I decided I needed to lose weight after a bit of a ‘weight shock’. The challenge everyone faces, assuming no personal health issues, is adopting an approach that you can maintain both during the attempts to lose weight and when you’ve reached your target.
I went with a method that some online advice discounts, but I strongly felt it would be the right one for me. Hopefully.
The Alaska shock
The Alaska shock was simple. I couldn’t fit into my 38″ waist Craghopper trousers. It wasn’t that they were a bit tight; there was no way I could get the button to reach the hole. Not even close. I needed to dump them or buy some of those little extender things you can get when you don’t want to throw away good clothes due to an expanding waist.
The scales were also tracking close to 17st. This caught me by surprise. I couldn’t do much about this heading into the Alaska trip, so I purchased some 40″ waist Craghopper trousers for Alaska and vowed to get back down.
I was hovering a full stone lower during my 2019 trips, but that was all before COVID and lockdowns.
My personal challenge
My challenges around losing weight are simple: –
- I compensate for things by eating.
- I lack imagination about what to eat.
- I begrudge purchasing, preparing and cooking food.
- I can be partial to the odd takeaway.
The last time I faced this challenge was during the nebulous period after my divorce, as I fell into eating quick foods and takeaways that put the weight on. This challenge seems to have come from lockdown and working from home.
Any plan for getting my weight down needed to address these challenges.
Weight loss is depressing
I detest getting on the scales and looking down forlornly to see if I’ve lost pounds. You can feel like you’re making great strides, but you check the scales, and it’s soul-crushing. The amount of weight you’re told to lose is also daunting.
According to my BMI, I am in the red and obese. I don’t associate myself with being obese when I look at myself, but according to science, I’m a basket case regarding my weight. Also, I should weigh 9st 6lb to 12st 11lb, which is ludicrously smaller than I am now. It’s so small compared to what I am now I can’t even conceivably imagine what that would look like, never mind the effort necessary to lose that many pounds.
So, I chose to cheat and not focus on how much I weighed. I guess the local doctor’s surgery would tut and shake their head in dismay, but I wanted to set myself up for success. I decided to adopt a strategy designed to address my weaknesses and strategies that work.
Money v Imagination v Time
Since I lack the imagination and begrudge the time to eat as best as possible, I need to compensate for this with money; it’s the only option. If imagination, time and money were points on a triangle, since two points on that triangle are weak, the third needs to be stronger.
I found a meal delivery service that didn’t just deliver meal ingredients with instructions on how to prep them but delivered freshly prepared meals. I just needed to heat them. They would have all the advantages of microwave meals but all the health benefits of having some non-existent servant giving me a plate of fresh food to heat up.
This was the first time a Facebook advert worked. Lions Prep appeared by magic, and I signed up for their 5-day, 10-meal plan for £85 a week. It’s not cheap. I’m sure people who prepare their food themselves are looking on in horror, but I would not prepare the food.
I recommend Lions Prep if you want to compensate for other factors with money and convenience.
Reducing calorie count
Any set of prescriptive rules that had to be followed religiously or felt like a set of constraints would inevitably be broken. I use an analogy in life: it’s like navigating by the stars rather than Google Maps. It applies to so much in my career and life. I needed this approach. A set of guiding metrics I could navigate, not slavish rules I had to follow.
I decided to use the calorie-tracking facilities of my Fitbit Charge 5.
I set the target, and it told me I needed to eat 500 fewer calories a day. I’d combine that with the Lions Prep meals and upping my exercise by getting more steps in and zone minutes.
Calories are a blunt metric, but I figured it was still a good plan because –
- The type of food is essential, but Lions Prep helps
- The individual impact of calories I’d have to ignore
If I’m constantly tracking lower and not being sedentary I felt the blunt instrument was a good way to manage the navigation. It’s not like I was going to starve myself.
A six-week success
September was a key month. I would navigate this plan and do 3km daily, a goal outlined online for September. I figured I might still be okay if I still had a takeaway a week.
I kept to at least 500 fewer calories than my recommended intake. I did 4.49km on average a day. I lost 2lb over the month. I found this disappointing. Even though I knew the pounds would come off slowly as per the Fitbit plan it was still soul-crushing.
This is why these endeavours normally fail, but this time, I continued.
In six weeks, I could get my 38″ Craghopper trousers back on. Realistically, I didn’t have to squeeze in and hold my breath. I could comfortably wear these 38″ Craghopper trousers again. I also found my 40″ pairs were almost at a drop-to-my-knees state without a belt even coming out of being washed before being forced to expand a bit by wearing them.
This was a success I could feel slightly smug over.
Why the plan works
Why did this work? Because it doesn’t feel like effort. Okay, there is some effort, as it still takes effort to avoid purchasing takeaway food, especially when my energy levels are low or I’m momentarily sick of my circumstances.
The navigation of the calorie count is both enough of a game and a learning exercise that I find it interesting. It’s been surprisingly easy to keep well under my calorie count if I stick to the Lions Prep meals since two amount to 1000 to 1200 calories daily. I tend to track to around burning 2.5K calories or more a day. Fitbit keeps this as a constant calculation compared to the calories I’m taking in.
It’s a daily navigation, then a weekly one, and I can handle that.
I’ve faced my challenges. Too many bars of chocolate here or a takeaway there, but since this is a navigation and coming off the route momentarily doesn’t cause the whole set-up to break down, the process survives.
I guess this plays into another analogy I like to use a lot in life: trust the process.
And, Finally…
I’m going to continue with the plan. I get bored with the Lions Prep meals occasionally, but that’s not the meals; I get bored with repetition. I tried an alternative prepared meal service for a short while as it was half the cost, but why it was half the cost was immediately apparent. They delivered what tasted like Supermarket ready meals, which tasted bland at best.
I know a health professional, and my BMI tells me I should lose more weight, but I will continue not obsessively to track it and concentrate on waist size alone. Simply because if I can keep to a 38″ waste, I’d be happy, and if I can go to a 36″ waist, I’d feel amazing. I have no idea what a 36″ waist would put me at, and I don’t care. At that point, I’d be quite small; I’m not sure I’d want to be smaller.
The next challenge will be winter, when avoiding a sedentary life is substantially harder.