Mission Accomplished: 112 Pounds Lost in 342 Days

On Sunday, March 18 of last year, my wife and I were having a late lunch at Five Guys.  We’d heard their burgers were really great, so we decided to give them a try.  Though the food was very tasty at first, as we sat uncomfortably staring at the crumbled remains of a small mountain of fries, we both decided the time had come for us to stop eating so poorly and to start losing weight.

I was always a tall and very, VERY skinny kid growing up.  Despite eating just about everything and anything pretty much non-stop throughout my teen years, I was never able to put on any bulk, maxing out at 185 lbs. during my senior year of high school.  Being so thin really limited my interscholastic basketball career, though not nearly as much as did my utter lack of anything remotely resembling athletic ability or natural talent.

Well, soon came college and beer – lots and lots of beer – along with many late night runs to the drive-thru.  And with each passing year came more added weight.  Then there was marriage, followed by fatherhood and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.  Eventually, the skinny kid who couldn’t hit 200 pounds would far surpass 300 and come alarmingly close to the same zip code as 400.  Something had to change, or I risked the same fate that befell my father, who died well before his time at age 59.

So that day a little less than a year ago at Five Guys, I finally decided that I had to take immediate and drastic action.  I downloaded a calorie counting and weight tracking app for my phone called Lose It!, and began inputting every single thing that passed my lips.  At first, I limited myself to slightly more than 1,000 calories per day by eating a 180-calorie protein-based meal replacement bar for breakfast and dinner.  The only meal I ate each day for those first few weeks was at lunch, and usually something along the lines of a grilled chicken salad.  (Eventually, I’d adjust to 1,500 calories a day with the bar only at breakfast and meals for lunch and dinner.)

The pounds really came off fast for a while there.  My first weigh-in on Monday, March 19 was 362 lbs.  Less than two weeks later, when the calendar changed to April, I had lost more than 16 lbs, dropping to 345.6.  With each passing month, I continued to drop weight at an exciting rate.  I lost 19 lbs. in April, 14.2 in May, 10.8 in June, and 10.2 in August.  By the time my birthday rolled around on September 1, I was within striking distance of my initial goal, which was 275.

I finally reached that initial goal of 275 on October 3, but realized I still needed to lose more weight, so I revised my goal to 250.  Though I continued to lose weight from that point, it became a much slower process with many more plateaus throughout.  My biggest fear was being able to successfully make it through the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays without gaining back weight, since that time of year is so focused on eating.  Fortunately (and somewhat amazingly), I not only didn’t gain weight during the holiday season, I LOST almost 6 pounds!

It was then that I realized what started as a diet had become a permanent change in eating habits.  For the first time in my adult life, I had succeeded in achieving a healthier lifestyle.  And though the rate of weight loss has slowed considerably, I eventually managed to reach my revised goal of 250 lbs. when I stepped on the scale this morning.  For one of the very few times in my entire life, I really felt a true sense of accomplishment.  I’ve lost 112 pounds in slightly less than a year…and I am going to make every effort to make sure I don’t gain any of it back!