Slim down on your couch
I have decided to write this article to celebrate my weight loss achievement and collect and share all my thoughts and experience on the subject. My starting weight and the weight loss weren’t that extreme but I’m pretty sure it will work for everyone because the approach I took was extremely pragmatic. There is no magic and anyone who decides to follow the same approach as me will struggle the same way but at least you’ll know it is achievable.
Problem
Approximately a year before my graduation I’ve started earning enough not to bother about food availability (before that yeah, I was on a pretty tight budget) and never limited myself after. Gosh, I remember that timelapse from the office kitchen we’d filmed one day: I was roaming between pizza tables and ate something like 2 large pizzas without any issue. As for most of the software engineers litres of tea and coffee a day were consumed, but in my case (I blame Slavic background, it is a custom there) both tea and coffee were spiced up with sugar, and the volume of it rose from decade to decade since my taste buds (or brain?) stopped reacting to the same level of sweetness.
So the food customs remain the same but activity went downwards. Intensive daily gym sessions became daily warmups, then weekly warmups, and finally completely disappeared from my life. Career development and family life brought new challenges and new responsibilities that pushed up the stress level and you know what helps to quickly reduce stress: the food. Sometimes, especially after long and hard projects I felt burned out and procrastinated like crazy and you also know what helps to make your procrastination enjoyable: the food.
I found myself in the state when I forgot what the real hunger feels because meal times came more frequently than a necessity for them and there were plenty of snacks in between (including litres of sweetened tea). Sometimes I ate something salty, like chips which made me want something sweet like chocolate which in turn pushed me to eat something salty after.
I’ve ended up with an average weight of 85kg for the height of 172cm looking for the next sizes of clothes. What was always S became M, and what was M became L. My suits were hanging in a wardrobe as a reminder of how fit I’ve been before. Snoring, acid reflux and heartburn became my daily issues. The joke “It is so sad when before taking a photo someone says suck your stomach in but you already did” was on my shortlist.
Failed attempts
I wasn’t happy about this situation, so I’ve tried to reduce the amount of sugar I consume with my tea, but it didn’t help. I’ve tried not to eat after 6 pm, but guess what, a huge meal at 5:45 pm is still before 6 pm, right? Didn’t help either. I’ve tried intermittent fasting, but again, the illusion that you are free to eat as much as you want in allowed periods or eating “for the future” (since no eating window is closing soon) makes you eat even more.
On the activity side, I’ve joined a gym again and struggled walking on a treadmill (my knees do not let me run) or ellipse, doing occasional workout on machines or (extremely rare) working with free weights. I’ve also changed my commuting pattern to include some walking so I did about an hour of walking every weekday. Guess what, it didn’t help much either.
The bathroom scales were impartial: my weight is still around 85kg.
Solution
One December day I got another bathroom scale as a present (thanks, Anna). This model had Bluetooth, a tracking app, and allegedly was able to calculate some extra parameters such as BMI, percentage of body and visceral fats and so on. The very first measurement was discouraging: the weight was 1kg bigger than on the previous scales, a lot of parameters were either in the orange or even the red zones. By metabolic age I was 5 years older!
I’ve done measurements a couple of times after that wailing about damn weight but after the Christmas holidays that added a few more kilos to my waistline, I’ve decided to make a change and started exploring my options.
After reading multiple articles I came up with the following conclusions:
- Modern diet recommendations could be questionable but the laws of thermodynamics are indisputable, so you can’t get more energy in the form of weight gain than you consume in the form of food.
- Just living and doing nothing burns such an amount of energy that to double it you need to run half a marathon a day, so exercises won’t be the main driver for weight loss.
- However muscles are the main consumer for energy, even between exercises, so bigger muscles will help to burn energy faster.
Ok, now I know a general direction, but what to do next? My engineering experience tells me that to reach the goal it should be well defined and measurable. Moreover, the progress should be trackable so I can compare it with the projected one. At any given time, I should tell what my weight change would be based on what I’ve eaten. And for that, I’ve done some calculations and established simple metrics using my daughter’s chore board and kJ (in thousands) instead of calories (feels a bit more scientific).
