My weight loss story is usually my go-to whenever I meet a new person. Nobody believes me when I tell the story, which in itself is a compliment. I guess there must be a subconscious component to it; most Americans do not see through a commitment to lose weight, so in a way it’s a brag. Nobody likes one who brags, it’s likely time that I finally lay this story to rest; so, I’ll tell it one last time. I’ll admit that some of my tactics are not recommended; I’m merely telling my story. Considering we now live in an era where apparently losing weight is fat-phobic, I expect nothing less than razor-sharp pitchforks for telling the story of what is (debatably) my greatest accomplishment.
I graduated high school at 245 pounds. Admittedly, I was overweight, but still had an athletic build thanks to the countless hours spent in the weight room, swimming pool, football field and the discus cage. However, I walked off the stage at high school graduation and needed to leave all of my athletic endeavors in the past. I had turned down some wildly expensive Division Three schools that wanted me to play football in favor of attending a more pragmatic state university close to home (and one-third the price), so I was no longer an offensive lineman and was now just some fat guy.
Then, I got my driver’s license, followed quickly by my first job during my first semester of college and this is the point when my weight started really getting out of hand. Partly due to curiosity and partly due to newfound freedom, I started routinely eating at the fast-food and other similarly unhealthy restaurants near campus far more frequently than I should have (I even ate a Double Down sandwich!). Sundays would I work a double-shift at my call center job, which included a one-hour gap between shifts. I would order myself a meat-lovers pizza, a large fry and a 20-ounce soda to be delivered to the building, and then inhale the entire calorie bomb in time for my second shift at the sedentary job. One of my friends would joke that I was struggling to get out of the driver’s seat of my car-except that he was absolutely right. I wore baggy clothes because they were the only ones that would fit. I couldn’t fit inside of the older desks in some of my classes. I had continued weightlifting, and saw some marginal strength gains, though there was no denying that my gut had grown considerably during my freshman year of college. I sprained my ankle during an intense floor hockey game a few months before graduating high school; it hurt like hell at the time and the weight gain only made the constant pain worse.
I want to clarify a crucial detail; my obesity was nobody’s fault but mine. The high school and the college I went to both had healthier options available. 21st century America also had the knowledge readily available to make better choices; I just made horrible choices. This also isn’t my family’s fault either; my father (before he died; ten days before my high school graduation) and one of my siblings were both in great shape, so that isn’t a reliable root cause to use. Unlike modern personalities, I didn’t demand that the rest of the world accommodate me, nor did I raise a stink with the university that the desks they provided were sub-standard (they were standard, it was me who was sub-standard).
It all culminated on a fateful day when I was on the cusp of turning 19 years old, near the end of my first year of college. I stepped on a digital bathroom scale and the readout hit me like a ton of bricks; 297.6 pounds. It felt like I was stabbed in the chest by an ice-cold dagger. That unrelenting readout served as my wake-up call; change was needed, and it was needed now. The second thought that raced through my mind was the fact that I had lost my father, a lean and muscular man his entire life, a year prior to heart disease aka the number one killer in America. My thought process was that since I was already genetically behind the eight-ball, weighing 300 pounds was basically just asking for it at that point. The fear of a very early death goaded me into action. For the longest time, I feared collapsing of a heart attack more than anything. It certainly didn’t help that at 18 I would get chest pain and the regurgitation feeling from heating unhealthy foods. As an aside, anyone who claims to be able to consistently out-train bad nutrition is a goddamn liar.
My first order of attack was to quit soda altogether. Yes, you read that right, quit altogether. Not taper down, wean off, or whatever enabling dog whistle that the internet loves to perpetuate nowadays, but stop drinking it cold turkey. This was no small task as I had grown into the habit of downing four 12-ounce cans of Pepsi per day. Yes, per day and yes, four cans. I immediately switched it out with tap water. The first two weeks were unbearable; headaches became severe, and I could no longer run on autopilot. Every trip past the fridge required a near Herculean effort to not grab a Pepsi. It was supremely difficult, however one month after that fateful weigh-in, I stepped on the scale again; 273 pounds. It worked.
With this newfound success, I decided to take it a step further. I started reading nutrition labels on the back of food packaging. I made it a habit to read every single label for the nutritional contents (the habit, shockingly didn’t take long to form, as Charles Duhigg likes to preach). I took to Google to start studying up on what the terms actually meant, and the daily value percentages. After acquiring this newfound knowledge, I started Googling the nutritional information of fast-food items that had landed me into my obese state. I was appalled and grossed out with myself. It served as a shock; stop fucking doing that.
My newfound dietary habits, much improved though by no means perfect, helped me drop a ton of weight quickly. I started doing rough math to calculate the number of calories I was consuming at my heaviest (roughly 3500 per day; not healthy unless you’re a professional athlete) and what I was consuming on my first downward trend (about 1500 per day, also not healthy for an active 19-year-old male). I went from 297 pounds down to 210 in a matter of six months. I no longer had a need for 44-inch waist jeans; in a fit of never again rage, I purged my closet of all the morbidly obese clothes I had. I had stuffed them into black trash bags and then crammed said bags into one of the Donate Clothes Here boxes on the side of the road. Maybe some African village made tents out of my fat clothes? I started noticing other benefits as well; the sprained ankle that I suffered during my senior year of my high school nearly 18 months prior had finally stopped constantly hurting me, and I had started to gain glucose sensitivity back; eating a small ice cream cone would give me an intense and unpleasant sugar crash. I also no longer felt the dry-heaving sensation when eating unhealthy foods (the rare times I would consume them anymore) or the chest tightness anymore.
As mentioned earlier, I was a football player and a track athlete al throughout high school, so I was always into the habit of lifting. I had maintained almost all of my strength from being 300 pounds, but now in a far-leaner 210-pound frame. I won’t lie, I felt like a complete badass. I went to a concert with one of my best friends and he brought his girlfriend along. She took a photo of me when I was wearing a tank top and posted it on Facebook. A ton of my old high school football and track buddies marveled at my transformed physique. Some casual acquaintances from high school asked me what college I was playing football for (I didn’t even play college football!). I was swole and thanks to being a perpetually rage-fueled 19-year-old (a story for another article), nobody wanted to mess with me.
Granted, me habits still were not perfect; I still ate a lot of Raisin Bran at breakfast; which has a ton of added sugar. I had also picked up a two-energy drinks per day habit. After all, STEM majors have a ton of long days and the caffeine was needed, or so I rationalized to myself. I cleaned up the diet gradually over the next few years, I went from being 210 pounds at 19 years old down to 190 at 21 years old. Except for energy drinks, I had completely given up sugar completely (which is like saying I’m totally clean now, except for my morning lines of cocaine!). Sadly, that’s when the admiration and the cheering for my progress stopped and the constant thin-shaming began (spoiler: it hasn’t stopped since).
Eventually, I dropped the energy drink habit entirely and converted to iced coffee-straight black. This took even more unnecessary calories off. As I mentioned in my thin-shaming article, I quit the shittiest job I ever had and then dropped another 15 pounds. Another big bonus was that I finally learned to keep my home base clean; ridding my home of junk food essentially forced weight to fall off.
Life is short enough as it is; don’t give The Reaper a helping hand…
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