Got a weight problem? Learn to love it

It’s the easiest way since the heavier you are, the more you can eat!
If you lose that extra weight those days are gone.

I will admit I was a bit of a tub in my twenties. My early working years were an orgy of eating, drinking and doing exactly what I wanted. Because, for the first time in my life, I could afford to eat, drink and do exactly what I wanted.

It was great.

Soon I started travelling on business and discovered the joys of expense accounts. Never competitive with other people I am hugely competitive with myself, so pretty soon I was battling to out-drink myself month by month, and as far as possible to out-expense out-drinking myself month by month.

It was even greater.

In fairness for much of that time I intended to get my shit together. I would occasionally resolve to eat less, drink less and do some exercise. It would last a few weeks, a few months, 5lbs, maybe 10lbs. Then I’d lose interest, lose momentum and find myself right back where I started.

Tight seat, tight pants, tight spot
Five years, and 70lbs later, three things made me decide that the party was finally over. First, flying quite a bit on business, I was noticing that levering my ass into the seat on domestic flights was becoming a challenge. Secondly I was starting to get aches and pains from body parts I’ve never actually identified but which I know I shouldn’t be able to feel. Thirdly I had exhausted growth space in my last pair of forty inch waist trousers and had to buy myself some forty-twos, which I can only describe as “clown pants”.

It had been fun, but now I needed to sort myself out. How to do it though? I freely admit I have absolutely no willpower and had failed many times before. The spirit is weak and the flesh willing. I needed a different plan.

Willpower is not a tool at my disposal, but habits are, and I’m rather good at them. I’d certainly developed loads of bad ones up to that point. Could I maybe develop one or two good ones?

Aim low, don’t disappoint
First, every day I noted down what I ate and estimated the calories. Every day, when I could, I weighed myself. By watching my average weight and average calories I worked out my “break even” calorie consumption; the level at which I neither gained nor lost weight.

Second, I set out to under-eat, on average, by 200 calories a day. That’s not much – a pint of beer or a chocolate bar – but if I could make that stick I ought to lose about a pound a fortnight. Make it stick for three years and I would be back to where I wanted to be.

And it worked. Three years later I had gone form 220lbs to 150lbs. Ten years later I’m still 150lbs.

But it wasn’t quite that simple.

That first 200 calories took me from 220lbs to around 200lbs, then my weight levelled off. Without necessarily thinking about why, I cut another 200 calories a day and my weight started heading south again until, around 180lbs, things once again levelled off. Lather, rinse, repeat; lather, rinse repeat. At 220lbs I had been eating 2800 calories per day to maintain my weight. By 150lbs it was 2000 calories per day.

Myths and Lies about weight loss
This makes perfect sense when you think about it. After all, every pound you lose means there’s less of you. Less miles of vessels for your heart to pump blood around, less weight to lift out of the chair or up the stairs, less surface area of skin to heat and cool. Every breath you take, every step you make, you burn less calories. For me I reckon it was about 10 calories per day per pound of weight lost.

People often talk about metabolism when they talk about their diets not sticking; to me that’s absolute horseshit. The reason people put weight on after a diet is science 101. You weigh less, so you use less energy. But you’ve not trained yourself to eat the right amount to match your new weight. You go back to your habitual eating pattern, which is now over-eating for your new weight. And sure enough, after a few months, you’ve put the weight back on.

This is why my approach worked so well for me. I thought I was dieting, but really I wasn’t – I was training myself to eat the right amount for a weight I wanted to be. I was making a permanent lifestyle change I would need to make to keep that weight off, and so doing got the weight loss for free.

I don’t miss the excesses. I got used to eating and drinking more moderately over the three years I was losing weight. We eat when we’re hungry – it’s triggered by a need for food – but the amount we eat, when we do eat, is a block of calories sized by our habits. For me, now, the smaller portions just feel natural.

Either way, don’t diet
With a bit of common sense, beating a weight problem isn’t that hard. Just forget dieting, take a long-term view, learn to eat the right amount for where you want your body to be, and you lose weight for free. But it is a long-term project. And you’ll never be able to eat what you eat now without gaining the weight back.

My tip? If you’ve got a weight problem, enjoy it, love it, learn to live with it. It’s the easiest way, and I’m all about the easiest way. But if you have to beat it, forget the dieting high road and take the calorie management low road. You might not get there as quickly, but it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to stay there when you do.