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

Many people have noticed that I have lost a lot of weight (almost 90 lbs. as of this writing) and I am frequently asked: “How did you do it?” Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. There is no single “just do this.” No magic bullet. The weight loss that I have experienced is the culmination of multiple small changes made based on a long process of trial-and-error. It is my intention to catalog the steps that I have taken, via multiple blog posts over the next few months, in the off chance that it might be useful (or at least entertaining) to someone. Here’s a sneak preview of topics I intend to cover:

1. Dan’s Weight History – Everyone has their own reasons for their health, be it good health, or bad health. Every person is a complex combination of body, soul, and spirit, and these pieces affect each other in interesting ways. In order to understand my journey to health, I think it will be helpful to understand the thoughts and feelings that led me to gain weight in the first place, and what motivated me to lose it.
2. Noom Weight Loss App – The spark that started me on this journey, and one of my main sources of inspiration during the majority of it, was an application that I downloaded for my smartphone.
3. Calorie Counting – Yes, I count calories. But just counting is not enough. You need to have a plan. Budget your food consumption. Know what you’re eating, and when you eat it. I’ll let you know how I go about it.
4. Volumetrics – The decisions that I have made in changing my diet have been based mostly around the simple concept of “volumetrics”. I intend to give a brief overview of what volumetrics means, and how I follow it. Hopefully this will illuminate some of the decisions I have made.
5. Dan’s Eating Habits – Up until this point, it’s all been background information: history and theory. This is the nuts-and-bolts. What specific changes have I made to achieve the results that I got? This section might get a bit long (winded) and may take up several posts. We’ll see how motivated I am.
6. Other Weight Loss Changes – Researchers seem pretty unanimous in their recommendation that lasting weight loss must come from changing eating habits. Just Google “diet vs exercise” and you will come up with a whole host of articles from various sources that mostly back up this claim. However, I don’t think that diet should be the sole component of an overall weight loss strategy. In my final entry, I will outline some other changes that I have made that I believe have had a beneficial effect on my health.

So if you’re curious, stick around. Who knows. Perhaps some piece of my ramblings could spark something in your own life that starts you on a similar journey to better health. That is my hope, and prayer. I have discovered something that has been elusive to me for years. It would be selfish of me to not at least attempt to share that discovery with others.

– danBhentschel