How I lost 183lb (83kg)
10-minute read
Before you read on, I urge anybody seeking to lose weight to see a doctor to make sure it happens safely and healthily. Extreme calorie restriction is unhealthy and if you find yourself in a struggle with eating too little, or indeed eating too much, please reach out for help. Even if it’s only me you talk to. I’ve had similar struggles and I’ll do anything I can to help.
There was no doubt that I needed to lose weight. I was almost 30 and had been eating inordinate amounts of unhealthy food on a daily basis since I was 23 years old. When I finally decided it was time to get healthy I read as much as I could and learned a lot.
The three most important things that helped me were nutrition, motivation and regular exercise. There is no magic secret. Hard work is what it takes. I’m going to touch on all three of those aspects and tell you exactly what I did to start out on my journey.
Nutrition
In my humble opinion, weight loss is 90% diet. There’s no amount of exercise you can do to offset a bad diet. There are a lot of opinions out there but in my book the secret to weight loss is CICO. That stands for Calories In, Calories Out. If more calories are going out than are coming in you will lose weight. You need to create a calorie deficit.
I’m using imperial measurments here because that’s what I’m personally used to, but if you need to know, one pound is 0.453592 kilograms.
One pound is also roughly 3500 calories. A daily deficit of 500 will result in one pound of weight loss a week. 1,000 extra calories burned every day in week will take off two pounds. A 1,500 surplus calorie burn every day will burn three pounds a week. They say 1-2 pounds a week is the best thing to aim for.
Choose a deficit and stick with it. Consistency is really important. You don’t have to eat the same thing every day or even the same number of calories, just aim for the same daily deficit. The best way to know how many calories are going in is to count them. I write down everything I eat, and by now I’ve learned a lot of calorie values off by heart.
But that can be a restrictive way to live, and not everybody wants to count every calorie they eat. It’s perfectly possible to lose weight without counting calories at all, but it still requires dedication, consistency and above all making sensible food decisions.
Try to add a portion of fruit or vegetables to everything you eat. Having ice cream? Throw on some strawberries. Fancy a pizza? Have it with a crunchy side salad. Make a conscious decision to include a healthy whole food with each meal or snack.
There’s also intermittent fasting. You choose an eating window and make sure you don’t eat anything in between. The classic is 16:8. 16 hours without food, then an eight hour period for your daily intake. It’s the fanciest form of skipping breakfast.
But it works, I can vouch for it personally. I went for a really narrow window of 21:3. I don’t tend to get hungry in the day so it suits me fine, but I can imagine it sounds like a nightmare to some of you.
Fasting can be taken even further, but you should seek medical advice and make sure you nourish your body with electrolytes. And I’m not talking about a blue Powerade, the body needs essential salts like sodium, potassium and magnesium in the right quantities.
I fasted four days a week for a few months when I was losing weight and I couldn’t believe how much I loved it. I had loads of energy, great mental focus and absolutely no dishes to do. I used this guide to make an electrolyte drink, and I had it warm so I could pretend it was a broth.
If you’re curious about fasting I urge you to read this Reddit post from /r/fasting. But I would only recommend extended fasting (more than 24 hours) for people with significant amounts of weight to lose. Fasting at a low body fat percentage can be very dangerous and now that I’m in the healthy range I do not fast any more.
Regardless of when you eat, you should try and have whole, healthy foods. Lots of vegetables, protein-rich food and some good healthy fats. I know cooking from scratch every day isn’t feasible for everyone, but weekly meal prep can help with that. Dedicate Sunday afternoon to stirring up sauces and portioning out vegetables and put them in the fridge or freezer. That’s a week’s worth of dinners taken care of.
In terms of calorie tracking, I would advise taking half an hour to write out a calorie cheat sheet. Look up the caloric content of your favourite foods so when you’re cooking you can work it out nice and easily. All you need is to know how many calories per gram. That way when you weigh out ingredients you can check the list and work it out in seconds. Here are some examples.
150g of lettuce
0.14 (calories per gram) x 150 (total weight in grams) = 21 calories
200g of avocado
1.6 (calories per gram) x 200 (total weight in grams) = 320 calories
If you have a few staple meals you eat regularly you’ll soon learn the calorie amounts and be able to eyeball it. But if you change brand or buy store-brand goods at a different shop than usual be sure to check the packaging, sometimes it varies!
It might be a pain to count every single calorie but it’s the best way to control exactly what’s going into our bodies. You’ll get used to weighing out foods and working out the nutritional content. Nowadays it feels weird for me not to!
Before moving on, I have a few simple eating rules I’d like to share.
Eat clean. Avoid processed foods as much as possible. If you don’t recognise an ingredient, neither will your body.
