How To Lose 100lbs (& Keep It Off)

I lost 100 pounds from age 17 to (around) 22.

It took a lot longer than I would have liked, but most people can't lose 10 pounds, let alone 100, so I'm being a bit hard on myself.

But if I did know then what I know now, it would have been two years or less.

The catalyst for that was I had a friend who told me he lost 90 pounds.

So, when I heard that this guy who's not an actor or a model or rich guy, he lost all this weight, I knew if I don't do it, that's all on me.

So, I did all this exercise, started counting my calories, all that kind of stuff.

Then I eventually went from 244 pounds to 144.

Then I got more into powerlifting, a bit of bodybuilding before that, and gained more weight.

Now, I’m at 168, something like that.

So overall, like 80 pounds down.

But basically, I lost 100 pounds and I only gained some back on purpose to line up with another goal that I had.

These days, I have no chance of going back to that weight of 244.

And I make it very easy for myself to keep that weight off.

How do I do that?

Well, a couple of things.

One of the biggest things is nutrition.

(Exercise may not be enough to lose weight, but you still need to do it to live longer. Check out this course to learn how to exercise with any equipment available.)

If you really care about controlling your weight, whether it's lowering it or raising it, you pretty much need to count your calories.

There are ways that you don't need to keep track of them and you can still make the progress, but on a scientific level—on a thermodynamic level—your body needs to have fewer calories than it requires to maintain itself.

That way, it will basically shrink.

So calories need to be counted, whether it's by your body or by your brain.

For me, two of the three biggest things that help are a digital scale and a big-ass phone that is purely meant for calorie counting.

There's nothing on the phone, but the calorie tracking app.

So what I do is I leave the scale on my kitchen counter.

Anytime I'm eating, anytime I'm cooking something, I weigh everything on here.

Guess what's also on my kitchen counter?

The big-ass phone.

Now, this is an old phone of mine that has a 13,000mAh battery, which means that since I only use it for this calorie tracking, it lasts like a month.

I have these two devices on my kitchen counter that help me keep track of my weight at all times.

When consuming food, I know how much I'm consuming and I know what the effect will be on my body.

Now, if I'm eating a bit much someday or whatever, I have to mark that down, and I understand what I'm doing.

And if someday, for whatever reason, it's not feasible or anything to track that day, well, that day's messed up.

I understand that.

But keeping those tools in my kitchen where I eat things every single day helps me keep track of the long-term stuff.

It's not just about, oh, I messed up one day.

That means the other 364 days of the year that I kept track are useless.

That's not how it works.

If you are unable to do something one day or mess up a couple of days here and there, I mean, it's not ideal, but it's not going to revert all your progress.

That's a very silly mindset.

You have to get into the habit of mostly doing the good stuff because no one can be 100%.

So you have to mostly do this stuff.

You have to keep things around you that help you accomplish your goals very easily.

For me, that's those two tools.

I weigh my food and track it so I know exactly what's happening.

The other thing that's super helpful is I keep a gym bag in my car.

So anytime I'm out, anytime I want to go to the gym, I am basically set.

Now, you do not need fitness to lose weight and keep off weight, but it really, really, really helps.

Not only if you build muscle or build strength if you're active, your maintenance amount of calories goes up, which means you're able to eat more without gaining weight because your body just needs more energy in general.

But getting into that fit mindset and that routine of activity, it helps you overall think, eh, I don't feel like eating a lot every single day. I feel a bit full when I go to the gym.

This doesn't really fuel for what I'm trying to do with exercise.

It helps you mentally to not gorge and eat a whole bunch of junk.

It helps in that sense.

And yes, with fitness, you can brute force some weight loss if you want to.

For me, when I was losing weight, out of the 100, the first 40 pounds I lost was pure exercise because I didn't really change what I was eating, but I introduced a lot of exercise and that helped me lose a lot of weight.

However, that was a very inefficient way to do it.

That's why I say it's brute forcing my weight there.

I wasn't doing it in a way that it was sustainable or helpful.

If I started counting my calories from the very beginning, those 40 pounds would not have taken that long.

I would have lost them in like one fourth of the time frame.

To give you an example as well, I did the Insanity workout from Beachbody Fitness, which is just insane.

This is jumping, all this calisthenics stuff, this high-intensity interval training, all this wild stuff.

It was truly insane.

It was five days a week, six to eight weeks, wild, wild bodyweight, jumping, calisthenics, cardio stuff, right?

Guess how much I lost?

Guess how much weight I lost doing all that stuff?

Two pounds.

My legs were thick, I was stronger, I had more energy.

But when I looked at the scale, I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God, I wasted so much time.

Because I didn't understand at the time that fitness, or rather exercise, is not the number one thing to lose weight.

It is keeping track of the energy that your body needs to begin with.

It's a lot easier.

Make this comparison.

You eat a bunch of junk, and then you run for two hours to kind of burn that junk away.

That's one option.

The other option:

Eat less or none of that junk to begin with.

Same thing, same exact thing on your body, thermodynamically.

Now, of course, the ideal thing would be to not eat the junk and then also run, maybe not for two hours, but just stack the good stuff.

While fitness and exercise is not necessary to lose weight, 100% is not, you should still do it because it makes it easier to change these habits that you have and make it overall easy for you to lose weight.

If you have a habit of going to the gym or going to do exercise, you have this mental familiarity with doing these things that may not be super fun, but you know they're helpful for you, and you make it a priority to do so.

Same thing with the scale and the calorie tracking.

Those things make it very easy.

Every time I go to the kitchen to eat, they're right there.

I have no excuse to not pull them out and keep track of what I'm doing.

If I don't do it, it's because I'm eating something I cannot track.

It's like homemade something from something I didn't make, or it's just, I don't know what it is.

There are different scenarios where you can't, but you can try your best.

You can guess what it is, look it up, whatever it is.

But the point is you have to make the effort.

You have to make the effort to keep track of the intake and improve your fitness to facilitate those good habits.

It does not need to be every single day, but it has to be most of the time.

Otherwise, your body won't treat it as a habit.

It'll treat it as a chore.

And if your body treats health as a chore, you're not gonna make it.

So, do yourself a favor and create an environment where it's easy for you to actually keep up with this stuff.

Keep the tracking stuff in the kitchen, keep the fitness stuff in the car, the scooter, whatever you got next to the door.

Just make it easy for your future self to keep the weight off or keep up with that goal.

That’s how I did it.

I made sure everything around me supports that lifestyle that I want, AKA not being omega fat anymore.

Do yourself that favor.

ACTION STEPS:

1. Set up a digital scale and calorie tracking device in your kitchen.

2. Make a habit of weighing and recording everything you eat (as best as you can).

3. Create a gym bag with essentials and keep it in your car.

4. Incorporate regular exercise into your life, the focus being on consistency.

5. Adopt a flexible mindset where occasional fuck-ups don't derail your progress.

6. Continuously educate yourself about nutrition and fitness to improve your habits.

Feel free to reply back with any questions.

Okay, bye!