Ever since I could remember, I was overweight.

Some history

As a kid in Croatia in the nineties, this was actually encouraged to a degree. I remember being called good looking and healthy due to my larger than normal weight. I’m not sure why that was, but chubby kids still occasionally get described that way. Maybe it had something to do with the war back then, but I don’t think it did, since my region wasn’t that badly affected by the war.

And that’s what I was, really — chubby. I wasn’t obese in any sense of the word. I was just chubby. Or at least, I was chubby at the start.

Then, past 10 years of age, my weight started raising eyebrows. Suddenly, it wasn't this amazingly healthy thing that I had a few extra pounds and I started hearing the word “fat”.

It didn't sound nice. It hurt and it didn't help the situation at all.

For a while at around 13–14 years of age, it started looking like I would lose my baby fat. I spent a couple of months during school holidays eating less and when you combine that with the normal growth spur you get in puberty, the results were immediately visible — I was at my least fat self ever.

Then high school started. I didn’t have many friends to begin with, but the first year of high school kind of sucked. I didn’t know anyone, and on top of that, my schedule was horrible. I’d have to get up at 4:20 AM to get to school in time and I’d be getting home at around 4–4:20 PM, depending on how lucky I got with transportation.

Two of my 4 meals were fast food and the results were immediately visible. I myself started noticing I was gaining weight.

What’s worse, other people started noticing and not many of them held back with letting me know they noticed. Now that it’s been over a decade, I’m starting to think maybe they did hold back to a degree, but it doesn’t matter. Back then, I was bothered by it and the effect of me being bothered by it was not what most would assume.

Instead of doing something about my weight, I would simply shut everyone out. I’d do less stuff with others, because what others said about me bothered me. I’d spend more time at home, more time being bored and more time eating.

I was never an active kid to begin with, but this like a bear preparing for hibernation in comparison.

From about 120 lbs starting high school (that means 14 years of age in Croatia), I probably got to about 150 by the end of the first year and it just went up from there.

College started and suddenly, there was more access to more fattening food. I’d skip lunch or dinner because there was a good chance the mess hall menu would not be to my liking. I’d more than make up for the entire day during breakfast, and then I’d often order pizza for dinner.

I remember moving out of the dorm at the end of my freshman year. My uncle lived in Zagreb, where I went to college, so he got there to help me move out. On the way home, we stopped by to pick up my aunt at a hospital. She’s diabetic, so she was at a weight clinic to see a specialist.

They had a scale there, which was something I always dreaded to see and managed to avoid stepping on for years by that point. My uncle, with no bad intentions, stepped on it and then asked me to do it to. He weighed at about 220 lbs. He was always a bit overweight, but he’s also a healthy man otherwise, so this wasn’t a problem for him.

As for myself, I tried dodging the issue, but eventually had to weigh myself to or it would seem weird how I was trying to avoid it. The scale showed 310. I was 19 years old.

I know where places /r/fatpeoplehate are coming from. It must seem infuriating how someone would see that number and not turn their life around right then at there. It was clearly a warning sign written with big red letters. I was at a weight clinic. I could’ve scheduled a checkup and some consultations immediately.

I didn’t. The fact that I weighed that much surprised me to. It was soul crushing, in fact. I didn’t do anything about it, though. At least, I didn’t do anything other than shutting everything out even further and continuing right along the same course for five more years.

In my sixth year of college (which lasts five years, but that’s a whole other, probably mostly unrelated issue), just before Christmas, I got sick with the swine flu.

I ended up in a hospital for 3 weeks total. This is a lousy experience for anyone, but at that point, I guess I was at around 400 lbs. I was put in intensive care and wasn’t allowed to even get out of bed. I started getting bed sores within a day or two, mostly due to my weight.

At first, they didn’t know what was wrong with me. They wanted to take a CT among other things, but I couldn’t fit in the scanner, so I remember hearing them discussing options, one of which was even to take me to the Zoo and use the CT there.

It was by far the worst experience of my life.

And guess what, it still wasn’t what made me start losing weight.

It did make me start losing hair, though. A few months after leaving the hospital, the hair loss started. Apparently, that’s something that often happens a few months after a very stressful situation. The hair recovered eventually.

This was January when I left the hospital.

The turning point

It was October of that same year when the weight loss finally started.

I have no idea why it did. I know I suddenly started to do some reading. I already knew about calories before that, but for some reason, this time, I decided to just give it a try and it stuck.

/r/loseit and /r/keto played a big part in it, but they certainly weren’t the most important factors. I do remember one brief moment where I was reading the /r/loseit FAQ and thought to myself, “hey, I might actually be able to give this a try”.

I figured out my basal metabolic rate and from that, my total daily energy expenditure. Then I registered an account on MyFitnessPal. According to information online, I was recommended to lose weight by eating 500 calories bellow my daily requirements. That would amount to about 4–5 lbs per month.

