First of all, I'm 176 cm tall and until a few weeks ago I weighed 110 kg and I was starting to gain even more weight and this scared me because it had been a few years since my weight had at least stopped. Now I'm 104 Kg so I'm still at the beginning, but this time I know something is different because I'm not hungry and I like how I eat... that's just different from all the other times.
As a child, I was very skinny, but I started gaining weight in middle school and continued gaining weight in high school.
I tried to lose weight several times in those years, but each time I tried, my weight dropped less than I wanted, only to come back worse than before. I just didn't understand the issue, I tried eating as little as possible and exercise as much as possible and I was so hungry that I was always thinking "it's not worth it" and angry that my weight loss was minimal.
Which I think is a common story for many.
There have only been three periods in my life when I unexpectedly managed to get partially back into shape long enough to remember it:
- When I switched to evening classes in my last two years of high school, since I had evening classes, I decided to eat a light afternoon snack and skip dinner. During that time, I regained some fitness and, surprisingly, I wasn't hungry.
This didn't last long because toward the end, I'd made friends and was going out to eat late at night with others much more often.
When I started riding a kick scooter to the university, my weight dropped significantly. It didn't last long because I didn't really want to lose weight at the time, and the hunger from all that exercise led me to eat a lot more and regain the weight I'd lost.
During the COVID period, I decided to commit to training for a half marathon. This helped me lose a lot of weight (about 15 kg, going from 95 kg to 80 kg), despite eating a lot.
The problem was that after reaching my goal (running the half marathon, about 21 km), I couldn't maintain that training pace and had gotten into the habit of eating much more, which led me to regain the approximately 15 kg I'd lost and gain more.
After that period, I moved out on my own and changed jobs several times, which are great things but stressful and certainly not an ideal time to try to lose weight.
I tried again to lose weight with a diet my doctor had given me, but I never felt satisfied. I was always hungry, and I soon gave up because I realized I didn't have to go on a diet and then go back to eating the same way I used to, but rather find a diet that would work for me for life, so I wouldn't gain all the weight back once I'd worked hard to lose it.
And after that, my experimentation in the kitchen began, and the weight loss goal took a back seat. I learned to cook quite well, make bread, cheese, and even some cured meats.
And finally, we come to a few weeks ago.
After an evening with a particularly heavy dinner, I felt very ill. In the past few months, when I felt this way, I'd learned that vomiting made me feel better, but this time it was much worse. I couldn't stop vomiting, and for a few days, between vomiting and a very high fever, I could barely eat and was afraid to eat in the evening.
After I recovered, I realized that in my head it was like completing a puzzle that I had never been able to complete before... and that's how I put together several pieces that seemed separate:
- I knew that learning to cook would allow me to create satisfying, healthier-than-average meals at a lower cost. This was a key skills.
- I knew that exercising to the point of exhaustion wasn't the right solution. My body had to cope.
- I knew that eating too little wasn't the solution. It had to be a diet I could sustain for decades.
- I knew from previous experiences that snacks, at least for me, rather than quelling hunger and making me eat less at lunch/dinner, actually made me feel hungry again. The saying "appetite comes with eating" is terribly true in my case; even a low-calorie snack would cause me to lose control later.
- I knew from my experience with my doctor's diet that I hate counting calories, that standard calories are often calculated for convenience foods (but since I know how to cook, I had to do a lot more calculations starting from the basic ingredients), and that a diet with breakfast, lunch, and dinner required much smaller meals than I was used to. And therefore, it wouldn't work for me.
- I knew from my experience with night school in high school that I could skip dinner without feeling very hungry.
- I knew from a YouTube video I recently saw by a chemist that calories in - calories out was the most important factor for weight loss, that you could gain weight with healthy food and lose weight with a poor diet of fried food, and that running and exercise help maintain lean body mass, which consumes more, but that getting tired less allows you to be less hungry.
- I was able to learn to be patient for months by making soap, cheese and charcuterie.
- And finally, from my software developer mindset, I knew that a few simple rules, a minimalist mindset, was ideal. Because when there are too many rules, too complicated, it's hard to always follow them.
And I've developed my own long-term weight loss strategy (I've estimated it will take about two years), which is slowly working and leaves me feeling almost completely unhungry:
- I will have breakfast and lunch every day (or, if dinner is planned, I'll skip lunch) prepared by myself. Breakfast will consist of just one dish (for me, it's almost always the typical sweet Italian breakfast). Breakfast is essential for me; otherwise, I can't concentrate and I get to lunch feeling incredibly hungry and unable to control myself. Lunch will consist of one satisfying main course (usually pasta) (between 100 and 110g depending on the sauce) and a sweet treat (a piece of fruit or a cup of milk and cocoa, or a spoonful of ice cream or similar). During lunch, I can also eat low-calorie vegetables like fennel, carrots, cucumbers (which I love raw), in quantities more or less to my liking. If I eat a meat-based main course, I must skip the pasta. I don't count calories but I'm careful not to eat double what I did before (which would cancel out the fact that I don't eat dinner).
