WeightWatchers

No Finish Line: Healthy Habits For The Long Haul

/ UsedToGuy / Leave a comment

As I crossed the 100 lb weight loss mark, which happened to coincide pretty closely with the one year mark, folks started to ask me when I would be done? I assume they meant done losing weight. I think they also meant when would I be done ‘dieting’ and go back to eating the way I used to. Something I had accepted and ingrained along the way was that there was no end. The habits I had adopted over 12 months would simply carry on. I began to trust that my body would settle into a weight that made sense, after all I wasn’t starving myself I was simply tracking my WeightWatchers points each day. Getting hung up on the number on the scale even began to take a bit of a backseat to feeling comfortable with myself and the side benefit of my now much smaller clothes.

Man walking a road towards the mountains.

I was determined to make things stick for good. My biggest fear became undoing all of the progress I had made by changing anything, at the same time I was realizing that in order for my plan to work long term I was going to have to find new goals and to learn to be agile. These two aspects of things may feel at odds, and in some ways they are, but it was a clear learning for me. Your plan has to be flexible and be able to change with you so it keeps you progressing. Being open to that progression is an important step and it doesn’t have to mean abandoning your core process.

After all, it’s easy to become complacent about repetitive tasks like losing weight or exercising. Even if you don’t give up you can fall into a pattern where you get comfortable, you can get over-confident and lose focus. This sense of confidence, what I call the ‘I got this syndrome’ is a red flag. I remind myself every day that the day’s decisions I make are what makes the difference. Even after all this time, maybe especially after all this time, being mindful that I am still the guy who weighted 300 lbs is critical to my continued journey. That guy isn’t gone, or lost to the past. He’s me, and if I decide to change my choices and fall back into old patterns he’s right here with me waiting to make his return.

For much of my first year losing weight we were in the process of renovating our kitchen, which turned into renovating most of our house. Evenings were full of Janet and I painting and doing work we didn’t want to pay the contractors to do. I was moving around constantly after work and sticking to my eating plan even as we made all of our meals on a small hot plate set up in our basement because our kitchen was gutted. This was a great test to show me that I could work my eating plan even when things were not ideal, but even as I was hitting strides on my plan I felt the itch to do more. I decided that once we were done with the kitchen renovations I was going to go back to running which was one of the main activities I had given up which made me feel like the UsedToGuy in the first place. But as I added running to the mix I wanted to be thoughtful about how I approached things so I didn’t fall into my all or nothing pattern. In my next post I’ll talk about how I mixed in exercise and learned to be agile.

Here are some of my key takeaways as I crossed the 12 month and 100 lbs gone mark in my journey:

  • There is no ‘before’ and ‘after.’ There is then and there is now. Anything can change at any time for the better, or the worse. I have to remind myself daily that I’m only as good as today.
  • Even as you progress you shouldn’t abandon your core plan. I stuck to my daily points on WeightWatchers and kept things in weight loss mode. I didn’t move into any kind of maintenance mode and still haven’t to this day.
  • Embrace change but tread carefully. I had to trust that I could keep things fresh by adding exercise. I was really worried about adding this in because I trusted how simple and focused I was and adding in more dimensions felt risky at first. I had such success being singular-minded I worried that any change would be a distraction.
  • Beware of the ‘I got this syndrome.’ I still remind myself to stay vigilant and aware. Becoming over-confident or comfortable is a warning sign.

Keep It Simple Stupid

/ UsedToGuy / 1 Comment

Our world is filled with things that are complex and difficult to fully understand. Look around the room you are sitting in, could you even begin to describe in detail how many of the things that surround us every day work? Technology, and the complexity that comes with it, provide great opportunities but also come with a fair dose of frustration, confusion and loss of control. Taking on, or any hard, large or difficult problem can feel the same way. And, for me, the first steps on this journey were filled with far more questions than answers. I quite unknowingly made some decisions early on that I believe made all the difference. Here’s what happened…

Joining WeightWatchers was a good first step and that ‘magical’ day certainly set me on a path. But, to be honest, in my life there had been dozens of those days where I would commit to action. Sometimes I would sustain that excitement for a week or even a few months but inevitably the newness wore off, the progress slowed and I fell back into old patterns. Any weight I had lost returned (and then some). Adding to the mix is that each ‘failure’ made the mountain a little higher and seemed to put my goals a little further out of reach. My belief in myself would diminish, and I’d feel a little more broken and like a failure.

