In May 2019 I was 65 years old, 184.15cm tall and my average weight was between 111 and 113kg.
I lost two or three kilos when I walked the
Camino Frances from St. Jean and on my return home I kept up my walking and was averaging around 103 kg prior to Covid.
Over Covid I withdrew somewhat from the rest of the world and stopped walking.
In June of last year when I started my next Camino (Madrid) my weight had increased to 118 kg. Initially I really struggled and my pack really dragged me down but gradually my fitness returned and by the time I was back in London after 11 weeks in Spain and walking from the tube station to my AirBnB I realised how light my pack felt and how good I felt. I decided to make a real effort to keep my fitness and to control my weight.
On my return home I weighed 108 kgs despite my various splurges on pastries and chocolate in Spain (see my food posts).
This morning I weigh 90.5 kg and I am well on my way to my goal of 83-85 kg. I am a Geek and so I have a set of smart scales and I weigh myself every day at around the same time. My scales sends my weight and body composition (muscle vs fat and bone) to an app so that I can track my progress. It also measures my body water content and cardiovascular health (I apparently have the cardiovascular system of an average male 15 years younger).
My weight loss journey is a zigzag. It is never a straight line down and frequently goes up but the overall trend is down.
All of my four siblings are obese or overweight. One sibling is dead.
During my midlife crisis (30 years ago or so) I went on a crash diet and exercise bonanza. At one stage I was swimming 4.5 kilometres every day! I lost a lot of weight, plus my gallbladder and I was ultra fit and addicted to the adrenaline from the exercise but, of course, that level of exercise takes heaps of time and eventually life intervened and over time the weight went back on.
Something that I read a couple of years ago changed my approach. I read an article that answered the question:
When you lose weight, how does the weight leave your body?
My guess, before reading the article, was that I was excreting it or somehow sweating it out and so I was surprised to learn that any weight that we lose leaves our body through our lungs when we breathe out. Of course this makes sense when you think about it in depth but for me at least and I suspect for many other people it was a revelation.
Now this doesn't mean that I can cause myself to lose weight just by breathing more or deeper without a physiological reason for doing that, but for me it did highlight the importance of good breathing.
This knowledge, in association with an understanding that our brains are one of our biggest energy sinks and that our brains are very active while we sleep has highlighted the importance of good sleep for good health and weight control.
Like many others, putting on a lot of extra weight disrupts my sleep and without active health measures the disrupted sleep increases my weight in a vicious cycle.
I used to wake up unrefreshed and often with a headache in the mornings.
These days, I am not on some crazy exercise fad but I love walking and so I take every opportunity to do that. Not just for recreation but also if I am going somewhere then if it is close I walk. If it is further away I consider taking public transport and walking between the transport and my destination. If I decide to drive for some reason then I look for a carpark some distance away from the end point so that I can include some walking in my journey. I do also love swimming and so I do that recreationally but not as often as I would like.
Of course, I am retired and so I have a lot of time to do this stuff and it can be harder when life is really busy.
I also am not on some crazy diet. Mostly I reduce my food input by portion control. I put less on my plate so that I am not tempted to over eat. I also tend to avoid simple carbohydrates such as potatoes, white rice and foods containing white flour but I am not religious about it. If it is a special occasion and someone has baked a nice cake then I will have some just usually a smaller piece than I would have had in the past.
I also seem to have fallen into a natural cycle of intermittent fasting. I usually only have a very light breakfast (one piece of toast, coffee and a piece of fruit) around 10 am and I usually eat a light dinner at around 6 pm and that gives me an interval of around 16 hours between the evening meal and breakfast.
Again, if you are part of a family that lives together and eats together then it is much harder to make changes to the meal times and content.
I grow my own vegetables and fruit and I eat these in preference to store bought fruit and vegetables unless what I want is out of season in my garden or not growing there for some reason.
I am not keen on video calling because that means scheduling my time and I avoid that. I am, however, happy to correspond via email if you are interested, send me a personal message if you want and we can chat offline.