Calculations
So I‘ve done some googling, pulled a few numbers and here we are:
Current weight: 87 kg
Target weight: 70 kg
Weight to lose: 87–70 = 17 kg
Energy in 1 kg of fat: 37,000 kJ
Energy in my overweight: 17 * 37,000 = 629,000 kJ
Recommended daily intake: 7,000 kJ
Daily intake I think I can give up: 2,000 kJ
Days to lose 1 kg: 37,000 / 2,000 = 18 days
Days to lose 17 kg: 629,000 / 2,000 = 314 days
So, seems if I cut my recommended intake (that is based on my age and weight, mostly muscle weight since fat doesn’t burn much energy) by 2,000 kJ (28%) I’ll be able to reach the target weight in 314 days, less than a year, by doing nothing, just eating less. And if I take into account some simple activities like walking, doing cleaning etc I can either speed up this process or eat a little bit more.
Projections
Ok, time to make projections, both optimistic and pessimistic:
87 kg as of Dec 31 (now)
80 kg / Apr 1st / Jul 1st
75 kg / Jul 1st / Nov 1st
70 kg / Sep 1st / ???
Well, optimistic projection does look good, since I’m not in a rush and there is no beach season or wedding I have to prepare for. Pessimistic projection looks a bit bad and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to reach 70 kg by the end of the year because my body will definitely readjust for the lack of food and will start burning energy slower especially closer to the end of the period since most of the unused muscles will shrink by that time (they do go away prior to fat). Nevertheless, these are my checkpoints now and I’ll be trying to reach these intermediate goals as soon as possible.
Metrics
Trying dieting before I was always surprised by the fact I haven’t eaten much on a specific day but got a weight gain anyway. As it turned out that was a bias since we tend to forget or diminish things that make us feel a little bit uncomfortable quickly. To beat this bias I’ve started recording energy for every piece of food I’ve consumed and these records along with the daily weight records are the key to the whole diet because now you can see a correlation between your energy balance and weight change.
I was able to reduce the recommended intake of 7,000 kJ per day by 2,750 kJ on average (almost 40%) which gave me an average weight loss of 160 g per day. It took me 110 days to lose 17.75 kg.
If you’d like to follow my approach I can give a couple of recommendations:
- Use a physical board to track your energy consumption. Put it in the kitchen so you see it every time you think of getting some food.
- Try to make a record before you even start cooking/prepping. In this case, you’ll know in advance the energy and can decide if you want to skip it or replace it with a less-calorie alternative.
- Try to find the food you like that makes you both happy and full at the same time but is not high on energy. I like sweets, but now instead of a little chocolate, I would prefer to have a salmon sandwich or steak, making me equally happy.
- If you can’t properly estimate energy for your meal, check it for something similar and take the highest amount. Most of the takeaway meals are in the range of 2,500–4,000 kJ. Do not cheat on numbers, record the worst-case scenario.
- Never ignore recording your drinks unless it is pure water or something that has less than 50 kJ per serving (like tea with no sugar or no sugar soda). A bottle of beer or a couple of glasses of wine are both about 500 kJ.
- Check your metrics before making any decision about food intake. There were so many times when I wanted to eat something just because it is tasty and not because I’m hungry but a quick look at the weight loss over the week or the list of food I’ve already eaten that day gave me enough strength to fight that craving.
- Eat slowly. I feel that I’m full only 20 minutes after finishing my meal so now I drink a tea about 10 minutes before the meal and try to chew as long as I can feel any taste.
- Take smaller portions. That 20 min gap between the time food gets into a stomach and it reports to the brain about fullness forces you to eat more while most of the time half of the average portion is enough.
- Try to focus on your meal. Make sure your brain is aware that the meal has happened. If you watch TV or scroll another feed on your phone you might get to the state when your mind will come back to the idea of food intake over and over.
- It is not required to keep desired balance every day. You can easily have a good dinner with family and friends one day but don’t forget to reduce your intake the next day but that extra energy you’ve consumed over the dinner. When I have such an event planned I’m trying to eat as little as possible before so I can enjoy a full course and still fit into the limits.
- It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you make correct records. and stick to your planned energy intake.
Results
As you might have already noticed from the picture of my chore board from above I have achieved my goal ahead of time and going to keep my weight now around 70–72 kg.
I plan to get back to the gym and start working on muscles rather than anything else to make my body burn even more energy so I can relax my diet a bit.
It wasn’t an easy journey. It was full of cravings, but the right tooling and will power can help you achieve this goal.
Afterwords
These days we eat a lot because food is very affordable and it is a quick and easy way to get positive emotions. Going outside, keeping yourself busy or entertained, having a good hobby will be a better and much healthier alternative for excessive and most of the time unnecessary food consumption. But we can’t deny that food is one of the things that help us to enjoy our lives. We just need to be a little bit more responsible with intake.
Stay fit, live well!