This latest (and last) weight loss attempt is the only time I’ve ever lost weight.
While I’ve attempted to lose weight countless times, this is the only time I’ve ever lost more than a few pounds. Yes, you read that right: the first time I have managed to lose any weight is the time I’ve managed to lose 100 pounds.
If you’re sitting in my old shoes, you should take comfort in that fact.
In fact, I’ve never been on a “weight loss journey” long enough to even buy a scale and track my progress. On average, my previous weight loss attempts have lasted about a day. Some of my notable attempts include:
Cabbage soup
This was the first attempt at losing weight — I had just entered high school. I remember my mother made a huge pot of this soup for me and stunk up the entire house in the process. This soup smelled and tasted terrible and I had to eat it for breakfast and lunch, but I was allowed to splurge for dinner.
I think I had about three spoonfuls of this before I threw it away.
Xenadrine-EFX
I had just turned 18 and wanted to buy a weight loss supplement. I remember my age because I was carded when I bought Xenadrine-EFX from Wal-Mart and just had turned 18. I didn’t know it at the time, but Xenadrine-EFX contained a now banned substance called ephedra that supposedly gave people strokes and seizures and was generally unhealthy. After taking a couple of pills (right before I downed a cheeseburger and a few sodas), I was jittery and felt extremely anxious and nervous.
I never took the pills again.
I don’t have a problem with nutritional supplements, but by definition, they only supplement what you’re already doing. You can’t buy weight loss pills and live an unhealthy lifestyle and still expect to lose weight.
Low-carb diet
I love bread (and carbs give us energy), so this diet was doomed from the start. This diet lasted about 2 hours, then I went out with some friends to Texas Roadhouse and they served us a basket filled with rolls and cinnamon butter.
I ended this diet one sweet, buttery, warm roll at a time.
Gym & salad regimen
I’ve also tried changing my lifestyle to the extreme, which consisted of going to the gym for two hours a day and eating bland grilled chicken and salad all the live long day. Should you live your life like that? Absolutely, I wish I could, but I love rolls slathered with cinnamon butter (see above).
Fortunately, eating rolls slathered with cinnamon butter in moderation can be apart of an active and healthy lifestyle.
Weight loss surgery
After failing numerous attempts to lose weight, just before the start of 344 Pounds I extensively researched weight loss surgery. Weight loss surgery can be a viable and effective option to lose weight, but it’s also serious, costly, and requires a lot of recovery time. It will also effect the way you live your life forever and ultimately and obviously I decided not to go this route.
What are some of your failed weight loss attempts?
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
As a vegetarian, I tried Atkins because my parents tried to do it…yeah, dumb move. There was almost nothing I could eat. Unless you count beans and olives.
I don’t like olives. My sister-in-law loves them, but she’s also a very weird person.
I get the impression that you’ve never failed because you’ve never actually tried.
I completely agree. The difference of attempts from than “2 hours” to 2 days shows the difference willpower and real “want vs. need”argument makes.
I do too.
Well my parents both did Atkins – bacon, butter, steaks, eggs every day… until my mom’s teeth started looking like a cast-iron pan.
I’ve used Slimfast (ha!) diet coke and cookies (that didn’t go well either) water diet – you fill up with water and run to the bathroom for exercise (no, I’m not kidding) energy drinks – which works for a few hours, then you have a headache and get shaky and cranky.
Now I’m exercising, and I feel healthier, even if I haven’t lost much weight.
Keep it up, you will!
There are ways to make a low carb (not a no- carb, mind you) diet work. The point being that, if you are watching your carb intake, you’re generally also reducing caloric intake. That coupled with exercise can be a very efficient weight loss method. I know, because I’m doing it now :) . Great site Tyler! Keep it up man. You’re an inspiration to many!
I’ve only done the eat 5 or 6 small meals keeping calories below 1900 a day, and exercise.
