I Broke A Promise

300.

That number makes me want to scream.

I promised myself that when I lost weight in 2023, it would be the last time I saw 300 on the scale.

Well, I broke that promise.

Last week when I weighed myself the scale told me 301.2 pounds. I actually felt kind of sick to my stomach when I saw that. I should have realized that it was going to happen. I’ve gotten really lax about what I’m eating, what I’m drinking, what exercise I’m not doing. But I still wasn’t prepared for it.

I have a varied history of losing weight as a result of being overweight my whole adult life, so I have plenty of practice with trying to lose weight. Because of that, I have a few ideas of what works and what doesn’t work for me.

I’ve had two periods of successful weight loss in my life.

During my first period of weight loss, I was in my mid-20s and working a retail job where I didn’t have access to food throughout my work shift. My previous jobs had been at a gas station and at a snack bar/restaurant where I had constant access to food throughout my shifts and would snack or drink soda throughout my day. But at this retail job, I didn’t have access to food and we were allowed to only have water on the retail floor. I was only able to eat food during my half-hour lunch. I was also on my feet all day and was consistently able to reach 15,000 steps a day. As a result, I went from about 245 pounds (my highest at that point) to 197 pounds. I wasn’t tracking my calories or my food. I wasn’t going out of my way to exercise. It just happened.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep that weight off for very long. I weighed 197 pounds for the first (and last time) the morning I went on a date with my ex-boyfriend. By the time that I broke up with him six months later, I was back up to 230 pounds. I ended up gaining back to my original 245 pounds and settled there for a couple of years. Then I gained to 265 and settled there for nearly a decade. I then gained to 275, plateaued there for a few years, then got up to 300 pounds during the pandemic and stayed there for a couple of years. And then I ended up getting to 314.7 pounds, the highest that I’ve ever weighed. That really bothered me so I set about losing weight very quickly.

In January of 2023, I quit drinking regular soda, restricting myself to diet soda. I lost ten pounds very quickly as a result of that. And then I joined Weight Watchers and got down to 272 pounds in just a couple months. I got there by eating a lot of salads and packing vegetables as snacks for work, substituting one meal of the day with coffee that had a Breakfast Essentials pack in it, and keeping up with my no regular soda rule. I didn’t make any changes to the amount of physical activity I got each day (barely any, my current job is a desk job so I’m pretty sedentary). I maintained there at 275ish pounds for a few more months until I went to Las Vegas in September of 2023. I broke all the good habits I had created and have struggled ever since to regain the good habits that I created last year.

And I’m paying for it.

I’ve obviously gained back to 300 pounds.

And trust me, I am very unhappy about it.

There are a few reasons that I want to lose weight, ranging from health reasons to mental reasons to vanity reasons. I don’t have any health problems right now and I would like for it to stay that way. There are some heart problems and diabetes issues in my family tree. I would like for them to stay there and away from my branch. But I have to take steps now to keep it that way. I also know that I struggle less with my depression and anxiety when I feel good about myself, and I do not feel good about myself physically right now. I don’t feel pretty or confident in my own body and that does affect my mental health. I also just want clothes to look on my body the way they look in my head. My head version of me is thinner than what I am now. Actually, Head Me is closer to what I looked like at 197 pounds. I was wearing a size 12 for the first time in my adult life and I felt really good in my body. I know that by society’s standards and medical standards, I was still overweight. But I felt and looked good. I want to get back to that feeling.

How will I get there?

Baby steps.

Sounds stupid and cliche but that’s the truth of it. From my previous attempts at weight loss, both successful and unsuccessful, I have learned a few things that work for me when it comes to my weight.

First, the more I have to think about food, the more I want food, and then the more I eat food. If I have to think about what I’m going to fix for a meal, then I end up overeating at that meal and then continuing that pattern through the rest of my day.

Speaking of continuing a pattern throughout the day, I have also learned that whatever the time period is between the first time I eat and the second time I eat is the interval that I continue to eat through the rest of the day. It doesn’t matter if it’s snacks or meals. If I eat breakfast then don’t eat again for another five hours, then five hours later I’ll eat again. Or if I eat a snack 45 minutes after my first meal, then I will proceed to eat every 45 minutes through the rest of the day.

Probably the most important thing that I’ve learned is that I have to make it easy to make a good choice. I can’t keep a bag of chips around because I’ll eat the entire bag. I can’t keep candy in the house because I’ll eat every single piece within 20 minutes. I can’t have any food apps on my phone or I’m going to order all the delivery. I have to create an environment around myself that I have to go out of my way to make the unhealthy choice.

So what does all of this mean for my weight loss journey this time?

I've been reading a book that makes the point that baby steps are important in the weight loss journey. It's important to build small habits because those small habits lead to change. Also, I ordered my planners for next year. Usually, I just use one, but I bought two and decided that one of them will be my weight loss tracker. It's a vertical layout Happy Planner. Each day has three boxes. I've decided they'll be for a food log, an exercise/movement log, and a small journal section. The Planner I bought is a dated 2025 planner, but I did have a partially used Happy Planner with the same layout on hand, so I'll use that for the next few months to finish out the year tracking.

Initially, my concentration is going to be focused on food logging. I just have to write down everything that I eat. I'm not going to count calories or restrict myself. I just have to log everything. To support this, I will also be meal planning and concentrate on buying healthier groceries without following a meal or diet plan of any sort right now.

The other change I'll be concentrating on is to move more. I plan on walking my dog daily (weather and road conditions depending as we move into Autumn and Winter). I'll start small with just 10 minutes a day. Baby steps add up to big changes. It will also be beneficial for my dog since he is elderly and has arthritis. In addition to the daily walks, I'll increase my daily step counts. I'm not sure how often I will increase the goal step count. I need to do some thinking about that but I'll start with a daily goal of 4000 and work towards increasing it slowly over time.

I’ve signed back up for Weight Watchers again. It worked well last time and I believe that I can use it again to get good results. The way that it counts points instead of calories works well for me. It makes decisions easier for me. In general, chicken or turkey is a better choice than beef or pork. Pack meals full of vegetables instead of carbs. Eat fruits instead of processed sugar. Over the next few months, I’m hoping to get back to eating more salads and vegetables at work. I bought a travel blender so that I can swap out my last meal of the night (I work nights) with a smoothie made of just frozen fruit, unsweetened almond milk, and a Breakfast Essentials packet.

As for exercise, at first, I’m going to concentrate on increasing my steps. While I work a desk job, I can walk laps around the room to boost my steps. Over time I’ll add in some cardio and strength training. But not right away. I need to make small changes over time instead of jumping off the cliff. 

Sure, jumping off the cliff might lead to permanent weight loss, but I might also bash my head on the metaphorical rocks and quit before I get started or gain all the weight back yet again.

Photo by Rusty Watson on Unsplash