How I Lost 33 pounds/15 kg (and Kept It Off)

My easy-to-follow experience

Growing up, I was always a skinny kid. I was athletic. I had good endurance. And best of all, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight.

I figured I just had a good metabolism.

But as I reached my early 30s, I found myself packing on a few pounds. It didn’t happen all at once, but over the course of a few years, I ended up with quite the beer gut. And I don’t drink a lot of beer.

“I guess my metabolism is slowing down with age.” I thought.

It seems silly now that I used to think this, because of the realization of how ignorant I was in the matters of weight gain and loss.

Losing weight is not as complicated as it seems. Actors gain and lose weight for roles. Athletes shed a few pounds when their coach tells them to. Bodybuilders go through intentional cycles of gaining and losing weight, year after year.

My experience with weight loss took me from relative ignorance of the subject to a fairly comprehensive understanding of it.

I’ll lay it all out here so that you can learn from my experience and hopefully discover that losing weight is really not that complicated. In fact, mechanically, it’s very easy. And it’s actually pretty fun.

So here’s what happened.

The Ketogenic Diet

I watched a Youtube video by Dr. Eric Berg, recommending the ketogenic diet for weight loss. If you watch YouTube videos on nutrition you’ve probably seen one of his. He’s very popular.

The ketogenic diet asks you to stop eating all carbohydrates. That includes all-grain products like bread, pasta, cookies, starchy things like potatoes and yams, and any sugary products. This is because these foods spike your insulin level, which prevents you from losing weight.

No carbs. No sugars. Simple.

I loved my sweets, but thankfully, had enough strength to endure the cravings and not give in. It only takes three or so days to defeat the physical craving for a type of food. The psychological craving takes a little longer but it goes away too, in no time.

So all you eat is proteins, like meat or vegan alternatives, and vegetables.

Even most fruits are forbidden. Apples, pears, and many other sweet fruits, according to Berg, have been bred to be extra sweet and contain too much sugar. And they too can spike your insulin level. Blueberries and raspberries are right though.

Intermittent Fasting

Dr. Berg also suggested pairing the ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting. This means you cut out one of your meals, either breakfast or dinner.

It is done to increase the time period that you go without food, in order to put your body into the state of ketosis. That’s when your body runs off of fat reserves and you burn off your own fat.

This was a tough adjustment at first, but I quickly learned to enjoy it. The hunger I felt when I skipped breakfast only spurred me on to keep going. It was a sign that I must have been doing it right.

The Disbelief

I went on the ketogenic diet on a whim. I never thought that it would actually work. So when the signs of weight loss began to appear, they went right over my head.

For example, I honestly thought, for a whole week or so, that the elastic waistbands on all my shorts had become worn loose, all at once. Just my luck, I thought, that all my clothes would unravel at the same time like that. Now I’ll have to buy new ones.

I’m not kidding when I say that for about a week, it didn’t even occur to me that I might actually be losing weight. I only went on a diet. I didn’t actually expect it to work.

This is probably due to all the stories I had heard in the past about people trying diet after diet and not seeing any success. I thought mine would be just another failure, a neat experiment, and nothing more.

The Diet Adjustment

I stumbled upon another weight loss video on YouTube. This one also mentioned intermittent fasting, but not in the context of the keto diet.

I was stunned. I had thought that intermittent fasting was a part of keto and only worked in conjunction with it. Looking back, I am again struck by my profound ignorance of nutrition and dieting.

Prior to this new information, I had followed the keto diet religiously. And now this new advice was telling me that I could start eating bread again, as long as I continue to skip breakfast every day.

I was hesitant to try this new approach because Dr. Berg always said, “If it’s working, don’t change anything.” And here I was, seeing phenomenal results, and ready to significantly adjust my diet.

Calorie Counting

The main reason, I realized, I was losing weight was because I was creating a rather large caloric deficit. It wasn’t that I cut out carbs. It was just that I was eating a lot less.

The guy in the new video said to count your calories. For this, he recommended an app called Cronometer. It’s used to record everything you eat in a day and to track all your calories. It’s an alternative to the popular MyFitnessPal, by Apple.

I now had a new religion. I wrote down absolutely everything I ate and counted every single calorie I put in my body. I then took away all the calories I burned by exercising.

My new diet continued to work just like the keto diet. I was steadily losing weight and loving every second of it.

I was able to dig through my closet and pull out all the old clothes that I had put away, thinking I’d never be able to wear them again because you know — metabolism. But now I was fitting into items I wore in high school. It was a satisfying feeling.

The Takeaways

The formula for losing weight is this:

calories in - calories out = weight gain/loss

It really is that simple.

I’ve stopped eating keto.

I’ve stopped intermittent fasting.

I’ve stopped counting calories.

Would I recommend doing the above three? Absolutely! That’s how I learned and experientially understood the formula for losing weight.

I now know what I can and can’t eat, and in what amounts, just by looking at it. I’ve started weight training and my new problem is gaining weight. I’m just not a big eater anymore.

I eat three, mostly healthy meals a day. I don’t have snacks. I rarely have anything that might be considered junk food. And I don’t drink anything with calories in it, only water, coffee and tea.

Honestly, losing weight was so much fun that I’d say gaining it in the first place was worth it. It really gave me a sense of accomplishment. And it couldn’t have come at a better time because I was really down on myself.

I now have a newfound pride and vigour for life. And it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t let myself go first.

So I wish you success on your weight loss journey. I hope you achieve your ideal weight. If you have your doubts, I did too. But it is absolutely doable. And hopefully, my story demonstrates that.