Add a fruit or vegetable to everything you eat. It helps create good habits.
Only eat when you’re actually hungry, no mindless snacking.
Don’t eat LESS – eat BETTER!
If you’re worried about how to choose what to buy for a healty diet I have a solution. When I was in the very early stages of losing I wrote out all the vitamins the body needs, and what foods were rich in each. Then I circled all the ones I liked. That became my shopping list. I brainstormed meal ideas from those ingredients and I have a photo of the original notes which I have uploaded here. Please note, this was before I was vegan.
I won’t tell you to avoid certain foods. But if there’s something unhealthy you’re eating in vast quantities try and reduce it gradually. Make small, manageable changes. If you’ve been going a month and the scale isn’t moving, increase your deficit by a few hundred calories or so.
I’m all about volume eating. I stuff myself with lots and lots of healthy food so there’s no room for the junk. You could eat cucumber and carrot sticks from dawn to dusk and not gain weight. But it’s a different story for chocolate or crisps. I know it can be difficult to let go of the unhealthy foods. But remembering the following few things will help.
Caveman mentality
Our bodies are biologically designed to put on weight. We all used to be cave people that lived off the land. Chocolate didn’t exist and we didn’t always know where our next meal was coming from. We’re programmed to want as much high calorie food as possible to ensure our survival.
But things have changed. We no longer have to be in great shape to hunt our own food. Supermarkets are a thing. The drive to gobble as much as possible is our brain’s way of helping us stay alive. But we know better now and when we feel the urge to feast we can reassure ourselves that we aren’t about to starve. We don’t need to eat a huge wedge of cake, we’ve got a healthy meal ready and waiting to be cooked up at home.
Bliss Point
Modern food is scientifically formulated to make us want more. There have been decades of research into the magical combination of sugar, salt and fat that makes our bodies crave more of it, even if we’re stuffed full. Foods like milk chocolate make our brains hit what is scientifically termed a ‘bliss point’.
The brain releases the happy chemical dopamine when it’s subjected to the right quantities of sugar salt and fat. That’s because of our old-fashioned caveman brains. The rest of the world had changed faster than we have been able to evolve. And the more we eat these kinds of sugary, salty and fatty foods, the more we want.
Abstaining from junk food breaks the cycle. We don’t crave it if it’s not in our system. It’s like smoking cigarettes. The last one we’ve had feeds into our desire for the next one. Cutting out the rubbish makes us less likely to want more. When we say no to junk food we aren’t missing out. The body doesn’t really want that kind of food. It certainly doesn’t need it. It’s all a big trick.
Advertising Trickery
Like everything in life, the food industry is designed to make money. Our wellbeing is not Nestle’s priority. Profits are. And the products our bodies don’t actually need are packaged in luxurious bright wrappers that are designed to catch our eye on the shelf and look as appetising as possible.
Even their placement on supermarket shelves is designed to trick us into buying more. Don’t fall for it. You’re much smarter than that! They want you to buy as many of their products as possible to they can enjoy big bonuses at the end of the year. Well, screw capitalism!
Big Bad Companies
Most companies that make junk food are unsustainable, bad for then environment AND treat their workers terribly. The majority of cocoa farmers get paid pennies and have never even seen a bar of chocolate, let alone tasted one.
Most junk food contains palm oil which is a non-native crop where it’s grown the most and enormous chunks of rainforest and endangered wildlife habitat are being cleared and destroyed forever to make room to grow more palm oil.
Nestle and countless other big companies use slavery and forced child labour to maximise their profits, and actively sabotage poor communities to make them reliant on their products. Like when Nestle spread propaganda in poor African communities that breast milk was harmful to babies in order to sell more formula. Don’t reward these big bullies with your money!
Whew, rant over. So, that’s the calories in covered, what about calories out?
Exercise
We should be aware of our activity levels. Personally I wear a Fitbit Inspire 2 and would recommend it to anybody who stood still long enough, but I know not everyone has the funds for a smart watch. If you want a measure of how many calories you burn a day you can use an online TDEE calculator. TDEE is your Total Daily Energy Expenditure.
Input your information (honestly) and it’ll give you a good estimate of how many calories you typically burn a day. It will even recommend a deficit and break down how much protein, carbohydrate and fat you should have.
Knowing that piece of data will allow you to control the incoming calories and stay in a deficit. Like I said before, losing weight is mostly connected to your diet, but exercise is really important too.
Firstly, it burns calories. Maybe not as many as you think. Running a 5K will probably burn 300 or so, which wouldn’t even quite cover a medium portion of McDonalds fries. When I first started running I was shocked that it didn’t burn thousands of calories.
Secondly, strengthening your muscles and respiratory system is an incredible gift to give your body. You’ll feel the difference if you keep working out consistently. Even just a couple of evenings a week will do.
