Tag: Weight Loss

One Saturday at a Time

Four years ago the scale read 186. Today it tells a different story. This is the Forgiveness post — the hardest of the three to write, and the most honest.

Four years ago this spring, I stepped on a scale and it read 186. I had worked for almost two years to get there, and the work had shown up everywhere. New clothes in sizes I had not worn since college. Old energy back in the legs. Knees that did not complain when I stood up from the couch. The person in the mirror looked like someone I recognized again, which was not a small thing, because for a long stretch before that I had been avoiding mirrors the way some people avoid their inbox on a Monday morning.

Today the scale tells a different story. Not the one I want to tell, and not the one I had hoped to be telling four years later. Nothing dramatic happened in between, which is the part that took me the longest to understand, and the part that matters most for what this post is actually about.

I changed jobs somewhere in that stretch. That is probably a post for another Saturday, the one about the difference between academic life and the financial world, between a calendar that breathes and a calendar that does not. I will write that one later and spare you the full tour for now. What matters here is that the new work sat me down, the old rhythms did not fit the new life, and I did not build new ones fast enough. The body did what bodies do. It adjusted to what I was actually doing, not to what I meant to be doing. Turns out bodies are excellent listeners. Mine heard every excuse I made and took detailed notes.

The return was not a week or a month or a quarter. It was four years. It came on slowly, in small unremarkable increments, the way these things almost always do. There was no decision to point at, no bad stretch I can circle on a calendar and say this is where it went wrong, no villain. Just a slow drift, measured in pants sizes and the steadily growing list of things I did not want to look at too closely. That is the hardest kind of regression to explain, because there is no story in it. A bad month has a shape to it. A bad year has a cause you can name. Four years of gradual drift has neither, which is probably why so many people end up carrying some version of it quietly, with no good way to talk about it even when they want to.

Three weeks ago I wrote about why I started. Last week I wrote about what the scale does not tell you. Focus, then Facts. I told you there would be a third one, about Forgiveness, and here we are, which was always going to be the hardest of the three to write honestly.

I would love to report that writing those first two posts fixed something, that putting it in public and naming the framework and telling all five of my readers exactly what I was going to do was enough to break the pattern. That is the version of this post I wish I could write. It is not the one I am writing, because the last month has produced no meaningful progress, and that is on me. I know what to do. I am not doing it. The focus slips somewhere around Monday, the facts become negotiable by Wednesday, and by Friday I am telling myself the week was unusual and next week will be different. The weeks are never unusual. The weeks are the point, and pretending otherwise is how four years happen in the first place.

There have been family matters this spring that have required attention, and I am not going to write about them here. There has been travel. There has been what I consider the particular stress of spring, which always seems to arrive with more on the calendar than I remember agreeing to. None of that is an excuse, and I am not offering it as one. I mention it only because pretending the last month happened in a vacuum would be its own kind of dishonesty, and this post has no room for that.

What I usually do next, after a stretch like that, is spend a few days beating myself up about it. Quietly, mostly, but thoroughly. I run through the week, count the missed walks, replay the snacks I did not need, the water I did not drink, the extra serving, the dessert, and make a long internal case against myself that no actual courtroom would have let me bring. The lawyer in me knows better. The rest of me does it anyway. It does not change a single fact about the week that already happened, and it almost always makes the next week harder than it needed to be. This is the part they leave out of every motivational poster. The part where you know exactly what you did and you sit with it anyway.

That is the thing I have come to understand about Forgiveness, and it took me longer than it should have to get here. Forgiveness is not lowering the standard. It is not telling yourself the week did not count. It is not pretending the facts are something other than what they are. It is just the part where you stop prosecuting yourself long enough to get moving again. The setback already happened. That part is finished. The only thing still in front of you is how quickly you put the case down and start the next day.

Here is what I have learned after enough Mondays and enough fresh starts to know the difference. The people who make it back are not the ones with the most discipline or the most willpower or the best plan. They are the ones with the shortest recovery time. The ones who can look at a bad week honestly, set it down without ceremony, and show up the next morning anyway. That is the whole game. Not the falling. The getting up. And how long you spend on the floor in between.

