How I Lost 31 Pounds and Learned to Love Myself

I have struggled with my weight for years. As a teen, I was incredibly skinny. As I grew into adulthood, though, my waistline never stopped growing.

Before I knew it, I was in my 40s and weighing in at 329 pounds. Since I worked in the insurance industry, I had access to numerous actuarial tables that offered insight into where my life was heading. None of those tables painted a happy picture for my future.

I hired a personal trainer. I tried diets. I tried supplements and pills. Nothing truly worked.

Everything seemed to fit into one of two categories for me. Either it was working but making me miserable or it was not working yet still making me miserable.

My downfall was snacking. I ate healthy meals but always wanted a between meal snack.

My doctor suggested eating smaller snacks or eating healthier snacks. She suggested that I eat a piece of fruit instead of opting for cookie or whatever else I wanted at that moment.

Being told that I couldn't or shouldn't eat the snacks that I wanted, however, only seemed to make me want them more. I became more and more miserable without them.

I talked with a psychiatrist about my psychological relationship with food. Those were good talks but they never changed my desire for unhealthy snacking nor made me feel any better when I wasn't eating.

Eventually, after trying and failing at more "solutions" than I care to remember, I found something that worked for me. I don't know if this option will work for anyone else. Regardless, once I found it, I wished that someone had shared it with me years ago.

I decided to flip my current routine on its head. Instead of denying myself the food that I wanted and feeling miserable, I gave myself permission to eat anything that I wanted to eat and to have as much of it as I wanted—with one condition.

Before I ate anything, I promised myself that I would drink a glass of water first.

There is nothing wrong with water, I told myself. Drinking a glass of water was easy.

And after I drank that one glass of water, I could have anything to eat that I wanted.

But here is the amazing thing, I found that when I drank a glass of water first, approximately 70 percent of the time, I lost my desire to have a snack. I was able to continue going about my day free from both my desire to snack as well as any feeling of misery that I had from not snacking.

As an added bonus, on those remaining instances when I did still feed a desire to snack, I only desired a smaller portion than I would have had without drinking a glass of water first.

It was liberating, actually, after years of feeling a tight control over what I ate to be able to eat anything that I wanted at any time that I wanted to eat with only one small restriction attached to it.

I cannot offer any scientific or medical explanation as to why drinking a glass of water destroyed my desire for uncontrollable eating. I certainly cannot guarantee that this tactic will work for anyone else.

The one thing that I know for certain is that giving myself permission to eat anything that I wanted as long as drank a glass of water first changed my life. In the months since I started doing this, I have lost 31 pounds. and am continuing to lose more.

My sense of misery and self-hatred at not being able to eat what I wanted is gone. I feel better about myself than I have in years.

I cannot offer any guarantees that drinking a glass of water before eating to your hearts content will help anyone else lose weight. I only know that this worked for me and, if your weight has been a challenge for you, I hope that my personal story is able to help you in some way.