Worked quite well, but I was doing this after Katrina which wasn’t a good time. Grocery stores had limited items, only a few were even open, and you had to wait in a long line out in the sun just to enter the store. Most restaurants were still closed, and those that were open had what they called “limited menus”. That basically meant you took what you could get and liked it.
I plan on revisiting this diet soon, just need to get motivated to start up. I will definitely be blogging the diet too as Tyler had mentioned how much that adds accountability to stay on course.
I’m glad. Just curious, why are you waiting so long to start your new lifestyle? Are things hectic right now?
A little hectic but probably not as hectic as some people. Laziness is definitely part of it, probably a trait of many overweight people.
Another problem is I have so few items in that meal rotation, I know I’ll get bored of it fast. So I really think I need to find some good recipes so I don’t fall off the wagon so to speak.
At times I was eating things like a large can of tuna with 18 crushed wheat thins, and some mustard. Because it fit into my calorie profile. Didn’t taste bad, but certainly not going to sustain a diet.
It’s also hard because each weekend I’m over at people’s houses and wind up eating what they have and it’s never healthy stuff. So I guess the only option there would be to not go, or bring my own little portioned foods and resist all that temptation on a regular basis. Plus football season cookouts.
But I guess that all falls back on laziness. That and no support, when I start my diet I start it alone and no one is coming with me.
Going to have to get started one of these days, need to restart my blog too (again, lazy lol).
Until then, I’m stuck in the same schedule as many other dieters, my diet starts next week, and next week it’s always next week.
Oh I tried just about every diet on the books too, but I actually worked them for weeks or months at a time. I’d like 10, 20, 30 pounds and then gain it all back plus more.
This is the first and only time I have lost over 35 pounds and kept it off. And it isn’t a special diet or pill or magical program. I am really proud of myself.
You are doing great :)
Congrats on the weight loss!
Ugh I’ve tried everything too. No carb, no sugar, no meat, no this, no that. Pills, pills, more pills, salads….. blech.
Now I eat less of the foods I like and move more. Period. I lose weight slower than any human on earth, but I DO lose! I run, I like it, I stick with it, it works.
That’s a good strategy, my friend.
I haven’t tried many diets other than either straight up exercise and/or not eating bad stuff. Only with my latest go at it have I been REALLY even analyzing food to any extent; before, I’d just count calories and try to work out as much as possible. Now, I count calories and try to keep track of what makes up those calories. Protein calories good because I weight train as well as cardio, fat calories always bad. Sugar calories? Well, bad in large quantities, but necessary for energy. So, I think you have to find a ratio that works for you. Right now I don’t have a specific ratio of calorie intake, I’m just going for as little fat as possible and not worrying too much about anything else. It seems to be working quite well!
I tried both Atkins and the South Beach diets. Both are essentially carb-restricted diets that rely on an initial period of carb deprivation to cause you to dump 10 to 15 lbs of retained water. Didn’t work for me at all. I also tried the Slimfast diet and that was a joke. I felt like crap.
What has worked this time was keeping a food diary, monitoring not just my caloric intake but the ratio of macro-nutrients (I’ve found for me that if my carb ratio goes too high I gain weight, even when I’m within my normal caloric range for a day) I consume. On top of that I run 3 times a week and do some body weight resistance training.
I’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty much been the Gym and Salad Regimen for me since January. But the results speak for themselves. I’ve lost this weight a few times over the past twenty years – Diet Workshop program, Atkins – with good results, but the problem was always maintenance.
This time around, I’d like to think I’ve finally learned the difference between “diet” and “lifestyle change.” They gym and salad won’t be going away anytime soon for me; that’s what I need to keep the weight off. Allowing myself a couple of cheat meals a month makes it manageable. Let’s see how I do after I hit goal at year’s end, but I’m feeling good about this time :-)
I had tried weight loss a couple times in the past; failed ones? I tried regular dieting, but I would go off track a couple days later.
