Between 2001 and 2003 I lost 60 pounds. Between 2003 and 2009, I put back on about 15 of it. Between Feb. 2009 and now I've taken off 22 pounds, and am still going. It's a long diary, because this was actually a struggle of epic proportions. Godzilla vs. Mothra. kismet vs. The Fat Suit. And I'm sure at some level it will be a struggle for the rest of my life.
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I'm one of those people who has always been negatively defined by weight. I'm 5'7.5", and at the end of high school I weighed 160 pounds -- just a hair under a BMI of 25. Not yet fat, but in the immortal words of Bender, pushing maximum density (ah cruel youth). Every girl who wasn't built like a boy basically suffered negative treatment, but I couldn't help taking it personally. It left a mark. I identified as "fat". Pictures from the time tell a different story now. There was a totally normal-looking girl hidden in those layers of baggy clothes, the ones I thought I needed to hide my gross self.
But 10 years later, as I approached the end of grad school, I really was fat. A steady diet of sitting on my butt in a cubicle, combined with having a group of awesome foodie friends who loved to cook and eat together, got me up to a no-denying-it-that's-fat 227 pounds. On the way there I'd gone through exercise phases and got in shape a few times but the general trend was up.
So here's the story of how I reversed that trend.
Between 2001 and 2003 I lost 60 pounds. Between 2003 and 2009, I put back on about 15 of it. Between Feb. 2009 and now I've taken off 22 pounds, and am still going. It's a long diary, because this was actually a struggle of epic proportions. Godzilla vs. Mothra. kismet vs. The Fat Suit.
How did I lose the weight? By deliberately, systematically, but sometimes ill-informedly, changing my energy balance. I document my experiments here so that you can jump over all the mistakes and get straight to the payoff.
Understanding my habits
In 1999, at my fattest, I was already eating "clean". After several years of training by cooking for vegetarian, organic-food-loving, CSA-shopping housemates, home cooked food made up most of my diet, I never drank soda, I shopped the outer edge of the grocery store (or preferably, the organic farmer's market). I didn't do a lot of snacking between meals, I didn't haunt the vending machines for m&ms. So it wasn't just going to be a matter of an easy little lifestyle change like cutting out the soda or snacks -- all of those "just do this one thing" tips were worthless for me and still are.
I was fortunate, in a way, that my job suddenly took me across the country in late 1999, away from my friends and the food-centric social life we had developed. A few weeks into my new life, I noticed that I'd lost a few pounds without really trying, and I decided that meant I could probably lose more.
But after a little while, I got stuck. I'd gotten into a few exercise activities. I was doing FIRM workouts (a classic aerobics-plus-weights series that I can not recommend highly enough) a few times a week. I thought that should be enough for me to make progress. I felt like I was making a lot of effort. What I left out of the equation, though, was my largely sedentary job. I was making a lot of effort -- for one hour per day. Not enough effort to justify what I was eating.
Minimizing consumption
I knew the basic equation. Calories out >> calories in. I knew the lower limits -- one shouldn't eat less than 1200-1400 calories per day or starvation mode kicks in. What I didn't know was how much I was burning or how much I was eating. The latter I could track, and I could limit it to the bare minimum. I started out with Weight Watchers, using their point system. That got me part of the way, maybe 10 or 15 pounds, I forget now.
I found that the bare minimum was a miserable place to live. I was hungry all the time, no matter which foods I chose. I was edgy all the time. I was prone to suddenly "need" to eat a lot because I felt so physically miserable, ending up with what I know now was probably a 3000-3500 calorie day every week or so just to compensate for all the 1300 calorie days. The net trend was still weight loss, but every step of it hurt. And the Weight Watchers ladies were smarmy and there was a lot of Christian stuff that didn't sit right with me, so I quit.
At this point in my life I knew nothing about any Harris-Benedict formulas or that I was probably just making my calorie deficit too large to be maintained comfortably. Using the HB formula, looking back at the weight I was carrying and my activity level at that time and what I found out about WW when I converted points to calories, I was probably trying to maintain a 1000-calorie per day deficit. No wonder I felt like crap on Weight Watchers.
Maximizing burn
Next I turned to FitDay, which is a free tracker I would recommend. I tracked everything I ate in calories instead of in points. And I decided that since subsisting on the minimum had been painful for me, I was instead going to find a level of eating that I could deal with comfortably and just jack up my activity to the maximum possible, to compensate. I could feel reasonably good eating between 1750 and 2000 calories per day, so that's what I did. I was taking dance classes (belly dance and African dance) 4 or 5 days a week, and doing FIRM workouts the other days. So on top of that, I decided, I would get up and walk briskly every day at 6 a.m. I mapped out a couple of routes that took 45 minutes to an hour. I turned my brain off, and I power-walked in the dawn, and I lost the rest of the pounds a few at a time until I got to a weight I could live with (167). But my whole life outside work was pretty much exercise -- walking in the morning, dancing in the evening, and sedentary work in between.
Of course, such a lifestyle isn't always maintainable. And so for the next several years when I had enough time to exercise and focus on weight maintenance, I'd maintain or lose, and when I got stressed and had other things to deal with I'd gain. I'd max at about 184 and realize I needed to do something, and work myself back down towards 170. But I could never get any lower.
