Reflections on Two Weeks of Weight Loss

I wanted to lose a little bit of weight and by experimenting with my eating I found a simple solution.

Two weeks ago, I decided the belly bulge over my belt wasn’t to my liking. I decided to lose some weight. I wasn’t overly heavy. Maybe 10–15 pounds. But one thing my father taught me young was to stay ahead of weight gain because losing a little periodically is easier than losing a lot.

In two weeks I’ve lost five pounds. How did I do it?

First, I did a bit of self-examination. What was I really eating, and how much, and when. When I got honest with myself, I realized my overall diet is rather good and healthy, but I’ve been a lifelong late-night snacker. I identified nighttime snacking as the likely culprit to my weight gain over the past few months.

I cut out most late-night snacking. After I’m done with dinner, I don’t snack. The few times I’ve wanted to nibble on something, I had a banana. Once I had some nuts and dried fruit, being fully aware the dried fruit was chockful of sugar which is one of the worst things I could eat at night.

Every day I weigh myself. A few days the weight blipped up from the previous day’s weigh in, but over the course of 14 days the trend has been steadily down and as of today I’m officially five pounds slighter than I was two weeks ago.

I try to learn things from situations like this. This is what I’ve learned.

Conduct experiments with your life. Eliminating late-night snacking was an experiment. I wasn’t entirely sure it would work, and certainly not as well as it has.

I conduct experiments all the time. I see what walking a certain amount does each day to my mental and physical wellbeing. I try writing at a certain time of day or using a certain new process to see if the writing is better or more productive. I carve out time different times of the day to read books to see when it’s most enjoyable and when I retain the most from what I’ve read.

I could give many examples of experiments I’ve done with my life. If you don’t experiment, you don’t learn about yourself. The nature of experiments is that most fail but when they succeed, they give us vital information. So, be prepared to fail a lot when you experiment, but keep experimenting. That’s how we grow and learn.

Listen to your body. You don’t “listen” to your body per se, but you can tune into its state accurately if you spend some time dissecting how your body feels or looks at any one moment. In this case, when I felt too full or bloated, I realized that was a signal that I ate too much in one sitting. Energy levels tended to be higher at certain times of day that seemed to correlate with how I ate.

Blatant honesty with yourself is important. Don’t lie to yourself. Try to stick to facts, not feelings. That can be more difficult to do than it seems. Self-honesty is one of the most important qualities you can develop to best grow and learn over time.

The solution is likely simpler than imagined. Like many people, I’m not immune to the deluge of advertising and content creator messaging about health, fitness, and dieting. It’s everywhere. There’s a reason that sector is a multi-billion-dollar market. You can make a lot of money selling people solutions to better health or a leaner looking body. Some of the things sold are just fine. Others are essentially snake oil. The solution (in my case, just not snacking at night) is often far simpler and less costly than the solutions you’re being sold.

You won’t stick to it perfectly so build reasonable exceptions into your expectations. I alluded to this before, but let me emphasize that you will not, I repeat will not, stick to any way of eating perfectly forever. You will have a piece of cake sometimes. You will snack at night. You will dive into the bowl of chips at a party. Build in that expectation so you don’t have one of those “well, I broke my diet so I might as well abandon it.”

Don’t lie to yourself. I alluded to this earlier also but let me emphasize this point too. Yes, it was the snacking at night. It was the sweet stuff. It was the pure carbohydrates in the form of chips and crackers. That was the fact that lay before me. It wasn’t “just how my body is” or some other cause. My weight gain was clearly related to how much food and of what kind I put into my mouth — period. I could have lied to myself, but what would that have gained me, except more weight of course.

For the record, I don’t think everyone should be rail thin. I don’t think the typical runway or fitness model is an ideal representation of what we should strive for. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being heavy. I just didn’t like it for me. If you don’t like it, then consider finding the simplest solution possible to help you lose weight. It’s so much easier to stick to something simple than something complex and burdensome.

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