In exactly 1 year I have lost 61 pounds. I’m 5’ 9” and started at 231 pounds and am now at a much more comfortable 170. I just turned 42, by the way. My body started turning against me at around 37 😊. Just kidding, I just couldn’t keep eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted anymore without the consequences.

Keto and other fad diets over the years have been difficult for me. I’m not saying they’re not effective, just that they were too hard to sustain for me. I could be successful for a couple of months, but then I could never stay with it.

I liked the idea of eating normal food, but just less of it, so I thought I’d give counting calories a try. I also started skipping breakfast except for the occasional Saturday. I started off eating 1,500 calories / day M-F and 2,000 / day on the weekends. This worked pretty well and I lost weight pretty consistently at about 1.6 pounds per week. I thought it would be a lot harder, but it really wasn’t that bad adjusting to the “restricted” calories. The hardest part was probably not having a bowl full of peanut M&Ms and other snacks while watching BYU football games 😊.

After several months my weight loss plateaued a bit so I adjusted my calories to 1,200 M-F and then just eating reasonably on the weekends. Sometimes the weekends would be 1,500 calories / day, but when we went out to eat or celebrated something with a nice desert, that would go up, but I tried to keep it reasonable. Eating out is very difficult with a restricted calorie count. It’s unbelievable how many calories are in meals at restaurants…

The pounds lost / week definitely started decreasing after the first 30 pounds or so. And the weeks where I would actually gain a pound or so, even after working hard to maintain my calorie counts, were super frustrating. But I kept at it and it continued to go down slowly. Ultimately I ended up losing an average of 1.17 pounds / week over the course of the year.

I was really trying to hit the 60 pound mark before I hit one year, so the last couple of weeks I have kept things to 1,000 calories / day outside of Father’s Day and my birthday. That was tougher, but not as bad as I thought. I have had less energy over the last couple of weeks, however.

So, I’m pretty happy with my progress over the last year. It’s fun buying new clothes that actually fit me well and I just feel better and better about myself.

I did all this with no real exercise outside of normal activities I did anyway. So, I plan to start adding in some exercise so that I can increase my calories without gaining weight back. I would still like to lose another 10 pounds or so, but I also need to start adding muscle and losing some of the flab still present. I legitimately don’t have much time for exercise with my work schedule and church calling, but I need to figure out how to do that…

Anyway, I just thought I would share. Thanks for the inspiration your post provided Samsonite, and all the others who have posted similar things. That really got me going and helped me know I could stay the course.

And, being an Excel nerd, I tracked everything: