A Hopefully Inspirational Weight Loss Story

Dropping 30 pounds with minimal discipline

While I’ve never been especially fit, neither am I overweight. I’ve been 150 pounds since college. I was 150 during my wedding. My thermostat was set at 150, and although it swung up and down a few pounds, I’d guess it was me.

Until I was hospitalised at 44. The six months of sitting around in bed appeared to reset my system, and in a shockingly short period, I weighed 180. No matter what I tried, this was my new normal. Newly split, living alone, I believe I had formed new habits: staying up late, nibbling on peanut M&Ms, and having my laptop in bed with me; it was the last thing and the first thing I saw every day. I was also beginning to date.

On one such occasion, I met Katie, a lady who was a prominent SF yoga teacher, but more than that, she was a practitioner of ayurveda. Up until that time I believed that yoga glorified stretching, and I had nothing to do with it. Katie, in her charmingly effervescent southern charm, emphasised in a manner that no one had before how yoga isn’t an isolated practice but a modest physical aspect of an old set of lessons about how to live your life. Ayurvedic treatment was comprehensive and had been developed 3000 years ago in India as a unity of mind, body, and spirit. It made sense to me: I could imagine millennia of trial and error, and suddenly I could see how the yoga asana practice—those bendy, painful contortions—was merely a physical implementation of a greater philosophy. Practicing yoga without the rest of the system struck me as empty.

Katie wanted to create a book on Ayurveda for women, and I was excited by this new subject and also had some expertise in book publishing, so I volunteered to assist. A few things occurred at this time that are worth noting. I really wanted to go out with Katie, and we were getting along great after a few dates. But volunteering to assist her with her book concept appeared to alter things. “I really like you,” she told me as we drank wine in Napa, “but I don’t think we’re romantically inclined. But we'd be great together working on this book, right?”

And that was our last date. It started a two-year process of assisting in getting her book written and published. At some point she even relocated back East, but it didn’t matter much since we completed our business online and over the phone. “If you’re going to edit the manuscript,” she informed me, “you have to go through the lessons yourself. You have to establish an Ayurvedic practice.”

As Katie was now in Virginia, she requested her friend Chrisandra, another ayurvedic practitioner, to work with me in person. We met every week or two, and she not only performed yoga with me but worked with me on nutrition, sleep, and other lifestyle choices I was making. On day one, I made the following adjustments to my life:

Turning off gadgets; getting to bed sooner. It wasn’t so much about the precise time, but I had to put away my computer and phone at 9 pm, and then it didn’t matter how late I stayed up. Inexplicably, I noticed I’d fall asleep maybe an hour later if those items were gone. Which also allowed me to sleep longer.

Morning stroll as soon as I was awake. No turning on the phone or computer either. Just wake up, get dressed, and walk for a half hour. Again, no one was as stickler about the durations as the habit.

Daily yoga. Oddly, this was the smallest portion of the endeavour. Sometimes I did it. Sometimes I didn’t. I was told to meditate also, but I wasn’t.

Change my diet. This was essential for me; my eating habits were poor. I didn’t consume junk food or prepared goods, but even organic diets may be harmful. I traded out my M&Ms for almonds and grapes. Just as pleasant to munch on, but often healthier in moderation. I had instructions regarding when to consume hot items and cold things. And after examining my body type and looking through my cupboard, I ended up taking out breads and pastas and sweets and eating more meats and cheeses and greens. I had a lot of fruit.

Most of these directions were straightforward to follow, but I wasn’t sure I could hack the diet. I’m hooked on sweets. I resided in North Beach, San Francisco, Little Italy, where pizza and pasta are neighbourhood staples and where life equals sourdough. But I started to envisage eating bread the way someone stuffs a turkey—just grabbing handfuls of fluffy filling and stuffing it in, and it began to freak me out. I acknowledged what I was doing as a modified “paleo” approach, but the essential thing to me was that it wasn’t draconian—I wasn’t monitoring things, and it wasn’t especially regimented, but it was directed to meet the season and my emotions.

I weighed 182 pounds when all this started. And I decided to record my morning body weight every day and put it on a graph, along with other notes regarding exercise and food. What occurred astonished me: every day I lost weight. Because the bodily reaction was quick, it became positively reinforcing. Which made it easy to accomplish. I didn’t simply lose weight; I dropped weight regularly and meticulously. This is my chart from the first 6 months:

Also worth noting: daily swings might be large—from salt consumption and water retention primarily—but on any one day it could bounce up or down a few pounds, so I learnt not to fret about the minor blips and focus on broader patterns.

Once I hit 150, I reduced some of the food limits—not altogether, but simply handled less severely. I’d eat some dessert, but just periodically and not as much. And bread on special occasions, if it was excellent bread. I kept munching on almonds and grapes and had a weekly habit of roasting Brussels sprouts, which were also delightful to chew. And I kept up my morning walks (which I did with a camera in hand to feel moderately accomplished), but I tapered off on the yoga practice. And with remarkable ease, I maintained my original weight of 150 for the ensuing years. That is, until COVID-19.

For approximately 8 years, this was my life. But the shelter-in-place switched me back to staying up late with my computer, lots of noshing, and very little activity, and in just a few months I watched my weight creep back up, and when it hit 170, I freaked out.

This summer I decided to try again, and I went back on the exact same diet and fitness plan. And I brought back out my spreadsheet to monitor progress. It’s been three months, and evidently the identical behaviours yield the exact same consequences; here’s my 2020 graph placed against the 2012 graph: