I am 47 years old and I have watched a lot of diets go by.
In no particular order:
Grapefruit Diet, SouthBeach Diet (tried it), Atkins Diet & other Low Carb, Nutrisystem (tried it), Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers (tried it, it works, sort of), OverEaters Anonymous (not really a diet), Curves (not a diet), Inflammation Diet, Heart Healthy Diet, Sugarbusters, Slimfast, Cabbage diet, Zone diet, Blood type diet, Paleo, Keto, Mediterranean diet, CICO – Calories In Calories Out (tried it, works, sort of)
These are not all of the diets, but these are the ones that I looked into at one point or another. Obviously, I didn’t stick with any of them and any weight I did lose, I gained back plus some. I was not a terrible yo-yo dieter, though, let’s be clear. I knew, on some level, that I wasn’t ready or didn’t believe they would work, or figured I would gain it back, so for most of my life, I just sat back and watched. And steadily gained weight.
I started out as a chubby kid. I was chubby off and on throughout my childhood & teen years. I will dig out a photo of me from the 80s at some point and show you that what was chubby then, I would have been more than happy to be the rest of my life, but I did not know it then. I was told I was fat. By everyone. The standard was pretty thin back then, and my family… wasn’t great. I weighed 135 to 140 pounds when I was 17, but in my family, a normal size for women was size 2 or 4, not size 8. They are vain people, and they were always dieting. A lot of them were, off and on, size 0. And what do I know? Maybe that was normal and the way it should have been. All I know is that I was told, and was convinced, that I was huge and hideous. I gained 100 pounds before I even realized what was happening.
When you grow up hiding your body, wearing loose clothes, eating in secret, you frankly just don’t notice a few pounds. With the scrutiny and ridicule I was under, I ate when no one was looking lest I be criticized or mocked or punished. That was at 135 pounds. Imagine their chagrin, when I was in the 200’s as a young adult. I was told I was too fat for a birthday cake when I was 25.
Ah well. The sins of the past.
I have gained weight every year of my life since forever. I have never had a net loss, but to be fair, I never really tried.
Listen, one thing is for sure, when you hate yourself, it isn’t so easy to diet.
Also, there was a point, when my weight was in the 200s when I was convinced that my body had taken over and it was no longer in my control. I truly did not eat that much more than everyone else (I thought) and yet my body gained weight. Today, I think there was some truth to that. I did consistently eat too many calories, for sure. I am not in denial about that. I chose what was easy at all times. Easy is not calorie-cheap, most of the time.
That brings us to today.
I do believe that CICO is a fundamental tenet of weight gain, loss, and maintenance, and I am committed to tracking my calories (in theory) for the rest of my life. Even if, by some miracle, I actually lost a lot of weight, I think I have to count calories in order to not continue to gain. So that will be a given, though out this process. I will either count my calories or eat foods whose calories I already know. Period.
Also, to be clear, NOT losing weight is not an option. I have too many health problems. Mine are not the obvious ones (yet). So far, of the ones you frequently hear about, my heart is fine, my blood pressure is fine (although it is starting to creep up), I am not diabetic. I am, however, pre-diabetic, having testing several times outside the normal range. My last A1C was 5.7. It could be much worse given the amount of abuse my body has suffered, but diabetes is still inevitable. As is high blood pressure. I have PCOS so I came out of puberty already insulin resistant. Being super morbidly obese has only exacerbated that, obviously.
No, my health problems are things like always catching every bug that passes by – last year I had the flu, badly, TWICE, back to back. Each time it turned into bronchitis and took 6 weeks to get over. Then later that year, I had pneumonia (with a compressed lung). That took IDK how long to get over. Months. Then I found myself with an abscess in a bad spot and while no one told me it was due to my weight, I know. It required surgery in a hospital and general anesthesia. It had a several week recovery – I honestly am still recovering from that one – and I ended up needing to buy some medical equipment in order to bathe properly. I was too tired, too weak, and too sore to not sit in the shower. And frankly, I couldn’t reach everything.
I am pretty much a trooper, but I did break down in the shower one day from all the trouble I was having just tending to basic hygiene after that surgery. I think that was the moment when I decided that I had to do something. And not a casual, “oh, I should really do something”, but more like, “omfg, I do not want to be immobilized and disabled for the rest of my short life until I die from weight-related complications.”
I still sort of sat on it for a few weeks.
Wow, this is really long and I haven’t even gotten to the good part.
So, anyhoo – I will be doing CICO.
I also think that I rely way too much on complex carbs and sugar, so I will be making a concerted effort to manage those better.
Lastly, a week ago I started Intermittent Fasting.
I am currently doing either 16:8 (16 hours of fasting, eating during an 8 hour window) or 18:6 (18 hours of fasting, eating during a 6 hour window). If you have never heard of it, it probably sounds crazy or like an eating disorder in the making. I do not think it is either of those things.
I already skip breakfast a lot of the time, and when I eat it, tend to be hungry all day. With Intermittent Fasting (IF), I skip breakfast on purpose. Yes, I tend to be hungry all day (naturally, I am not eating for 18 hours), but I am hungry all day with more calories reserved for lunch and dinner and less opportunity to go over my calories for the day.
There are allegedly other benefits to intermittent fasting: going into ketosis for several hours a day causing my body to burn fat stores, and autophagy (the body’s natural repair cycle). I don’t know how one actually tests any of this stuff or if there have been any real, long-term, in-depth studies to the effects of fasting on fat loss or on healing the body, but I’ve read a few things about IF and the one thing it offers that no other diet has ever offered up to now: tackling the insulin resistance and my body’s natural desire to regain the weight I lose. Those are very real things that my body needs to address.
So here’s my actual plan:
Lower carbs, CICO, and IF 16:8, minimum.
I am pretty sure that I can credit the IF for this past week’s losses. There is NO WAY I could stay under my calories if I was eating all day. It is actually a hell of a lot easier to NOT EAT (for an allotted time) than it is to try to make good & healthy choices all day long. I need that 16 or 18 hours to figure out what I am going to eat and how that’s going to fall in my daily CICO.
xo
Fatulous 