Losing 100 Pounds

I have lost over 100 pounds.  I weigh over 100 pounds less than what I weighed in January of 2022.  The weight loss was intentional. A lot of friends have been curious about what I’ve done to lose weight, especially those that are interested in dropping a few pounds.  Below I will take you on my weight loss journey, sharing changes to my behaviors and what motivated me to commit to this task.

January of 2022 was a time to consider New Year’s resolutions, which almost always include a weight loss goal.  While I wanted to lose some weight, I hadn’t committed to any plan of attack. At that point, my strategy was to weigh myself every morning and hope that my weight was less than the day before.  Since I was recording my weight regularly in my phone, I was able to look back and see that my highest recorded weight was 296.5.  But I know that there were some days that my weight was higher than this, but I didn’t have the heart to record the actual weight.  There could have been some days where I was pushing 300 pounds.  My routine then is like it is now where I weigh myself in the morning with no clothes on, right before I take a shower.  I do this hoping to catch myself when I am at the lowest weight of the day.  I’m sure I was over 300 pounds at this time with clothes on and a full belly when I was asked to step on the scale at the hospital on the evening of January 18, when I broke my arm. 

One of our favorite actors is a man that was regularly described as weighing 300 pounds.  Even if I didn’t look like him, I didn’t want to be able to be compared to him in that way.  He looked overweight.  I didn’t want to look overweight.  I think most people would have never believed me if I told them I weighed as much as I did.  And while I didn’t really feel bad, I was concerned about how this affected my general health.  An immediate concern was that COVID-19 was usually harder on large people.  I had successfully avoided COVID at that time and felt that if I was smaller, I would be more likely to survive.

While my arm was in a cast, I started taking my lunch to work and eating a little better.  I ate a lot of pre-packaged salads.  I had lost a little weight by the time I was released from wearing a wrist brace on Friday, March 4.  On March 5, I bought some Slimfast premixed shakes.  On Sunday, March 6, 2022, I officially started on a Slimfast diet.  That morning I weighed 290.6 pounds. Throughout the rest of my account to this journey, I use this weight as the starting point for my diet.

The diet plan was simple.  I drank one premixed shake for breakfast and another for lunch.  I didn’t eat anything else until the evening.  At that time, we were using the Blue Apron meal delivery food service for 4 meals a week.  This was when Blue Apron had meals in a category called their Weight Watchers meal plan. Even though these meals were low calorie, they were filling and tasted good.  I was concerned that the Slimfast shakes would leave me feeling hungry, but this was never an issue. 

When I started this plan, I didn’t have a firm goal for a target weight.  I understood that a good, safe goal for losing weight is no more than 10 pounds a month. From past experience, I expected to lose a little more than that in the first month if I was having success.  At the end of March, I had lost 14 pounds.  I set my sights on losing 40 pounds on the diet, then seeing how I felt before I committed to more weight loss. Even before I got to the end of April with 23 pounds lost, the weight loss was going well enough that I was considering an even lower weight as a goal.  I seemed to remember 220 pounds being a previous weight where I felt more comfortable so something around that weight became an unofficial goal.

We took a 3 day vacation to Ashville, North Carolina at the beginning of June 2022.  While we had some bigger meals in the evening during this trip, I stuck with Slimfast shakes and meal replacement bars and managed to weigh a pound less when I got home from the trip. We took a similar strategy with a 3-day trip to Louisville in July 2022 with my weight being down 2 pounds after the trip.  By the end of July 2022, I had dropped 40 pounds but my sights had already be set for more weight loss.

A few details about the Slimfast products. When I started, I chose several Slimfast flavors in hopes that by mixing it up, the variety would help me stick with this diet.  I found the Original Creamy Milk Chocolate to be my favorite.  I also drank the French Vanilla and Strawberries and Cream Original varieties as well, but I grew tired of them.  I found the High Protein Creamy Chocolate to be unbearable, almost like drinking vegetable oil, so I steered clear of the High Protein shakes. On the other hand, their High Protein Energy Shakes have become a breakfast staple for me, the Rich Chocolate flavor providing extra caffeine for a morning boost.  I tried some of the coffee flavored energy varieties, but they didn’t work for me since I’m not a coffee drinker. I occasionally ate the Slimfast Meal Replacement bars instead of drinking a shake, but this was more for convenience when I was in a place that was difficult to keep a drink cold. Our go-to bars were the Chocolate Nut Crunch, Vanilla Almond Crunch, and Nutty Caramel & Nougat.

