I wrote a science-based book about life-changing epiphanies, and I believe recent weeks have seen many people experience such holy-shit moments regarding a sudden desire to lose their Covid weight.
We have been through some shit, and it has affected our waistlines. In the U.S., 42% of people gained “more weight than they intended,” and the average was a whopping 29 pounds. We’ve been stressed as fuck and eating too much high-calorie food and drinking too much alcohol and not being active enough.
Me. Fucking. Too. I’m included in that above paragraph. I gained at least 20 pounds since March 2020. I was stressed as fuck over Trump, a massive career change, and of course, the plague.
And now I’m hearing a lot of positive buzz. The trauma of Trump is fading; he’s not constantly in our face any longer. And people are getting vaccinated. My second dose is only two weeks away! The world is far from perfect, but the easing of pressure is giving people a chance to catch their breath. And in a period of a newly calmed mind, epiphany can strike.
But that’s not really what this piece is about. It’s merely tangential. I want to talk about a recent conversation I had with someone who wants to lose weight.
First off, it’s okay to want to lose weight. As long as you do it for the right reasons and in the right way. There are numerous right ways, just as there are numerous wrong ways. Some people on social media have been expressing dismay at me promoting my book Lose it Right on Substack, saying any effort to lose weight is unhealthy. No, ignoring potential health problems is unhealthy. And just because the weight-loss industry is corrupt as fuck doesn’t mean viable solutions to healthy and sustainable weight loss don’t exist. They do exist and are worth pursuing if YOU decide you’re ready.
A lot of people are feeling ready. And I’m a good guide.
That’s not bragging. It’s a simple statement of fact. In my previous writing career I earned a reputation as an excellent source of science-based and compassionate weight-loss information. The endorsements for my book come from world leaders in obesity research and treatment.
About this conversation I had. This person said they were using a calorie tracker to hit a goal for an upcoming summer vacation. The number the tracker gave for a daily caloric intake was too low. So we started off by talking about that. The first thing I did was punch their relevant numbers into a TDEE Calculator. TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure: how many calories you burn in a day.
We figured out what a more reasonable and sustainable caloric deficit would be, along with modifying their goal. All that took just a few minutes. The next half hour was the really important part of the conversation. The part where I explained that suffering is not an effective strategy.
Having been out of the health, fitness, and weight-loss industry for a little while served to sharpen my thinking even further about what matters more than anything else: sustainability. I began by telling the person the joke about how “the easiest way to gain five pounds is to lose 20.” Because you lose 20 then gain back 25.
There are members of the anti-weight-loss community, one of them the organization Health At Every Size (HAES), that frequently toss out a bullshit metric of how 95% of weight loss efforts fail. When people follow bullshit diet scams and/or adopt a suffering approach to weight loss, then that figure might be accurate. Conversely, there is ample scientific research (included in my book Lose it Right) that shows success rates are far higher when a person feels psychologically ready to lose weight and approaches it in a rational way that is mentally and physically healthy.
The same methods of weight loss don’t work for everyone. Yes, dietary changes and caloric restriction are necessary, and adding some form of movement can be of significant benefit. But exactly how you accomplish those things needs to be tailored to each individual.
I gained weight over the last year, and kept wanting to lose it. And yet despite knowing more about how to lose it than the vast majority of people, and especially knowing better than anyone what works for me for losing weight, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it because my head wasn’t in the right place. I was still traumatized, still anxious as fuck.
Then I got a Covid vaccination, and a switch flipped. It seemed like that tiny amount of fluid injected into my arm contained a miracle destressing agent. Suddenly I was ready, and I got back at it. And the weight is steadily coming off.
Most important is that I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying restoring my fitness and eating healthier and barely drinking alcohol. Everything feels better and sustainable. I’m stiff and sore a lot of the time because I’m pretty hardcore on the exercise, but what I am not is miserable.
This is what I explained to my friend. You need to feel like every step you take in your weight-loss journey is the right one. You’re doing this because it feels good and you enjoy it. That comes with a caveat. There will be days that you have to drag your ass out to exercise (or do some form of non-exercise activity) when you don’t want to, and you’re probably not going to be saying “Oh I just love to NOT eat cake!” It’s more to do with an umbrella psychology. Despite exerting mental effort here and there for activity as well as using similar efforts in choosing healthier and lower-calorie choices most of the time (occasional indulgence is not only permissible, but recommended), overall you feel good about the entire thing. You aren’t suffering, but rather thriving. Firing on all cylinders. You’ve found a process you can sustain and enjoy.
And most important—you don’t stress over the scale. Caloric deficits are the biggest guessing game ever. You can track caloric intake and burn, and what the scale says is often going to be a fuck you in terms of what you think you should have lost and what it says you lost.
I’m reminded of what it took to build the Channel Tunnel between England and France. That went way over budget and took a lot longer than they thought. But at the end of it all, they had a fucking Chunnel!
Just expect that it’s going to take longer and be harder than you imagine. But it won’t matter so much because you’re not hating the process. You’re feeling better and have more energy and are sleeping better and change is happening, but at a pace that is manageable and sustainable.
See this is why my book wasn’t a bestseller—because the weight-loss industry sold everyone on the idea of “fast and easy,” and that’s just a pile of bullshit.
Except when it’s not. Wait, what?
That’s where the epiphany thing comes in. In my book The Holy Sh!t Moment I interviewed a number of people who were able to lose a lot of weight relatively fast and keep it off because they’d had a life-changing realization. In a moment, they psychologically transformed into a different person. They still had to go at a pace their bodies could handle (injuries are derailing—don’t hurt yourself!), but motivation was never lacking because that drive just became who they are; it was something they felt they had to do. If you don’t want to read the whole book, you can read the article I wrote that the book is based on here.
So while I generally preach the slow and steady approach, you may have hit a turning point where you’re all about “fuck slow and steady.” And I wouldn’t want to hold you back on that.
Again: It’s about it feeling right. If you psychologically feel as though you’re on the right path, faster can be better. Just remember not to hurt yourself. And by fast I don’t mean massive caloric restriction or any lose-a-pound-a-day bullshit. It is critical that you not go down the path toward disordered eating behavior or even a full-blown eating disorder. There are minimal caloric intakes that must be maintained in order to be healthy, and the faster weight loss is only achievable via added activity, which also must be done at a sustainable pace that doesn’t wreck your body.
The simple math is: for every 100 pounds you weigh, you can lose 1 pound per week. If you weigh 100 pounds, then you probably don’t need to lose any weight unless you’re super short. But for a 200-pound person you can reasonably lose 2 pounds per week. If you’re 300 pounds, you can lose 3 pounds per week. And so on.
Of course, this isn’t meant to diminish the importance of habit formation and being disciplined, but rather is a discussion of the initial spark that allows for such things. If you feel ready to change, my book Lose it Right is now available online. You can start by reading the Introduction here.