The struggle is real, and I am not going to dress that up or sell it as something it is not. The fight continues, and I am not going to promise it is going better than it is. Forgiveness is the part that lets the fight continue at all, because without it, four years of drift becomes a reason to stop trying, and with it, four years of drift becomes a starting point. The same way it was a starting point in November of 2020 when I took that picture and looked at my face and decided I was done. The starting point is wherever you are standing. It is never where you wish you were standing, and waiting until you are somewhere better before you begin is just another way of not beginning.

So this morning I walked. This morning I also hope to play golf, weather permitting. This afternoon I will make choices about what I eat, and some of them will be the right ones and some will not. Tomorrow I will do it again. The ebb and the flow is not the obstacle. The ebb and the flow is the shape of it, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. Focus got me here. Facts tell me what to do now that I am here. Forgiveness is what keeps me here, on the days when here is not where I wanted to be by now. Four years. One Saturday at a time.

What The Scale Doesn’t Tell You

Every morning, for nearly two years, I stepped on a scale. Same time. Same spot on the bathroom floor. I’d look down, note the number, and get on with my day.

The scale is an accountability partner. It doesn’t lie. It also doesn’t tell the whole story.

That distinction took me longer to understand than it should have. For a while, I treated the morning number like a verdict. Good day or bad day. Working or not working. And I’ll be honest, there is something genuinely satisfying about stepping on that scale and seeing the number go down. A small victory, delivered before the coffee is ready. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But a verdict requires complete information, and the scale is working with a thin file. It knows what you weigh at 6:47 on a Thursday morning. It doesn’t know what you did for the six months before that, and it isn’t interested in finding out.

I figured this out slowly, the way you figure out most things that matter, not in a single moment, but in the accumulation of small observations that eventually add up to something you can’t ignore.

One of the things I started noticing was my heart rate. Early on, three miles was work. My heart rate on those morning walks told me my cardiovascular system was doing considerably more than it should have had to. But the number that really told the story was the one I saw when I wasn’t moving at all. Resting heart rate is quiet data. It doesn’t announce itself. It just sits there, and over time, if you’re making the right choices consistently, it goes down. That number dropping is the body reporting back that something has changed at a deeper level than the bathroom floor can measure. The scale hadn’t moved much yet. But the resting heart rate had, and it knew something the scale didn’t. I still track it. On the days I’m doing things right, it shows up in that number before it shows up anywhere else.

Then there was the afternoon. Somewhere after lunch, the energy would just leave. Not dramatically, no collapse, no moment you could point to. Just a slow drain. The enthusiasm that was there at nine o’clock wasn’t there at two. What I started noticing, over time, was that this was a signal. On the days I was eating well and drinking enough water, the drop was smaller. On the days I wasn’t, it wasn’t just physical, it was everything. Focus, mood, the will to make one more good decision before dinner. The afternoon became a report card I hadn’t asked for, and the grades weren’t always flattering.

Water is the one I simply didn’t think about. Not resisted, just ignored. It wasn’t a choice, it was an absence of attention. The frustrating part is that even now, knowing what I know about how much it matters, I still find myself at two in the afternoon realizing I haven’t had nearly enough. What I’ve learned is that water does more than hydrate. It fills me up in a way that quietly crowds out the bad decisions. It cleans me out in ways I’ll spare you the details on. And when I’m properly hydrated, I simply feel better. Not dramatically, not in a way I could put in a spreadsheet, but in the way that makes everything else a little more manageable. It is not a wellness trend. It is not a lifestyle brand. It’s water. I still have to remind myself to drink it.

A recent week on the road reminded me how much of this depends on owning your schedule. Business travel is the enemy of everything I’ve just described. You don’t pick when you eat. You don’t pick where you eat. The water bottle you keep on your desk at home is five time zones away. Hotel gyms are negotiations with yourself you usually lose. I’ve gotten better at it over time, packing a refillable bottle, walking the terminal between flights instead of sitting, ordering the thing I actually want rather than the thing I talked myself into because everyone else did. But I won’t pretend the road doesn’t bend the week out of shape. It does. The strategies help me come home without giving back everything I built. They don’t make the week itself easy.

