Why I lost half my current body weight last year - and never before
This blog is a story about the principles and habits that helped me lose weight and accomplish a sustainable and healthy body. These principles are: 1) focus on diet, not exercise, 2) the realization that every body is unique and has its own perfect diet, as well as 3) the realization that reducing insulin (peaks) is key. The habits I used to quickly lose weight were: 1) to track my calories, 2) intermittent fasting and 3) reduce carb intake.
If you are reading this, chances are you are not satisfied with the way you look. Or how you feel. Most likely, you feel a little overweight. I have been there my friend.
At my fattest time during college, I weighted more than 125 kilograms. That is almost 50% more than my current weight. Struggling with weight was part of my life. I never felt entirely comfortable swimming in public It was hard to find the right clothes: it could be very confronting to go shopping. Being fat is certainly no picnic.
So naturally, I was trying to lose weight pretty much all my life. Each attempt failed, utterly. Until roughly 2 years ago, when I started my journey to become “normal” for the first time in my life. Why did I manage to lose my weight 2 years ago, and never before in my life?
The “before” photo. As you can see, I was trying to flex. Yep, this is me trying to look slim and cool while weighing 125 kg.
The “after” photo, during a Spartan Beast run with Ms. Sustainability.
This is the story about why and especially how I lost my weight. It is also about why and how I did not lose my weight. It is a story which I would very much like to share with you, even though I am not a very good writer. Why do I take the effort to write it all down and share it publicly? Because hopefully, it will inspire just one of you readers to become happy with yourself.
I will start with principles I have learned in the past two years that helped change my world view on food and dieting. What I learned is to be skeptical about what I learned: the biases stemming from my youth, my culture and the environment around me. I will follow up with the habits that helped me lose my weight, or “loser habits'“ as I call them.
Before we jump to the fun part, I would like to conclude the introduction by stating that it is easy to lose weight. The fatter you are, the more you can lose. The thing is: you simply need to find out what works for you. The thing that is holding most of you back, are your habits. These are based on the way you view the world, your prejudices and the environment in which you operate. Change either of these, and you change yourself.
Let’s get started.
Food, Health & Body Principles
Everybody is an expert on food and diets. Ask a hundred people around the world about what they think is healthy, and you will get 200 answers back. Often it is easier to ask what people find unhealthy, even though we do not realize that the things that are considered healthy in some parts in the world, are unhealthy in another and vice versa.
In order for me to lose weight, I needed to overcome my personal biases. I was never fully aware of this, but I admit it now: I was wrong about many things. Wrong about what is “healthy” or “unhealthy”. How the body works. Or how the body actually stores fat. It is funny that everybody has an opinion about how not to become fat, while virtually nobody knows how the mechanics of becoming fat actually work.
I certainly do not know everything. I am an engineer, not a medical doctor, so you should also be critical about my “expert” opinion. However, I do base most of my findings on other doctors. Plus, you could say I am somewhat of an experience-expert in being fat, and how to lose weight. Below are the lessons I had to learn in order to lose that weight.
Principle 1 - There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to losing weight
Funnily enough I always thought there was “a perfect diet” that fits everyone. But we all know that everybody in this world is different and unique. That does not mean a perfect diet does not exist. It simply means that you will have to find your own perfect diet in order to maintain a healthy body. And believe me, when it comes to losing weight there are plenty of perfect diets to choose from.
There is the vegetarian diet, vegan diet, low-carb diet, paleo diet, keto diet to name but a few. All these diets have convincing scientific evidence that they work, together with people advocating they lost a lot of weight on these diets. The thing is: they might work on some people, and not on others. Every one of these diets has pros and cons, advocates and opponents, and each one of these diets is backed with a lot of good scientific data. That means one or more of these diets might help you, others will not. For example: there are plenty of people in France who eat high amounts of saturated fat, drink wine and do not work out. Yet, these people are still healthy and slim. Why is that? Because some people fit this diet, and some do not. The only way to decide what is the perfect diet for you, is to experiment and test it on yourself (without causing too much harm that is).
