Weight A Minute

People often talk about wanting to lose weight and struggling with it. I don’t say this to sound like some jerk trying to rub it in their faces, but I accidentally lost weight. However, I felt the same as people who accidentally gain weight; it was the opposite of what I would’ve liked to have happened, and then was faced with having to take action to change my weight. My goal was to go the opposite direction that most people aim for, but it was still difficult.

I’ll give some context to start this all off. And first, you know, weight is just a number. It has some meaning, but it’s also relative to height, muscle, fat, etc. I know that, and I don’t necessarily have a number I feel like I need to be, but I have an idea of around what weight I want to be in order to be looking how I want to look. That being said, for reference, I’m 6 feet tall. I was, at one point, 200 pounds. I didn’t workout or partake in cardio too often, so I should have been doing it more often, and as a result, I was 200 pounds. I wasn’t so far off from where I wanted to be. Then, I went vegan. Over the next year and a half, without really changing my workout regiment at all, I lost 15 pounds. 185 now. And it was a pretty good 185. I lost quite a bit of fat, granted, maybe I wanted a little more body mass back. But that would likely come with increasing my working out. I think the 185-190 range would probably be good if I were to be working out more consistently.

Either way, I was happier with the way I looked at this 185. Over the years, I worked out occasionally, never consistent, never pushed myself. I stayed at 185 for 4 years. I bring all this up, because oftentimes people think “Oh, you’re vegan you keep losing weight because of that.” I did lose unhealthy fat when I went vegan, like I said, over 18 months I lost 15 pounds, but then for 4 years, I stayed right there. So, I had reached a good weight and stayed there.

Fast forward to the last day of July in 2024. We had a surprise meeting at work. We found out we were being changed from hourly to salary, and it would be effective immediately. When I say immediately, I mean, they gave us 4 days notice. Some may say, what’s the big deal? My work, for the past several years, was reliant on me working overtime. I had been working 10-hour days for years. As you may know, anything over 8 hours a day is overtime. So, I worked 4 days a week, 10 hours a day, meaning 2 hours of each day, or 8 hours a week, was at time and a half. When they changed us to salary, with basically no heads up, we found out we wouldn’t qualify for overtime anymore. 4 days we had to prepare for this hit to our income. Turns out, I took a 15% pay decrease. And I had no time to prepare for it.

For many reasons, as you could imagine, I was pissed. Now, I would’ve been mad no matter what, but imagine if they gave me a three-month heads up, for example, I’d have time to prepare and to budget. By the way, we were told they had known for a while but there was a lot of stuff going on that they were figuring out and they “didn’t think to tell us any sooner.” Fantastic. Thanks, guys.

Now, everyone’s financial situation is their own. My job is not responsible for my personal situation, my expenses, nor are they responsible for all the different situations everyone on my team has. And everyone’s financial situation is different. But losing out on 15% of your money– effective immediately– sucks for everyone. And it was immediately a hit that I felt. I had to scale back on my spending. No other way around it, had to be done. It’s difficult, especially when you have only days to figure that out. It’s not like I could just stop having a car that I pay for. I couldn’t just cut out expenses like insurance or power or gas or my phone or whatever. Obviously. So, I looked at what I was spending on food and figured, I’ll just have to get cheaper there.

I still wanted to be healthy, I didn’t want to eat crap. But I just had to find the cheaper, healthy foods. I’d have to partake in less healthy foods that were pricier. I’d have to focus on more cabbage, more potatoes, you know, get back to my Irish roots. I used to go through an avocado a day with my morning avocado toast, I halved that. A bunch of things like this. It was annoying, but I figured, whatever, I can do it. It was not easy, but I made it work.

Time went on. I didn’t notice changes in my weight, but I’d hear that I looked thinner. Usually I would think, “Whatever, they just think I am, but I’m not.” But I kept hearing that I looked thinner. More and more. From multiple people. At first I’d respond with something like, “I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve lost weight.” But when I heard it from so many people, I figured I just wasn’t noticing it and that they were right. I try to be self-aware, knowing that if I don’t notice something but several other people do, they’re probably right. But I also figured I’d lost 2 or 3 pounds maybe, but it was just a noticeable 2 or 3 pounds, you know? Like, all in the face. Or somewhere else noticeable.

So, my pay cut took place at the very beginning of August. End of November, 4 full months later, I had a physical. Went to the doctor’s, they weighed me, and I was 169 pounds. Yes, in 4 months, I had lost 16 pounds! I was not trying to lose any weight, if anything, I wanted to gain a little weight. And I just lost 16 pounds, essentially, because of my pay cut. By the way, by the end of December, I was at 167. I had lost another 2 pounds, so, overall, in 5 months, I lost 18 pounds.

I Was Pissed.

Really Pissed.

This was all because of my diet changes. Maybe stress too, who knows? But that lit a fire under me. I was not going to let my job cut my pay and turn me into a shriveling raisin of a person. I could fix this. The problem, I still need to be cheaper with my food. But maybe my changes weren’t good enough. I was saving money but I was taking too much away from myself. And I wasn’t working out consistently enough still. I’d had enough.

Fuck that!

I made changes to my diet, again. Still being frugal with my money, but I figured, I just need cheap, filling stuff. And I need to start eating more in general. Easy way to do that… I eat some healthy bread. I was going to start eating more. Started adding bread to more of my meals. Added another meal to the day. Went from 4 meals to 5. It’s not like I couldn’t eat more. I love to eat. So, I planned out what things I should be eating for what meals, adding some good healthy stuff to plump me back up. Because I did not like that I was getting so thin, and other people were noticing… and I wasn’t even noticing. And it was time to put together a strict workout regimen that I needed to stick to. No more, eh I’ll try to work out two times a week. No. I am going to work out three times a week… barring any extenuating circumstances. And I wasn’t just going to do a few workouts. I was going to be doing 12. And I had just been using my 15-pound barbells, not my 35s, because that was too much of a step up. Too bad! I picked out a few workouts that I could use the 35s for. I was going to have to. I wouldn’t be able to use the 35s for everything, but I’d just have to work my way towards that.

