Lose Weight in 2024 with These Simple Steps
I lost more than 20% of my body weight in 2023, now it’s your turn
At the beginning of 2023, I was a 5'8" 230 pound, heavy drinking 57 year old real estate broker. I was fat, but I looked pretty good. I was out of shape, but I still rode thousands of miles on my bicycle annually and had just returned from a trip to Peru where I hiked to Machu Picchu with my son and a group of twenty somethings.
As we slip into 2024, I am a 5'8" 180 pound 58 year old non-drinking writer (the rarest kind of writer.) I’m not fat. I have been in the gym on a regular basis since May. My body fat is down from about 40% to somewhere in the mid 20’s. I will be riding my bike from Miami to Seattle in 2024.
Losing weight is easy. The fatter you are, the easier it is to lose weight.
I have lost weight many times in my life. Maybe you have, too. Before 2023, every time I lost weight, I gained it back, along with a little extra for good measure. I have repeated this pattern more times than I can recall.
So why is this time any different? Sure, I lost fifty pounds, but isn’t it inevitable that I will be putting on 60 or 70 pretty soon? It’s a fair question.
The answer is “No.” I won’t be gaining the weight back. There won’t be any extra, thank you very much. Because this time, I didn’t set out to lose weight.
How it usually goes
When we set a goal to lose weight, whether it is twenty pounds or three hundred, we typically follow the same path.
We set the goal, we make a plan to eat healthier and move our bodies more. We always start out strong, don’t we? Whether we start ordering Nutrisystem meal kits and join the gym or we learn to cook and set up a peloton in the spare bedroom, those first few weeks are easy.
The scale responds pretty quickly. Let’s face it, if you are trying to lose weight, it is usually because you have some to spare. As soon as you begin consuming less calories and burning more, the needle on the scale starts to move.
That needle is motivating. Intoxicating, even. You can’t stop weighing yourself! Your clothes get loose. You pick up steam. You cut out sweets. You add five minutes on the treadmill. You’re home free.
Then something happens. Life isn’t afraid to intervene, is it? Your cat gets sick or your mom comes to visit for three weeks or a tree falls in your yard and takes out a power line so you have to live with a friend for a bit. Your routine is interrupted. Your momentum is sidetracked. All those rosy thoughts about modeling a two piece bathing suit for the first time in two decades slip out of your mind.
You miss a day at the gym. You eat a quarter pounder with cheese because you are in a hurry and just don’t have the time to cook tonight. You stop at the pub and have a couple of drinks because you need a few minutes away from your mom. It happens.
It doesn’t take long to surrender all of your progress. Your loose clothes begin to fit again. Then they start to feel snug. You can’t believe it. You start in on yourself with the negativity. “You are such an idiot,” you tell yourself. “You were on a roll!”
Pretty quickly your goal to lose weight is swept aside, replaced with a daily struggle to simply survive your current circumstances without losing your mind. You’ll try again next year.
Occasionally, we set a goal to lose weight and we succeed! Happy days are here again.
You took all the right actions. You ate less. You ate healthier foods. You walked more and took the stairs at work and made time to go to the gym. You persevered and you lost twenty pounds, just like you drew it up in December.
Everywhere you go you hear the same things. “You look great!” “How’d you do it?”
But now what? You don’t really want to lose any more weight. Your goal has been achieved — that’s old news, now.
You aren’t as motivated to go to the gym. It makes less sense to take the stairs — why sweat on your work clothes, anyway? One fast food meal isn’t going to make that much difference.
It doesn’t take long. You aren’t weighing yourself religiously anymore. One day you hop on the scale and realize you have given back more than half of what you lost. It’s disheartening. You may not have the emotional energy to get back into weightloss mode. You’ll try again next year.
Losing weight is a useless goal. Your weight is a product of your lifestyle. Your lifestyle is a summation of your habits. If you want to be healthier, change your habits. Your weight will follow.
Instead of setting a goal to lose weight, set multiple goals around building and maintaining healthy daily habits.
Everyone is different. Everyone starts from a different place. Everyone travels a different path and everyone is headed for a different destination. Just the same, we are all pretty similar creatures.
You will have to make some adjustments to fit your situation, but following these suggestions will start you down the path to a healthier and happier life.
- Get a DexaScan and RMR test to better understand how much energy your body burns each day.
