racoonbeast

Many amazing and inspiring stories here. Thank you all. I will share my story, for what it is worth, and share what I have learned from a life time of battling my weight. I am, and have always been a four hundred plus pounder just waiting to happen. My entire life has been a struggle not to let it happen. I am just shy of six feet tall, currently 220 pounds, and dropping. I am sixty years old and retired. I weighed 370 pounds two years or so ago. I have been on every kind of "diet" known to man during my life time, at one time or another. All of this has caused me to draw some very definite conclusions about the art of losing weight. I had taken a similar plunge about fifteen years ago when I went from about 360 pounds to less than 170 pounds. But I changed jobs from one where I walked all day to one where I sat at a desk all day, got nothing that could be confused with exercise, started eating everything in sight with no thought of the consequences, and drank beer by the twelve pack four of five times a week. I began the climb back up to 400. I was able to hold the line at 370, where I stayed for years, but did not consider that much of a victory. I am not here to lecture of make universal rules for anyone. I will just relate my experiences, and what I believe to be true as a result of them. I will do my best not to label anything "right" or "wrong". What is right is what works for you.

The first rule that I believe to be absolutely true: Forget "dieting". By that I mean any regimen that caused me to eat unnaturally for me. Yes, I would lose weight. And I would put it back on, and probably more, when I was through. I finally came to the realization that eating more calories than I burned meant that I gained weight, and eating less meant that I lost. It is no more complicated than that for me. So, my mission was to arrive at a healthy plan for eating that met all of my nutritional needs, and something that I could stay on for the rest of my life. Sure, I have been on, and have seen others do the Atkins thing. Just the mention of that hocus pocus can get me ranting and raving, so I will avoid going into a long scientific rant filled with big words etc... and just say that it has been proven to me through experience and exhaustive research that it is a fool's errand. Sure, you can lose some weight, but you can't stay on that thing forever. Well actually you can stay on it forever because if you stay on it long enough it will kill you, which will mean forever for you. It has been my experience, and the experience of countless others that I have known, that when you finally go off it, which you will, and should for your health at some point, what you have managed to lose will come back with some additional weight as a reward for your efforts (sorry, I guess I lectured a bit here and espoused a "value judgement). I get a big laugh out of the "juice diet". Friends who have gone on it are always amazed and report amazing weight losses of up to ten pounds in the first week or so. This is absolutely predictable. The average human being is going around with seven to ten pounds of "stuff" in their intestines on any given day of their life. Suddenly blasting it will lots of nothing but liquified fruits and vegetables results in a predictable massive clean out. Duh...! Of course all that weight left, and quick. But what do you think will happen the moment you go back on solid food, which you must because few would be happy living on juice forever? I firmly believe that there is no magic bullet. Calories consumed in relationship to calories burned is an undefeatable law of nature, in my opinion. So, my mission was to develop an eating plan that I could stay one forever. It's all about "conditioning" myself to alter, or amend my expectations. Humans are remarkably adaptive creatures. Given enough time, we can adapt to anything, to the point that it becomes our expectation. To offer a crazy example, if someone arrived an nine in the morning and hit me over the head twice with a stick every day, of course it would suck and I really would not like it. But, if done long enough, the first time that I would experience a major psychological crisis would be the first day that they did not show up. My expectations would not have been met, my life would lose the predictability that we all crave, and I would have this underlying feeling that my little universe was spinning out of control. I would crave the stick, and my daily ability to complain about it.

The other important part of weight loss, and maintenance, is regular exercise. Another big problem for me. I categorically, and with no reservation hate "exercise". I can not just sit and do anything for the sole purpose of doing it. I have a long history of gym memberships paid for, and not used for more than a few weeks to prove it. I know that I should do it, I wish that I could, but after beating my head on that wall for more years than I want to admit, I had to come to grips with the fact that I can't, and accept that. Yes, if I were to follow my own advise and stick with it long enough to "condition" my mind, I probably could. But the concept is just so abhorrent to me that I can never make it that far. Kudos to those who can do this. I can't.

So, my challenge was to arrive at a healthy eating plan that I could stick with forever, and "condition" (or brainwash) myself into causing it to be my expectation. I studied nutrition extensively, with the help of my wife, a veteran nurse. I stopped eating meat, or most animal by-products. I replace that food group with beans, legumes, the very high protein grain called quinoa, and my one concession to animal by products, a serving of low fat yogurt daily. We need an adequate amount of protein daily, and it needs to be a complete protein. Some of it has to come from animal products to round out our requirement. I mainly eat vegetables, fruit, and whole, unprocessed grains. I do not eat processed, refined sugar in any form. A treat for me is a can of nice sweet beets. I do not consume alcoholic beverages in any form, at all, ever. I cap my intake at 1200 calories a day. I am never hungry. You would be amazed how much broccoli you have to eat to get to 1200 calories worth. In this plan, I am at the point that I literally can eat as much as I want on any given day. I eat just once a day in the middle of the day. I never could eat breakfast, and my former habit was to eat a light lunch so as not to get sleepy at work, and gorge myself at supper, the worst time of the day to do that if weight is a concern. I now eat my big meal around mid-day, with an apple or an orange, and a cup of low fat yogurt in the evening for supper. There are days when I have to stuff something down my throat that I probably would not have eaten, just to make sure that I get my 1200 calories. I know that eating only once a day is not recommended, but I had to go with what works for me. I will be the first to tell you that in the beginning, this regimen really sucked. But I knew that if I stayed at it long enough, it would become my habit and expectation. These days, where I used to crave M+M's, I now crave green beans. I could no more eat an M+M than the neighbor's cat.

I then had to address the regular exercise problem. In order for it to work, I knew that it had to be something that I considered fun. If I thought that I was doing it for exercise, I wouldn't do it. It took a while for me to arrive at the right activity. One day, out of the blue, I remembered how much I used to enjoy riding a bicycle when I was a kid. I had not been on one, or thought about one for probably fifty years. I have a bad back, so I didn't know if I could do it or not. I borrowed my grandson's bike for an afternoon, and was absolutely hooked when I returned it. I came here and eagerly gobbled up all of the vast knowledge available here that I could process, and pretty soon knew what I wanted for a bike. And yes, a year later, experience had honed my taste and I sought and bought another bike to compliment the first one and fill in the voids of the additional things that I wanted to do on a bike that the first one was not good at. I love my bikes and look forward to my daily ride. Sometimes on the pavement with my hybrid, and sometimes on dirt roads and slightly rough trails with my mountain bike. This way I do not get bored with my routine.

So, to bring this long epistle to a close (sorry for the length), I beat this problem just by realizing that the key to success or failure laid between my ears. It was not what I did, but how I looked at what I did. I had to strip away the B.S. and become nakedly honest with myself. It was not about what I should do, what I wished that I could do, or what someone else thought would work for me. It was about being real honest with myself about who I was, what I was and was not capable of doing, and working with what I had in a way that would end in accomplishing my goals. It was about baring my soul to myself, and accepting what I saw staring back at me. The key to my success was knowing that we are a critter that is capable of reprogramming our software, and knew that if I stuck with what I decided long enough, it would become what I expected and wanted. In my case, I was right. I will never eat any differently than I do, except add some more calories daily when I reach my goal weight, and never stop loving and riding my bikes. It took will power in the beginning, but I knew that every day that passed put me closer to my goal of accepting and desiring my current lifestyle.