How I've Been Losing Weight

In theory -- and only in theory -- weight loss is easy: eat right and exercise, so that you're expending more calories than you're consuming. Unfortunately, we are human beings, we are complicated creatures, and so allegedly simple processes can become complicated. If it were as simple as smug idiots make it out to be, we'd all be thin already.

I've been putting on weight steadily since I was 18 or so; for year after year I tried to turn it around, but never with success for any length of time. But here I am at the age of 45, and I've finally come up with an approach that works. For six months now I've been shrinking and getting healthier; here's what I've been doing.

Regular doctor visits. Preventative medicine is more affordable on my health plan than it was before (thanks Obamacare!), so I started seeing a doctor. If you're oversized and you're worried about your doctor shaming you, two things to remember: he's probably seen it all and is there to help rather than judge; and if it turns out he's a jerk, you can find a better doctor.

Vitamin D capsules. One of the things the doctor figured out was that I was vitamin D deficient; I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since I don't drink milk and I don't work in a field with my shirt off. If you're vitamin D deficient, you'll have less energy and your muscles won't recover from exercise very well, so you'll want to start taking vitamin D pills to compensate. They're inexpensive and readily available. I've been taking the 5000 IU variety (about 12 times the daily requirement for a normal person), and after six months my vitamin D levels are where they need to be. My doctor tells me it's essentially impossible to overdose on vitamin D, so I'll recommend the 5000 IU if you suspect you have a deficiency to correct. (It would be best if you'd see a doctor and ask him what he thinks, but you knew that already.)

Protein. We all know about counting calories, but how about making sure you're getting enough protein? I wasn't getting enough protein, which led to all sorts of satiety issues. The recommendation is roughly 1 gram of protein every day for every three pounds of body weight: take your weight in pounds, divide by 3, and that's how many grams you need a day. So if you weigh 300 pounds, you need 100 grams of protein a day. Once you're getting that protein, if you're anything like me, you'll start feeling full. But it's important that you look at the numbers; if you're just saying to yourself "I had a turkey sandwich for lunch so that's got to be enough", you're really just guessing, aren't you? Run some numbers. Look at the packaging. Here are some good sources of protein I've found:

Fats and carbs. I haven't given up on either; a person needs fats and carbs to be healthy. I just try to make sure they're not coming from empty calories; or if I'm eating empty calories, I try to limit the intake.

Exercise, in general. Find something you can justify doing, by whatever standards work for you. For me bicycling is the way to go: I can complete errands on the bike so I don't feel like it's a pointless endeavor. Whatever exercise method(s) you choose, if you're highly out of shape, accept that you're going to perform pitifully at first, and even brief efforts are going to leave you exhausted and debilitated. You'll get over that, as your heart and lungs reacquaint themselves with activity; give it time, and it will cease to be debilitating. Consider that the first tangible benefit from what you're doing: a cardiovascular system you can be proud of.

Feeling hungry. This is actually the biggest change in my life; turns out a lot of my problems were in my head. I'm one of those people who generally tolerates aches and pains without paying them much mind, but there was one ache I did not tolerate well: hunger pangs. For some reason, hunger pangs really worried me, to the point that I was careful to eat so much that there was no way I was going to feel even a little hunger before the next meal. And that is a terrific way to put on weight. Mind you, this wasn't even anything I was consciously aware of; it was something I had internalized so deeply, my ability to assess whether I was hungry had become, "are you good for at least three hours?" I don't even know how I discovered I was doing this, but once I discovered it, it changed a lot. The first thing I did was allow myself to get hungry, stay in that state, keep my mind calm, and prove to myself that hunger pangs aren't that bad. Once I did that, it changed my perception of hunger radically. I get hungry sometimes and it's no big deal; or pretty often I will head off hunger in the nick of time with small portions. But I'm not doing what I was doing before, where I was eating so much that hunger pangs simply couldn't happen.

Diet, as a concept. If your traditional diet has been making you fat, you need to change at least part of it if you want to get healthy. What's more, you'll need to accept that you can't resume your traditional diet once you're done "dieting": if bad habits got you where you are, bad habits will get you there again if you resume them. This doesn't mean giving up pizza forever, it just means that it can't be one of your regular go-to foods any longer, if you want to get healthy and then remain healthy. You'll still have pizza, just not as often, and probably in smaller portions.

Outsmarting yourself in the kitchen. To make better food choices you'll probably need to outsmart yourself: you fell into bad food habits for a reason, so you need to figure out why you fell into those habits, and change things so that those habits no longer work. For example, convenience is a common reason to eat the wrong foods, so you need to figure out a way to make better foods even more convenient. What if you prepare more nutritious foods ahead of time so that they're waiting for you in the refrigerator? Or what if you get some lentils and tomato sauce cooking before you're even hungry? It's not how you're used to doing things but that's kind of the point.

Weight loss goals. I don't have goals, other than to get steadily healthier. I don't use a bathroom scale because I would most likely misuse the information: on days where my weight went down a few pounds it would persuade me to let up a little, and on days without gains it would discourage me. So no scale for me; the standards I'm going by are how my clothes feel, and how I feel. I'm not planning on rapid weight loss, just maybe a pound or two a week, as an ongoing benefit of a better diet and a healthier lifestyle. One or two pounds a week may not sound like much, but that works out to 50-100 pounds a year, and that's weight you can keep off because you didn't lose it in some sort of unsustainable freak diet. Slow and steady, and properly healthy.