I'm new to reddit,but it looks like this would be a good place to share my story, and get some feedback on my situation. For a little bit of background, I'm a 42 year old male 5'10'', who works on the 9th floor of an office building sitting in front of a computer all day. When I quit smoking in 2009, I replaced my smoking habit with a snacking habit. Over the years, my weight crept up to 320 on April 1 of this year, and I finally decided to do something about it.
I talked to my doctor about it, and he mentioned that medication was an option, but thought that we could start by trying to change to more healthy habits.
I wanted to change both diet and exercise habits. On the exercise side, once per day, I started going down to the basement on the stairs, and walking back up the 185 steps. I also downloaded one of those couch to 5k apps, and over the course of about 9 weeks, I was up to running 2 miles non-stop by early June.
On my diet, I added fresh fruit and vegetables to my meals and snacks, and went from 2-3 Cokes per day to 1 per week. By early June, I was at 302, and I had never felt better. I had more energy, I was sleeping better, and I was even more productive at work.
In mid June, I came down with a case of cellulitis, which landed me in the hospital for 3 days. I got pumped with more antibiotics in 3 days than I've taken in my entire life. By July, I was still exhausted. I hadn't exercised in 3 weeks, and could barley get out of bed. My doctor put me on an antidepressant, which improved my mood, but didn't help with being tired all the time. Throughout all of my recovery period, I was keeping the good diet habits that I started in April, and by late August, for the first time in several years, I would get on the scale, and I was under 300. To help with the fatigue, my doctor prescribed phentermine. I've been on that for 10 days now, and in that 10 days, I've finally had enough energy to start over on my couch to 5k app, and I'm down 4 more pounds to 295. I just signed up to run a 5k on Thanksgiving with my brother, and my nephew. I'm also a week into Weight Watchers, which seems to help make better choices on what I should eat.
So far, I'm pretty happy where I've come in the last 5 months, especially considering that included a lengthy recovery from a serious illness. The phentermine and antidepressant is a short term solution, that the doctor thinks will last until about February, taking a beak from the phentermine for November and December, and I'm wondering what some good long term strategies are to maintain my weight once I get it down to something reasonable, and I'm off the medication. It seems like now that I'm on an appetite suppressant, now would be a good time to revamp my diet even more, and weight watchers seems to be a good starting point to that, but is it enough? Is it important to set an actual end goal weight, or should I set smaller incremental goals? Should I make my goal 275, with a plan to make it 250 once I get to the 275, and then 225 once I reach the 250, or is it better to start with a goal of 225?
Thanks for reading my post. Any comments of would be greatly appreciated.
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