The pants are the most honest instrument I own. There is a specific pair in my closet that I have used as a benchmark for longer than I’d care to admit. The scale might be unmoved on a given week. The pants don’t care about the scale. They fit or they don’t, and they have no interest in making me feel better about the difference. You cannot talk a pair of pants into flattering you.

What connects all of these things is the same lesson, approached from different angles: sustainable change is not linear, and the scoreboard you’re watching is probably not the most important one. One bad week is not the story. A number that moved the wrong direction on a Wednesday morning is not the story. The story is the direction of travel across months, and you can only see it if you’re paying attention to more than one thing at a time.

I have been walking daily since long before this series started. The streak exists not because I have unusual discipline, but because I learned something that intensity never teaches you: consistency compounds in ways that don’t show up in a single morning. The fitness industry will not sell you this, because you cannot package it in a six-week program.

A sprint gets you somewhere fast. Consistency gets you somewhere real.

The scale will tell you the truth. Just not all of it. Learning to read the rest of the room, that’s the work nobody puts on the box.

Why I Started — And Why That Still Matters

In November 2020, I took a picture to make people laugh. It didn’t go the way I planned. What followed was the hardest and most important journey of my life. Some of it has slipped. Here is why I am starting again, and why the reason I started still matters more than anything else.

I began this blog to talk about how and why I was able to recapture my life by losing weight. The inaugural post was titled “Fat, Fifty and Fatigued,” and I meant every word of it. I do regular check-ins to see if I am happy with where I stand from a health standpoint. The honest answer lately is no. Since leaving academia to return to the financial field, some of the weight has crept back. The schedule changed, the rhythms changed, and somewhere in the transition the habits I had built started to erode. So recently I decided to begin the journey again. To get back to where I was, and maybe further. To do that, I need to go back to where it started. It all started with a picture.
The picture was taken on a Thursday, a week before Thanksgiving, 2020. It was warm enough that wearing a hoodie felt like a small act of rebellion against the season. I was teaching from my home office, which meant I could wear whatever I wanted, and I wanted everyone to know it. So I took a picture and posted it. Look at me. No tie. No commute. Just a guy in a hoodie, conducting class from his living room, winning the pandemic. And then I looked at my face in that picture, really looked at it, and the joke stopped being funny.
That was the moment. Not a doctor’s appointment, not a conversation with anyone who loved me. A selfie.
That picture was taken in the middle of one of the strangest falls any of us can remember. The country was a mess, and I was not in great shape either. The election had been called but half the country wasn’t ready to accept it. COVID was getting worse, not better. And every time you turned on the news, someone was talking about who was most at risk. They kept using the word comorbidity. I had to look it up the first time I heard it. It basically means the conditions that make you more likely to die. Obesity was on the list. High blood pressure was on the list. I had most of the list, and I felt it every day. Every night when the heartburn woke me up. Every time I caught myself in a picture and looked away. I was not just overweight. I was a walking risk factor and I had been for years, and until that Thursday in November I had been very good at not thinking about it too hard.
My oldest brother died that September, two months before I took that picture. Both of my brothers were born with extra DNA that hindered their development, leaving them vulnerable not just to viruses but to complications most of us never have to think about. COVID found him anyway. I was still carrying that loss when I posted the hoodie picture, still in that strange suspended grief where you go through the motions of normal life because there is nothing else to do. One week after I made the decision to start losing weight, my other brother came down with COVID. There were some touch and go moments. We made the call to get him to the hospital where he had a fighting chance. Unlike my oldest, I was able to visit him. He was there for a couple of weeks, and then he came home. He is still with us today. And somewhere in those weeks of waiting and visiting and hoping, I kept going. Because I had just watched COVID take a man who had no choice about his vulnerabilities. I had a choice. I was not going to waste it.
At my peak, according to my scale, I weighed 252 pounds. I had never said that out loud before I wrote it in 2021, and even then it felt strange to put it in public. There it is. I didn’t want to be a statistic. I didn’t want my family to lose me the same year they had already lost so much. So I started.
The timing helped, and if you read last week’s post, you already know why. A semester doesn’t wind down gradually. It collapses. Around Thanksgiving the intensity breaks, the calendar starts to breathe, and for the first time since August there is actual white space. That is what I had in November 2020. A picture I could not stop thinking about, a grief I was still learning to carry, and for the first time in a long time the capacity to focus on something I could actually control.
By 2022 I was at 186. Everything got better. The knees stopped hurting. The acid reflux that had woken me up almost every night for years was just gone. I bought new clothes in sizes I hadn’t worn since college. I felt like myself again, or maybe a version of myself I had given up on finding.
And then, gradually, some of it came back.
The financial world doesn’t have semesters. There is no Thanksgiving wind-down, no January slow start, no built-in breathing room. The days got longer, the schedule got tighter, and the habits I had built around a particular kind of life stopped fitting the new one. I didn’t lose the plot all at once. It happened slowly, one small compromise at a time, until I did a check-in one day and didn’t like what I found.
Here is what I know now that I didn’t fully understand the first time. Losing weight is hard. Keeping it off is a different kind of hard, and nobody really prepares you for that part. Motivation comes and goes. Discipline gets tired. The only thing that actually holds is knowing your why, specifically enough that you can find your way back to it when things go sideways. I have done this long enough to know that is true.
My why hasn’t changed. I don’t want to be a burden. I want to be around for the people who count on me. I want to feel the way I felt in 2022, when the knees didn’t hurt and the clothes fit and I had enough energy to actually show up for my life. That was true in November 2020 and it is true right now. The number on the scale has changed. The reason has not.
Focus. Facts. Forgiveness. That is the framework that worked for me the first time and it is what I am coming back to. Focus means knowing your why and keeping it close. The Facts piece means understanding what actually works, not what you hope will work. Forgiveness means accepting that setbacks are part of it, that starting over is not failure, it is just what comes next. Over the coming weeks I am going to walk through each one. If you are on this road too, I hope something here is useful. If you are just starting, welcome. You are in the right place.

