Fitness and Nutrition

How I lost 72 pounds in 16 months.

Update 2023 August 08: I made a video!

I decided to lose weight on April 24, 2022. I was 252 lbs and pretty unhappy with how I was feeling and looking. I've tried dieting off and on in the past with various amounts of success and I didn't want to go the same routes. I decided what I needed was a total shift in my mentality. I needed to re-evaluate my relationship with food.

From April 2022 to November 2022, I went from 252 to 193. The below table is pretty much what I ate on most days:

It's important to know that what I ate exactly isn't really important. It's what I didn't eat. I kept it strictly to three meals, which meant less "tracking." I put "tracking" in quotes because I never coutned calories or wrote down what I ate, but I knew what portion sizes I was eating and could adjust if I wasn't seeing progress. I didn't snack on any processed food. 

I also started doing martial arts again, which is something I loved up until my mid-twenties. As the weight dropped, my abilities improved, and this allowed me to stay disciplined.

From November 2022 to April 2023, I actually gained back about 20 pounds. I was at 213. After recovering from my back injury in March of this year, I got right back to it, but I changed my diet to be much better for my wallet:

I'm now at 179. This is how I'm currently eating, though the past few weeks I've been eating a bit more liberally on the weekends.