Whether you are overweight or not, in your lifetime you would have got more ‘tips’ to lose weight than tips to help the homeless. Maybe it would have been “eat a high-protein breakfast; avoid sugar, salt, and oily stuff; go for an evening walk; the key is diet, not exercise; eat your heart out but exercise; drink plenty of water; stay away from junk food; sleep 8 hours; weight training is a must…” The list goes on.
Unfortunately, this free advice rarely works in reality. For the uninitiated, more than one–third (78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese, resulting in medical costs of $147 billion per year.
So, how do you shed those extra kilos, burn fat, and get a toned and healthy body? Walk briskly for an hour on the treadmill — while watching Netflix on iPad — everyday for a year. And no, this is not one of those expert ideas that never worked.
Alasdair Wilkins, 27-year-old science and medical journalism master’s student at the University of North Carolina, weighed 285 pounds 12 months ago. Today he weighs 185 pounds. He recently chronicled his journey for Vox, how he lost 100 pounds, and what life changes he experienced as a result.
- Don’t Get Intimidated by the Gym
Basically, I just went to the gym, and I … walked. On a treadmill, uphill, at a brisk pace, for about an hour every day — and I do mean every day — from July [2014] to April [2015]. That’s more or less it! I started grad school in August, which meant I moved out of my parents’ house and away from their immaculately stocked refrigerator, and also meant the place where I worked all day was located more than a 10-foot walk from where I slept, which also helped, but that’s more or less it! That is not something I can monetize.
- Set Low Pressure Expectations
I never would have lost 100 pounds if that’s what I had set out to do. Indeed, the weight loss only happened as soon as I had given up hope of losing weight at all. When I went back to the gym last July, my only real goal was to start feeling a little better about myself. If I had any weight-related goal at all, it was probably on the order of 5 to 10 pounds, and losing 20 would have made me ecstatic. Because I wasn’t putting pressure on myself to lose 100 pounds all at once — or in this case, at all — I sidestepped the biggest danger when it comes to weight loss: discouragement.
- Figure Out What Works for You
The thing is, though, it was a lot easier for me to hop on a treadmill than to cut portions, at least at first. So I just ignored the (frequently contradictory) mountains of literature on the best way to lose weight and just focused on finding a way that worked for me… The weight loss succeeded because I found a way to be extreme in moderation. Losing 100 pounds can’t have been some titanic act of individual will, as I’ve proven fairly conclusively over the first 26 years of my life that my willpower is mediocre at best. Instead, I managed to reshape my environment so that the result was weight loss, rather than continued obesity.
- Distract Yourself from Your Own Fatness
I constructed a life for myself in which my physical appearance just never, ever came up, as any reminder of how I looked took me right back to the core of my self-hatred. Pulling that off meant placing strict limits on what I considered myself capable of. I convinced myself that nobody could ever consider me attractive. At 26, I had never been in a relationship—I’d never even been kissed—and it was torture for me to even talk about the possibility of romance, because doing so necessarily meant thinking about how I must appear to others. More than that, it meant being honest with and accepting of myself, two things I was just not prepared to do.
Lessons Wilkins Learned About Weight Loss After Losing 100 Pounds
- Overweight Women Judged more Harshly
Another advantage I had, both while being fat and while losing weight, was that as a man I could live in a space largely free of judgments. I can think of only two occasions in my entire life where I was made to feel self-conscious about my weight, and neither was particularly mean-spirited. Now, it isn’t that being bullied over one’s weight is an experience unique to women, as I suspect my experience is on the extreme end even for men. But I suspect such light treatment was only possible in the first place because I’m a man. I received less criticism at 100 pounds overweight in my entire life than a woman 10 pounds overweight does in, what, a month? A week? A day?
- You Don’t Have to Lose Weight
There’s a robust medical consensus that obesity is associated with a whole lot of serious medical issues. There are health risks to being fat. But there are also health risks to making oneself miserable by going on unsustainably extreme diet and exercise regimens. This all gets much more complicated when we look again at society at large, how it systematically drives people toward gaining weight and then makes them feel like failures the moment they do so… In the meantime, I’d argue there’s room for everyone to determine for themselves how best to balance the physical and mental aspects of their own weight. Maybe the healthiest life means losing weight, but that won’t necessarily always be the case.
