The exact actions I took to lose 27 lbs in 2 years and keep them off
I quit sugar on January 1st, 2016. That day I weighed in at 174 lbs.
At 5'10" tall, this put me just right on the edge of an Overweight BMI (body mass index) of 25.
- Diet. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2015 I let myself eat any cookie or sweet I wanted. By Christmas I would wake up thinking about Peppermint Joe Joe's. I was addicted.
- Exercise. About 1 yoga class a week in late 2015.
- Mental health. I was well on the path to good mental health but not quite there yet, having worked with life-coach Christina Berkley in 2014 a powerful coach in early 2015 who is in his 70s and doesn't have a website, and life-coach Emeric Thorpe in late 2015.
- Reading. A book that had a big impact on me was Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth. In it, she suggests throwing out all dieting rules and eating whatever we want and seeing how we feel. This was the start of my actually asking myself, "how does my body feel right now?" instead of following strict deprivation diets. 2015 was a year of putting on some weight and not feeling guilty or worthless. This was huge for me. I had to accept myself fully as-is before I could tackle a big change like giving up sugar.
*By February 1st, 2016 I was down to 164 lbs. That's 10 lbs in 1 month just from quitting sugar.
- Diet. This was from just from giving up sugar alone. I did not make any other changes. I ate a lot of fruit whenever I felt like it and also popcorn and pizza.
- Exercise. I wasn't doing much (considering that between 2013 and 2015 I trained for and ran in 2 half and 2 full marathons). I went on short 3 mile runs 1-2x a week.
- Mental health. Quitting sugar took ALL my mental energy. I wasn't too focused on adding any mental health work in.
- Reading. See above.
My next 10 lbs took 9 months to come off. By October 25, 2016 I weighed in at 154 lbs.
This makes sense: typically the first lbs come off quickly, then the rate of loss slows the closer we get to our healthy weight. This is due to metabolism changes. If we're reducing calories, our metabolism adjusts, slowing down as we cut calories. I wasn't counting calories but taking out sugar meant taking out hundreds of "empty calories" (calories without fiber or nutrients) a day that were just extra.
- Diet. You can scroll through my Instagram to see what I eat daily. It's usually a smoothie for breakfast with greens, banana, mango, and a scoop of unsweetened pea protein powder (only $12 at Trader Joe's!). Lunch is a big salad. Dinner is sometimes healthy like sweet potato fries or vegetables and rice or sometimes not like pizza. Or sometimes I just eat a bag of popcorn for dinner. Seriously. On the weekends I enjoy pancakes but with yogurt and butter instead of syrup or jelly.
- Exercise. February 2016 I enrolled in a month of CrossFit and went to classes 4x/week. I went on short (3-6 miles) and long (10-16 miles) trail runs several times a week March and April. May I was traveling in Europe and did not do much exercising but did do much consumption of French baguettes and croissants. Starting June 2016 I increased my yoga practice from 1-2x a week to 3-4x a week. I joined Black Swan Yoga in Austin, TX which is heated, aerobic yoga.
- Mental health. My weight loss stalled until I started seeing a therapist and psychiatrist (medical doctor of mental health) in July/August 2016. My psychiatrist prescribed me the anti-depressant Wellbutrin for a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, which I had also been diagnosed with in 2005 but declined to continue taking medication after I had a bad reaction to Paxil. One study showed that Wellbutrin was correlated with 5lbs of weight loss on average for participants studied.
- Reading. A therapist recommended the book Running On Empty by Jonice Webb, PhD in June 2016 and that changed my life. Suddenly I realized what I'd been missing in my life: emotional nurturance. Like most Americans I know, I did not learn emotional nurturance skills and I did not have a kind inner voice. I started devouring books that taught me these skills. Here's the reading list I give to all members of Give Up Sugar For Good, many of them I read in 2016.
- Bonus. I met my now boyfriend in October of 2016 while at a music festival in San Diego which I attribute both to luck and a result of finally learning how to take good care of myself.
My next 7 lbs took 7 more months to come off. On May 29th, 2017 I weighed in at 147 lbs.
At 154 lbs I was well within a healthy BMI with a score of 22.5. 147 is a BMI for me of 21.1, also healthy.
