How to lose weight after you already lost it

(If this listicle isn't your style, jump to the bottom for a quick summary)

1. Feel good about yourself. You're at a healthy weight, you've worked hard to get there! Convince yourself (by never saying it aloud) that you'll never be overweight again. Stepping onto the scale is an exciting event that reminds you how hard you've worked to get here.
2. Take a new job. You're on top of the world, and everything is aces. Sitting behind a computer isn't hard, but it gives you a chance to work your mind!
3. Wear your favorite patterned blue shirt, the one that looks good on you.
4. New job is stressful, but you truly believe in what you're doing. Work harder, longer hours. Feel stressed, but never lose sight that you're doing good in the world. Maybe you miss a run, one or two a week.
5. And... you make more money! Heck, why not start ordering food delivered more? You grew up in the country, where the closest Dominoes delivery point was a regional airport five miles away. It's _special_ to have someone bring you food -- there are even apps for it!
6. Work longer ones, miss more runs. Wake up, work, tap a button for heaping portions of delicious cuisine, work more, go to sleep.
7. Sure, you're stressed, but if you just work a little harder, that will go away, you're sure of it. Things will get easier, you're doing good.
8. Spend 80 hours a week behind a computer. You don't have time for the grocery store, or to run, because what you're doing is important. There are deadlines to meet and people to please.
9. Drink. Drink with friends, drink by yourself. Drink whiskey, drink beer, drink boxed and bagged and bottled wine. Get to know the guy behind the counter of the liquor store, you never talk much but he's always friendly, with a smile that tends to brighten your day. He never asks about your work, there's no deadline to meet.
10. Keep wearing your favorite patterned blue shirt to the office. Ignore how it restricts your movement (_it probably shrunk in the wash,_ you think, but maybe you don't even think that. More likely you just wear it, and you stare at your screen and you think about the problem right in front of your eyes that demands attention right now).
11. Third pair of jeans in two months with a ripped hole in the crotch? (_Maybe I need to change brands,_ you might think, but more likely you just swing past Nordstrom Rack on the way to work, buy another pair with your salary, throw the old one away).
12. Get home from the office, and be so brain-dead you can't look at your computer. Buy a six-pack of beer, drink four in a night. Watch Netflix in a daze, only geting up to receive the calzone being dropped off at your front door. (_This is a better work-life balance,_ maybe you think, _at least I'm taking time for myself,_...but more likely you don't think anything at all).
13. That night, in the early, early morning, when you can't sleep and you're downing water because you've got to be up in a few hours and you don't even know what show you're watching anymore: step into the bathroom and pee. Notice the dusty scale next to the toilet. Weigh yourself. Stare at the number, bleary-eyed. Deny it with no thought. Put the scale away, crawl into bed, and try to fall asleep. Scrape through the next day at work.
14. With laundry running low, you reach for that patterned blue shirt, which has somehow wound up at the very back of your closet. Put it on. Feel how tight it is. Look into a mirror, while some manic clown inside your head screams the phrase _I look like a stuffed sausage!_ over and over and over
15. Take the shirt off as fast as you can, throw it onto the floor of the closet, into the back corner (_have you been here before?_ you suddenly wonder, you can't help it). Wear something dirty to work.
16. A happy hour with coworkers until 2 a.m. makes everything better, at least until 2 a.m.
17. You're in the middle of digging through your closet, furiously, and you're stuffing everything that doesn't fit into large, vacuum-sealed bags. You're doing this less as part of a plan and more because you no longer know what fits and what doesn't and, god forbid, it's making it difficult for you to get ready for work in the morning, and work is so important, work just _has_ to be worth the time you've invested in it. So you take all the clothes that don't fit you any more and you stuff them into bags and stick them where you can't see them, and you've dealt with the immediate problem at hand.
18. Encounter someone new in the office. Listen to them rhapsodize about how much they believe in their mission. It occurs to you how young they sound. How naive they sound. How wrong they are. But not so long ago, you believed that too.
19. Open up a five-year-old email from a college advisor: "A job won't be there for you at the end of the day. A job won't take care of you," she wrote.
