I Failed to Lose Weight Ten Times. The Eleventh Time, Something Changed

The first time I tried to lose weight, I was twenty-six years old and standing under fluorescent lights in a CVS on Lexington Avenue, holding a bottle of appetite suppressant that promised, in cheerful blue letters, Lose up to 10 pounds in one week.

I believed it.

Not because I was naïve, but because belief was easier than disappointment.

I bought the bottle, carried it home in a plastic bag, and placed it on my kitchen counter like an object of ceremony. That night, I swallowed the first pill with a glass of water and stood there afterward, waiting.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened.

But I went to bed convinced that tomorrow would be different.

It wasn’t.

My name is Daniel Wu. I live in Queens, New York, in a fourth-floor walk-up that smells faintly of fried onions and laundry detergent. I work as an IT support technician in Midtown. I fix things that freeze, crash, or refuse to respond.

Computers are honest that way. When something is wrong, they show you.

Bodies are quieter.

At my heaviest, I weighed 298 pounds.

I did not reach that number suddenly. I arrived there gradually, through years of small surrenders.

Extra takeout after long days.

Skipping walks because it was raining.

Eating because it filled time, because it filled silence.

Because it filled something I could not name.

The first diet lasted nine days.

On the tenth day, I ordered a large pepperoni pizza and ate it alone, sitting on the floor in front of the television. I remember the grease soaking through the cardboard, the salt and heat and relief.

I remember the shame arriving immediately afterward, like a bill delivered to the table.

Failure number one.

The second diet was keto.

The third was intermittent fasting.

The fourth was meal replacement shakes.

The fifth was calorie counting.

The sixth was running.

The seventh was personal training.

The eighth was a mobile app that sent encouraging notifications.

The ninth was a twelve-week transformation challenge at a gym where mirrors covered every wall.

The tenth was starvation disguised as discipline.

Each attempt began with hope and ended with quiet collapse.

People think failure is dramatic.

It isn’t.

Failure is ordinary.

Failure is eating one cookie and deciding the day is ruined.

Failure is missing one workout and deciding the week is lost.

Failure is looking in the mirror and deciding nothing will ever change.

The worst part wasn’t the physical discomfort.

It was the erosion of trust in myself.

Every time I promised I would change and didn’t, something inside me grew quieter.

Eventually, I stopped making promises.

It was safer that way.

The turning point came on an airplane.

It was a flight from New York to Chicago. I was visiting a client for work.

I boarded early, hoping to avoid attention.

My seat was 17A, a window.

The man in 17B arrived a few minutes later. He was tall, wearing a navy suit and the expression of someone already tired.

He looked at me, then at the seat, then back at me.

He didn’t say anything.

But he sighed.

It was a small sound.

But it contained everything.

The entire flight, I sat rigid, my body pulled inward as if I could occupy less space through effort alone. My shoulder pressed against the window. My arm stayed fixed at my side.

When the flight ended, I stood slowly, my back stiff, my legs numb.

I walked off the plane carrying something heavier than my suitcase.

That night, in the hotel room, I stood in front of the mirror.

Hotel mirrors are unforgiving. They show everything.

I looked at myself for a long time.

Not with anger.

With exhaustion.

“I can’t keep living like this,” I said out loud.

It was the first honest thing I had said in years.

The eleventh attempt did not begin with motivation.

It began with acceptance.

I did not buy supplements.

I did not join a gym.

I did not announce my plans.

I simply went for a walk.

One block.

That was all.

I walked to the corner and back.

It took four minutes.

When I returned to my apartment, nothing had changed.

Except I had kept a promise.

A small one.

But it was mine.

The next day, I walked again.

This time, two blocks.

My knees hurt. My breathing was uneven.

But I finished.

The third day, it rained.

I almost didn’t go.

This was how the other ten failures began. Excuses that sounded reasonable.

Instead, I put on a jacket and walked anyway.

Rain soaked through the fabric. My shoes squeaked against the pavement.

But I walked.

Not because I was strong.

Because I was tired of being weak.

Weight loss, I learned, is not about intensity.

It is about consistency.

Intensity is exciting.

Consistency is boring.

