8 months, 40lbs down, feeling great!

thatguy009

It was 8 months ago when I started on my weight loss journey at 233 pounds. I had just spent the previous 3+ years living a very frugal lifestyle with very little income in my first major attempt at starting a business. I survived by withdrawing money from my IRA, using some other savings that I had from my full-time job over the previous year, and of course I signed up for as many credit cards as I could while the banks still thought I had an income. I moved in with a parent and was able to live rent-free for a year. I sold my dream car and shared an old 1994 Buick that was borderline unsafe to drive.

After 3+ years of doing nothing but putting all my energy into being successful at business, arguments with business partners, running into regulatory red tape (and walls), I eventually ended up leaving the company I had started. I found myself depressed, bored, burned out, unable to sleep, obese, lethargic, bitter, and in hindsight, based on symptoms I was having, likely pre-diabetic. I wasn’t in a rush to find something new career-wise, but I knew that I was going to need to get myself healthy again to be able to have the energy to accomplish anything again or to be happy.

Unconsciously, I knew I was soon going to have to be taking insulin shots like I've seen other diabetic relatives do growing up.

I’ve had a bad diet and have been overweight for most of my life. Today I am 193 pounds and have 13 pounds to go to reach my goal (will be a total loss of 53 pounds).

I started off using MyFitnessPal (MFP) to track everything I ate and I bought a Fitbit to track my activity and linked it together with my MFP account. These two tools alone I credit most to my success and will be key to my continued success. You can’t improve something unless you can measure it. Fitbit helped me measure and improve my activity and MFP helped me measure and decrease my caloric intake. I also bought a nice scale that measures body composition (muscle %, body fat %, visceral fat), this helped me measure and see my results over time.

I’ve also increased my knowledge about nutrition and hormones, mostly through watching YouTube. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that your diet is far more important than your exercise routine. I still think exercise is important, but not because it burns a lot of calories (it doesn’t), but because of how it affects your hormones and makes you feel physically and mentally. When I exercise I actually have less food cravings, something to do with how it affects your hormones.

I'm hoping to do a follow-up post soon on what I’ve learned about nutrition and hormones.

2manyhats

Congratulations!

missh1967

That is awesome! Congrats!

craignev

That's great.....very well done!

lisaisso

Sweet! I can relate to the exercise /no cravings thing..