I am not sure I have much to teach anyone but hopefully some will find this post inspirational. I have been large most of my life and have hit 300 lbs twice. Once in high school and again some time after graduating college.
In June 2022, just before my 29th birthday, I did a lot of research into the best ways to lose weight and keep it off. Honestly, all of the medical literature really depressed me. So I took a second look and decided to design my own program. It has worked phenomenally for me.
Last year I mostly maintained. A bit up, a bit down. But I was not counting calories, I was not consistent with my workouts, I was really pretty relaxed about everything for the year.
Below is the program I made that got my weight down:
My rules were simple, and I'm going back to them with a few changes. If you're 300+ lbs and looking to slim down here is what I did:
Determine your basal metabolic rate (BMR)
there are online calculators that are pretty decent
If you want to get more precise, get an InBody scan
If you want to get even more precise, go to a sports clinic
Only ever eat your BRM
Going under causes you to get hungry & hurts metabolism
Going over will slow weight loss
No other rules about eating
The goal in my system is weight loss, nothing else
Only do light exercises
Biking, walking, swimming, whatever exactly doesn't matter
Don't go into Zone 3 exercise. Going into "Zone 3" exercise will spike hunger and the trade off in calorie loss is not worth it
You can know your weight loss each month ahead of time
~1 lbs / month for every 100 calories you burn over your BMR through the light exercise
Modulate weight loss by doing more light exercise
Don't go under your BMR to lose weight, instead increase exercise time
This is the safest way because it does not spike hunger nor detrimentally effect your metabolism
For every 5 lbs you lose, reduce your calorie limit by 50 calories
my program does not promise "health" it promises sustainable weight loss that you won't quit.
In the process you'll end up making better choices over time almost by accident. it becomes a positive feedback loop.
slow and steady wins the race. Keeping my eyes on my personal goals helps a lot.
Now, I am focused on muscle gain, Vo2Max increases, and tighter nutrition. But if I tried to focus on all of these from the start, I would have failed - like I had so many times since I was 8 years old.
I need to use some new techniques as I'm more healthy than I have been in a long long time, and I even finished my first ever 5K last month!