And boring is sustainable.

I did not eliminate pizza.

I did not eliminate dessert.

I did not eliminate anything.

I simply paid attention.

I ate slower.

I stopped when I was full.

Not when the plate was empty.

This was harder than any diet.

Because it required honesty.

The first ten pounds took three months.

Three months for ten pounds.

The old me would have quit.

This is too slow, I would have said.

This isn’t working.

But this time, something was different.

I wasn’t chasing speed.

I was building trust.

Trust that I would not abandon myself.

No one noticed at first.

Which was good.

Change is fragile in its early stages.

Attention can break it.

Six months passed.

Twenty-five pounds gone.

My clothes fit differently.

Stairs felt easier.

My reflection looked unfamiliar.

Not better.

Just different.

One morning, at work, my coworker Melissa looked at me and said, “Have you been working out?”

Her tone was casual.

Curious, not judgmental.

“Yeah,” I said.

She smiled.

“You look good.”

Two simple words.

But they stayed with me all day.

Not because of vanity.

Because someone had noticed effort.

Effort is invisible most of the time.

There were still bad days.

Days when I ate too much.

Days when I skipped walks.

Days when the old voice returned.

You’re still fat.

You’ll always be fat.

But this time, I did not listen.

Failure was no longer the end.

It was part of the process.

I did not need perfection.

I needed persistence.

The hardest moment came at month nine.

I hit a plateau.

For six weeks, the scale did not move.

Six weeks of effort.

Six weeks of nothing.

The old panic returned.

This is it, the voice said.

This is where you quit.

I stood in my bathroom, staring at the number.

Waiting for it to change.

It didn’t.

I wanted to give up.

Instead, I did something radical.

Nothing.

I kept walking.

Kept eating carefully.

Kept living.

And eventually, the plateau broke.

Progress resumed.

Slow.

Quiet.

Unstoppable.

The day I reached 198 pounds, I didn’t celebrate.

I didn’t post photos.

I didn’t tell anyone.

I went for a walk.

The same walk I had taken on day one.

One block.

Then two.

Then three.

The city looked the same.

But I felt different inside it.

Lighter.

Not just physically.

Emotionally.

As if I had put down something I’d been carrying for years.

People began treating me differently.

Strangers smiled more.

Cashiers made conversation.

Doors were held open.

These things had always existed.

They were just newly available to me.

This was the strangest part.

Not the weight loss.

The visibility.

One evening, I found the old bottle of appetite suppressants in the back of a drawer.

Unopened pills remained inside.

I held it in my hand, remembering the man I had been.

Desperate.

Impatient.

Alone.

I didn’t feel shame.

I felt compassion.

He had wanted change.

He just hadn’t known how.

I threw the bottle away.

Not because it was useless.

Because I no longer needed shortcuts.

The eleventh attempt succeeded because it was not really an attempt.

It was a decision.

A quiet, private decision to stop abandoning myself.

There was no dramatic moment.

No sudden transformation.

Only thousands of small choices.

Walk or don’t walk.

Stop or continue.

Quit or persist.

Each choice insignificant on its own.

Together, they changed everything.

Today, I weigh 182 pounds.

But the number is not the victory.

The victory is trust.

Trust that I can begin again after failure.

Trust that I can survive discomfort.

Trust that I can keep promises to myself.

The first ten failures taught me what didn’t work.

The eleventh taught me who I could become.

Not someone new.

Someone reliable.

Someone patient.

Someone who stayed.

Sometimes, I still walk past that CVS on Lexington Avenue.

The fluorescent lights still buzz overhead.

The shelves still promise transformation in bright, cheerful packaging.

I understand the appeal.

Change is seductive when it looks easy.

But real change is quiet.

It happens in ordinary moments.

In rain.

In silence.

In the decision to continue when no one is watching.

I failed ten times.

Not because I was weak.

Because I was learning.

The eleventh time, I didn’t chase perfection.

I chose persistence.

And persistence, unlike motivation, never asks you to be extraordinary.

It only asks you to begin again.

And again.

And again.

Until one day, without realizing exactly when it happened, you look in the mirror and see not the person you hoped to become—

But the person who never gave up.