The question I’ve asked myself over and over in the years since then is, why did it work this time? What did I do differently? Over the last six years I have asked those questions a lot. The answers, like the plan, is that I kept things simple.

Here are the core lessons learned:

  • I was accountable: Each day I tracked everything I ate.
  • I was focused: I did one thing–focused on my food intake.
  • I was honest: I tracked exactly what I ate and tracked my weight each week and logged it no matter what.
  • I ‘worked small’: Each day I recommitted to my plan.
  • I was mindful: Every time I ate I made myself aware of how much I was eating. In most cases I pre-measured food–not because I was super worried about how much I was eating but to try to teach myself portions.
  • I was aware: Every time I walked past the snack cabinet or thought, “I can have just one of those,” I reminded myself that I was going to have to write that down.
  • I was forgiving: I made mistakes and led with self-forgiveness and grace which made it possible to just press on.
  • I was determined: No matter what I just stuck to the plan.
  • I played the long game: I did not focus keeping score and wins/losses or working towards an end, but rather focused on establishing habits that were sustainable forever.

Even more critical than what I did was what I DID NOT do:

  • I did not try to do everything all at once: I focused just on food, exercise would have to wait.
  • I did not take a day off: I didn’t want to feel like I was punishing myself or rewarding myself. I was just learning to live my life in a new way. You don’t get to take days off from living.
  • I did not judge myself when I was less than perfect: Good enough was good enough. I accepted that I was not perfect and could not do things perfectly.
  • I didn’t ‘game things out’: In prior attempts I would try to make sure I lost some weight every week so I would do stupid things like trying to sweat off weight the day before a weigh in. Each week would turn into a challenge to beat the last week until I couldn’t win and would quickly become exhausted from trying.

In retrospect, while I applied these concepts I don’t think I could have written them down like I did above. In the early days of my journey I didn’t really have a perspective. I just clung to those few simple things and they started to work.

The Right Time is NOW

/ UsedToGuy / 2 Comments

It was just a random workday like any other. At the time I worked out of my dining room, sitting at the end of a long table we only used twice a year. Little by little I had taken over the room to such a degree that when any holiday came I had to load our bedroom with all of the stuff that made up my ‘office’ so the room could be used for its intended use for a few hours before turning it back into my office. I remember I was the only one at home that day, usually Janet is home, writing at the kitchen table while I work in the room right next to her, but I remember on this day there was nobody around.

I don’t know where I first saw or read about it but on this particular day I saw something about the director Kevin Smith losing a bunch of weight on WeightWatchers. For some reason his story resonated with me. Maybe it’s because we are about the same age, both from New Jersey, like Star Wars, who knows…but for some reason I decided, really decided, in that moment that I was going to sign up for WeightWatchers right away and I was going to work the plan whatever that meant. I broke out my credit card, signed up and told myself all I was going to do was track everything I ate. I would do this every day for every meal no matter what–that was it. I didn’t have a weight loss goal, I didn’t know where things would lead but I knew I was tired of feeling like I did and knew I wanted to change.

Note: I really ‘love’ the way AI generates images. So great at some things and so bad at others. It is kinda fitting that ChatGPT thinks this person beginning their journey has two middle toes on their right foot, apparently hops on one foot for two steps then jumps 360 degrees and lands on their left foot (on which this person is wearing a shoe).

When I first saw these mistakes in the image I had ‘created’ my first instinct was to go fix them, but the more I looked at the picture the more it seemed appropriate. Most times when we take on a seemingly insurmountable task we aren’t ever fully up to it, we are flawed, we lack the tools we need to accomplish our goals, we are scared, we make mistakes, go in the wrong direction and sometimes have to start over.

I always had that little voice in my head giving me good reasons to put things off, now wasn’t quite, if only things were more ideal I could start, I’m too busy to make it a priority. The truth is the stars will never align, the time will never be perfect and all I know is that on this particular day I came to that realization. I took my first step and was determined to keep stepping no matter what…