A Weight Loss Story That Should Be Inspiring

Losing thirty pounds with only a little bit of self-discipline

Despite the fact that I have never been particularly fit, I am not overweight. Since I was in college, I have maintained a weight of 150 pounds. At the time of my wedding, I was 150 years old. The temperature on my thermostat was set at 150 degrees, and while it moved a few pounds in either direction, I would assume that was me.

Until I was hospitalized at 44. The six months that I spent sitting about in bed seemed to reset my system, and I surprised myself by gaining 180 pounds in such a short amount of time. This became my new normal, regardless of what I did to change it. 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. On a daily basis, it was the very last thing I saw and the very first thing I saw. In addition to that, I had begun dating.

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 was glorified stretching, and I had nothing to do with it. Katie, in her delightfully bubbly southern charm, explained in a way that no one had before how yoga is not a solitary activity but rather a small physical part of an ancient set of teachings about how to live your life. Katie's explanation was not the first time anyone had ever explained this concept. 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 identify how the yoga asana practice—those bendy, painful contortions—was simply a physical implementation of a greater philosophy. Practicing yoga without the rest of the system struck me as hollow.

Katie wanted to write a book about ayurveda for women, and I was fascinated by this new topic and also had some experience in book publishing, so I offered to help. A couple of things happened at this point that are worth mentioning. I really wanted to go out with Katie, and we were getting along well after a few dates. But offering to help her with her book idea seemed to change things. “I really like you,” she told me as we sipped 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 began a two-year process of helping get her book written and published. At some point she even moved back East, but it didn’t matter much as we did our work online and over the phone. “If you’re going to edit the manuscript,” she told me, “you have to go through the lessons yourself. You have to start an ayurvedic practice.”

As Katie was now in Virginia, she asked her friend Chrisandra, another Ayurvedic practitioner, to work with me in person: we met every week or two, and she not only did yoga with me but worked with me on diet, 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 particular hour, but I had to put away my computer and phone at 9 pm, and then it didn’t matter how late I remained 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 phone or computer either. Just wake up, get dressed, and walk for a half hour. Again, no one was a stickler about the durations as much as the habit.

Daily yoga. Oddly, this was the smallest portion of the endeavor. 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 lived in North Beach, San Francisco, Little Italy, where pizza and pasta are neighborhood staples, and life equals sourdough. But I began to visualize eating bread the way someone stuffs a turkey—just taking handfuls of puffy filling and packing it in, and it began to gross me out. I recognized what I was doing as a modified “paleo” approach, but the important thing to me was that it wasn’t draconian—I wasn’t measuring things, and it wasn’t particularly regulated, but it was guided to match the season and my moods.

I weighed 182 lbs when all this began. And I decided to record my morning body weight every day and put it in a graph, along with other notes about activity and diet. What happened surprised me: every day I shed weight. Because the physical response was immediate, it became positively reinforcing. Which made it easier to do. I didn’t just lose weight; I lost weight consistently and methodically. This is my chart from the first 6 months:

Once I reached 150, I relaxed some of the dietary constraints—not entirely, but just handled less rigorously. I’d have some dessert, but only sometimes, and not as much. And bread on special occasions, if it was awesome bread. I maintained my snacking on almonds and grapes and had a weekly routine of baking Brussels sprouts, which also were fun to nibble. And I kept up my morning walks (which I did with a camera in hand to feel marginally productive), although I backed off of the yoga practice. And with relative ease, I maintained my old weight of 150 for the subsequent years. That is, until COVID-19.

For about 8 years this was my life. But the shelter-in-place turned me back to sitting up late with my computer, plenty of noshing, and very little movement, and in only a few months I saw my weight creep back up, and when it reached 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 behaviors yield the exact same consequences; here’s my 2020 graph placed against the 2012 graph: