Don’t worry. These weight-loss steps are repeatable.
I’ve always been a curvy girl. I’m just under 5’3″ and I can’t remember a time when I weighed less than 149 pounds. My body’s equilibrium is 150 pounds, plus or minus five pounds.
In high school, I was on the minus side; overall, I was eating less, sleeping more, and the least stressed I had ever been in life (aside from my time in the womb, of course).
In college, as I started to incorporate weightlifting into my workout regiment, I was on the plus side. I didn’t weigh myself often because my weight really doesn’t fluctuate too much but I always trying to be leaner; not skinny but healthy for my body. Unfortunately, more recently, during one of the last times I stepped on a scale, I faced what felt like a grim new reality: my equilibrium may have shifted in the wrong direction.
At one point in my professional career, over a span of 6 months, I was going back and forth from Boston to Philadelphia every week for work. It’s not a long flight, but the frequency of the trip definitely threw me off.
Towards the end of my time in Philly, I went to a doctor’s appointment. Oddly enough, after a certain point in my life (high school, I think?), physicians never weighed me. They always asked me how much I weighed and took me at my word. And I had no qualms about that because, as I said, my weight really doesn’t fluctuate. But this time, I was asked to step on a scale. And when the doctor read the number back to me, my heart sank.
Towards the end of my college career, I weighed approximately 155 pounds. At this doctor’s visit, I clocked in at 175 pounds.
The Backstory (Before the weight-loss)
My eating habits essentially changed overnight, but only partially by choice. While I was out on vacation at Disney World (yes, I was an adult going with another adult, but I’d never been before and I had to see it), my company hired a new employee. She wasn’t on my team, but it was hard for me to not get excited about the prospect of a new work friend. Whether she liked it or not, she was about to become my new bestie.
As the company I worked at continued to grow, so did the work and the stress. So, when my favourite restaurant became a chain and opened a new location down the street from my office, my new work bestie and I would go almost weekly to de-stress. And every time we went, we’d split a massive plate of pork carnitas nachos and some churros with chocolate sauce dip. Besides that, we’d each get at least two cocktails to ourselves each night we went.
Eating out once in a while is fine. But eating out weekly and adding thousands of extra calories on top of what you’re already eating packs a punch to the waistline for sure. This change was by choice. And since my weight was increasing so incrementally, I never noticed a difference. Hence, I thought nothing of it.
This was the part that didn’t change by choice: I got a promotion at work. Promotion is normally a piece of awesome news. Except, I was promoted into a role that I swore up and down I would never take on: consulting.
Consulting is cool and all except for the constant traveling, in my opinion.
For me, the biggest issues I have with work travel are:
- The messy sleep schedule, AND
- Not being able to cook for myself.
Because I don’t live close to Logan Airport and I needed to arrive early enough to start the workday, I would often have to wake up at 3 AM to get myself together. As someone who is always tired, even on a full night of sleep, this was ‘no Bueno’ for me.
Add to that the fact that when I’m traveling and staying in a hotel, I can’t cook for myself. I know my body very, very well. And I know that no matter what I order at a restaurant, it will never be as healthy as what I make for myself.
So three days a week, eating out two times per day (my body is not interested in breakfast) really did me in. Looking back, it’s no wonder I put on 20 extra pounds in less than a year.
I accepted this extra 20 pounds as my reality since my schedule was way too tight to fit in more exercise, and the company I worked for didn’t get a corporate apartment with a kitchen until after I had already finished my assignment.
If they had that from the beginning, things would’ve been a little different.
That was Q2 2019. Fast-forward to early 2021. A friend and I decided to do a weight loss challenge: 5 pounds per month. I bought a scale so I could track my progress. It was the first scale I ever owned.
Pre-pandemic, I would normally weigh myself at the gym. But since we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I don’t feel comfortable going (re- Corona or no Corona, I’m kinda feeling too lazy to go; I’ll be honest, I’d rather be sitting), I decided to get a scale of my own so I could take care of it at home.
On day 1 of the challenge, I took measurements of my stomach and thighs and wrote them down. Then I stepped on the scale to see the damage. I assumed that I had either stayed in the 170s or gone up to the 190s. I used a couple of calorie counter apps to plan out what I would eat if I was 175, 180, 185, or 190. I like to plan out the spectrum of options beforehand, just so I know what to expect.
Imagine my surprise when I stepped on the scale to see 151.1 pounds.
I didn’t believe it. At all. So, I visited a friend a couple of weeks later and used her scale. She always gets weighed when she goes to the doctor and she claimed her scale was always accurate for her. This time, her scale confirmed it: without making any changes to my lifestyle (I thought), I was down 24 pounds and back within my equilibrium.
So, What Changed?
I quit (read: I was eating out less).
I pretend quitting my job was the cure for everything that ailed me, and it’s only semi-true. But the real “cure” was that I was eating out less and cooking for myself more.
Eventually, I couldn’t continue consulting. I never wanted to do it in the first place. But now, more than ever, my family needed me and I couldn’t be so far from home anymore. My final straw came when a close family member was having a medical emergency and had to wait for me to come back from Philly so she could be seen in the emergency room. The worst possible thoughts were racing through my head.
If I don’t get there in time and she dies, I’ll fly back and burn this place to the ground.
Would I really have done it? Maybe not. But due to the stressful circumstance, I was in a very negative mental space.
So, I started applying to other jobs and when I found the right next opportunity, I pounced on it. That new opportunity kept me closer to home, which meant I went from eating out six times per week (remember: three days, two meals per day) to eating out an average of once every 2–3 weeks since I had consistent access to a kitchen.
I was drinking less alcohol.
I’m a social drinker. I love a good cocktail and even if a restaurant has mediocre food, I’m inclined to call it “one of my favourites!!!” if the drinks are A+. But I rarely ever drink by myself at home. I don’t know what it is. I’m just not all that interested in drinking alone.
But when I was traveling for work and out for dinner, everyone wanted to grab drinks. Plus, they were expense-able. How can you turn down free alcohol?!
So, after I left, I went from drinking six drinks per week (two drinks per dinner, three dinners out) to drinking an average of two drinks every 2–3 weeks.
My stress decreased dramatically.
My last job wasn’t a great fit for me because I thrive on predictability and clear expectations which, by nature, aren’t qualities you often find in a consulting role. Even if your company does things in a cut-and-dry way, your clients are the wild card.
On the surface, predictability sounds boring. But I really believe that when I have a more predictable set of requirements, I’m able to stop expending energy trying to figure out what the curve is so I can keep pace with it, not talk of getting ahead. And instead, I can expend that energy towards finding creative ways to elevate my deliverable to be even more useful than the original expectation. With predictable expectations, I find I have more room to deliver a much higher quality product.
So, I always went to work with a sense of anxiety at my last job because I knew there would be a curveball. I knew. It was inevitable. I was never wrong about that. And that stressed me out.
Add to that the stress that comes with 1) annihilating my sleep schedule by getting up at 3 AM regularly and 2) patiently waiting for the Uber driver to stop taking so many wrong turns so I don’t miss my flight, plus all the stress that comes with packing and getting through TSA. I swear I’m literally never traveling with explosives; I don’t own any that I know of. Yet, whenever my bag goes through the scanner at the airport, I’m like, “What if I accidentally packed something I shouldn’t have…?”
As you can guess, that was the most stressed-out period of my life. So stressful, in fact, that I ended up starting therapy. I’m glad I did, but that’s a story for another article.
But first-day jitters aside, I settled into my new job nicely. Expectations were clear and reasonable. No more curveballs. No more fire drills. No more “Sunday Scaries” that lasted through Friday.
Why Eating Out Isn’t Great For Weight-Loss
Even though I’ve always been overweight, I’ve always eaten relatively healthy. There are a lot of reasons why a person may not be losing weight and as I got older, I started to fall into the eating-healthy-but eating-too-much category. And to the best of my abilities, while I was eating out six times per week, I was picking the “healthiest” items off the menu. But even that wasn’t enough to save me.
I mentioned this earlier but, while it is possible to find some healthy options when you’re out, there is still a multitude of reasons why the simple act of going out to eat can lead to weight gain. You have no knowledge and limited control over any of the options you order that aren’t just steamed veggies. For all you know, that “healthy” grilled chicken in the salad you ordered was potentially cooked in enough oil or butter to raise the calorie count higher than you probably even realise. And, besides, there are options that are advertised as healthy on the menu, but they may actually end up being far from it.
Why Alcohol is a Dieter’s Nightmare
In theory, an effective way to lose weight would be to consume fewer calories than you’re burning. It’s a simple equation that has worked for many, but this concept goes out the window when it comes to alcohol because your body has trouble processing alcohol. Put another way: A 300-calorie cocktail hits different than 300 calories of broccoli, and not in a good way.