I did the math in my head. I had no idea what my weight was, but I guessed that it would take me years to reach normal weight that way.

I decided to give a 2200 daily caloric limit a try, which was well bellow the recommended levels. I had the low blood sugar shakes for a couple of days, but I managed to stick with it. Eventually, with a combination of my body getting used to it and me figuring out that avoiding sugars and other carbs made it easier to eat less, it became easier overall.

In fact, after a couple of weeks, I dropped my daily intake to 1800 calories.

Within weeks, people started noticing. Those same people I used to avoid (and that’s including family members), because of the things they’d say about me suddenly started saying nice things.

It was a strange feeling for me. I didn’t really know how to react to it, but I knew I liked it, so I kept going.

Full disclosure — I don’t know what my exact peak weight was. Before I started, I was avoiding the scale and since I started, I couldn’t find a scale which would have been able to weigh me.

What I do know is that about a two months into my dieting, I was doing something with my brother in law and then we figured out that hey, he has a scale used for weighing cattle.

The old me, before the turning point, would completely shut off everything or everyone at the mere mention of that idea. The new mew, however, took the opportunity to asses the situation.

The scale said I weigh 396 lbs.

The old me would have been shattered by that realization. The new me took it simply as useful information. My brother in law’s mom was the first to react negatively towards that information, since she was the first to hear it other than my brother in law and myself.

Well, I guess it wasn’t really a negative reaction. It’s just that before the turning point, I would have taken it as a negative. She simply said the scale must be wrong — there’s no way I weight that much. Heck, it was probably an attempt at consolidation or even a compliment along the lines of “you don’t look like you weight that much.”

In any case, about 3 weeks later, I managed to find a personal scale which was able to weigh up to 440 lbs. I used it and I was at 379 lbs already. From that and the information I got three weeks earlier, I was able to assume I was at or likely even above 440 lbs when I started losing weight.

From that point on, it was all downhill, but in a good way. I was losing an average of 20 lbs per month, sometimes even more. It started slowing down gradually, but I was also able to reduce my intake to a 1600 calories limit. By that point, I was so used to eating less, I rarely even got past 1400 calories.

I also started to be more active. I’d go out more, even go for short runs occasionally.

Suddenly, I even started enjoying spending time with people I know. I wanted to try out new things. It’s amazing how your brain is able to compensate by not wanting to do things your body probably couldn’t anyway.

Gradually, though, it slowed down, as it was supposed to. I probably lost the first 200 lbs in about a year, year and a half at most and spent the next year losing the remaining 50 lbs.

A brief relapse

At some point, I got comfortable with the new me.

I didn’t track my calories as accurately. I started to eat ever so slightly more. I started a new job where eating out, in a nearby fast food joint, or ordering takeout was a weekly thing.

I didn’t share this with anyone yet, but I gained about 10 lbs and it was just as soul crushing as the 400 lbs I used to have.

Maybe people didn’t even notice, but it sure felt like they did and I didn’t want anyone to notice. I saw it as a personal failure and I didn’t want anyone else to see it as a failure.

Getting back on track

It’s just 10 lbs, some would say. No big deal.

For me, it was. It faced me with the reality that I have a problem that’s deeper than just weight. I can’t afford to relax or be careless with food.

I’m not alcoholic, so I can’t just quit cold turkey. I need to eat to survive, but my brain is broken in some weird way, if I don’t keep myself in check, I’ll just eat too much.

I’m an addict to something I actually can’t live without.

I started running as a band-aid. I started with a 5 km run and it was great that I was actually able to do that on the first day. I felt tired and sore, but there was less guilt with every meal that day. I didn’t lose the weight I regained, but I managed to stop the gains.

I upped the distance and the speed and eventually got to 10 km and even 12 km runs every other day. The start of this new habit was early November last year (2014, for those who read this at a later time). I kept the weight I gained, but I improved my overall fitness level.

Still, it was a band-aid. A very useful and healthy band aid, one I should keep using, just not as a band-aid. I had to deal with the underlying issue.

The reality is, I have a mental problem. I’m not sure if my former obesity was the cause of that mental problem, or if the mental problem was the one that came first and caused the obesity. It could be a “chicken or the egg” question or it may have even been some sort of feedback loop.

I don’t know how to fix it, but I do know how to keep it in check — by keeping what I eat in check.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been precisely measuring calories again. It works. I knew it would work, because I tried it before. I started losing weight again.

That, combined with running and some light bodyweight fitness means I’m in better shape than ever and I intend to get better still.

The mental problem is still there, though, either until I find a way to deal with it, if there is a way, or for the rest of my life if there isn’t one.

Either way, I’m prepared to do it.

The damage was done

Weighing over 400 pounds is not without consequences, some of which are likely permanent.