You don’t even need heavy weights. Body weight exercises can be extremely effective, especially if you’re carrying a little extra husk. Some of the fittest people I know only do bodyweight exercise, also known as calisthenics. If you have zero workout gear and plan to keep it that way, bodyweight workouts could be for you. If you’re worried it’s too hard, you can build it up from basic, easy moves, as demonstrated in this video.
My favourite thing about challenging my body is the effect it has on my mind. I’m always proud of myself afterwards, and staying in my routine gets really fun because I can see how much stronger I’m getting. It’s its own reward.
A lot of people ask me if I run. For some people have it in their heads that running is the key to weight loss. It can help you shed some serious pounds, and I’ve been through running phases for sure. But I’m more about muscle workouts. They push the heart rate sky high and building muscle means your body burns more calories at rest.
You can choose whatever exercise you want, or try several different ones to see what you like. Start gradually, especially if you aren’t exercising much as things are now. I turned to Youtube and followed along with coaches like Holly Dolke, Madfit and Pamela Reif. Eventually I went and got my own persaonal trainer certification and now I form my own routines.
I can also recommend trying Pilates. It’s all about slow, controlled movements using your own body weight and core muscles. It’s also a great way to improve flexibility and mental stamina.
There are no right or wrong exercises to do. Anything that gets your body moving and heart rate up is what you’re aiming for. It doesn’t have to be massively strict or regimented but I would suggest trying to get into a routine of some kind.
My strength nights were Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I did cardio on Wednesdays and Sundays and had Saturdays off completely. These days I do about 20 minutes six days a week. That sounds like a lot, because it is. If you’re just starting out, 2-3 workout days a week will be plenty. Especially if you increase your daily cardio activity, such as walking.
Everybody’s different. I do squats to work the body’s biggest muscles, the glutes and quads. I do planks to strengthen my entire core. I lift weights to help build my arms. I enjoy it and I’m really happy with the results. Your workouts can be whatever you want them to be.
One thing we should all be striving for, however, is progressive overload. If you do the same workout for months on end, soon it’s not going to be challenging you enough. But if every few weeks you up the intensity, you’ll train your body to keep getting stronger and fitter by adapting to the new challenge. Take it gradually, and if things feel to easy on the gym/living room floor it might be time to take it up a notch.
Motivation
It can be hard to find the strength to say no to unhealthy foods and keep up a solid exercise routine. It can also be difficult to think up healthy meal ideas. There’s also a challenge in resisting the overwhelming urge to think ‘Oh, screw it! I can just start again tomorrow!’.
I decided early on to take in as much information about health and nutrition, so I sought out scientific papers, documentaries and podcasts. I wanted to learn and to keep it all fresh in my mind. There are so many great YouTube channels out there too. Start teaching the algorithm!
We’ve come this far, I may as well out myself now. I am a Tumblr user. Still. I have a blog where I collect inspiring images and motivational phrases. The best ones I made into phone wallpapers so I’d see it every time I looked at my lock screen.
I want to share my favourite mantras from my (otherwise entirely private) Tumblr blog. Mulling these over changed my attitude towards, well, everything. The things we say to ourself dictate our behaviour. Tell yourself you can do it, hear it and believe it.
Self-discipline is the highest form of self-love
We should love our bodies and treat them the best way possible. And for me that used to mean ‘treating’ myself to unlimited chocolate, sweets and crisps. Now I know that disciplining myself is much more of a treat than going on a food binge. Even if I feel hard done by, I’m actually being the kindest to myself I’ve even been.
Abs are made in the kitchen
Because weight loss is 90% diet! It’s not about slaving away doing gruelling workouts in the gym for hours on end. Nutrition is much more important for weight loss than exercise so remember that when you want to eat a huge pizza or gorge on chocolate.
This month’s diet is next month’s body
The results we see are not immediate. We’re on about a four-week delay. The effort you put in today won’t be visible until next month. When you’re considering giving up, tell yourself to give it until the end of the month. By then the results will be showing themselves and you’ll want to keep going!
I can do hard things
Weight loss is hard, every aspect of it. But hard does not mean impossible. When I watch Biggest Loser Australia on Amazon Prime I’m always blown away, and not just by the problematic nature of a financially-compenated competitive weight loss show. At first the contestants cry because what’s being asked of them is so difficult.
But they soon realise they can do it. They are capable of rising to the challenge. And soon they’re asking the trainers for more. Once you believe you can accomplish hard things you’ll see how capable you really are. You can be absolutely unstoppable if you believe in your own ability. You CAN do hard things!
Reach out if you have questions, I could talk about health and fitness all day long. Maybe I should make a podcast about it, who knows? That does sound like me.