Word count: 944 words.

Day 19 Gratitude Challenge – The Picture

Four years ago, as I was completing the first gratitude challenge, I made two posts in Facebook.

One was about gratitude see below. I think these words are still applicable.

Today we are to consider the challenges we have faced in our lives. What can I find to be grateful for for in those challenges. While there are many examples, there is a present challenge that exists. How to survive during a pandemic. The present challenge requires me to view the world through a different lens and focus on what matters. I have intentionally tried to direct my energy toward things that matter. I am grateful that the pandemic has caused me to look at an approach life differently.

The other post from that day is at the top of this one. When I took that picture and made that post, I was not aware that my life was about to undergo a dramatic transformation.

I looked at that picture and immediately realized that something needed to change. My health and weight were out of control. That day, I started researching options and quietly began my transformation. Ultimately, I lost about 60 pounds but have since gained back around 15 of those. What’s interesting is that I find my current weight unacceptable, even though it is still lower than my original goal.

So, today’s challenge is to be grateful for your challenges and difficulties.

Progress

As readers know, I have been on this lifestyle journey for nearly two years. While my life has improved immensely, there is work to be done. After a recent trip to the UK, my weight had crept up a bit. Time to back things up again. So, I resolved to lose the weight gained on the trip plus a few more pounds. I announced it here. I created a plan and implemented it. Here is the latest progress report.

Things are going okay but not as well as I hoped. When I started in November 2020, I had a strong why and a good plan. I and amazing early and consistent success. I had nearly total control of my schedule and meal planning. I also had a major event in the beginning which provided more motivation.

This time it is different. With a new job, I have less control over my schedule and meal planning. While I have a good plan, I have been inconsistent in execution. My successes have been followed by setbacks.

While I have a good why, it isn’t a great “why.” My weight loss goals feel more like a should than a must. It’s frustrating because last time, it seemed so easy. I should be more than halfway to my goal but I am not.

This week, I got frustrated which was good. Frustration can lead to failure of you let it. I chose to let the frustration provide motivation resolve. I recalibrated my plan. I recalibrated my why. I committed to excellent execution. The result is significant momentum towards my goal.

