Before we get into the specifics of how I did what I did, let me tell you a little bit about what exactly I have accomplished. I have been pretty severely overweight for most of my adult life. Here is a brief table of my weight history. The dates without a month are approximations based on my (pretty hazy) recollection, but other weights are based on my medical records, or (for the 2013-2014 entries) my own measurements.

Date	Weight (lbs)
1994	185
1995	200
1999	210
06/2004	222
04/2006	242
06/2008	249
07/2009	254
09/2011	261
03/2013	261
05/2013	248
07/2013	231
09/2013	217
11/2013	200
01/2014	199
03/2014	189
05/2014	182
07/2014	182

And here’s a graph of the above data:

 

Ancient history

I was a pretty skinny child, right up until I graduated from high school in 1994. I knew that many people in my family struggled with weight loss, but stupid kid that I was, I was certain that it would never be a problem for me. As a teenager, I ate huge portions of the greasiest, sugariest, saltiest, most fattening foods I could get my hands on. I actually prided myself on my “ability” to chow down on anything and everything without it affecting me. In one particularly memorable episode, I recall going to the corner store with a friend and purchasing a half-gallon of ice cream… for EACH of us. We then proceeded to eat most of it in a single sitting, while watching some of our classmates compete in an indoor track meet.

At some point, right around when I went off to college, my wonderful “ability” began to fade. I can remember people joking about the “freshman 15“. Supposedly, it is common for college freshmen to gain around 15 pounds during their first year of college. I was surprised by the accuracy of this prediction because I gained almost exactly 15 pounds in that time period… and I never stopped gaining. While the chart above shows a fairly steady progression of weight gain between 1995 and 2013, the truth is actually a bit different. At multiple points in those 18 years I noticed the trend and made attempts to adjust the trajectory. Most of these attempts were half-hearted, ill-conceived, and short-lived, but my actual weight fluctuated quite a bit during this time, especially between the years of 2006 and 2013.

Recent history

Several times during the 7 years between 2006 and 2013, I temporarily increased my exercise and / or decreased my eating, but I was never able to achieve lasting results. I was under the distinct impression that, no matter how hard I tried, I could not decrease my weight below 235 pounds. Also, I noticed that no matter how lax I became in both the exercise and eating departments, my weight didn’t seem to ever go above 265 pounds.

So I became comfortable with a range of 235 – 265. Whenever my weight started pushing over 260, then I would start exercising more, and / or would start eating less. Then, once I started getting down around 240ish, I would notice that my efforts were becoming less effective, and I would be feeling better about myself, so I would become more lax in my habits. I’d guess that I went through this cycle about four or five times in the 7 years before 2013.

The turning point

Sometime around February of 2013, I hit 268 pounds. It was the first time that I had ever noticed that I was over 265, and I decided I really didn’t like the implications of that. So just as I always did in the past, I started to exercise more and eat a bit less. After a couple of weeks of this, I decided to look into applications for my Android phone that could possibly help me with my goal of losing weight. I wasn’t really expecting much, but I realized that I was fighting a losing battle, so I figured it was at least worth a try. I somewhat arbitrarily decided to download the Noom Weight Loss app. One of the first things the app did when I started it up was to ask me what I weighed currently, and what weight I wanted to be. This was on Sunday, March 17th, 2013. I weighed myself at 260.8 pounds, and after a bit of deliberation, I told Noom that I wanted to be 200 pounds. As I entered the information, I can remember thinking “200? Yeah, right. There’s no way.”

Tumbling towards a goal

Noom got to work on me right away. The following Sunday, I weighed in at 257.6. The Sunday after that, I was 254.4, then 254.2, 252.4, 251.2, 249.4… For the next eight months, I consistently lost an average of about 1.8 pounds per week until November 7th, 2013. That morning I weighed myself at 199.0 pounds. I had overshot my original goal by a whole pound! Woo hoo!

After this, it was tempting to see if I could get back down to 185 lbs, the same weight that I was when I was in high school, but I decided that it would be a better idea to experiment with maintaining my weight to see what that would be like. I also wanted to see if I could keep things going without constantly relying on Noom to help me out. So, with Thanksgiving and Christmas looming on the horizon, I set myself the goal of maintaining a weight of approximately 200 pounds until the beginning of February 2014.

Between November 7th 2013 and the end of January 2014, my weight fluctuated between a few pounds north and south of 200, but it never went outside that range. I hit 194.8 once on November 28th, and I hit 205.8 once on December 30th, but for the most part, my weight was very close to 200 for the entire duration of November, December, and January. Okay, I thought, I had successfully maintained a low weight for an “extended” period of time. I decided to try losing some more.

How low can you go?

In February, I started to lose weight again. Based on BMI calculations, my “ideal weight” is about 145-195 lbs, with most recommendations focusing on the 165-185 lb range. So, I originally set myself a new goal of 185. This proved to be not too difficult to achieve. By the beginning of March, I was at 189 lbs, within striking distance of my goal.

So I decided to see if I could push it a bit more. My current goal is 175 lbs. I figure that’s right in the middle of the 165-185 lb range that I am often quoted, and it’s an aggressive weight, but not ridiculously skinny. I’m having some difficulty getting much below 180 lbs, though. For the past 12 weeks I have been fluctuating between 178-185 lbs. Admittedly, I’m not trying too hard. I’m quite happy with my weight as it is, and while I’m curious to see if I can get down to 175 lbs, I’m not super motivated.

And that’s where things stand right now. In the next installment, I will give some more information about the Noom app that I mentioned.

– danBhentschel