How to lose weight
Having lost about 40 pounds dropping down from close to 200 pounds to about 160 pounds and having kept that weight off for over five years now, I wanted to share my methods and thoughts with anyone interested. Key aspects of my approach are to make weight loss basically your top priority every single day and to weigh yourself daily.
The quick summary version of my approach to losing weight is:
- You first need to truly and fully commit to a weight loss goal.
- You need to focus on your weight loss goal every day and even virtually all day long and every time you consume or consider consuming anything.
- Weigh yourself every day. Progress must be measured and is your reward.
- Eat moderately and eat healthy meals and snacks. (This does NOT mean starving yourself to the point of misery at all!)
- Keep restaurants and dinner parties and other social eating events to a bare minimum.
- Increase exercise (but this is not strictly necessary).
The Details:
The first and most important step in losing any significant amount of weight is that you will have to focus on it and make it a top priority every day. Achieving any important goal in life almost always takes focus and commitment. You can’t just hope to lose weight or want to lose weight, you have to plan to lose weight and commit to that plan.
If you are going to truly commit to losing a significant amount of weigh then it will help a lot if you have a strong reason for achieving this goal. Do you need to lose weight for health reasons? to look better? to feel better? to fit into your cloths?
It will also help a lot if you have a certain date in mind by which you want to lose a certain amount of weight. For example your high school reunion is coming up. Or you are planning a beach or a pool-side vacation. Or any important event where you would like to show off a slimmer you.
So if you really want to lose weight and have a strong reason for wanting to do so and are ready to really commit to it and focus on it, here are my suggestions:
Weigh Yourself Every Morning
Weigh yourself every morning. Be sure to use a good quality digital scale that measures to an accuracy of 0.2 or 0.1 pounds and that gives consistent readings. The usual advice is to weigh yourself only weekly since daily weight can fluctuate several pounds which can be misleading and sometimes depressing.
But a daily weigh-in will help keep you focused on your weight loss goal each and every day.
Weight gain and loss is very incremental. We all need to eat. You don’t need to go on anything like a starvation diet. You can eat your three meals a day and also some snacks and liquid calories beyond that. But it’s a fact that every extra bite we take in is incrementally going in the direction of higher weight. On a very temporary basis there is the physical weight of the food or drink that we take in. And, much more importantly, with the exception of water and other zero calorie items there is a longer term incremental impact from everything we consume.
My approach to weight loss (and later weight maintenance) was and is very much day by day. But also meal by meal and snack by snack. I kept it in mind that everything I consumed was going against my goal. More importantly though, everything that I thought about consuming but resisted the urge to consume was helping me towards my goal.
And I wanted almost immediate feedback and reward. I was able to resist most evening snacking because I knew it would add to my weight the very next morning. My reward for not snacking would be weighing less the next morning than if I consumed a snack. If I was not going to weigh myself until say Saturday there would be less motivation to have the discipline to resist snacking on say Monday night.
And sure, the initial incremental weight loss in the morning from avoiding as opposed to consuming a snack on a particular evening would simply be the physical weight of the food. But even over a couple of days it would soon lead to incrementally fewer calories absorbed by the body.
Some morning weigh-ins will be depressing as you may gain two pounds seemingly randomly or possibly because of an over-indulgence. Even if that can be blamed on a temporary increase in water retention or whatever I firmly believe it is best to know. If your morning weigh-in shows you have gained say two pounds then you can try a little harder that day to minimize your consumption and perhaps add some additional exercise. If it turns out that was just an almost random fluctuation upward well then all the better because as that random fluctuation reverses and your extra effort kicks in you just might be 2.2 pounds lighter the next morning. But if the two pounds gain was more “real” then why would you want to wait a week before knowing about and trying to reverse it?
Conversely some of your morning weigh-ins will show a surprising amount of loss which may indeed be due to a temporary fluctuation. But why not celebrate the loss and resolve to try to make it permanent by making an extra effort to consume less and exercise more that day? If you can achieve a lower weight for any reason including less water retention then tell yourself that you can make that more permanent and also reach an even lower number with effort and focus. And you can.
What foods should you eat?
I don’t have much knowledge in this area. But I would certainly say eat a balanced diet. For example, I found no need to avoid carbohydrates. I ate a sandwich for lunch almost everyday while losing weight. But more recently I found that avoiding carbohydrates was beneficial.
Be aware of the calorie and sugar content in what uou eat and especially in packaged foods. Many items in the “chips” isle have a shocking amount of calories listed for a shockingly small serving. For cereals I recommend the all-bran cereal and I noticed that shredded wheat (including the spoon size option) is one of the very very few breakfast cereals that have no sugar content.
