{"id":89,"date":"2014-07-03T20:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T00:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/?p=89"},"modified":"2014-08-08T16:55:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-08T20:55:38","slug":"on-losing-weight-part-2-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"On losing weight (Part 2 – History)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
Date<\/th>Weight (lbs)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
1994<\/td>185<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1995<\/td>200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1999<\/td>210<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
06\/2004<\/td>222<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
04\/2006<\/td>242<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
06\/2008<\/td>249<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
07\/2009<\/td>254<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
09\/2011<\/td>261<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
03\/2013<\/td>261<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
05\/2013<\/td>248<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
07\/2013<\/td>231<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
09\/2013<\/td>217<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
11\/2013<\/td>200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
01\/2014<\/td>199<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
03\/2014<\/td>189<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
05\/2014<\/td>182<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
07\/2014<\/td>182<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

And here’s a graph of the above data:<\/p>\n

\"Weight_06_14\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ancient history<\/h1>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>“. 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.<\/p>\n

Recent history<\/h1>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The turning point<\/h1>\n

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<\/a>. 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.”<\/p>\n

Tumbling towards a goal<\/h1>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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\u00a0idea 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Okay, I thought, I had successfully maintained a low weight for an “extended” period of time. I decided to try losing some more.<\/p>\n

How low can you go?<\/h1>\n

In February, I started to lose weight again. Based on BMI calculations, my “ideal weight<\/a>” 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

– danBhentschel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading On losing weight (Part 2 – History)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hentschels.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}