- Be Comfortable in Your Skin Even Without the Weight Loss
The problem was never really my weight, but my own inability to deal with my weight. So sure, congratulate me on losing 100 pounds if you want — of course I enjoy all the compliments I get — but the really important thing here is a more general sense of wellness: physically, mentally, and everything else. And if that’s the case, let’s celebrate and encourage, not criticize and stigmatize all those who don’t have to lose a ridiculous amount of weight just to reach that point.
This article (“Really Dumb” Weight Loss Secrets of a Man Who Dropped 100 Pounds in 12 Months) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
One of the most important thing to successfully loose weight hat many people forget to mention or don’t consider or ever mention: Be single.
You don’t know how huge of a difference is to set goals for yourself, and decide what to eat and not, and whatever you need to do, if you are single or not, which can be 10 times harder EVEN if your partner want to sync with your goals. Worst, if your partner don’t need to loose weight at all.
So hey what I said is not set on stone or I won;t fight to near death with anyone to defend it, I’m just saying, many weight loss successful stories are there that I read, and most of them are of single persons.
Funny thing is that I have never heard a guy disrespecting a woman because of her weight. I believe that part is false
It is not false,it happens all the time. You may never heard of any incident like that but I have heard and experienced it myself. What he says isn’t false. It may never happen to you or even around you but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening at all somewhere in the world.. Both men and women are being disrespected by both genders because of how they look and their weight.
Amazing, I hear it all the time, the phrase “fat bitch” comes to mind. My best friend is overweight, & I remember men saying she has a beautiful face, if only she coukd slim down.
I am thin, and hear too many times from men that I would be more attractive with some curves, so it goes both ways, but for women, social norms easily accept, even some admire a thin woman, but criticize an overweight woman. Even fat men will judge a fat woman.
LMAO, this dude’s been living under a rock. As a guy, I can attest that fat women get judged 10 times more than fat guys. Over 90% of it happens behind their back. Hell, it’s considered part of normal guy talk.
really, you never heard of woman being disrespected because of her weight?! Either you’re not paying attention or you don’t want to. Do me a favor, the next time you’re in a supermarket, browse through all the tabloids/ magazines and count the number of articles that mention a woman’s weight gain and the pictures associated with the article. And that’s just example!
“It’s stupid that people assume exercise alone will do anything, when you eat more calories than you expend.” (Taken from facebook). Yeah all i did was stop eating shit food (Pizza, hamburgers, toasts, etc) I started on a diet consisting of Tuna, vegetables, fruith and “healthy bread”. I lost 15 KG in mather of weeks. My stomach, which was probably blown up by the food and soda became next to flat. Now i am excercicing pluss having a realative healthy lifestyle.
yeah, I’m glad he’s healthy and all now, but an entire year to loose 100 lbs??? sorry but that’s no secret recipe, that’s someone who found a lazy way to loose 100 lbs.
I completely disagree with his view “distract yourself from your own fatness”, I was 240 lbs, and as I’m sure many other people will silently agree, I was kinda in denial. I told myself I was largely built (no not ‘big boned’) and just figured that was how I was. One day I asked a girl out and she told me no, I ask why, you can assume what she said. I started obsessing about my weight, and instead of pussyfooting around it and whining like so many people seem to do, I took action. I worked out everyday for the next 4 months, about 3 hours a day. I can hear the comments now “well some people don’t have 3 hours” – neither did I, I made the time no matter the cost. Every morning and every night I would weigh myself, and I noticed days I tended to slack off in the gym or eat unhealthy I didn’t lose anything/gained weight. That helped motivate me to work out more vigorously, and got me down to my weight of 180. ***MY TIP IS*** : pay attention to your weight, everyday, and when you are disappointed don’t bitch. Think of what you did wrong and fix it. It’s not ‘the way you are’, it’s how well you’re progressing and how well you can control yourself.
I had lost 25 Kg in 6 months, working out a lot, eating half what I used to it and the most important thing is to stop drinking beer, the beer is so bad for diet..
lol josh, its not about eating less, its about eating the right things, in the proper amounts.