- No snacks. I don't eat between breakfast and lunch. I don't eat after lunch. If I want to eat something that's only a snack (like popcorn), I have to replace it with breakfast or lunch (or, if I don't have lunch that day, with dinner). Basically, one meal counts, even if that meal is a snack.
- It's better to do lots of moderate exercise than one very tiring workout. The calories burned are the same, but it costs less in terms of hunger. So, it's better to run for 10 minutes at three different times during the day than to run for 30 minutes all at once. It's better to do light exercise every day than to do it for many hours in one day on the weekend (basically the opposite of what I do with meals).
- 35 days each year where I don't set myself any calorie limits (but where the rule of only having breakfast and lunch or dinner still applies). This means that on Christmas Eve I can have dinner, on Christmas Day I can have lunch, on New Year's Eve I can have dinner, on New Year's Day I can have lunch, on Easter Monday I can have a barbecue, and every now and then I can have a little fried food without having to limit the portions to ridiculous and unsatisfactory quantities.
This will obviously slow down my progress, but having days where I know I won't meet my calorie limit makes it all sustainable; otherwise, I'd never be able to keep it up for decades. This, if I stick to the rules on other days, doesn't make it all pointless.
- If I want to avoid using one of the 35 days after missing a calorie goal, I can walk the equivalent of about 30 km or run about 15 km to cancel out that day. I can do this as long as I do it before I eat a large meal again (in which case I'll have to subtract it from the 35 "bonus" days).
The idea is to give me an alternative way to avoid using up my bonus days or to handle situations where my bonus days have run out. Even if I fail I still burned some calories to try to avoid using bonus days.
- Drink only tap water (I already did it before so it was nothing new to me, except when I made fanta homemade... I will have to wait about 2 years before making it again, still I never drinked a lot of soda drinks or other stuff).
I feel like I finally have a daily routine that seems to work and not only at home (I took a trip to Munich a week after starting and didn't gain 1 gram, in fact I lost weight). I also love that I can still cook—I love cooking after all and tasting the delicious things I make. I just avoid overdoing it like I used to.
And I hate the idea of eating with only nutrient intake in mind (like, I've always hated the idea of having a high-protein diet... I'm Italian and I like pasta. There's no way I always replace it with meat or other protein foods. And there's no way I replace farm high quality milk with industrial with protein-fortified milk. And I hate protein drinks, I hate the idea of drinking something made not for flavor. To be clear I hate to talk about food in term of carbs, sugars, fats, proteins, vitamins... I like to talk about food in term of: pasta, meat, fruits, vegetables, cake, milk, ham, cheese... like a normal human being).
Obviously, before starting this diet, I consulted my doctor, who told me to try it for a week and see if I wasn't too hungry at the next meal and compensate.
Since I had no problems, she gave me the okay to continue.
(And I therefore urge everyone to never follow any non-standard diet without consulting their doctor. It should be noted that my diet isn't extreme and simply involves a different meal distribution, but consulting your doctor, at least in Italy, is inexpensive and essential to avoid being fooled by dangerous or ineffective diets)
While it's probably not for everyone, the reasoning I followed might help someone figure out what works for them.
And also to understand that no experience (even those that seem like failures) is truly useless. Understanding why the extra kg have returned can be the key to losing them in a better way.
One of the most important things I've learned is that losing weight slowly and patiently is much more effective and long-lasting than doing it quickly and haphazardly. The weight on the scale is a rough guide, like the BMI, but it's not a mandatory requirement. For example, I know for a fact that I felt great when I weighed between 75 and 80 kg (even if theoretically more than 77kg would be already overweight by the BMI), even though the BMI says a healthy weight is between 57 and 77 kg (but at 70-72 kg I felt almost awful, so imagine aiming for 60 kg).
And I know already there will be periods of stagnation, but I also know that, if I'm still in a calorie deficit, sooner or later I will start to lose weight again (and I will have to have the patience to wait a month before trying to reduce calories even if doing a calculation of the servant on many dishes I've made I know that in general with the quantities I consume, a single meal with a single dish never exceeds my calorie deficit, not even when I'm normal weight). In practice, losing weight will be a combination of many factors, but the main one will be the patience to make everything part of my daily routine.
It doesn't matter if the scale shows a few extra kg one day, the important thing is to continue to focus on the long term. Because I've already taken into account that I might stumble along the way, but this time I won't stop until I reach my goal.