I’ve been dieting since June 2, 2009 when I started out at 246.4 pounds. I now weight 210.4 lbs (today was my lowest weigh-in in YEARS). During my first month, I lost over 25 lbs. That was back when I was tracking all calorie, carb and fat intake.
So whats the diet? Sensible eating and drinking under 1,500 calories. What does sensitive eating mean? No fried foods, no junk food, NO SODA (Seriously, High Fructose Corn Syrup is the devil!), no fast food, eating as much organic as possible. I ride a bike once or twice a week and it works great and it also renewed my interest in bicycling.
I can’t remember a time where I have felt better about myself. My current goal is 200 by Halloween.
I used to weigh over 400 pounds and I’m currently around 300 and still losing and just like you Tyler, I went the route of exercising more. I tried Atkins, those chitosan pills and every other fad out there and I lost a lot and have it kept it off just by eating less and exercising more.
Oh and love the site as well. More inspirational than someone yelling at me.
About 5.5 years ago I decided that I had enough of being overweight and tired. I was 385 pounds and 23 years old at the time. I dedicated myself to going to the gym, but not going crazy at the gym (an hour on the treadmill and some light lifting plus an hour swimming in the pool). I went at least 5 times per week. I’ve always had a good diet (no fast food, no soda, lots of water), but my portion sizes were obscene. So I lessened my portions and still ate the healthy food. I went from 385 pounds to 260 pounds in about a year. I felt great.
Then two things happened. First, my gall bladder went (the doctor said it was a result of losing too much weight too quickly). As such, my body had (and continues to have) a hard time processing fat out of my foods. Second, I graduated from graduate school and landed a great job an hour from my home. This means that I am out of the house from 7:30am until about 6:30pm and exhausted by the time I get home.
Slowly, the weight came back on. When I was in graduate school, even though I went to a school that was 45 minutes from my house, I had so much free time that going to the gym was easy. It’s extremely hard to lose weight when you’re out of the house in a sedentary office setting for 8 hours each day with an hour commute on either end of that work day.
Last winter I reached 380 pounds again. At that point, I was disgusted. I joined a gym down the street and went there every day for over a month. Maybe 10 pounds came off. So I stopped going to the gym.
However, due to an active summer and the dietary changes that I’ve made over the last few months (smaller portions), I dropped 50 pounds so that I’m weighing in at about 330 now. I’ve been at this weight for about a month and I’m confident that I can lose another 70 and sit at 260 (which is where I want to be in the short term).
The lesson that I’ve learned is that you have to get into shape when you have the freedom to do so. Because if you wait until you have an executive-type job and a lengthy commute, it’ll be harder than you could imagine.
In my first year of college I lost 20 pounds by taking the then-popular diet drug “fen-fen”. I also forgot to eat and my mother started putting Ensure in my car because without it, I would just not eat all day. As soon as I went off the drug after moving out and going off their health insurance I put on the twenty pounds almost overnight…plus another twenty for fun! Fast forward 14 years and I’m finally back in the size I was at that time – with no drugs….just rough calorie counting and exercise daily.
Oh godddddddd – the cabbage soup diet. I tried that one as well, with as much luck as you. YUCK!!!
I also tried SlimQuick for Women, which I did lose a few pounds with, but quickly gave up because it was WAY too expensive.
I am presently undergoing my (hopefully) final attempt to lose weight, and have lost about 12 pounds in less than a month. What am I doing? Eating right – reducing portion sizes, eating regular meals and snacks to keep metabolism up, choosing healthier alternatives, and EXERCISING. I’m actually finding myself enjoying the exercise now that I’ve made a routine of it (though not the last two days since I’ve hurt my leg somehow. :( )
I enjoy reading your blog – very inspiring! You look great – I’m hoping I can soon join you in the ranks of people with successful weight loss! I’ve got quite a ways to go, but I really, really feel like I can get there this time.
-Dee