Do you ever just feel hopeless?

@daniels8186 I know the feeling. Feels like a losing battle: damned if you do, damned if you don't...

That's how I was feeling up until February last year - after decades of gaining and losing and regaining (weightwatchers was the worst for me: I put on weight on WW!), each time putting on more weight than I lost previously, and reading up on the research and realising that about 90% of people who lose weight will regain it within a couple years, and there's not a single scientifically proven approach that gets better odds... it's not just that we are "failing" but our doctors, scientists, government health departments don't actually have answers that hold up when scientifically tested...

I knew I needed to lose the weight, because it was making me feel sick and tired. I had no energy, had mystery pains, and a bunch of other unpleasant side effects - not to mention I was still gaining even more weight.

The thing that worried me most was about "regain"... because I had lost weight before, I knew I could do it, but it always seemed to go on faster and get even bigger... and the endless cycle of losing, gaining, losing, gaining, was exhausting and demoralising.

Anyway, I decided I had to just start, and I knew it would take me about a year to lose the excess weight, and that meant I had a year to work out a maintenance plan to keep it off.

From Feb 2019 to Jan 2020 I lost over 120lbs. More importantly, I spent this time researching, thinking, planning how to make things as easy as possible to maintain for life. Its too early to say I've succeeded - its only been 4 months of maintenance so far (can't really claim victory until maintain a healthy weight long term over many years), but what I have prioritised:

1) Building healthy habits. In the past I had thought about things like eating healthy, exercising, sleeping well, stress management etc, but always as individual tasks. When you create a habit, while it can be hard initially to create, in time it becomes such a normal part of your everyday life you don't have to think about it, you just do it (like brushing your teeth).

2) Start simple, with one change. Once you've mastered that, you can add on a new change. If you try to do too much too soon, all that change is too difficult, and will likely result in crash & burn.

For me: focusing on eating really well (according to my way of eating) is the core and top priority of my approach. It is only over time that I've added in other things on top of this.

Exercise is good for health, but research has shown it's not so great at fuelling weight loss - people who exercise tend to feel hungrier, and then eat more, and/or make poorer food choices, sometimes because they think they have "earned it" and they can overestimate the impact of exercise compared to underestimating the impact of their food. It doesn't matter what sounds like it will work on paper (increased exercise = more calories out) if human behaviour in practice leads to different results.

Additionally, a new intense exercise regime can cause inflammation and water retention, which can increase your scale weight, which is really demoralising when you're doing everything you can and can't see "results". (You've given an example: you're been doing heaps of exercise, yet gained weight. Perhaps this is water weight, or inflammation, or muscle growth. The scales can't tell the difference).

So initially, my only exercise was low impact walking, and it was only after I felt confident in my food habits and had lost a lot of weight before I increased my exercise.

3) Sustainability. I made sure I didn't start anything that I though was unsustainable. In the past I have at times done "challenges" which work for 3 months when you focus completely on them, exercising intensely for 1+ hrs every day, counting every calorie, weighing every mouthful, etc... but none of these were sustainable long term... sooner or later something else in life would change the balance and these high-effort-time-consuming activities would sooner or later fall by the wayside.

I felt I had to make things as easy as possible, as fool-proof as possible, so I could stick to things not just in the short term but for the longer term.

One example of this, is that my primary regular exercise does not require special equipment or for me to go somewhere special like a gym. I aim to get up every morning and do any kind of exercise (yoga, running, a walk, bodyweight HIIT), and I succeed at this most days. When I used to make it my goal to go to the gym 3 days a week for an intense workout, I could never keep it up in the long term.

4) Question everything. I rethought everything I believed I knew about health and weight, as it clearly hadn't been working for me in the past. While everyone is different, what I recommend is The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung - or watch his free videos on youtube and read his free blog on The Fasting Method website (ignore the paid membership option, unless you want that).

He outlines a theory of weight loss where, in a nutshell, you eat low-carb-healthy-fat wholefoods and intermittent fast. These are all big complex ideas - which sound weird, scary, extreme on first instance - and he goes into detail about the scientific theories he is basing his advice on. He's also not didactic: he admits there's a lot we don't know for sure, there hasn't been enough solid science testing these ideas, and you have to work things out for yourself about what exactly works for you (while working with your own doctor).

He also doesn't expect anyone to be perfect: it's okay to eat birthday cake on a special occasion, the problem is when we are eating highly-processed high-carb foods regularly. (Or at least, it is a problem for most people who struggle with weight. Some people might be able to eat differently, but they are generally not the ones who are overweight).

It helped me lose 120 lbs in 11 months, maintain for the past four months, reverse my insulin resistance, stop my snoring problem, and basically I've lost all those bad side effects I had when I was overweight. I have so much more energy and get good sleep!

5) Good doctor. I did everything under supervision of a good doctor I trusted. If I had a doctor who said to me what yours has said to you, I would fire them and find someone else. (There is no scientific evidence that weightwatchers is effective for losing weight, and even if it works for some people, it clearly doesn't work for everyone - and you already tried it for 6 months! No doctor should be pushing it on their patient).

My doctor ran various tests, diagnosed me with insulin resistance and a sluggish thyroid, gave me a prescription for Metformin, and we did blood tests about every 2-3 months to check my vitamin & mineral levels as well as see if this approach was successfully reducing my insulin resistance & sluggish thyroid AND ensure it wasn't causing any harm.


The above may or may not work for you. But it did for me (so far! touch wood!) Ultimately, you have to keep trying different things until you find what works for you. It is hard, and that sucks, but what is the alternative?