In the past few months I managed to shed about 30 pounds. I only know that because I started tracking it 3 months in. You see, my goal hasn't been weight loss so much as wanting to just be healthier. After one too many back doctor visits, and less-than-stellar bloodwork recently, I decided to make a few changes. So far, it's working. But I have lost weight before, only to see it eventually return. This time, I am going to really try and lock-in a s-l-o-w path to a healthier me. The weight-loss is a visual side-effect, not the main event.
So, yeah, I guess this is one of those January health/weight-loss blog posts? 🤦🏻♂️ In my defense, I started way before the New Year.
How It's Going Down... (The Weight, Apparently)
I would love to tell you I hammered out a spreadsheet and meticulously tracked calories, balanced my diet, and hired a personal trainer. But, really, it was just more of a gentle decision to swap out every second slice of pizza for an apple, not drinking diet sodas like I used to, and drinking way more water. That's really it. Over and over. Day in and day out. I am going easy on myself, making basic changes and incorporating the changes s-l-o-w-l-y.
You see, everything in its natural state is entropy anyway: without a food source your body endothermically regulates itself by going after glycogen in your liver, then later exothermic activities like metabolising fat (though you must be careful to not lost muscle and protein). A human body will sustain itself when you are doing calorie deficit/exercise, but I am trying to avoid too many changes at once - a delicate dance where the main thing is healthy eating, and the side-effect is weight-loss.
By the way, our modern American food industrial complex would have you understand none of these things.
Not that I am any expert. I'm just getting healthier and changing my relationship to food...
Heavy-Set = Part of My Identity
I won't put too fine a point on it, but I grew-up experiencing episodes of Food Insecurity. My single mother worked very hard, but odd jobs and and social security benefits after my father's death only took us so far. Money was always tight. I had a happy childhood, but towards the end of any given month food sometimes got downright scarce. And though I was never deeply hungry, the required food-budgeting of poverty (in a word) sucked. I was a thin kid who got fat a lot, because I hoovered it up during plentiful times. Not having constant-access to abundant food, that many kids take for granted, it really did a number on my relationship to food later in life.
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So flash-forward to my roaring 20s, where I was in the workforce, and I ate a lot. A bit of food scarcity as a young kid turned me into this "clean your plate" adult, and a hardcore foodie. As a consequence, I have lived at some level of slight overweight (and sometimes very overweight) for most of my adult life. Just from plain old overeating, the American way! 😂 "Heavy-set” was the usual first-descriptor that pops into someone's head when meeting me. The extra poundage was my main accessory—I like to think I carried it well. As well as anybody living a singularly-American off-and-on obsese lifestyle, anyway! 🤣
And my weight just never mattered much to me. Until it did.
Over time I got these little pains here and there with my back, and my knees. And those extra pounds weren't helping: they were the “friend” who always borrows money and never pays you back. Not the greatest company to keep as you approach middle-age!
My average build the past 30 years.Quality of Life Over Everything
A recent visit to my back doctor had him telling me "you could gain half an inch in height, and save your L1 and S5 and never see me again, just by losing 15% of your body weight". That's one helluva sell! But not always easy to do!
But it motivated me to do something about my back, by losting weight. But this time it had to be lost gently. I've been here before, and was a VIP member of the American "yo-yo" diet culture, many times.
I want to make changes that will see me through retirement, at the right weight for me where my body functions with minimal pain or issue from weight. Sure, I'm no spring chicken and I'll get a sore back now and then...but at least I won't be looking at weeks of being sidelined due to an overburdened spine about to fall apart.
So I attacked this whole thing from a healthy eating angle, and ignored my weight entirely. Just intake. I knew my weight would, eventually, reduce. Working mostly-remote allowed me to avoid the constant "food in your face" vibe that permates modern office work these days. Of course now that my job went from Remote to Hybrid, food in the office will help me test these new eating habits! 🫠
When someone is as obsese as I was gettibg -- 30 pounds quickly and quietly leaves the building, giving a false sense of accomplishment. So I remind myself: this is just the start. 30 pounds can just as quickly come back, and bring friends. So I view any weight-loss right now as just a waypoint along a long-term path to being healthier and stronger.
So this post is not about any kind of achievement. It's about my spine doubling its strength and eliminating pain, or my knees and hips not needing to get replaced. It's all just about quality-of-life as I get older. And, for me, my eating habits (and weight from them) affects all that.
The Takeaway
I’m not pretending changes in eating are easy for everyone, or me. It wasn't. I just didn’t hyper-focus on it, either. If living longer is a bonus ***DLC I unlock in this life, great! But I could also get hit by a bus after publishing this blog post, too. So I try to keep things in perspective: it's about my back no longer hurting, and my bloodwork being a tad healthier overall. That's it.
I also found it's really important to forgive yourself and not have toxic self-talk when figuring out healthier habits. Life is hard enough, without that.
People are starting to notice, and compliment etc. But to be honest, I kind of hate how I look right now, because I'm at that awkward "nothing fits" and "must buy new clothes" phase of the journey. Expensive!! 😂
For me, this is purely about standing straight and moving around with less pain, and hopefully adding a little buffer to my lifespan—just enough to try out 85 new breakfast spots. Or see my nieces and nephews grow up.
Also, I'm not even halfway to where I ultimately plan to get: to lock all this progress in, I still need to lose another 15-ish pounds and then add back another 10-15 pounds of muscle --just to be able to have a stronger core & weight for the years ahead. If I don't, all this could reverse as fast as it arrived. To succeed, I must get my body to hold (and be happy) at this new set point, to get stronger in it. And I have to keep that hungry kid inside of me calm, and feeling secure about food and not stress-eat etc. It's a weird time. None this happens overnight, and I know I must succeed if I am to contiue to have a decent quality-of-life as I age.
I know I will never be a health-obsessed gym rat, either, so this whole thing is probably a multi-year project (ugh!). But it's the only way it can succeed for someone like me...going s-l-o-w-l-y and calmly.
So I just say to myself, over and over, "I want my back to work less, be sturdier, and my knees to handle a full day" --- and that's enough for me.
