I don't have before pics. There are pretty much no pics of me. I more or less like it that way.
Started regimen last July. Grandpa died at the end of June. Biggest suit size in big & tall store is 64L. I had one of those taken out to fit better for a wedding in 2017. By July 2018, for my grandpa's funeral, it wouldn't fit right. Tailors could not make it bigger. There was no bigger off the rack size anywhere.
So I guess that was the wakeup call if anything was. Being too damn fat for the fattest suit in the fat store, that's how you know you fucked up. Big time.
So I made a plan. I'm a firm believer in the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) method. A good chunk of whatever success I've had in life I owe to being able to sketch out simple, medium-term plans with attainable targets. You wanna see how stupid my plan is? Here you go.
Of course, that's like the legislation, right? Even if you've got a plan like that, you need to execute it. I like simple, so calories in, calories out was how I backed into the larger plan. Need a caloric deficit of about 9,000 calories per week to hit 10lbs per month. Sedentary, that meant about 2250 per day or so should do it. Wanted to build in margin for error, and the number drops as you lose weight, so I bumped it to 2,000. Didn't worry about day to day so much as weekly totals to add up to monthly totals. First couple months looked like this. I still leave the goal at roughly 2,000. I set it a while back. I'll change it again next month at the halfway point to 2020. But most days lately I'm between 1600 and 1800 anyways.
Of course, this is how the boss thinks about executing things. But the worker on the ground knows that ain't always so easy. So I had to come up with ground rules. I suck at complicated things. So simple. No butter. No red meat. No cheese. No white rice or white bread or pasta. No added sugars. That's how I started. I know it's delicious, but fuck cheese. Way too easy to eat a billion calories of that shit without thinking about it and get fat as fuck. Fuck pasta too. So especially fuck mac n cheese. Goddamn, I could easily eat a full box of that shit for lunch and put down the calories in one meal I do in a whole day now. Lol, let's be real, I could eat the whole fucking box, butter and all, with 5 ounces of chicken and jalepenos in it for lunch as one big bowl. If I need to feed a starving family for a week, give me a 10 pack of that shit. Otherwise, keep it the hell away from me now. Beer is hell too. Gotta admit, I've had a few. But generally I keep that shit away from me unless it's some big party like Christmas or something. Even then, try to not let myself go nuts and only have a few. Have never let myself hit a 3,000 cal day like that one in early July since. That was the last box of mac n' cheese in the cupboard. Kraft dinner is the devil of Canada.
So how did I stick to the ground rules? Grocery list. Every week. Online shopping places, even if you don't use them, can help you compare product nutrition facts. Then there's always myfitnesspal or something to plug food into. In general, for macros, I'd err on the side of more protein and more fiber. But I'm not being super strict about that. Not doing keto. Still, if I'm gonna have a calorie deficit, I'd rather it be in carbs than protein. Buy spices. Learn to love chicken and vegetables and turkey and brown rice.
So here I am. 80lbs down. Not quite at the halfway point. Not quite at the 100lbs point. Not quite feeling much different. Still very much a big fat giant monster of a man. But chipping away at it. Don't look any different in the mirror to me. But can tell by clothing that weight's coming off.
The suit coat that wouldn't fit me in July? Here's what that 64L (taken out to be bigger by a tailor) looks like on me now. I'm swimming in it. If you look back at my plan, it's going accordingly. Here's me in a 58L version of that same coat (never taken out). Probably about 9" since July has come off my chest. Probably near 7" off my hips. Wearing 42"x32" pants now in the same brand I had been wearing 48"x32" of last summer, and they're a bit loose now, and the others were a bit tight before. Yes the picture's bad. Yes the angle's bad. No my face isn't in it. And the dust on the 58L coat is all because I dug it out of a closet and haven't fit into it in 8 or 9 years. It needs to go to the cleaners.
So that's about it, everyone. That's what 10lbs per month for 8 months gets you. Most impressive thing I guess is that it only takes 8 months to undo basically 8 years of weight gain. But it's not a miracle. Most people you know aren't even gonna notice. They're really not. People don't pay attention to you. And 410 and 330 are both broadly "fat." No way outta that. You're not gonna feel much different either. At least I don't. I really don't. Don't look different in the mirror to myself either. You know what does make me feel different, though? Lifting. Weight training. Doesn't make me look different. But I'll tell you one thing, lifting weights again for 1 month made a bigger difference in how I feel than losing 80 pounds for 8 months.
I don't know why I took those pictures. I don't know why I typed all this up. I really should be doing work. I guess doing it is like some kind of a little self-encouragement on a dreary gray day. I only update my plan once per month. I put a little "x" in the right column. Truth is, I haven't weighed myself. Might have been a bit heavier when I started. And I think I'm a bit ahead of the curve on the plan, at least at the moment. So maybe I did lose more like 90lbs or something. You wanna know the funniest part? One of the only differences I've noticed other than clothing size is that I can scratch those hard to reach parts of my back easier now and I don't think I've needed a plunger for 6 or 7 months. Lol, guess it's the little things, gross though they may be.
Otherwise it's all in the clothes. Changing sizes takes so long. At the bigger sizes, you can blow through 50 pounds before you shift from 5xl to 4xl. It takes another 50 to shift from 4xl to 3xl. And another 50 again to get to 2xl. But then it only takes 30 to xl. 25 to L and below. Think about it. We're talking 180lbs between 5xl and xl, and only 75lbs between s and xl. This is comforting going up, "I'm still the same size," as you pack on 50lbs. But it can be discouraging going down. You can languish for 4 or 5 months "at the same size" even if you're dropping 10lbs per month. That's why I like the coats. The coats don't lie. They come in inches. Harder to fudge. And they sell them in 2" increments generally. So you know if you're moving down or up.
Even inches are slow. Two months takes forever for a coat or a pant size to drop. Week to week it's un-noticable. Can't help but find myself "playing dress-up" once in a while, seeing if things from my past fit again, or if current things are getting looser, paranoid maybe I'm plateauing. Goddamn, the human mind is super shitty at long term plans. And this ain't the type of thing were you're gonna see day to day progress. It just ain't. Even a month of good progress is gonna get you maybe 10lbs lighter. But that's it. You won't look different. You'll be the same size (at least when you're up around my size). Most people are not gonna notice or care. But after 3 or 4 months, you've gotta buy a new belt or new pants. Big one for me was boxer briefs. Had to drop down a size. Old ones just fall right to the floor now. But that has happened once. Once. In 8 months. Take the small victories. Best you're gonna get.
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