The Trip of 100 Pounds Lost: How Did it Begin?

Someone named August posted today on the SLD forums that he’d lost 100 pounds:

The scale dipped to 185 a bit unexpectedly this weekend. [He is 6′ 3″.] Well, that was my target.  Now what?

100lbs down.

Anticlimatic really.  The last three pounds just disappeared overnight.

And I can still stand to lose more, despite having people telling me I shouldn’t lose anymore since last year.

Since he has posted many times, and has been so successful, I think there is a lot to be learned here. Here is some of what he learned along the way.

Are your habits getting in the way?

I had a similar slow start with SLD too.  It wasn’t until I realized my habits kept me eating far more than I needed to that I started losing significant amounts of weight.

Bananas: good or bad?

I used to eat bananas everyday for potassium, but within an hour, I’d be really hungry.  One day I brought brisket I cooked overnight and I didn’t want to put it in the fridge, so I had it when I usually had my banana.  I didn’t think about food again until it was almost time to go home and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything else!

What about sweeteners?

I drink a lot of coffee, and when I decided to drop the sweeteners and take it black, the temptation to eat wheat products practically disappeared.

What about patience?

I began in a very low key way.  I simply started trying sugar water, then different oils, and for a while it didn’t seem like it would work.  Then one day Seth linked to the guy who ate protein nose clipped.  I decided to get a nose clip and try that for a while.  It worked in a borderline way, in other words it was effective enough to keep me doing it, but I wasn’t losing very much weight at the time.  Eventually, I ended up taking two tablespoons of walnut oil in the morning everyday.

The AS was enough for me to realize I was always eating more than I needed.  I’d dig into something and then realize I didn’t need to finish it.  My life was built around food.  I love to cook and I live by myself, so that means way too many calories in one place.  As I started to recognize this, I began to wonder how to change this.

Then on Good Friday I did a fast.  I decided that if I started to feel bad, I’d just take some oil.  It worked very well.  I realized I could get by with very little food.

Thanks to Heidi.