This principle became very clear to me when watching the below TEDx clip from Eran Segal. The lesson here: be critical of generalized diets or methods that proclaim to work for everyone, and determine your own perfect diet that is sustainable for you in the long run.
Principle 2 - Focus on diet, not sport
No matter how hard you beat the gym, you will gain weight if you systematically eat the wrong things. It is very, very easy to eat too many calories in a day. Let’s take apples as an example. Fruit is healthy, right? Well, sure. However, an apple has about 60+ calories. That means that for most people, you will have to run almost a kilometer to burn off the energy of just a single apple.
That does not mean that exercising does not help you! You feel healthier, your metabolism goes up slightly and your immune system performs better. I used to prefer running (and doing cardio in general), but I know from experience that strength training produces more sustainable results when it comes to weight loss. In fact, 10 minutes of high intensity or strength training (if you really go all the way) is just as effective as hours of cardio in the gym. A good book about this is the four-hour body. If you are new to sports, not sure what you like or how to do it, I recommend Gravity Transformers on YouTube. They are great in explaining quite difficult topics also described in this article in a neat, concise way.
Principle 3 - Insulin makes you fat
Despite all the controversy between different diets and their health benefits, there is one thing they pretty much all agree upon: high levels of insulin are associated with obesity. The truth is of course way more tricky to explain in just a single paragraph. It is generally well understood however that fat cells grow under the influence of insulin. Insulin levels go up mostly by eating carbohydrates. From what I understand, if your insulin level is high, your fat cells cannot burn fat. In fact, you can only store fat. And so, it is virtually impossible for fat cells to burn fat when your insulin levels are too high. The best examples I have found on how storing and burning fat works, is the low carb down under community. Both Dr. Paul Mason and Dr. Benjamin Bikman have been fundamental for understanding the physics behind fat storage and consumption in the human body. I recommend all of their movies on YouTube, but my personal favorites are shown below.
As insulin is created most when you eat carbs (sugar in particular), the easy solution is to simply refrain from eating carbs. More on this in habit 3: carbs are bad. The truth, as always, is not so easy however.
Loser Habits
Since a few months I have come to the realization that for most people, it is not their fault for being fat. Most of us simply do not learn what food does to their body. I believe now that our environment is mostly to blame. A mix of bad habits fed by common misbeliefs and biases on diet, in combination with the availability of so much unhealthy food. The fact that a “healthy” breakfast for young children is considered to be breakfast cereal chocked with sugar is astonishing to me. Breaking these habits is challenging in this environment. Luckily, you can sort of re-program yourself to exhibit habits that will help you achieve a sustainable body. The ones that helped me the most are listed below.
Loser Habit 1 - Track your calories (for a while)
Do you have any idea how many calories are in your food or what you drink? It is not meant as a condescending remark, but as an honest question. Most people have literally no idea. Let’s provide an example, again using apples. What is healthier: apple juice or coca cola? I bet most of you would say apple juice (fruits are healthy, right?). Turns out, they pretty much have the same amount of sugars (and thus calories) in them, about 45 kcal per 100 ml (more about that here). The only way to know the nutritional value and calories in your food, is to check what you eat and drink and log what you consume for a while. It is both clarifying and depressing.
When my girlfriend installed MyFitnessPal on my phone, I started to keep track of my food. The insights I gained on my eating patterns changed my life fundamentally. What helped me most is the realization that a lot of the “in-between snacks”, such as protein bars (which I perceived as healthy) generally contain a tremendous amount of calories. The only way for me to learn how much I over-ate, was to track my consumption. It can be a lot of work for some, but it is a great way to become conscious about what you eat.
As a contradictory remark, I would like to point out the fact that I do not believe entirely in the “caloric” theory the human body. This is the more classical “calorie in vs. calorie out” view, where you lose weight if you simply eat less calories than you need. This is of course true, in the sense that if you starve yourself you will reduce weight. This is neither the most healthy, nor the most sustainable approach however. I believe more in the “endocrine” view of the human body, where hormones play a large part in (de)regulating fat storage and consumption. This is explained perfectly by Dr. Benjamin Bikman in his before-mentioned clip Insulin vs Ketones - the battle for brown fat.
Despite the caloric theory not being entirely correct in my view, it remains a simple and easy habit to kick-start your journey towards a healthy body. I am still tracking my calories to this day.
Loser Habit 2 - Intermittent fasting, more fun with less food!
I never eat breakfast. Why not? Because I can eat more during the rest of the day and I feel a lot better. Skipping one meal a day is one of the easiest methods to lose weight because you automatically eat less. Many people believe it is unhealthy, stating breakfast “is the most important meal of the day” and that “they cannot do anything without eating breakfast in the morning”. Granted, it took me a few days to get adjusted but after a while I ran half a marathon in the morning without having breakfast.
Besides, I know of only one organism that eats breakfast, lunch and dinner at regulated intervals: humans who live in “modernized” societies. In most hunter-gatherer societies, you eat whenever you feel like it and there are occasional days without food. In fact, there is plenty of evidence showing that skipping a meal or fasting for a day (or two) has huge health benefits. It might not be for everyone, but it is a simple one-trick pony that has proven to be beneficial for your health. The below videos from the YouTube channel What I’ve Learned describe intermittent (and regular) fasting in detail.
It's not just about eating less. Though it is certainly important, it did not provide me with the best results. I got that by adjusting my diet itself and eating different macros, or less carbohydrates.
Loser Habit 3 - Carbs are bad
Carbohydrates (carbs in short) are controversial. They are not bad per se, though I believe they are definitely misunderstood in Western society. Carbs are organic molecules: chains of sugars, starches and fibers. They are important in understanding fat storage in the human body. Let’s recap from principle 3 and elaborate shortly on the effect of insulin. It is well known that insulin regulates the conversion of carbohydrates into fats (triglycerides) by promoting the absorption of especially glucose (a simple sugar) from the blood into fat cells (Wikipedia). In other words, insulin “tells” your fat cells to store glucose from your blood into your fat cells. Under the influence of insulin, fat cells virtually cannot burn fat. They can only store more fat. Consequently, the goal when losing weight is to reduce insulin levels as much as possible, or to avoid the food that triggers an insulin response for you. What usually triggers the highest insulin response? You guessed it: carbs. Sugar in particular will ensure a high insulin response.
To summarize: high levels of insulin are associated with obesity. Carbohydrates stimulate insulin levels the most. Reduce or virtually eliminate your carb intake, and your body will start burning fat instead of storing it. The mechanics of this are explained amazingly well by Dr. Paul Mason in the below video. He is a great source on low-carb diets, health and other medical aspects too such as cholesterol.
Recently I even tried the keto diet. This is a very restrictive diet, but has provided me with excellent results. In a keto diet, you eat a lot of fat (70% of your food), relatively few proteins (20%) and little to almost no carbohydrates (10% max). The idea is that your body no longer has any carbohydrates to burn, so it has to start burning fat. It sounds crazy, but I have experienced it in practice: the more fat you eat, the more fat you will burn. This is mostly true as long as you do not eat carbohydrates and not too many proteins (although I have now seen evidence where protein could possibly beneficial on a keto diet). If you are afraid of eating a lot of fat, watch this video on saturated fat by Dr. Paul Mason. It should help alleviate some of your concerns.
Any more tips?
I sincerely hope this helps you to achieve a sustainable body weight and become happy with yourself. There is only one additional tip I would like to give you. Find a buddy. Find someone who can accompany you on your journey and who is there for you. A person who works as a positive feedback loop on your habits, who simply makes it fun to lose weight with. Find a fellow “loser”, and everything will come natural to you. My “loser” was, and still is, my girlfriend who actually is responsible for me starting on this path. She is the best, for without her I would probably still be fat. I cannot express in words how to thank her, but she has inspired me to be healthy and I hope I can do the same for some of you.