If you have never heard of a DexaScan, don’t feel stupid. I learned about them from my son earlier this year. I got my first one in May and had two more in August and November. In November I made a video about the experience.
Your DexaScan will tell you a lot about your body. Things you may think you don’t want to know, like exactly how much you weigh and how much of your weight is lean tissue compared to fatty tissue. You’ll learn about your visceral fat, the dangerous layer surrounding your internal organs. You’ll get measurements of each major part of your body.
The RMR test will tell you how many calories your body burns each day at rest. Once you know that number, weight loss becomes a math equation.
If you don’t get the RMR test, you are going to rely on numbers that are designed to be “one size fits all.” Be sure to assume your body burns less calories than these number suggest until you have evidence to the contrary.
I suggest that you do the DexaScan and the RMR test at the beginning of your journey and then periodically as you progress. Seeing your body fat percentage drop is especially motivating. Far more powerful than the needle on the scale.
2. If you drink alcohol, stop.
If you have read many of my recent posts, you are probably beginning to think I am some sort of teetotalling zealot. I don’t think that’s the case, but I certainly understand the thought.
I quit drinking on January 29, 2023. Within a few days, with no effort on my part other than to say “no” to alcohol, I was losing weight. It was automatic. Alcohol is sugar. Every alcoholic beverage has a significant sugar content. The boozier the drink, the more sugar there is.
Heavy drinkers can lose two pounds a week or more simply by giving up the sauce.
Giving up alcohol is easier than you think. Most drinkers are habitual drinkers with no physical dependency on drinking. They drink because that’s what they do. You can tell yourself a different story any time you want. I told myself that I was a person who used to drink and now I am.
There are lots of benefits to not drinking beyond weight loss.
Giving up my drinking habit ranks on the list of the greatest accomplishments of my life. Right up there with meeting and marrying my wonderful wife, De and the births of my sons.
I hope that you will take that critical step and see for yourself.
3. Cut out all fast food.
Cigarette manufacturers intentionally engineered their product to contain enough nicotine to cause physical addiction.
Fast food is delicious. I don’t suspect nicotine, but there is certainly plenty of fat, salt and sugar to keep you coming back.
In 2018, the FDA mandated that restaurants with 20 or more locations make nutrition information available for their standard menu items. This information can be eye opening.
According to the hardees.com website, the “Super Star Combo,” consisting of a double patty burger, fries and a drink clocks in at up to 1970 calories. The sandwich itself is 950 calories and contains 62 grams of fat along with 185 mg of cholesterol.
If you are hoping to lose weight, you cannot eat anything like this on a regular basis.
If you really have a craving, though, you can do this. Order the combo meal. Take the bag outside and stand near a trash can. Open the bag. Put your face in it. Take a good whiff.
Pull the fries out. Smell them. Eat one fry. Take your time. Chew it slowly. Let the fat liquify on your tongue. Hold the taste as long as you can before you swallow it. Eat one more.
Now the burger. Unwrap it. Smell it. Take one tiny bite. Chew it. Savor it. Hold on to it as long as you can. Swallow it.
Now one more fry and one more small bite of the burger. The rest goes into the garbage. Don’t take it with you to give away or to portion out and eat over the next week. Toss it into the nastiest garbage can you can find in the most public location available. You don’t want to be the girl digging it out of the can for one more bite!
There are acceptable items on fast food menus, but you really have to look for them. For now, just say no to any establishment that could be considered fast food.
4. Commit to moving your body on a regular schedule.
The RMR test you took gave you a picture of how many calories your body burns every day without moving. Just the energy required to keep you alive.
In August 2023, my RMR was 1711 calories. Of course almost no one does nothing physical at all. I am an active person. I go to the gym several days a week. I ride my bike a lot. My calorie burn might be 2300 or even 2500 calories a day.
The more I move my body, the more calories I burn.
Everything I put into my body contributes to my calorie intake. It’s a math problem.
In order to lose weight, my calorie burn has to exceed my calorie intake. The bigger the differential, the faster the weight comes off.
In addition, if I go to the gym and lift weights, I build muscle. Muscle tissue takes more energy to support than fatty tissue. The more muscle I have, the higher my RMR is. This is an excellent example of compounding in action. Going to the gym burns calories, which is helpful. It also builds muscles, which burn calories by simply existing. Gym = Good!