January and February passed, two months, I gained 12 pounds back. Actually, I had gained those 12 pounds back by about a month and a half. But I continued through the rest of February and through the beginning of March, however, I’ve stayed at the number, which is 179. Haven’t been able to get past that after the immediate success I had. I am already proud of the fact that in a month and a half I gained back 12 pounds, and it’s made a big difference. And again, the number doesn’t really matter.

But it does.

I’ve set my mind on getting back to that number of 185, just to say that I can fucking do it. Just to say, “Cut my pay? Fuck that. I don’t care. I’m not going to let myself shrivel up and be pathetic. I am not going to let outside factors determine who or what I am.” I like to apply that thinking to everything whenever I can. This should be no different. I am going to be what I want to be. So, I am going to keep working and keep improving.

And it was yet another moment in my life that I realized, I really can do a lot if I set my mind to it. And I do have the time for things, even if I say I don’t. We all say that from time to time, don’t we? “I’d do this, but I don’t have the time.” Here’s the thing, sometimes that is true. But I bet it is never 100% true. In my particular situation, my thinking was, I don’t have the time to be doing a full workout three times a week, every week. Well, maybe if everything in my life were exactly how I wanted it, and I had as much time as I wished I’d have, I would have time to do what my mind perceives as a full workout three times a week. But I’m not there. However, I do the following, and I’m sure many people do too. I took “I don’t have enough time to do what I really want to do” as an excuse to not do anything. Maybe I couldn’t hit 100% of what I want to do… but can I do 50% of that? 60%? 75%? Absolutely.

I’d love to do more workouts every day. It’s hard to find time for as much as I’d like to do. But I added way more workouts than I was previously doing, and I made sure to be more consistent with my time and my days. And I’ve stuck to it. So, sounds like I did have some time, even though I constantly told myself I didn’t have any time. It’s a little reminder that if I set my mind to it, I can do a lot. Probably a lot more than I normally give myself credit for. This is a reminder to me, this instance, that I can do this no matter what the scenario is.

However, getting back to the working out, for whatever I reason, I just had 15s and 35s when it came to my barbells. I bought them a while back. It has been difficult to try to make the leap from 15 to 35 on some of these workouts. The solution? Is it Option A, say something like, “Well, that’s all I can do!” Or is it Option B, Buy some 25s!

Option B is correct.

So, I just did that. As I write this right now, it is March 11th. This is how the journey has been going so far. But I am not done. The 25s will come in and I will incorporate those, and I will keep up with my workouts, and I will keep up with… eating more. I know it may sound stupid. “What a luxury! You just have to eat more!” It’s not like it’s so completely easy. Sometimes I’m making myself eat a little more than I am craving just to make sure I am eating enough to gain weight. And it also has to be good food, good weight, healthy fat. I have been doing that all along, and as I make myself eat more, I want more. It becomes the norm. It’s like training my body to recognize what is the normal amount of food to eat.

So, this is where I currently stand. 179. Gained 12 back of the 18 I lost. Not done yet. I’ll return to this piece after I’ve made progress. I’ll probably just pause right here, but it felt important to write about this journey so far, at this moment. So, I’ll take a break here… and I’ll return whenever it is time to return…

*******

And the time to return was April 3rd! Those 25’s finally came in and I was able to start incorporating them. I’m midway through the third week of using them, but I weighed myself after the first two weeks of using them, made it to 181. So, I gained another 2 pounds, making that 14 pounds of the 18 I had lost! I’m getting even closer.

After this week, it will have been 3 weeks of having upped things from 15 to 25, and I feel like 3 weeks is enough time for me to have gotten used to that, so next week I up the ante a little more. I’m going to push myself more because I really want to make it back to 185. In fact, that’s just goal number one. Get back to where I was. But if I was honest with myself back when I was 185 and not working out all that much, I would’ve said that I wanted to workout more, be stronger, probably gain another 5 pounds from there. So, why not add on goal number two? After hitting 185, I will try for 190. Might as well try. There will be no true failure. Even if I don’t make it to 190, the effort in trying to get there will result in me being healthier. The number is just a number. But I’m aiming for it because of what the effort to get there will do for me.

*******

And returning again on April 18th, after having upped the ante again, I managed to gain another two pounds! 183! Meaning I have now gained back 16 of my 18 lost pounds… two away from getting back to my starting point.

My goal is to stick with this new routine for three weeks and then up the ante once more. And maybe keep doing that until I’m actually just unable to do anymore. But the strategy has been working for me, clearly.

*******

It’s May 5th, I had upped the ante again, and weighing myself again this morning… I did it. 185 pounds. Back to my original weight. All of the 18 pounds I accidentally lost over the course of 5 months, I intentionally gained them all back over the course of 4 months. I’m ecstatic, not only to gain all 18 pounds back, but to have gained them back in slightly less time than it took for me to lose them. I’m not sure why exactly, but it feels like I won… like I beat… someone. Myself? My former self? Maybe.

This feels like a natural spot to end this piece. I’m on a second mission to try to gain a few more pounds and get into better shape, but I completed the first mission. I gained back what I lost. And in the end, maybe it worked out pretty well, because the 185 I am at now is a healthier 185 than I was at before.

So, there’s a positive to take from this. Also, a reminder, I can do a lot if I set my mind to it.