Blessed by the Potato

On August 29th my pants fell down while walking around the living room. So yeah, I’m feeling pretty good about my weight loss this quarter.

After the last update, a few things came together and I finally just did the thing I knew I had to be doing all along (but didn’t because it was hard): I started tracking everything I ate. I used measuring cups and a scale, and put it all into the FitBit app’s calorie tracker function (I had several recommendations for myfitnesspal, but I already had FitBit there to track my steps, and it worked well enough). I started eating a lot more fruit (helped by the fact that Ontario peaches and nectarines were in season so I just bought cases of those) and veggie sandwiches, and tracking, and paying attention especially near the end of the day as I was running out of calories in my budget. I bought just an absolute fuck-tonne of chewing gum, and had light breakfasts and lunches when I wanted to leave the ability to have pizza for dinner. And even on vacation, and even with all-nighters as a grant deadline came up, I stuck to my budget (though on vacation I was aiming for calorie balance for the week rather than a deficit, and with the all-nighters I chewed so much gum the artificial sweetners caused… umm… intestinal distress).

The final score: DOWN 19 lbs BABY. WOO!

I posted 7 days in about how hard it was to fight the cravings, but I stuck it, and it got better. I only have bad cravings every few days (and mostly after about 12:30am), so it’s become routine enough that it doesn’t take a tonne of conscious willpower any more. My habit is to check FitBit — can I eat that? Computer says no. Also, it wasn’t like full intermittent fasting, but I did delay or skip breakfast most days and put a limit on eating after midnight (pretending, as one does, that I was a mogwai), which also helped.

It’s still a total mystery though why I managed to actually do it this time. Yes, I had some extra motivation (a bad score on my cholesterol test, my dad going into the hospital, another quarter where the same-old wasn’t really cutting it), but I don’t think I was all that lacking in motivation before. I did have a bit of a mind-shift internally where I realized how much of my eating was not due to physical hunger, but I really can’t put my finger on how I managed to flip the switch to knowing that chocolate is not an emotion. That’s a bit disappointing because it makes it harder to help other people find that last bit of motivation or mindset or whatever, and also worrisome because I don’t know how easy it will be to stick to better habits for the long run (or re-start the diet after the inevitable future slip-up).

Of course, even this is a relatively minor achievement in the grand scheme of things. I hit my goal for the year, but the loss is still a fairly small change, percentage-wise — few people would notice if I didn’t tell them, and I’m a long way from being described much more charitably than having a “dad bod”. My BMI is still not great, and I have to continue being good for a lifetime to keep it off. And the “never weight” was something I set back in grad school as like a “ok, it would be ridiculous if I got that fat” level. So even losing ~20 lbs from that point still just puts me at about where I was in grad school — and no one was mistaking me for skinny then.

Looking ahead, the final quarter of the year features Thanksgiving, my birthday, Halloween, and Potatomas. I’m going to keep tracking, and the itty bitty candy bars may be a good way to have some treats but not bust the budget — I’ll have to see if I can be trusted, or if total abstinence is the only way to go. Either way, I’m going to take the season into account and adjust my budget & target to be a minor deficit (and I won’t freak if it averages break-even some weeks). I’m less than two pounds off my original goal for the whole year, but if I can make it through to New Year’s holding steady at this weight, I’ll call that a win for the year. My next plan is to get down to the “overweight” range according to my BMI by June next year, which means losing another 15 pounds, more gradually. And then keeping it off for a lifetime.

Anyway, goal reached, so start the countdown: the price of the course is going back up!

One thing that I was amazed with when losing weight is how fast some of my other health issues settled down. FitBit tracks my resting heart rate, and that’s come down almost 10 bpm in just three months. I also used to have heartburn a few times a week, and last month only had it twice (though that is likely less losing weight and more the fact that I’m not eating a bunch of chocolate, chips, and other heartburn-inducing foods right before bed). If I go to a life expectancy calculator, I’ve lost enough weight this year to add a year back to my life (whoops, gotta adjust the savings plan now ;)

Footnote:
I noticed that I started calling it a calorie “budget” and not a “diet” or “allocation”, and that tracking let me immediately see my “funds” left each day. I’m explicitly trying to leverage my ability to be good with money to be good with food, but I needed an easy-to-use electronic tracker to get there. Also, I’m eating a lot of convenience-esque food: almonds that are packaged in small servings, so I know I get 170 cal/serving and don’t have to weigh them, etc. It’s more than double the cost for almonds vs. just buying the big jug, but I think it’s a non-negligible component to success so I’m more than happy to pay for it.