Pick one thing that you are willing to commit to doing every day in the “move your body” category. I picked pushups. I started on August 12. I did 25 pushups every day and I tried to do them within 10 minutes of getting out of bed. This gave me a lot of momentum. Whatever you do right away tends to feel very important to you, so do something that contributes to your major objectives.
As I got stronger, I raised the number of pushups. Today is December 29. I did 110 pushups this morning. They aren’t great pushups, but my arms are bigger and I can do a lot more than I could do in August, so we will count this as a win.
You might pick going to the gym four days a week, or walking for half an hour every morning rain or shine or riding your exercycle or feel free to steal the pushups idea. But do something and do it as soon as your feet hit the floor.
5. Eat smart.
The older you are, the lower your RMR is likely to be. I cannot possibly lose weight if I don’t pay attention to my diet. If I eat just one Super Star Combo meal, I am going to have difficulty maintaining my weight.
At a certain age, the importance of what we put into our bodies far outweighs the benefits we get from exercise. It sucks, but it’s a fact. Get used to monitoring your food and beverage intake and exercising self control.
At a basic level, we eat in order to provide fuel for our bodies. Our body tells us when we are hungry and when we are satiated. One of the benefits, or curses of living in a plentiful time in history is that we can choose to eat for pleasure or for distraction or entertainment.
You are in a unique position to know your own eating habits. If you tend to eat between meals, to eat things that are not healthy or to overeat, it’s imperative that you find ways to minimize the damage you are doing with these behaviors.
Here are a few ideas:
If you are like me and constantly want to be eating something, keep tons of low calorie options available.
I have grilled chicken breasts in a container in my refrigerator all the time. If I feel compelled to eat something between meals, I could do worse than a grilled chicken breast.
I love ice cream. I buy Nick’s ice cream. Nick’s is a low calorie brand. Most of the “light” ice creams don’t have the same mouth feel that regular ice cream has. Nick’s is heavier, but an entire pint is under 400 calories. Compare this to Blue Bell, which is about 800 calories per pint or Jenny’s, which can have 1200 or more.
There are a number of single serving ice cream products that can satisfy your craving without derailing your effort to be healthy. Lately I have been buying Helados Mexican ice cream bars, which range from 70–150 calories per bar.
Salads are great snacks and meals. Most of the calorie content in a salad will be in the form of cheese, protein, croutons and dressing. You can skip the cheese. You can control the proteins you use and you can choose the dressing. Learn to enjoy dressings with less fat and calories. Bolthouse Farms has a nice variety of dressings made with yogurt that usually come in at 50 calories or less for a two tablespoon serving.
Fruit is a good option for snacking. I always try to have a pound or two of grapes in the freezer. I love the sweetness and the cold satisfies my ice cream craving. I also slice ripe bananas and freeze them for the same reasons. They are creamy in your mouth like ice cream at a fraction of the calorie cost.
6. Monitor your progress.
Putting all of these steps into motion will result in you making progress. Your weight will come down. You will get stronger. You will feel better. You will probably sleep better and have more energy. This is good stuff.
You need to keep score. Not to compare yourself to someone else. Not to check off a box or consider a goal “accomplished.” No, you need to keep score to make sure your new habits are working and to give you the encouragement you need to keep going.
Weigh yourself weekly. Keep the numbers in a notebook or on a spreadsheet. Look back every once in a while and be proud of your progress.
Take pictures of yourself naked once a week. Keep them in a password protected folder. Look at them occasionally.
When you lose weight you will eventually have to cut the ends off your belt. Keep them where you can see them.
You will eventually have to buy new clothes. Take some pictures of yourself in the old clothes before you give them away.
If the time comes when you are no longer making progress, take a look at all of the parts of the machine to see where you may be slipping. Tighten up the ship and get back on track.
You have spent your entire life getting into the shape you are in right now. You can’t remake yourself in a day.
Be patient. Make a plan to build these new habits. Do your best.
From time to time you are going to go off the rails.
You may get drunk, like I did in September.
You may eat a Super Star combo meal and drink two milkshakes. You may skip the gym for a few weeks.
That’s OK. Just own it. Tell that little voice inside your head to “Fuck off.” But listen to it a little bit and get back on the horse.
The healthier you keep your body, the healthier your mind will be, the more you will be able to enjoy your life and the longer you will live.
The better you feel about yourself, the happier you will be. You will be a better friend, lover, parent and person.
I know this is your year. Let me know how it goes!
Chris Compton www.twainingwheels.com 12–29–2023
