Last year on this date I was 214 lbs, about 10 lbs heavier than I am now but down ~45 lbs from Feb 2023 (I am 6’1-6’2”-ish).

I have now spent about a year at a reasonable/acceptable weight. I’m up 7-8 lbs from my lowest weight, most or maybe all of which is muscle. I have a relatively light, simple weight lifting routine I do, and while it would read as too easy to most people, I am patient and it has produced and will produce good results for me going forward.

Over the years I’ve tried lots of different things fitness wise, but this past year has felt do-able and sustainable in a way nothing else has quite been. In no particular order, here is what I think I now know:

1). The most important exercise you can do is the fork put down. Track EVERYTHING you eat and don’t eat too much. Really that’s the whole game. Don’t eat too much. Exercise is honestly way overrated in weight loss. Barely matters for most people. In fact, to reduce psychological load and avoid inadvertently increasing your appetite you might do what I did and just do NO exercise during an initial weight loss phase. There is no real reason to do it until you have already lost the weight you want to lose. IMO. It will just make the whole program seem harder and make you think you can eat more (became you are exercising).

2). Associated with #2–you WILL eat too much from time to time. Sometimes WAY too much (a couple weeks ago I ate something like 5,000 calories in a single day). You will feel guilty/bad. You will want to make up for it by cutting way back the next day, and if you can’t do that, you will get discouraged and be tempted to eat whatever and give up totally.

The most important tool in your arsenal is a philosophy that allows you to get back on the horse. Just go back to your normal eating goal. Don’t sweat deviations as long as they are not becoming the norm. If they are then the main thing is to get strict about recording everything and staying ultra compliant. Don’t change too much. You may (as I do) build into your daily eating goal the possibility of some cheating so that when it happens it doesn’t matter and you’ve prepared for it. But diets work when you stick with them.

3). Measure everything. Spend the time to go get your resting metabolic rate tested and your body fat scanned ($150 at Dexabody in Murray if you aren’t too far from there). Do a scan regularly until you feel comfortable with how your body responds to various diet levels and exercise amounts. Knowing your RMR allows you a great starting place for how much you ought to eat. Checkups will tell you if you need to increase or decrease. This data sometimes sucks to get (when you’ve worked hard and it doesn’t show much progress) but it is invaluable. Don’t change your routine unless new data tells you that you should. Test once a quarter until you are comfortable.

4). Some things are temporary, some are permanent. Not everything has to be sustainable. You may need to do things while you are in the middle of a weight loss focused portion of your journey that would not be sustainable. But once you get to the weight you like, you can go back to something much less demanding. Sustainability is important in a diet, but the stuff you do to get to your goal weight at first doesn’t need to be sustainable. For example I got to 215-220 in the first phase , but to get down below 200 I had to do every other day fasting and maintain my calorie deficit on eating days for about a month. That was hard. Nothing I’ve done since compares to it honestly. So losing weight is hard, keeping it off people say is hard but it is actually a lot easier in terms of how much you can eat.

5). Intensity is generally your enemy. Your body is built so that losing weight will always take time. Intensity doesn’t add anything like enough weight loss to make up for how much it taxes you mentally and physically and makes you likely to quit. There may be a time to increase intensity, but it should come at a time when the easier pounds have already come off and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and only have to be intense for a short period.

If you have a choice between reducing intensity at the cost of slightly slower weight loss, take that deal every time. It almost never pays off enough to make it worth it imo. This is a mental battle. You need every advantage you can get.

6). If you really can’t do it, look into Ozempic/Mounjaro/generics. Don’t hesitate. Get on them, get yourself to a healthy weight, then put together a sustainable diet from there that will allow you to either taper down or go off of them. Your life is short. If you can afford it, don’t waste any more of it than you must being unable to enjoy it to its fulness. Side note—also look at mental health. Often obesity that one just can’t shake is a combo of bad genes, depression/anxiety, and bad habits.