Skurgeon
Well-known member
My first Entry
I weighed 402 pounds 17 months ago. Since then I’ve lost 167 pounds and now weigh 235.
I’ve lost the weight by counting calories and working out/exercising.
I don’t have a firm goal weight but my guess is somewhere between 195 and 210. I think I’ll know the closer I get. At the moment I think I look pretty good.
The beginning:
I got so overweight by obviously eating too much. If I had to guess I was probably eating about 4500 calories a day on average but I never tracked it so who knows? I was making the worst choices. Fast food… A lot of fast food… I mean a real lot. If it wasn’t fast food it was late night grocery store shopping for that nights binge which usually took place in the grocery stores parking lot. I would eat until I just couldn’t eat anymore…and then an hour later I would eat more… especially if it was pizza or chicken wings or ice cream that I hadn’t been able to finish earlier.
I had decided I had had enough in November of 2019. I was wearing a 6 XL shirt and 62 inch waisted pants. I was only 392 pounds at the time. I got a gym membership and started going but not really and I ate a little bit better but not much and by January 22nd 2020 I was 402. Seeing the “4” in front of my weight was my wake up call. At this point I couldn’t walk for 3 minutes without back pain (caused by huge belly I think) The gym and diet became my laser focus.
I lost 18 pounds in 10 days by Feb 1st( insane I know… I thought we’ll it’s all water weight)
I lost another 18 pounds during the month of February.
I lost 15 pounds in March
I lost 18 pounds April.
that’s 69 pounds lost in the 3 months and 10 days. I was in a zone. After that Covid came along and took the gym away from me. I continued to focus on my diet and do what I could at home. Weight loss slowed to about 2 pounds per week which I thought was great. Like clockwork I lost about 8 pounds a month.
The gym came back and went away a few times because of Covid. It was driving me crazy. I love lifting weights. I have my own adjustable bench and power block dumbbells that go up to 85 pounds. I’ve had these for over 20 years. I started using them whenever the gym wasn’t available but I never feel like I can really do what I want.
My Diet:
I follow a CICO approach and I focus on protein for my bodybuilding. I decided to go with a balanced approach and not make anything taboo on my diet (even thou that still happened) I came out with a basic outline/goal of 35% Carb, 35% Protein and 30% Fat. That rarely ever happened. Most days looked something like 40% Carbs, 40% protein and 20% fat.
I eventually came to a Calorie goal of 2250 per day that had at least 200 grams of protein. This resulted in the 2 pounds a week weight loss and I stayed in that groove a long long time. I came up with the 200 grams of protein because I heard you should eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. I knew 400 grams of protein was probably too much so I chose 200 because that was my initial goal. To cut myself in half and go from 400 pounds to 200 pounds. So I tailored my diet and protein to what I thought a 200 pound version of me should eat. I had the thought eat like a 200 pound person and become that.
My calories probably could have been higher but I didn’t feel deprived or hungry and I thought my 2 pounds a week weight loss wasn’t too extreme so I settled in that zone for about a whole year.
At the beginning of this month(June 2021) I decided to change my calories. my average weight loss had gone from 2 pounds to about 1.7 over the course of the year. I decided that I wanted to lose weight slower. My thinking was I don’t want to free fall into my end weight (whatever it is) I want to glide slowly so that it just slowly bleeds into a maintenance phase.
So I decided that I wanted to lose just 1 pound a week. I did the math and came out with an answer of adding 350 calories per day to make my daily calorie intake 2600. I should say that even thou my calories were set at 2250 over the course of a month they would average out to about 2150.
By the way I have tracked things very analytically. I have way too much data! I weigh all my food. I log everything in an app. I do monthly assessments on pen and paper. (I’ll post pictures at some point). I would easily suspect that my level of tracking qualifies as an eating disorder. But I love it! I love math and graphs and charts and all those kinds of analytics.
So, upping my calories to 2600 has been slightly difficult. I was finding it hard to eat that much without introducing more calorie dense foods that I had been avoiding. 3 weeks into June and I’m getting closer and 2600 is starting to feel more normal. At 1 pound a week I should lose 4 pounds in June but 20 days in and I’ve already lost 5 this month. It will be interesting to crunch the numbers when the month ends.
I guess that’s enough for a first entry. I welcome any questions or comments.
