Lost 80 pounds in 8 months. Here's what I did.

Hey, I'm u/Cheezman75. As the title suggests, I've successfully dropped a third of my body weight over the course of eight months. I started my weight loss campaign on the 13th of September at 240 pounds, and first weighed in under my goal weight of 160 pounds on the 10th of May, 239 days later. For the rest of the important stats, I'm a man, 5'8" tall, and both started and finished my journey at 22 years old (173 cm, 108.9 kg > 72.6 kg). Now I'm here to share my story and hopefully pass on some useful information I picked up along the way.

Now this is a story...

I went in for a checkup with a new doctor and had some bloodwork done. I came back a week later to find out that my lipid panel was quite damning. LDL was through the roof. The doctor prescribed me a statin pill to keep my cholesterol down, and I immediately realized something was wrong (What the hell, I'm too young for this, none of the men in the Lipitor commercials were my age...).

I asked the doctor if this could all go away with weight loss, she said possibly, and that was my motivation to get started. I already knew all about r/loseit and CICO from a previous weight loss attempt (I still have my MFP account from back then, with a login streak that's nearing 1200 days), so all I needed to do here was actually put in the work.

(Side note: I was able to have the prescription dropped after doing the next blood test 30 pounds lighter.)

How did you lose the weight?

I ate less. That's the gist of it. I weighed the things I ate on a kitchen scale, tracked what I ate in MFP, and weighed myself every day. Most days came in at under 1300 kcal. I kept at it for a very long time, and that's how I got to this point. Most of my journey could be described as "eating the right things and waiting for good things to happen." While I may have made some plans to try to follow, the only concept I strictly adhered to was CICO.

What kind of plans?

I did try a few things with respect to macronutrients. In the opening stages of my diet, I aimed for a balanced diet where 40% of the calories came from carbohydrates, 30% from protein, and 30% from fat. I found it to be a pretty good approach that allowed me a little bit of everything. It was only a starting point, though. Over time, I would refine my plan into something closer to the conventional knowledge.

• Take your goal weight in kilograms (1 kg = 2.2046 lbs).
  
• Multiply it by 1.4 to get the grams of protein.
  
• Divide the grams of protein by 3 to get the grams of fat.
  
• Multiply the grams of protein by 1.2 to get the grams of carbs.

160 pounds = 72.6 kg, so that means I would try to eat 102g of protein, 34g of fat, and 122g of carbs every day. But these rules were only a suggestion. I didn't strictly follow them. Sometimes I ate more carbs than I planned for, and I hit my protein goals maybe... once a week. I'm sure my efforts to get more protein and eat more filling foods still counted for something.

I wonder what's for dinner

Some people would like for you to believe that pure CICO means eating 1200 in booze and McDogshits every day; that only their ideas can bring you health, which they will share with you for just three easy payments of $29.99. The truth of the matter is that what I was losing, certain food items appeared in my logs more frequently than others. Let's take a look at some of these heavy hitters.

• Chicken Breast: Maybe my most frequently consumed food. Definitely my greatest source of protein. I prefer to boil my chicken breasts, seasoning the water with parsley, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper.

• Tilapia: The "chicken of the sea," and my fish of choice. Great nutritional profile, and tends to be less expensive than cod. After thawing, season with paprika, garlic powder, and black pepper, then bake at 400 °F (205 °C) for 15 minutes. Use a baking sheet with a rack.

• Peas: They say you need a vegetable, and I chose peas. That's because I like them and they're high in protein. I like to get the frozen bags from Steamfresh.

• Lean Cuisine, Meatloaf: Relatively low-cal, pretty filling, and of the meals I made that had a decent amount of protein, this one was probably the easiest. Just pop it in the microwave.

• Fruit bars: I'm lumping three products into this category: Nutrigrains, Walmart-brand bootleg Nutrigrains, and Special K pastries. I usually eat these for some cheap carbs to fuel a workout.

• Coffee: Only four calories a pint if you can drink it black, and one hell of a hunger buster. Further down, I'll explain how I learned to drink black coffee.

• Sandwich: The first of my custom recipes. Throw together some low-calorie bread, incredibly lean ham, low-fat cheese, and fake butter. Using Nature's Own for the bread and Smart Balance for the butter, I can make mine for 205 kcal.

• Wasa: Sometimes for a snack, I like to take a Wasa cracker and stack different types of cheese on it. The one I have saved as a custom recipe in MFP has a slice of Muenster, a slice of Colby Jack, and a stick of Mozzarella string cheese for a total of 245 kcal.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for, it's time to present the Pizza Award! My top frozen pizza is... Margherita from Amy's! It's the classic: mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. You can eat the whole thing for 840 kcal, or buy in personal size for 400 kcal! Just be sure to sponge up some of the oil after you cook it.

Did you do any exercise?

I started my diet in September and didn't add exercises until November. At that point, I started running with the C25K program. You've probably heard of the saying that weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise. That's how the saying goes. In practice, I would say diet is closer to 95% or even 99% of the effort. In terms of weight loss, regular exercise helped by stabilizing my water levels and getting me to the finish line slightly faster.

But that's not to say it was without any benefit. I went from being winded from a walk down the street to being able to run for 5+ miles. I gave myself another reason to learn more about nutrition. I learned how to hydrate myself. And of course I'm much healthier from all of that.

Hot Coffee

As a student, my work tended to keep me up very late, so I would wind up drinking a lot of coffee for the caffeine. However, with sugar and cream added, I was taking in almost 150 kcal every time I poured a new cup. This was a problem for me once I started dieting, so I came up with a routine for weaning myself off of these unnecessary additions, and learned to drink not a coffee-flavored milkshake, but coffee itself.

Get a cup of your freshly brewed coffee and a spoon. Before adding anything, drink a spoonful of the black coffee. Repeat this for as long as you can. Then add your cream. Drink a few spoonfuls of that. Then add tiny amounts of sugar at a time, drinking another spoonful between each step. Stop adding sugar when you like it.

The first day I tried this, I was able to cut the amount of sugar I used in half. As time went on and I kept doing this, I could tolerate more and more of the black coffee, until I started drinking the whole thing black.

The lightning round

Any odd tips I have lying around will go here.

• The food scale was vital to my success. It was a big help to know exactly how much of everything I was eating.
  
• Finding a healthy food that you enjoy eating will make things much easier.
  
• Mathematically, any day where you eat under your goal weight's TDEE is guaranteed to be forward progress.
  
• Everything you do or don't do will cause your body to retain water. The water will fall off eventually.
  
• I conquered my old stress eating habits by realizing that food does not solve the other problems in your life.
  
• Take carbs before a workout, and protein afterwards.
  
• Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
  
• Use high-effort meals, such as foods that take longer to prepare, when you're unsure of whether your hunger is genuine.

What now?

Some people would like for you to believe that this weight loss is only temporary, that I'll somehow gain everything back plus interest. The way I'm approaching maintenance will prevent this. Even in maintenance, I'm still weighing both myself and my food, and tracking everything to the best of my ability. The only difference is that I've changed the target from 1200 to 1900. The battle for health and self-improvement is a lifelong effort, and so my new goal is to remain at a healthy weight for life.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I hope you were able to find something useful. Good luck to everyone who's trying to lose weight!

And one final thing. I chart my weight daily on the Android app Libra. Here's an album of all my graphs.

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