I Lost More Than 50 Pounds in Six Months — Here is How I Did It

Spoiler alert: “piece of cake”

On January 6, 2023 I reported as previously agreed to Dr. Maxa’s office for my annual physical.

Most people don’t like going to the doctor. I don’t mind. I’ve always had it pretty easy health wise. Almost four years in, I still haven’t had COVID. I rarely get the flu. I like my doctor. I look forward to the banter.

I’ve been going to see Russell Maxa for about a decade. I took a two year break because some insurance company or another wouldn’t pay for it, but it’s been a regular thing. He has been very consistent with his admonitions about my weight.

2023 was no exception. I clocked in at 230 or so, perfectly distributed, in my opinion, on my 5'8" frame. “When are you going to lose some weight?”

“Doc, I have a slow metabolism,” I said with conviction. “I ride my bicycle almost every day for an hour. I look pretty good for a fat guy.”

He didn’t push the issue. It was a losing battle and he knew it. The biggest problem was that I believed myself. I was convinced that my metabolism was slower than normal and that I was overweight due to that one single inconvenient truth. I was wrong.

I left the office with a glowing report. Other than the obvious, I was quite healthy. My blood pressure was textbook, my heartbeat was slow and steady and I was in the clear for another year.

Two weeks later, I celebrated my 58th birthday. My wife put together a great birthday dinner at a local restaurant where we were joined by a dozen or so friends and family members. Pitchers of specialty cocktails were placed on the table as I took my seat.

The party was delightful. I ate some of everything and drank more than my share. My two sons were there. The older one had recently given up drinking and the younger one wasn’t a big consumer. “More for me!”

A few days later, I told my wife I was going to take a break from alcohol. My main motivation was to set a better example for my son and to be supportive of his effort to quit drinking. I was also cognizant of just how many nights I was sitting on the sofa drinking margaritas. I planned to take a week off and assess, but we all knew I would be back with a vengeance.

The first thing I noticed when I stopped drinking was the marketing. Marketing for alcohol is so ubiquitous that it is simply part of the landscape. You don’t notice it, but it is everywhere and it comes at you all of the time. Whether you drink or not, take note of the constant pressure to drink. Billboards, signs in windows, on taxicabs, on busses, radio spots, tv spots, product placement in movies, even characters in novels are encouraging us to have a drink. It’s a marketing machine that never rests.

I remember the lightbulb going off in my head just a day or two into the break. “Wow. America is hardwired to drink,” I thought. This isn’t something I had ever noticed before. Maybe you have. If not, look around.

This realization gave me pause. Usually, if someone is making that sort of concentrated push to get me to do something, that something is not in my best interest. Or yours.

Not drinking was a struggle, but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. I did go to bed earlier and one night I went to bed before 8 PM. I knew if I sat up on the couch that night I was going to have a drink, so I simply went to bed. A week became two and then three.

The next thing I noticed was that my quality of sleep had drastically improved. Just a week into not drinking I was considerably better rested every day. I liked that new feeling.

I did not notice feeling better physically back then. I have always had a high tolerance for drinking and other substances. For the most part, I don’t get hungover. I have gotten so drunk that I passed out at 5 or 7 in the evening, slept for an hour or two and then rallied for another party session deep into the morning. Many times. I did not believe that alcohol affected me the next day. I continued to tell myself that story in the first few months of my newfound sobriety.

I spoiled it in the last paragraph — my experiment turned into a thing.

On day 24, I was riding my bicycle in Atlanta. I was stopped at a traffic light. I had my left foot on the pedal and my right foot on the curb. I made a decision that it was time for a margarita. I was going to ride another mile or so to El Tesoro and have one. They make great margaritas and they have a cool outdoor space where I could hold court, meet some new people, be the life of the party. And then I said out loud, sitting on my bike on the corner of Flat Shoals and Glenwood, “You are not going to disrespect day 24.” And I didn’t. The clock kept ticking and I stayed alcohol-free.

With one exception, I have not consumed an alcoholic beverage since January 29. I talked about the exception in this article: https://tinyurl.com/5a8cfztb. I drank a good number of alcoholic beverages that evening. Or was it a bad number?

The day after drinking in Ireland I clearly realized just how bad I felt. That must have been my baseline for well over a decade. I have tasted drinks my wife has had, but just a taste. I have not had any strong desire to go back.

I don’t think that I am done drinking forever. I am an impulsive fun loving guy and sooner or later drinking is going to look fun to me. I would be surprised and disappointed if I ever return to regular consumption of alcohol. I am well aware of the changes that not drinking has ushered into my life.

The third thing I noticed was that I was losing weight. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. I am sure that I had thought about the caloric impact of heavy drinking. I had done “The Whole 30” program twice, losing 10–15 pounds both times before putting it back on in the subsequent weeks.

