A few mornings ago, I weighed myself found myself at 155.2, exactly 19 pounds lower than my recorded high of 174.2 from November 8, 2019. My highest weight was almost certainly during the holiday season, but I had stopped recording my weight over that time.
My standard weight during my twenties and early thirties had hovered around 155, climbing into the 160’s with extended forays into the 170’s over the last couple years. Over the past half year I worked my way back down to 155 is due to the simple principle of “a little more exercise and a little less calories over a long period of time”, both greatly aided by the pandemic shut down.
Exercise is the easiest to explain. Working from home saves me an hour of commute every day. Twenty of those minutes were purposely turned into a walk. The other forty minutes have been spent chasing the children around. Playing with kids and a leisurely walk (my pace hovers around a 23 minute mile) is not much, but still a massive improvement over operating a vehicle and an otherwise sedentary life.
As for calories, the change was facilitated by cutting out restaurants beginning in late January and an improvement in snack options after we stopped leaving the house. We live with my in-laws, whose age makes us a high risk household so we’ve been particularly withdrawn from society after the pandemic spread to America.
I’m an inveterate snacks, which hasn’t changed, but staying at home has morphed my goodies into nuts and fruit. I suspect it is due the psychology of online purchase instead of shopping in person. It was no big deal to pick up a bag of chips at the supermarket, but it feels very different to make the same decision via your web browser, especially knowing that everything will have to go through a decontamination process after its delivered. Just this little extra friction has made a big difference … and missing out on four months of donuts at the office.
As for cutting out restaurants, there were three types of benefits — less food, healthier courses, and lighter ingredients.
In normal times, I’ll eat out about five times a week. Even though I won’t gratuitously stuff myself, I am a dude who clears the plate. If a restaurant gives me a significant overage, I get a doggy bag, but it feels odd to ask for a container for one last bite. At home, minimal leftovers are split between multiple people or becoming an appetizer for the next meal. At work, every little extra was ending up in my gut.
Helping the quantity improvements is are the reduced options for high calorie dishes when you’re making it yourself. We just made hamburgers for the first time in a week ago. I’ve had one can of sweetened soda once this entire lock down. I love fried food, but like snacks, I’m not addicted enough to deep fry my own fare. So I haven’t eaten french fries in four months.
Finally, each of our meals are just inherently more healthy. To satisfy their patrons, a restaurant needs to hedge their flavor with salt and fat. I’ll do the same when I’m cooking, but I am also much more cognizant of the long term consequences to me when I add each “extra”. Also, due to news of meat shortages, we ate way less meat during the first couple months for a couple months. I don’t have a stance in the carbs versus proteins debate, but we substituted the decreased proteins with increased vegetables instead of starches, which I presume it was an absolute win all around.
In all, I’m pretty pleased that I’ve been able to get back into my size 32 pants. Assuming that I lost these 19 pounds since the end of January, that calculates to just two ounces a day, which seems to be a pretty moderate pace.
Hopefully this new lifestyle will stay steady when things start to crawl back to normal.