First of all, I have loose skin. I was told most of it my snap back, but it will take a long time and I still need to lose some weight to help it along the way. I need to get into body-builder body fat levels in order to really push through that part, which would be an achievement on it’s own.

Secondly, it did a number on me psychologically.

I know I’m not fat anymore. I don’t feel that way and I don’t look that way.

I’m still not completely happy with the way I do look and I constantly have to reassure myself. This sounds horrible, and I’m probably making it sound worse than it is. In any case, looking at myself in the mirror feels orders of magnitude better now than it did when I was at my old weight.

It feels good now. It doesn’t feel perfect, but it feels good and it never felt good back then. I was avoiding mirros almost as much as I was avoiding the scale.

Still, there’s definitely some psychological damage that remains. I know it. I can feel it. I guess that’s the first step towards getting over it.

One thing’s for sure. Choosing between being this way and being the way I was is no choice at all.

So how does one lose weight?

I have no idea.

I can tell you how the physical process works.

You figure out how many calories you spend in a day on average. To oversimplify, that’s how much your body needs to keep living and maintain the weight you have.

Everyone is different here, but we’re all humans, so all considering, we’re still pretty much very alike. Various online calculators won’t give you a completely accurate value, but it’s close enough most of the time.

Once you have your daily expenditure, you decide how easy you want to take it. I don’t want to put anyone down here. I say easy, but I don’t think that’s a bad way to do it. In fact, that’s the recommended, healthy way to do it.

A pound of fat is about 3500 calories, last I checked. If you want to lose a pound in a week, you eat 500 calories bellow your expenditure. That’s 500 calories you lose per day, or 3500 in a week. If you want to lose more, up the difference.

Just keep in mind, going into extremes is not healthy. For me, I was so fat, even extremes were probably a better alternative then staying that fat for any amount of time. If you do the math for losing 20 lbs a month, it would mean 5 lbs a week or a 2500 calories deficit per day. Since my initial limit was 2200 calories and it soon dropped to 1800, let’s simplify things and I assume I was eating 2000 calories per day on average during that time. That means that my daily expenditure was about 4500 calories.

If you think about it, it makes sense. I was carrying all that weight around. That takes a lot of energy. I also needed a lot of power to keep all that mass alive.

Basically, the bigger you are, the more wiggle room you have to lose that weight.

So now you’re eating at a deficit and let’s say your aim was to lose one pound per weak, which is the safer, easier and healthier option. After two weeks you see the numbers you expected don’t match up with the numbers you got. Maybe you lost less or, if you’re lucky, you lost more than you thought you would. That’s easily explained.

You might not have been accurate in measuring how much you ate. Did you weigh your food with a scale? No? You should. You’re eyes and hands aren’t really a precise measuring tool.

Your assessment of your daily caloric expenditure might be off. As I said, everyone is different. Various basal metabolic rate or daily expenditure calculators are based off of statistics. Everyone’s under the same bell curve, but there are always outliers. Your actual BMR and thus your total expenditure might be even 20% off the assessment. Heck, it can even go further than that if you’re a very active, or very inactive person.

That’s not a problem. You’ve been trying for a couple of weeks now. You know how much you ate. You know how much you lost, or even gained and you know about how much a pound of fat is worth in calories. Do the math and figure out what your metabolic rate actually is.

Your may also have a condition. Something that significantly affects your metabolic rate, such as a hormonal disorder. I will say this — it’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Not all is lost yet. Get yourself checked out and find a fix for it. There is usually one available.

But anyway, to recap, the process is simple. Eat less than your body needs to maintain the weight and you will lose it. It’s the only way to do it. Any fad diet you heard works, any changes in what you eat such as “avoid sweets” or “avoid carbs” just end up with the same affect — they trick you into eating less.

Absolutely every sort of weight loss boils down to “you ate less calories than your body needed to maintain”. You just didn’t know that’s what it boiled down to.

The difference is, actual calorie counting is the only completely reliable way to do it. Everything else might or might not work, but measuring your food intake and keeping it under your outtake will work 100% of the time. It takes conscious engagement on your part, but it will absolutely work.

But that’s just the process. The process is simple.

Actually going through with the process is the hard part

And there, I’m afraid I can’t help.

I can’t tell you what the deciding factor was that made something click in my head. I have no idea what it was.

I just know that at some point, it happened.

I informed myself about my options, I gave it a try, I saw I could keep doing it for a while at least, and then people started noticing.

Maybe give that a try, but I cant guarantee it will work.

It’s a mental hurdle that really needs to be overcome. That’s for sure. How to do that is a million dollar question. How to avoid getting that mental hurdle in the first place is the billion dollar question.

I can tell you from personal experience that it can be overcome, and it’s worth the effort.

It’s so worth the effort.

Good luck.