Striving for balance
This spring I decided I was going to figure it out once and for all. I was skeptical of the estimated calorie burn values I was getting for certain activities on the SparkPeople website (another free calorie tracker I would recommend). So I bought a Bodybugg. The Bodybugg lives on your arm all day and night, and it reports, fairly accurately, how many calories you are actually burning, so you can adjust your eating or your activity to make sure you have a calorie deficit at the end of the day. I quickly found out that my 42 minute sessions on the elliptical did not burn 500 calories, as the Spark database told me, but closer to 300. I found out that ballroom dancing was good exercise, but not as good as I (or Spark) thought. So what I thought was enough exercise to give me a calorie deficit wasn't, at all, and that's why I was stalled. And I found out that the best possible way to crank off a lot of calories in a short time was to run.
For exactly six months now I've been shooting for a 500 calorie a day deficit. Sometimes missing, sometimes exceeding, but over all, it's been enough for me to lose 22 pounds since February. That's 67 below my 1999 maximum, and the same as I weighed at the end of high school. As I've gotten closer to my ultimate goal (about 150 pounds) and I've gotten fitter, my calorie burn for the same activities has gone down noticeably.
In summary, here's what I think I've learned about weight loss, and why I think so many people have trouble and frustration over it.
1. It is not possible for me to know if my calorie balance is right by "instinct".
That's just me. Maybe naturally skinny people can and that's what makes them different. But if you are fat, chances are you're overestimating what you need systematically, maybe only a few calories a day on average if your weight is drifting up slowly. Just 10 extra calories a day will put on a pound per year; you know what 100 extra will do.
2. The exercise you are doing does not burn as many calories as you think it does.
On a rare day when I take an all day dance workshop with several hours of classes and then go to a dance in the evening, I might burn 3100 calories.
On a day when I do 3 miles around the neighborhood jogging most of the way, and then go to a high-energy zumba class after work, or combine one of those things with a couple hours of yard work, I might burn 2700 calories.
On a day when I just do that run, or just do the zumba class, I might get to 2400.
On a day when I just get in a walk, or just a ballroom dance lesson, I can barely hit my 2250 calorie burn goal.
2a. Or even if it does, it doesn't make up for a largely sedentary lifestyle.
And on a day when I just sit at my desk most of the day and don't force walks by parking my car in the faraway deck, I'll burn 1800 -- if I'm lucky. Not that much more than the 1460 Bodybugg says I'd burn lying perfectly still all day.
3. The food you are eating has more calories than you think it does.
I've been holding to about 1700-2100 calories per day for years now (lapses aside) and I can tell you one thing for sure. No serving of food that Americans are accustomed to eating is the right size.
What you are being served in restaurants is probably at least double what you need to eat, triple if you go to the chain-restaurant gutbuster places. What you casually put on a paper plate at a friend's barbecue is probably several hundred calories if you're being careful and well over a thousand if you really pile the plate. Over the years I swear that people have gotten more and more extreme with what they think is "enough" to offer a guest. If you're trying to keep calories down, any seconds anywhere are right out of the question. All you can eat buffets -- even delicious vegetarian Indian ones -- are the devil's playground. I know this because I measure and I track even when I've been "bad".
At home, I got rid of all my "normal-sized" plates and bowls. For dinner I use salad plates and I've bought a lot of what people probably think of as condiment bowls for servings of cereal and the like. They hold about a cup. Instead of the big mugs and glasses that are so popular these days, I drink any non-water beverages out of some heavy duty little old-style drinking glasses. They hold exactly a cup. That's about right. It's helping me learn to estimate what I should eat outside the house, too.
How low can you go?
The last few days I've been seeing numbers that start with "15-" on the scale. 158.5-159.5 That's HUGE for me. I did some back of the envelope calculations and figured that somewhere between 148 and 153, I'll be "all right". My bodyfat percentage will be around 22-23 if I don't lose my current lean mass. On charts I've seen, that's in the "fit" range for women though not in the "athlete" range (10-12% is "essential fat"). It's a big challenge to get there -- I'll be digging into a fat stratum that's basically been on my body for over 20 years. Some of the things that I've read here suggest that now is when I should start to expect to take off weight more slowly (my body has been very resistant to dipping below 160 for the last couple of months) and should add more weight training to help keep on the lean mass.
I don't promise anything like a "series" here, but I've got a couple of other diaries in me -- look next weekend for one on the calorie value of everyday tasks to motivate you to keep moving even if it's just to feed the cat.
And if you have a diary in you, well -- put 'er here. Or put 'er in the comments, actually, and I'll put 'er here.
October 26
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - ???
October 27
Tues AM - ??
Tues PM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 18)
October 28
Weds AM - ???
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock
October 29
Thurs AM - A DC Wonk
Thurs PM - ???
October 30
Fri AM - ???
Fri PM ???
October 31
Sat AM - ???
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 19)
November 1
Sun AM - kismet -- the calorie value of everyday tasks
Sun PM - ???