discipline is a pretty important part of my current weight-loss journey. It manifests primarily with tracking how many calories and other nutrients I eat during the day. Currently my goal is 2000 net calories a day (calories from eating/drinking minus calories burned from walking) and I use My Fitness Pal (the free version, the paid version’s a scam at $30 CAD / month) to keep logs of the food I eat.

Now I could just eat based on vibes or give myself treats because I think I’m doing a good job, but usually I end up putting on some weight. By keeping a record of what I ate during the day and seeing what I really am eating, I can see what progress I am making to my weight goal and I can even plan ahead. For example, I know my egg-and-cheese sandwich with coffee is like 600 calories and the chickpea curry-and-rice dish I had for lunch is like 300 calories, so I can “afford” a snack or a little dessert to top up on calories 1.

Patience

They say patience is a virtue. Per my googling, losing a half pound to a full pound a week is considered healthy. So much for all those magazine covers advertising some astronomical amount of pounds lost in little time… But there’s another element to this: weight loss isn’t linear. Because of weight fluctuations due to things like eating and drinking, my weight history is a series of ups and downs… yet the trendline slopes downward.

So not only do I need to accept losing a seemingly minuscule amount of weight (which isn’t really that minuscule if you see what a pound of fat looks like) for over a week, but also being patient by looking at trendlines over a week or so instead of just a few days. If I became impatient and trying to something drastic to make the line go down by starving or something like that… well, chances are I’ll just rebound because of how uncomfortable that state would be. I am trying to lose weight and keep it off for the long term, thus I have to accept small decreases that fill up the bucket rather than rushing through it and then crashing down to the ground (or up to the sky, given we’re talking about weight loss here?).

Motivation

I have, on multiple occasions, “crashed out” on my weight loss trip.

“Screw it, I’m never gonna get in shape!”

“There’s no point in continuing this!”

The last time I had a proper crashout was a day when I had a huge doner wrap with fries, a bag of Takis, a Popeyes biscuit, two tandoori naans, and a big plate of nihari. Now none of these foods are inherently bad, but combined I hit 217.1 pounds in the next morning’s weigh-in… my highest weight in over a year. I was pretty distressed and defeated the night before. Should I quit? Am I really this incompetent?

But while I can quit and just eat whatever i damn want and end up with whatever weight… I’d still long for wanting to be in shape. I want to be under 200 lbs. I want to be in shape. And quitting isn’t going to change that.

I know there is an opinion of motivation being very unreliable compared to discipline… but I think motivation is a pretty big component. How good can discipline and patience be if I don’t want to do it?

By having motivation, I convinced myself “hey, it was a slip up, but we can recover and get back on the road”. Ever since that last crash-out I “locked in” and hit a nadir of 206.6 in about ten weeks and my weekly average had dropped just under six pounds. But this run did include weeks where I maintained and even gained weight. Yes I panicked a bit, but I had the motivation to continue to be patient and maintain disciplinary rituals like weighing my food and logging it into My Fitness Pal to get over those plateaus and it has certainly paid off.

So from my experience, weight loss is hard. It not only requires changing your diet, making food yourself, and including some form of regular exercise (primarily walking, working out doesn’t really burn that many calories but it is good to do anyway). It’s also about holding yourself accountable to the choices you make. It’s also about waiting through long periods of time and handling short-term volatility to see progress on the scale and in the mirror. And it’s about putting yourself through these things because you want to achieve the end result.

I hope this read was worth your time. If you’re also interested in losing weight and keeping it off, here are a few resources and people who have been of great assistance in my journey.

1 I am a firm believer that you can eat whatever you damn want as long as it fits in the “calorie budget”. Although eating things high in fibre or protein and low in sugar helps big-time with making that budget comfortable.