20. Start counting. Realize you worked 55 hours as a salaried worker last week, no overtime. And you still need to bill for it, so that extra 15 hours went straight to the company, none for you.
21. Ask yourself: *why?*
22. Force yourself to work 40 hours a week. Experience pushback from colleagues, who are suddenly feeling the pinch now that you aren't working wild hours. They are resistant to your work/life balance changes, but you find it hard to be angry with them: after all, it wasn't long ago that you had the same mentality.
23. With more time in your evenings, you feel a void. No SO, few hobbies, an apartment only a few steps above unfurnished, despite having lived there for more than a year. You keep drinking, mostly to fill time. But: now that you've pushed away the stress of work, you begin to question why you're drinking so much. What effect is it having?
24. Step on the scale, and for the first time, you absorb a devastating piece of information you have until now denied: *You have gained 70 pounds*
25. Feel helpless. Don't talk to anyone about it. Be embarrassed. Drink more. Try to go for a run, but your athletic shirts are tighter than they've ever been (_STUFFED SAUSAGE!_ the clown roars).
26. Settle into misery. Beat yourself up when you eat too much. Tell yourself you need to work out, but don't do it.
27. Delay going in for your physical, because you can't stand to have the doctor compare charts of the last 2 years to the current one.
28. Get frustrated. You don't have any fitting summer clothes, and the sun is out. You're hesitant about spending money on clothes, because they're such a source of insecurity for you. But then you remember: you grew up in the country, and dropping $30 in Walmart was a hella good way to spend a Saturday.
29. Go to Walmart and start throwing cheap crap into a shopping cart. Get one of those work shirts that last about three months. Get a shirt with 6 cats flying through a galaxy on it, extra large. Buy a couple pairs of shitty basketball shorts. When you walk back, you're grinning and laughing to yourself because *you know that these clothes are going to fit you!*
30. Wear that nice shirt to work, and, for the first time in months, feel comfortable in your appearance. You don't worry that everyone is judging you like the Sausage Clown in your brain (and, part of you realizes now, that is a ridiculous assumption and something they probably never were doing anyway).
31. You rock that extra large Galaxy Cat Shirt. You own it. You are Space Cats.
32. You like how these clothes make you feel, even if they are cheap quality. You remember the tightness of those athletic shirts, and you have a revolutionary thought: _If I feel comfortable in my exercise clothes, maybe I'll want to exercise!_
33. Get online and, in a flurry of an impulse buy, get 4 nice extra-large athletic shirts.
34. Put one on, and go for a run. For the first time in a long time, feel confident. Feel comfortable. It doesn't matter if you're wheezing, or you had to walk for part of it -- you're convinced you look good, or at least, unremarkable.
35. The exercise changes brain chemicals, brings new lines of thought, and you decide to try out another idea, one that's been in the back of your mind since that night you stepped on the scale and saw that big SEVEN ZERO: Stop drinking.
36. Stop drinking entirely. Download one of those apps that tracks your sobriety, and charts the changes happening in your brain and body the longer you're sober.
37. Struggle. Friday nights are empty. Your social calendar, never great, is now abysmal because all your friends drink. You try to join them to the bars, but it only ever works if the bar has good food. On one frustrating Friday night, you sulk in your apartment and play old N64 games while sipping from a crate of La Croix.
38. Be grateful that you don't experience any of the painful withdrawal symptoms of alcoholics. Read about them extensively, to help you put your experience into context.
39. Begin to enjoy running again. Get on a training plan for a race. Make calendars on graph paper, with your mileage written down on each day. Cross out that little number, one for every win. After a week, you've got a streak going, and your attitude has shifted: It's not: "If I run today..." It's "When will I run today?" You can feel this change happening, and it makes you happy inside.
40. You think maybe work gets better, but maybe it's just because you're managing your time better. You don't care. The days at the office aren't the tireless sludge of a few months previous, nor are they the giddy thrill of the early days. You aren't sure what to make of this, but you don't think it's bad.