While between meal snacks were off-limits, I found myself lurking around the snacks in the breakroom at work after a few months, looking for something to tide me over through the afternoon.  I discovered packages of pork rinds that were slightly more than 100 calories and would occasionally get a package of them.  I justified this addition because Slimfast says men may need more calories and may add an additional shake.  Each shake is 180 calories, and this snack was less than that.  I didn’t notice a difference in the amount of weight I was losing when I added this. I also found that it also helped a desire to have a more solid food option.  I soon found other snacks that were 100 calories or less that I would keep at home and eat during my lunch break.  These have become part of my daily routine.

Not all vacations were weight loss successes. We went on a cruise in October 2022. Based on a previous cruise experience, I planned to eat whatever, whenever, completely abandoning the Slimfast plan.  My hope was to gain less than 10 pounds.  I only gained 8 and that dropped off quickly.  By that time, I had lost about 55 pounds and was feeling much better.  I also started going to the gym around this time which helped me burn more calories.

The Thanksgiving and Christmas 2022 holidays provided another challenge.  While I stayed with my Slimfast diet, there were more big meals in the evening.  I participated in a “maintain, don’t gain” challenge at work through the holiday season and this plan worked well.  Going into January 2023, I had lost over 60 pounds on the diet.

As the year began, the weight was not dropping off as quickly. In March, I celebrated my birthday month a little more than I should have. We also took another cruise, and I gained more than 10 pounds this time. But by the end of March, I was weighing around 220 pounds, but I had decided before then that I would get down to at least 210 pounds.  My strategy changed to losing 10 pounds, reassessing how I looked and felt and then trying to lose more if I felt that it was the right thing to do.

Beyond how I looked and felt, there were a couple of other thoughts that would help determine what would be my ultimate goal.  First, I thought it would be nice to weigh less than 200 pounds.  The other thought was that it would be nice to be able to say that I had lost 100 pounds.  These thoughts became major factors in my deciding where I wanted to end up.

By the time we went on a 4-day vacation in July 2023, I had already lost over 80 pounds on the diet. This trip would be more like the vacation to Asheville, North Carolina where we used Slimfast during the day.  I only gained one pound during this trip.

My wife started doing the Slimfast diet after I had some success with it.  My willingness to try it was based on her success with it in the past.  As August rolled around, she decided to go back to Weight Watchers.  For her, that diet works better.  She gets to eat more real food with that plan, not leaving her wanting like I was afraid I would feel with just the shakes.  Her change in diet would also affect me.  She noticed that Blue Apron no longer had a Weight Watchers meal plan.  They still had low calorie meal options, but these were not always Weight Watchers point friendly.  She didn’t want to use all her daily points on one meal, so we discontinued our Blue Apron subscription.  She changed to using Weight Watchers recipes which were lighter than what we had been eating.  We also ate these recipes more days of the week than the Blue Apron meals.  August 2023 would end up being the month of my diet where I saw the most dramatic weight loss.  Not only would my weight drop below 200, but I would also get to a total loss of 95.3 pounds on my diet.  When I added in the 6 pounds that I lost before I started Slimfast, I had lost over 100 pounds.

I am now transitioning to a different kind of diet. Instead of trying to eat fewer calories that I’m burning, I need to start balancing the calories burned and consumed.  At this point, I’m still using Slimfast most days but trying to find ways to add calories to that. The diet was easier to manage when it was trying to eat less, finding that balance will be a challenge but I’m up for it.

I’m also at a point where I’m getting new clothes.  There were a couple of points during the weight loss where my clothes were way too big, and I didn’t want to get many new clothes because I knew I would lose even more weight.  I am finally at a weight where I am committed to stay.  I can get clothes that fit and get rid of the ones that are too big.