Among many other things, alcohol can:
- Increase dehydration,
- Block nutrient absorption,
- Reduce the body’s ability to burn calories, and
- Negatively impact the quality of sleep.
None of these things are helpful when trying to shed weight. That’s not to say people who drink can’t lose weight; it’s just important to realise that alcohol in any quantity can complicate things.
And while I didn’t give up drinking for good, I absolutely noticed a difference in how my body felt internally with the reduction in drinking after I left that job.
I used to think my body just wasn’t used to alcohol, so bad insomnia, bloating, and grogginess were just things I would eventually get used to. But I’ve heard it before and I’m only now starting to understand that alcohol really is a toxin, there isn’t much “getting used to it”.
How Stress Keeps You Squishy
Imagine just decided to never stress out ever again, and then actually being able to never stress out ever again! Unfortunately, I stress over everything, so it’s not possible for me. However, I’ve definitely become less stressed out after quitting that stressful job.
By now, everyone knows that stress leads to increased body fat. It’s not news anymore. Stress increases cortisol in the body, which then triggers increased abdominal fat deposits in the body. Additionally, stress triggers another hormone called betatrophin, which a University of Florida professor found to slow down metabolism in rats.
Add to that “stress eating”, a relatively common occurrence. Not everyone stress eats, but those who do are probably at risk of overeating.
There were a million things to stress about at my last job. A stressful job doesn’t always mean bad company, though. I’ve learned that some positions end up being more stressful than others. For example, I find supporting consultants, creating materials for them, and automating processes that they utilize is far less stressful and has far fewer moving parts than being a consultant and juggling multiple client relationships. So, transitioning from being a consultant back to being internal support was the biggest game-changer for my stress levels.
What comes with that is no longer having to juggle unrealistic expectations so regularly. People who aren’t consultants, understand that it’s easy for a client to simply ask for something that’s not entirely possible, and they really wouldn’t know since they’re hiring consultants in the first place. Why would they hire consultants if they know exactly what needs to be done and they have the manpower to do it themselves. And unfortunately, the people who are in the room with the client hold the key to how that request pans out.
If you’re lucky enough to be in the room and you know the situation, you can respectfully outline the limitations and offer alternatives. But the worst-case scenario, and a scenario I was very familiar with at my last job, was that someone who didn’t know the nature of the work was the person who was in the room with the client, by themselves, promising everything under the sun, possible or not. And then you have to fit round pegs into square holes because no one wants the embarrassment of going back to the client and saying, “I know we said we could build a fully functional spaceship to the moon out of duct tape and q tips and we promised it by next week but um…. it might not be possible anymore….”
A third stress-reduction point was that with this new job, I was able to be close to my home in case of emergencies. The peace of mind from that alone is priceless.
How Can You Implement These Changes?
While I lost 24 pounds without actively setting out to do so, that doesn’t mean you can follow similar steps with intention and achieve results. It all starts with baby steps and three good steps to take would be:
1. Eat out less.
I’m not an all-or-nothing kind of girl. Some people can quit things cold turkey, but that’s not the way I roll. Eating out can serve as a fun way to try new foods, enjoy good company, etc. But to the best of your abilities, it may be beneficial to reduce the number of days that you eat out and opt to cook at home instead. Once upon a time, I was eating out six times per week due to my work schedule and lack of access to a kitchen. Since starting this new job, the highest frequency I’ve reached for eating out is one a week, but it’s usually less than that.
Even if you only eat out once a week. If you’re able to make it once every two weeks, it’ll make a difference.
2. Reduce alcohol consumption.
Your body doesn’t like alcohol because it doesn’t like poison, but it’s okay if you like it. I, personally, enjoy it as well. But since it can potentially slow down your metabolism and block your body’s absorption of what it actually needs, it’s worth cutting back on. I cut back from six drinks a week to one or two every couple of weeks and here I am, accidentally 24 pounds lighter!
3. Chill out.
Even if you’re not in it for weight loss, reducing stress improves sleep quality, cardiovascular health, overall quality of life, and so much more. Maybe your job is the main source of your stress and you can’t quit that job, right now or ever. Maybe your family is the source of your stress and you can’t quit them either. Whatever the case, if you can’t remove your stressor, it’s worth finding a way to mitigate it.
In other words: if you can’t remove a stressor from your life (work, home life, etc.), try adding in a stress reliever (sports/exercise, a nap, etc.).
Check out some more articles on weight-loss and healthy eating.