41. *Start to lose weight.* You aren't tracking calories, but with consistent running, no booze, and some food management (eating earlier in the day, and nothing after 8 p.m. or so), you begin to see pounds slough off, a handful at first, and then a more plodding, but consistent pace, about a pound a week.
42. Tell no one. This is your special secret, and you delight in thinking it. Eventually people will notice, although with 70 pounds added, you acknowledge it will be a long while.
43. Eat better food. Not just healthy -- go to those fancy restaurants and order something expensive and delicious. Without booze, it's like you have an instant Groupon. You don't do this all the time, maybe once a week, but you're having so much fun engaging with friends over these amazing meals that you decide it's worth it.
44. The Sausage Clown is quiet now; you hope he is dead, but you know better. He's waiting for his chance to fuck with your head, and you are determined not to give it to him. You have one frequent thought that helps keep him at bay now. You think it when you're putting on running clothes, or when you're drinking soda water: _I am taking my health back. I am taking my body back._
45. Wait around. Wait around a lot. It takes a long time to lose 70 pounds. You can only do it so quickly. Be frustrated, be tired, but when the going gets tough, look at the app that tracks your weight. Look at that clear line of progression. Your efforts are having an impact. Your sacrifices are paying off. The trend line may be slight, but it's definitely, unquestionably, going in the right direction.
46. Drop a hole on your belt. Gain a hole on your belt. Gnash your teeth at the annoying process that is weight loss. Drop two holes on your belt, gain one back. Drop another, gain another. This is just how it goes.
47. Go on a run with a close friend. When they ask how you're doing, spill the beans. Tell them how embarrassed you were. Tell them how you stuffed your clothes in the back of the closet, and how you denied it, how you pretended you didn't have a problem for months on end, how you covered it up with drinking and work and delivery food. How you were so embarrassed, and how you didn't want to talk about it, not to anyone, ever. Tell the story between miles 1 and 3. Let it spill out into the breeze, now impotent poison. Your friend will listen, he will encourage you, and once your confession is spilled and discussed, you'll talk about something else, and in miles 4 through 6, you'll feel lighter than any scale says.
48. At a certain point, pull that bag of clothes out from the closet. You know they won't all fit, but you've lost some weight now, maybe some will. Lay them out, and try them on, one by one. Organize them into categories by weight: these should fit at 220, these at 210, these less than 210. Put them into dresser drawers with a big post-it note on top with those weight numbers, knowing that any time you hit one of these weights, it's time to try them on again. The patterned blue shirt goes in the under 210 category, so you know it'll be a while before you get to wear that one again -- but instead of an _if_, it's a _when_. This shift in thinking is wonderfully positive.
49. You are only able to add a single shirt to your wardrobe this time around: an ugly green cotton shirt with a faded logo. But once you realize it fits where it didn't fit before, you put it on, and you walk in front of the mirror, and you remember how you couldn't wear this shirt three months ago without the Sausage Clown screaming in your ear. You wear the shirt for the rest of the day, and that thought keeps repeating: _I am taking my body back. I am taking my body back._
50. With your clothes organized, your goals crystallized, and your mind de-boozified, you finally confident that you are moving in a good direction. This will be hard, and, eventually, you will have to avoid the traps you were pulled into before. But learning from mistakes is, after all, what makes good people... good.

*tl;dr; I lost a lot of weight, gained it all back plus a significant amount, and had a difficult time confronting my problems. Now that I'm on a positive track, I wanted to share my experience in a "To Do List" manner.\*

To keep with community rules regarding specifics on weight-loss progress

-I've limited time at work to achieve a work-life balance

-stopped drinking

-eat earlier in the day and little to nothing in the evenings

-I've organized clothes that no longer fit into categories to help me with motivation

-On a running training plan that has me running consistently six days a week -- basically, a strong source of calorie burning, although I haven't yet attempted to track calories directly. I probably will when I plateau, but... honestly, getting rid of booze has eliminated so many empty calories that I'm hopeful it will be a while before I need to do that.

submitted by /u/maddoxnelson
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