My approach was to eat three normal and varied meals a day. Beyond that I snacked between meals but only when hungry and I concentrated on healthy snacks such as bananas, grapes and fruit of all kinds. Also, I consumed mostly only low or no calorie beverages. The easiest way to avoid unhealthy snacking is of course not to buy them in the first place. Avoid that potato chip aisle!
I minimized restaurant meals. In theory a healthy restaurant meal while skipping the appetizer and desert should be fine. But in my experience and based on daily weigh ins, eating at a restaurant almost always instantly led to incremental weight gain. An occasional restaurant meal is fine but recognize it will usually go against your goal.
Dinner party type situations are great fun and it is wonderful to have a social life that includes these. But sadly these events should be minimized. You know how these events go. Your host (including you if you are the host) wants to be generous and for every one to have a good time. At a dinner party it usually feels quite impolite to insist on small portions or to refuse the appetizers and deserts and the drinks. We all need a social life and need to enjoy these get togethers occasionally. But the reality is that these situations will work against our weight loss / weight control goals and do need to be minimized. It might help to be clear to your friends that you are a weight-loss and later a weight-maintenance plan and ask that they not “lead you into temptation”.
I am not a fan of the idea of eating small meals say five times a day as advocated by some. It may work for others but was not my approach. My view is that you can eat a healthy between meal snack. But I would never advocate having a snack at all if you feel you can simply resist the urge and wait until your next meal. Sorry, but every bite is always a step in the wrong direction. Resist if you can. I am not talking about making yourself miserable. But if you can resist a snack without much stress, go ahead and do that.
And go ahead and skip a meal when you can. Most days I am absolutely ready to eat at meal times. But if it occasionally happens that you are busy and your mind is not on even on eating then take the opportunity to skip that meal. The very next morning you will weigh less than you otherwise would have.
In my experience “eating begats eating”. Our stomachs seem to get used to a given level of food. If we are always sort of topping up our stomach then it seems to get used to that and want that. On the other hand I found that when I cut back, my stomach seemed to eventually get used to that. I simply had less cravings for between meal and after dinner snacks. And I have always found that having one evening snack seems to often lead to an appetite for more. It may be easier to simply resist the urge to snack as opposed to trying to have a modest evening snack which may only whet your appetite for a lot more.
What about Exercise?
We should all be getting exercise since it is so beneficial. And it will help with weight loss. But added exercise is neither a necessary nor a sufficient component of weight loss. That is, you can lose weight even without adding exercise. And you will not likely lose weight by simply exercising while not controlling your eating. The old saying is “you can’t outrun your fork”. But adding a lot more exercise while focusing on reduced calorie consumption will certainly accelerate the weight loss progress.
Other advice
Sleep more. If you have been in the habit of staying up watching television then simply try to go bed earlier. When you are not awake, you are not eating. And your body will burn almost as many calories per hour while sleeping at is does while sitting watching television or surfing the internet.
Drink plenty of water.
Counting calories or the equivalent is not required in my experience. If you stick to modest portions and a healthy balanced diet and stick to healthier snacks you don’t need to count calories. Actually your daily weigh in takes the place of that. If you are losing weight most days then your calories must be sufficiently low.
As far as alcohol goes I was surprised to find that moderate beer consumption did not have any big impact. Beer certainly has calories so it must have some negative effect on weight but it simply did not seem to have a big impact. But I would be the first to admit that abstaining from or minimising alcohol is an even better idea for lots of reasons.
Because weight is affected by what you eat and do every day, this is a goal that you have to be focused on virtually every day. Sure, you can take the odd day or even a couple of weeks off and not think about it. But in general you will need to be working on your goal of weight loss or maintaining your lower weight virtually every day. The hard truth is, it will need to be on your mind at every meal and every time you consume or even consider consuming anything.
Enjoy the feeling of satisfaction. You are going to feel good about your accomplishment of weight loss and about the will power you displayed. Enjoy that feeling; you earned it.
To modify a saying from Warren Buffett (see there is an investment connection here after all!) – “Weight loss is simple but not easy”. And losing weight and keeping it off may turn out to be among the best investments you will ever make.
Best wishes to anyone who is actively attempting to lose weight. In my experience the rewards in both health and satisfaction with appearance will be well worth the sacrifice and effort. Before too long the mirror will be your friend rather than something to be avoided.
Final thoughts:
I’m no expert. Many approaches can work. But let’s face it; most people fail at weight loss. And so I just wanted to document and share what has worked for me.
END
Shawn Allen
October 15, 2020 with a few edits on January 31, 2023