- Diet. Still no sugar but also working on eating smaller portions. Really listening to when my body felt full. Yoga helps with knowing what my body feels like.
- Exercise. Maintained yoga 4x/week and running short runs 2-3x/week. I learned how to swim! This was on my bucket list forever and finally May 2017 I took swimming lessons. I now swim 1-2x/week.
- Mental health. I could tell the difference big time. My major depressive episodes were waning, happening only a few times a month instead of several times a week. This had included feeling out of control with my emotional response. A trigger would occur and I would break down: crying, feelings of hopelessness, catastrophizing, and what I referred to as the "black hole of despair" which I now know was the freeze response of my nervous system in reaction to stress or a strong emotion. (For more on this read The Polyvagal Theory by Dr. Porges.)
- Reading. I finally made steps to apply for graduate school! So starting in May 2017 I was reading GRE (the graduate school entrance exam) study guides and enrolled in a GRE prep course. Once my emotional nurturance bucket filled up, I felt strong enough to take on a big challenge and aim higher professionally. Read my grad school application process play-by-play here.
It's May 25, 2018. My weight stays between 146 and 150 depending on the time of the month, what I'm eating (salty foods make me retain water), etc.
- Diet. In 2018 I have been having fun baking (using dates and bananas instead of sugar cane): breads, cinnamon rolls, cheesecakes, cookies, muffins...things I went without 2016-17. As long as I don't eat after I'm full or eat when I'm bored instead of hungry, adding these in has been fun, especially making them myself.
- Exercise. I'm working on increasing my running speed. I run Cal Poly canyon on my lunch break (2.5-3miles each) at work 3x/week and do a beach and/or trail run on the weekends (4-6miles each). I keep track of my races and times in this handy excel sheet. I use the app Strava to track my runs. I notice the more yoga I do, the easier it is to keep my weight down. This is because:
- the activity burns calories
- yoga keeps me from eating as I like to do it on an empty stomach
- yoga keeps me present in how my body feels, keeping me from overeating or eating as a response to an emotional trigger or boredom
- Mental health. I went off Wellbutrin to see how that felt and I decided I wanted to stay on it because I'm going through a lot of life changes right now like moving across the country for grad school. I feel no shame or guilt for taking anti-depressant meds and I love feeling awesome every day. I still feel strong emotions but I have no despair days, only rare, brief despair moments. I feel strong in my ability to be mindful when a despair-moment comes on and not believe it. Believing it led me in the past to catastrophizing, applying a temporary negative feeling to all of life, which is what made me quit jobs too soon, move apartments or cities (or countries!) too often, leave relationships without working on them, etc. Now I'm able to sit with discomfort and trust that the moment will pass. Somatic (body) healing was also important in the form of:
- Reading. Books that helped me understand the importance of somatic healing were: The Body Keeps the Score by Dr Bessel van der Kolk and Healing Trauma by Dr Peter Levine.Gearing up for the start of graduate school this fall where I will be working towards a Master of Public Health at Boston University, I've been reading public health books such as The Ghost Map (2007) about the cholera outbreak of 1854 in London. I'm excited to work on public health issues like nutrition, emotional health, mental health, obesity, and type II diabetes, topics we cover in here in Give Up Sugar For good, on a population scale in grad school.
I have taken lessons that took me years of trial and error to learn and put them all in my 8-week Give Up Sugar For Good program.
I provide all the best tools and resources so you don't have to make all of the same mistakes I did. My mission: help everyone learn the self-love habits and mindsets for a healthy and peaceful world. I think that the violence we see "out there" can be a reflection of the violent ways we talk to ourselves. When Gandhi said, "be the change we wish to see in the world," what he meant was: we each have to find peace within us. What that has meant for me is examining my self-talk: replacing shaming statements with loving statements. This in turn, changes the way I treat others, and the way others treat me.Learn more or enroll here in the next Give Up Sugar For Good.
Me, April 2018, 148lbs. Feeling happy and healthy but also okay to handle difficult emotions and life events as they arise, that previously elusive quality known as resilience.
*source = https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm?source=quickfitnesssolutions