I weighed 402 pounds 17 months ago. Since then I’ve lost 167 pounds and now weigh 235.
I’ve lost the weight by counting calories and working out/exercising.
I don’t have a firm goal weight but my guess is somewhere between 195 and 210. I think I’ll know the closer I get. At the moment I think I look pretty good.
The beginning:
I got so overweight by obviously eating too much. If I had to guess I was probably eating about 4500 calories a day on average but I never tracked it so who knows? I was making the worst choices. Fast food… A lot of fast food… I mean a real lot. If it wasn’t fast food it was late night grocery store shopping for that nights binge which usually took place in the grocery stores parking lot. I would eat until I just couldn’t eat anymore…and then an hour later I would eat more… especially if it was pizza or chicken wings or ice cream that I hadn’t been able to finish earlier.
I had decided I had had enough in November of 2019. I was wearing a 6 XL shirt and 62 inch waisted pants. I was only 392 pounds at the time. I got a gym membership and started going but not really and I ate a little bit better but not much and by January 22nd 2020 I was 402. Seeing the “4” in front of my weight was my wake up call. At this point I couldn’t walk for 3 minutes without back pain (caused by huge belly I think) The gym and diet became my laser focus.
I lost 18 pounds in 10 days by Feb 1st( insane I know… I thought we’ll it’s all water weight)
I lost another 18 pounds during the month of February.
I lost 15 pounds in March
I lost 18 pounds April.
that’s 69 pounds lost in the 3 months and 10 days. I was in a zone. After that Covid came along and took the gym away from me. I continued to focus on my diet and do what I could at home. Weight loss slowed to about 2 pounds per week which I thought was great. Like clockwork I lost about 8 pounds a month.
The gym came back and went away a few times because of Covid. It was driving me crazy. I love lifting weights. I have my own adjustable bench and power block dumbbells that go up to 85 pounds. I’ve had these for over 20 years. I started using them whenever the gym wasn’t available but I never feel like I can really do what I want.
My Diet:
I follow a CICO approach and I focus on protein for my bodybuilding. I decided to go with a balanced approach and not make anything taboo on my diet (even thou that still happened) I came out with a basic outline/goal of 35% Carb, 35% Protein and 30% Fat. That rarely ever happened. Most days looked something like 40% Carbs, 40% protein and 20% fat.
I eventually came to a Calorie goal of 2250 per day that had at least 200 grams of protein. This resulted in the 2 pounds a week weight loss and I stayed in that groove a long long time. I came up with the 200 grams of protein because I heard you should eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. I knew 400 grams of protein was probably too much so I chose 200 because that was my initial goal. To cut myself in half and go from 400 pounds to 200 pounds. So I tailored my diet and protein to what I thought a 200 pound version of me should eat. I had the thought eat like a 200 pound person and become that.
My calories probably could have been higher but I didn’t feel deprived or hungry and I thought my 2 pounds a week weight loss wasn’t too extreme so I settled in that zone for about a whole year.
At the beginning of this month(June 2021) I decided to change my calories. my average weight loss had gone from 2 pounds to about 1.7 over the course of the year. I decided that I wanted to lose weight slower. My thinking was I don’t want to free fall into my end weight (whatever it is) I want to glide slowly so that it just slowly bleeds into a maintenance phase.
So I decided that I wanted to lose just 1 pound a week. I did the math and came out with an answer of adding 350 calories per day to make my daily calorie intake 2600. I should say that even thou my calories were set at 2250 over the course of a month they would average out to about 2150.
By the way I have tracked things very analytically. I have way too much data! I weigh all my food. I log everything in an app. I do monthly assessments on pen and paper. (I’ll post pictures at some point). I would easily suspect that my level of tracking qualifies as an eating disorder. But I love it! I love math and graphs and charts and all those kinds of analytics.
So, upping my calories to 2600 has been slightly difficult. I was finding it hard to eat that much without introducing more calorie dense foods that I had been avoiding. 3 weeks into June and I’m getting closer and 2600 is starting to feel more normal. At 1 pound a week I should lose 4 pounds in June but 20 days in and I’ve already lost 5 this month. It will be interesting to crunch the numbers when the month ends.
I guess that’s enough for a first entry. I welcome any questions or comments.
