The morning of September 26, 2011, I stepped on a bathroom scale for the first time in longer than I care to remember. The number that showed up was a lot higher than I’d expected.
This isn’t going to be some melodrama about how I made a decision then and there to change my ways. That decision had been made quite some time ago. This day was my initial weigh in to see what I was starting with. I’d already figured out where I wanted to be and what I was going to do to get there. This morning, just over two months later, my morning weigh-in was 40lb less than it was when I started. It’s a pretty good start but there’s a long way to go.
I have a background (though informal) in sports nutrition and strength training. These are subjects I’d been interested in for a really long time. I read articles and studies and dipped my toes into many pools in an effort to see what worked best for me. The method I used isn’t for everyone and I won’t go into details. If you want to know about it, pick up The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook by Lyle McDonald (not affiliated, I just love this book).
Since this isn’t a blog about metabolic physiology, I’ll save details. However, it needs to be mentioned that “weight loss” isn’t necessarily “fat loss”. You can hack off a leg and lose weight. Just because the scale moves doesn’t mean you’re dropping good weight. You need other metrics to compare against to make sure you’re doing it right. The only reason I’m using the scale number is because I can compare that against the rate of loss and ballpark changes to body composition.
Fat loss is a two-part situation. I have a target I’m shooting for I’m doing is something that everyone can do as long as they have the willpower and the understanding that permanent change, whether it be weight loss, quitting smoking, or anything else requires a change in the behavior that got them into whatever situations they happened to be. Anyone can do anything short term. It’s making it stick that’s the hard part.
There are two sorts of goals you can work toward. If you want to take a trip somewhere, you save some money (or rack up credit card debts…shame on you!), book your plane and hotel, and enjoy the vacation. If, however, you want to lose fat and keep it gone, you have to figure out what to do after you hit your goal to make sure it stays that way. Going back to your previous behavior will eventually put you back where you started. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always gotten.
There are a lot of things to say about this since it’s on a lot of minds, especially going into the New Year. As I check in with updates about my own progress, there will be discussions on some of those as well.