So here is the report, since my trip, my weight is down 7 pounds. While I still have several pounds to go, I achieved nearly 30% of my goal. Even if I only added 1% each day, I would reach my goal by Christmas. So this is good news which MUST be celebrated.

But I have to be honest, it is exhausting. Staying focused on this all day along with everything else is often overwhelming. I start running out of gas about 2:00 pm each day. By the time I get home after 5, there is little left to “fight the battle.” My will power is shot. My motivation is shot. I just want to sit, read, pet the dog, and/or watch mindless television.

Because I know the flesh is weak, I make sure there are NO unhealthy options available in my house. Every dinner is planned before the day begins. When I get home, I know what is for dinner and I make it (if it isn’t already made). For snacks, I have simplified it. I have at least one fruit and one vegetable available. My go to vegetable is carrots. For fruits it is either banana or grapes. I eat only this (and limit fruit and binge if needed on vegetable. There are no other snacks available. No chips. No ice cream. No crackers. This makes a huge difference.

So long story short, plan…plan…plan…plan and stick to the plan. Your plan must include options for disruptions. Also, don’t go for perfection but do go for excellence. Execute the plan as best you can.

The Battle is Rejoined

It all started with a picture. A picture of me I didn’t like. A picture that motivated a significant lifestyle change. The picture was taken 20 months ago.

Since the picture, I lost a lot of weight. Most of the weight came off in the first three months. Over the last 17 months, there has been a slight downward trend.

All of this is good. I am still 60+ pounds off my high. I have mostly maintained the weight loss (give or take 5 pounds). I am still walking every day (at least 10,000 steps per day for 899 days). Occasionally I jog. I eat healthier than before. I am still amazed by my progress and celebrate the progress I have made so far.

Yet, I want more. I have a new number and fitness level in mind. My new goal is 20 pounds lower (don’t worry – if I lose 20 more pounds, I will still be “overweight” according to CDC BMI guidelines). My new number is a good number. It will put me down 80 or two softener salt bags. My new number will also incorporate some more weight training to obtain a higher fitness level.

So I will blog about it in real-time this time. So I begin with my why:

First, I believe 20 pounds down will be a healthier and happier weight for me. Second, I want to lower my health risks. For further information, search “health risks of being overweight.” Third, I want to break the pattern. Both my fathers died in their mid-60s. (Note: Both ate poorly, smoked, drank, and got little exercise). Fifth, I want to see my children grow older. Finally, I promised my wife a trip in 2044. I need to be around for this.

So the battle is rejoined. 20 pounds or bust – or 20 pounds is a must. Let the fun begin!

Day 19 of Gratitude Challenge

It’s been one year since I took the picture. One year of change I never thought would happen. One year of steady improvement.

I began this journey alone and unhappy. I began not knowing where to start. But I made the decision to change. My advice – make the decision about why then work on the how.

Over the last year, I have received so much encouragement and support from family and friends. Thank you it made a difference. I haven’t been perfect but I have improved. And more importantly, I could not have done it without the encouragement. I am grateful for all the kindness.

Today’s challenge is for you to thank a friend and family member. Call, text, email, message, Snap, What’s App or snail mail them. Just thank this person for something they did.

Rainy Day Thoughts

Earlier this week, it was 70+ degrees and sunny. Today it is 40 degrees and rainy. A common descriptive phrase where I live is that we are the land of infinite variety. We also say if you don’t like the weather, wait 48 hours.

What if we all took a similar approach to all aspects of life. In other words, rather than reacting negatively to the current situation, we accepted it for what it was and looked forward to an optimistic the future?

So far, I have not written about the specific foods and “diet” that has lead to a nearly 70 pound weight loss. Rather, I have spent most of the time writing about mindset. This has been intentional.

For me, I attribute my success primarily to a change in my mind set and focus. From the beginning, I believed the next 48 hours, 30 days, and 3 months would bring a better result. You need to pay attention to what you’re doing today. You also need to have the patience and ability to look beyond what happens today.

Set aside time this weekend, whether it be 15, 30, or 60 minutes, to think about the person you want to be in the future. Write it down and commit to it. Next week, I’ll write about the food system I chose to follow. Have A great weekend!