In February I realized that my pants were loose. In March I had to cut my belts. In April, my younger son commented on the changes and suggested I start going to the gym. I agreed to go at least twice a week for a month.

I have never really enjoyed the gym. I was a kid who wanted to be an athlete but never felt like an athlete. The gym has always just been a reminder of how far behind the real athletes I am. But I went. And I liked it. Alex showed me a dozen exercises, helped me come up with some starting weights and turned me loose. I’ve been 44 times since late April. Not great, but quite a change.

The next thing that happened was my introduction to the DexaScan. Alex told me he was going for one. “What’s that?” I asked. On May 2, I got my first Dexa total body composition scan. This was three months after I stopped drinking. I had already lost over thirty pounds. I weighed 197.5 pounds and I was STILL 32.4% body fat. That was eye opening. And disheartening. But I was encouraged that I had lost the weight.

That appointment motivated me to really think about my food intake. I love ice cream (never gonna give it up) and I am a grazer. I committed to getting rid of my snack stockpile. I love chicken, so I started stockpiling grilled chicken thighs for those grazing moments. I embraced Caesar salad as a go-to lunch or snack. I cut bananas into slices and froze them. I froze grapes. Instead of ice cream or other sweet treats, I began to eat frozen fruit.

There was no big strategy here. I just thought about where my leaks were and made some changes. Life is habitual. I changed some habits. It is always easier to change a habit than to eliminate it. Instead of a sandwich, I ate a chicken thigh. Instead of an ice cream bar, I ate half a frozen banana. Instead of a margarita, I drank a diet coke and took a couple of bong hits. I never said I was a saint.

I was writing more and more. Writing leads to thinking and introspection. One day I was talking with my friend Mary about a guy she had met on the internet. He seems like a perfect partner for her. She said they don’t have chemistry. This conversation got me thinking about arranged marriages and how two people thrust into that situation would go about getting to know one another. I had a eureka moment. “WE CHOOSE WHAT WE LIKE AND DISLIKE.”

I had to know, so I started thinking about all of the things I don’t like. Number one on the list was tomatoes. You may be struggling with tomatoes being equivalent to being told who to marry, but it made perfect sense to me. I decided to like tomatoes.

I started by telling people close to me that I was going to learn to like tomatoes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” they said. But I was resolute. I started by stopping. I have always ordered salads, sandwiches, whatevers with “no tomatoes.” I simply stopped. I remember the first time I ordered a grilled chicken club at chic fil a. There were two big goopy slices of tomato. It was gross. I nearly bailed on the whole thing. But I ate it all and it wasn’t that horrible.

My wife buys cherry tomatoes for salads. I started slicing them into quarters to put in the salad. I made a point to eat a slice or two each time. Being intentional about tasting it, chewing it, feeling the goopiness. I embraced it. It took months, but I like tomatoes now. They aren’t in the ice cream or chicken category, but I like them. I had a salad for lunch today. There were four large slices of tomato on it. I cleaned the bowl.

In September I took my wife to Europe as part of her birthday celebration. I told her I planned to start drinking coffee on the trip. I despised everything about coffee. The smell, the taste — even coffee flavored desserts were off limits for me. Until September. I said “I am going to start loving coffee.” From the first latte I have enjoyed it. I drank every style coffee I could find on that trip and now I routinely have two to five cups a day. Yum.

I got two more dexa scans. I got one in August and another in November. (Here is a link to a video I made about the November scan and the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyox6CK1OvA) My body fat is down to 25.4%. My weight is 177.8. The scan reports a lot of detailed measurements. My waist has gone from whatever it was in January to 42.3" in May, 39.4" in August and 37.6" last week. I was wearing XL or XXL shirts in January. Now I am buying mediums.

Recently I ate black olives. I have always hated olives. I did not make any plan to start eating them. My wife wanted a Greek salad. It had black olives in it. I picked them out and popped them in my mouth one by one, chewing and savoring them, knowing I was in for a treat. they were tasty.

On August 12, I started doing pushups. I did 25. Alex challenged me to get it up to 60 by the end of the year. I did 95 this morning. I usually do 3–5 sets throughout the day. Yesterday I did 500 pushups over the course of the day in response to a challenge from a random guy on X. My biceps and chest are telling the tale.

In 300 days, I have completely transformed myself physically. I have stopped drinking after close to two decades of daily abuse. I have all but stopped consuming fluff on TV. I write and publish daily. I have a much fuller intimate relationship with my sons. I believe that every experience is a potentially great one, including experiences like going to prison or surviving a life threatening accident or dying. We choose how we perceive everything, from foods to trauma. I choose to embrace it all.

I can’t wait to get up in the morning and live another day. How about you?