How I lost 30lbs?

Sunday August 19 2007

by Fitzgerald Scott

I was never fat. I was as skinny as a rake. All the way up to twenty years old people would call me "small man". Then I went to the land of plenty, the land of milk and honey the U.S.A. and I gained a couple pounds. No I'm not being euphemistic; I went from 5 10, 140 lbs to 160", close to the heaviest I'd ever been in my life.
I had weighed 160 before but it was a two month period during which I rarely left the house since I didn't have a job. The weight disappeared as soon as I started University in Trinidad and Tobago.

When I went over to a US university the pounds came back even though I was at school. But to Americans I was still skinny I guess.

Fast forward to my ex-girlfriend days, I met her when she weighed 180lbs and I 160lbs, she was on a down slope of weight because of diet pills and I was staying steady. I got an assistantship at grad school and then we both started an upswing to the heights of obesity.

At my heaviest I was 225. I knew I had to go straight back down this wasn't at all good. I had watched daily as my toned arms turned to putty. I started getting the stretch marks which I have to this day and chaffing on my inner thighs. My sister came from Trinidad and was astounded to see how I had blown up into this Pillsbury Doughboy. My clothes didn't fit and I couldn't find jeans that were big enough for my butt at Kmart.

So I resolved to start exercising and portioning my food, I knew I had to jog or run or something but I hate exercise. Even when I was skinny I hated exercise for the sake of itself. Put me in any kind of game and I was fine, take away the opportunity to win at something and my enthusiasm plummeted.

The portioning went a lot better. I bought fruit and nuts and carried them with me for when I was hungry. I tried to make sure that I ate at least every three to four hours to sustain a high metabolism. I even tried not eating anything but fruit, nuts and other light foods, not a good idea. Without carbohydrates I felt weak and constantly hungry and it was too easy to catch a cold. In the end though, the portioning alone didn’t work to help me drop the weight.

I gave up drinking juices for a while and I lost 5lbs. I started trying to walk around the area with my girlfriend and I lost another 5 lbs. Soon though my girlfriend stopped wanting to walk and I gained back those 5 lbs because, though I wanted to continue I preferred to spend the little available time I had with her, with her. Then I began to miss orange juice etc so back came those pounds too.

We tried swimming too but the chlorine in the pool burned our eyes too much (it burned for almost an hour after leaving the pool.) Again it was my girlfriend who baulked.

After these fiascos, I resolved to myself that I would go to the gym everyday for an entire month and I did. I tried my best to keep moving and not to rest between exercises. Some of the other fat people I saw there weren't really as committed. They would work for the first 5 minutes and then basically move around the equipment doing a couple half hearted reps every ten minutes or so. The result of my month of commitment were again disappointing though, I didn’t I lose a single pound. I was probably fooling myself and not working as hard as I should have.

Even after these disappointments I knew I couldn't live the rest of my life at that weight. It just wasn't happening. I used to look at fat people and wonder how could they see themselves getting bigger and not do anything about it. I had seen myself getting bigger and bigger and done nothing. I had endured the stares and grimaces of people who had once complemented me on being fit but enough was enough I wasn't going to get any bigger and I definitely wasn't going to stay at that weight.

I knew from reading that the best way to exercise was to incorporate the extra activity into my daily life such as taking the stairs rather than walking or parking as far away from my destination as possible. The first was easy, the second seemed ridiculous and went against my nature of getting the best deal possible but I tried the best I could. Also I knew I needed to get a bicycle. There was no way I was going to run anywhere aimlessly, plus walking to school which was an option took way too long.

I had had a bicycle before but...I just realized I probably threw it away for nothing. The individual I trusted to repair it was so untrustworthy (because of stupidity not the other case) that he probably did a bogus job and told me it couldn't be repaired. Anyway the point is I borrowed a bicycle.

As it happened I was often marginally late to work but that is another story. Being late meant that I would stand up and ride as fast as I could on the bike, then I would sit and rest while still pedaling. As soon as I was rested enough I would stand up and ride again at top speed and then rest again by sitting and pedaling. I would do this continuously until I reached to work, invariably just as the sweat was beginning to pour. This meant that for 15 minutes straight I would be exercising non stop as hard as I could. It wasn't boring because (1) I had a purpose and (2) I like to ride.

The weight just dropped off of me. It was amazing. Failure, with success on top like a cherry is the tastiest, most satisfying treat ever. But of course there's usually a problem, at around 195 lbs the bike broke and that's where I stayed. The weight remained off though.

I repaired the bike but it soon broke again. Then I tried fixing it myself and timed it just right so I was done just as I was leaving the US.

In the time since returning home, I had some woes and completely lost my appetite for a while. I would never have believed it, and in truth I've found it hard in the past to empathize when people say they’ve lost their appetite but now I understand. The net result was a 10lb loss.

So in all I'm down 40lbs from my pinnacle. I still have a ways to go since I think 160 is a good target weight. I've been looking for and putting off buying a bicycle because of the price, hopefully that won't be forever.
Actually I can't wait when I think about it. I really liked riding. I would ride from Mt. Hope to Port of Spain and back sometimes, it was fun. Or in Miami I would ride around campus and to and from school in the mornings and evenings, it saved me money and I got good exercise in the process the perfect two-for-one deal.

Good luck with your weight loss attempts.

Fitzgerald Scott