For well over a month now, I’ve been making a conscious and determined effort to lose weight.
It is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve strugged with my weight ever since I was a little kid. It’s mainly due to the way I was brought up. Living in the U.S. South, you’re part of a culture that values flavor and tradition over healthier options and nutritious living. I fundamentally did not understand nutrition until very recently, and that is mostly thanks to what I’ve learned as part of my various health struggles.
When you’re in kidney failure you have to modify your diet. You have to limit things like phosphorus, potassium, and sodium. I’ve gotten really good at learning to cut things out of my diet, even things that I love. Turns out I have more willpower than I ever imagined.
But when you’re in kidney failure it’s almost impossible to lose weight. You retain fluid. You swell. You get bigger. It’s hard to tell where the body fat stops and the excess body fluid begins.
Now that I have a happy, healthy kidney, weight loss is an achievable goal. Not only is it achievable, it’s necessary. I also have developed some minor heart issues. If I don’t get them taken care of now, I know what awaits me. In the immediate future, it would be an ablation. In the longterm, it would be early mortality. These are just the facts.
And to be honest, I hate being a fat guy. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like seeing myself in a mirror.
The only time in my life that I was thin was when I was in high school. I started working a part-time job at a local fast food joint, and I literally worked my ass off. I lost 60 pounds (approximately 27 kg) in the span of about 6 months. It probably didn’t hurt that I was also trying to impress a girl. But hey, whatever works.
The weight stayed off for around a year, but it slowly started creeping back up. In college, my “freshman fifteen” (pounds) started being the “freshman thirty”, then forty, then suddenly I was back where I started.
But that all ends now. I’m eating healthier. I’m eating things that have more nutrients that my body needs. I’m eating with more balance. And, I’m exercising regularly for the first time in my life.
The resource that was most helpful to me, out of everything I’ve read or learned, was “The Hacker’s Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition”, by John Walker. In it, he lays out the problem from an engineering/project management perspective, and makes some points I’ve never made time to think about before. Essentially, the secret to weight loss is all about calories. If you eat more than you burn, you put on weight. If you eat as many as you burn, you maintain your weight. If you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. Simple stuff.
Right now my daily metabolic rate is about 2800 calories. If I stay under that (which isn’t all that difficult), I lose. I’m trying to stay below 1800 calories each day. Every 3500 calories you “keep out” translates to one pound of body fat, so with this method I should expect to lose around two pounds each week (which I know won’t work out quite right, since everyone hits a plateau at one point).
I must admit that at first I was disappointed in the results I was seeing on the scale. My face is notably thinner. My hips are thinner. It’s evident I’ve lost a bit of weight. But at first, the numbers didn’t match what I was seeing in the mirror. Then today, I went back and looked at some of the recorded weights from my most recent doctors visits. Turns out, I was way heavier at the start of the year than I even realized. As of this morning, I’m down 18 pounds!
The changes I’m making aren’t meant to be a temporary measure. They’re the new way that I eat, the new way that I exercise, and the new way that I live. It’s not so radical that I won’t be able to maintain it for the long-term. I figure if I keep my actions in check, the results will follow.