Probably less since I just weighed myself with my jeans on (which I normally don’t do).
One weird thing I’ve been catching myself doing is looking at my weight loss as a kind of time machine. I find myself thinking, “when was the last time I weighed this much?” quite often. 243lbs probably would put me towards the later part of my college career. I walked a great deal all over Boston but my eating habits were atrocious. but My ultimate goal of 215lbs would take me back to my second semester of college, I think. I never weighed myself so it’s all guesswork. Before college I went through a phase where I was actually too thin (and unaware of it, mind you, I still thought of myself as fat).
I spent a lot of time during the year I took off between high school and college eating at diners with Joe and I probably gradually gained some weight back during that period. It seemed an awful lot like I was suddenly 200lbs in the middle of my first semester, but it was probably more gradual than I remember. I think Chris and I making midnight trips to Supreme’s and Cappy’s for steak subs and greasy pizza probably had more of a negative effect on my weight than the bacon and eggs I was eating with Joe. Plus, I was still 18 years old and my metabolism was higher.
I think the kinds of food and the portion control have been a big factor in losing weight, but the biggest change has been the more regimented eating habits. Kim and I eat almost nothing after dinner. We eat smaller meals throughout the day and there’s little desire for me anymore to eat anything after dinner. I think I have also taken greater care to observe that when I am in the mood to snack on something it is usually because of some other thing that is completely unrelated to food. I want to eat when I am stressed out, when I am bored and (most often) when I am trying to solve a problem. The latter is a big thing, and a cup of coffee usually satisfies the urge. But if I am working on a project of some sort, it’s easier to do with something to munch on. Imagine Sherlock Holmes but without his pipe and instead a bag of barbecue Ruffles.
I know, it’s lame.
Seeing the old pictures my sister posted on her Facebook has been a real eye opener. I really don’t notice the weight loss until I see how we used to look…and then I can’t imagine I ever weighed that much. You’ve been using your weight loss to look back and compare times when you weighed the same. I’m looking back and seeing how big I really was. I don’t remember looking or feeling overweight, but when I compare pictures of myself now to how I looked then it’s obvious that I was. I don’t know how I let myself get that big, but now that I have the tools and knowledge to eat and stay healthy I hope to never be that big again. I’ve lost about 50 lbs since those pictures and am within the target weight for my height…and was able to lose most of it in a fairly short amount of time. Not saying I wouldn’t kill for a Krispy Kreme donut right now, but I know that I can’t eat them every day like I would have in the past.
i know that i felt overweight now just because of how much more energy i seem to have and how I don’t feel like an old man when I run across the street.
That’s wonderful, Justin. I was wondering when the next update would come. This is all good. I can’t do the “time machine thing” because the last time I knew my weight before starting to lose it was 2000 or 2001, I think. I remember telling a doctor in 2001 not to tell me my weight when he weighed me because “I [didn’t] want to know.” You’d think moments like that would make you wake up and decide to lose the weight and then start losing it, but no, I still waited another six years. Anyway, you lose it when you’re really ready to, and it’s great that you’re doing so well with this.