This is a post on a health-related topic. We are not medical or other trained health professionals. The information presented here was what learned about ourselves on our journey. Your journey is different and it is best to consult your doctor or other medical professional before making a change. Please see our disclaimer at Before Making Lifestyle Changes before making any changes to diet, activity, etc.
In a previous post, we talked about how creating new habits takes courage, dedication, and discipline. Waiting to figure out what worked and didn’t was maddening. When we started, we figured it was going to be simple; change calories and we change our weight. In this post, we will discuss why this approach didn’t work, what we learned, and how we have learned to iterate over small changes over going all in.
Our Simple Goals
We wanted a weight change of 0.5 – 1 lb. a week for a sustainable goal. In transparency, our goal was to lose weight. We found that the same rules apply to gaining weight. It’s known as the 3,500-calorie rule. That goal equated to a change of 500 calories daily for each of us. Like many things you will read in the area of weight management, it turned out to be more of a guideline. We will discuss this in another post.
Going all in Instead of Iteration
Of course, we didn’t just reduce calories. We went for low-fat, low carbs and high-protein meals. We also decided to increase our water intake. Further, we cut out sweets in exchange for fruits and nuts. If you read our post on hidden calories we would find we were simply changing one devil for another. And of course, we started exercising more.
We are aware that calorie counting is a pain, goes in and out of fashion, and doesn’t take into account nutrition. Still, if we hadn’t counted our calories we would have never learned that supposedly healthy food was a calorie-dense as unhealthy. We had found another place that we felt lied to by so many sources of information.
So What Happened?
It took roughly 4 weeks to start to even kick in. Why? Because it wasn’t easy to reduce our calories to the desired level. It was very hard to believe the data of what that looked like portion-wise. We were also forcing our bodies to make changes. The faster you try and make the changes the more it will want to fight you. Our bodies tend to want to stay where they are at.
Here is where the problem came up. After 4 weeks we saw changes. If someone asked us what caused the change and we couldn’t tell them with any certainty. Was it the reduction of fat or the lowering of calories? We didn’t know the impact of water on our bodies as discussed in this post. Maybe it was the increased physical activity. Like other dieters, we cheated a lot as we stopped eating the dopamine fun foods like chocolate.
Lack of Repeatability Left us Stuck
Remember our goal as stated wasn’t about nutrition or being healthy. Our goal was sustainable weight management. For our weight management to be sustainable, it had to be repeatable. If we didn’t know what impacted the changes, we had no way of knowing how to stay on track. At this point, it wasn’t a lifestyle change. After riding the roller coaster up and down, we decided to attack our goals more scientifically.
It is the lack of consistency and multiple changes that create the roller coaster rides. It is easy to lose or gain weight as we stated in our post on the Weight Management Equations. What is hard is controlling or sustaining it by understanding what works for a person. This is what we found from the empirical evidence from our journey.
Here is What We Found:
- Cutting carbs meant taking away too much fuel for us to work out properly. The workout intensity diminished over time.
- Adding excess protein created a need for more water to digest which created other GI tract problems.
- Eating healthy, before we started monitoring calories, was adding more calories instead of lowering them.
- We were overworked and didn’t have enough recovery capacity from the exercise. This reduced the dopamine hit that we all get from a workout.
- We would get injured working out as our bodies couldn’t recover based on our new ‘healthy’ diet.
- The results were initially good, but plateaued quickly and we had no idea what change caused what result.
We found that this was becoming a bad cycle. The cycle reinforced that all the suffering was for nothing. If you don’t see results and are suffering for something, you will stop trying. While we lost weight, we failed to maintain it.
Applying an Engineering Mindset
Coming from the software world, we decided to apply agile practices to our weight loss. This meant changing a couple of things, getting feedback from the scale for a couple of weeks, learning if it worked, and adjusting the course based on our learning. Through this approach, we found a way to understand what worked and what didn’t.
We finally landed on the fact we had to be more scientific. It took making a small change, waiting for a result, and then iterating over to learn what worked for our bodies and goals. By starting with simple, understandable, consistent changes, we learned what worked for us.
Tips for Keeping on Track:
- Eating well-balanced meals unless directed by a medical or similar health professional helped us. We found unbalanced meals such as fat-free or sugar-free will not necessarily be sustainable long term.
- Be honest. If you enjoy wine or beer you need to count them in your calculations. They add up quickly and can skew understanding if left out.
- Ask the portion size before you order something at a restaurant so you aren’t surprised.
- Make changes 2-3 at a time. If you change too much all at once it will be hard to understand what happened.
- Use fast food to your advantage when traveling. They have great nutrition information and their portions are consistent from restaurant to restaurant.
- If you have a bad day, don’t try to compensate. Compensating for a bad day puts noise in your data. Just chalk it up to learning.
Iteration was Key
With an iterative approach, we found we were able to make connections faster. Connections became learnings we could use. With each learning, we could adjust our course faster. When we hit a plateau, and nothing changed for a few weeks, we knew we had to do some research. As a result, we also realized how much information we received was just wrong.
We learned If we do not see changes after week 3 to adjust our plan. After resetting our calorie budget by 100-200 we would watch it for another week. We learned as we went. If nothing is moving for you, look honestly at what you’re doing. It does take a while for your body to actively feed on its stored calories. Likewise, eating an extra 1000 calories for one day won’t have a permanent impact on weight gain.
To be successful we had to learn to do it little by little over time. That is how we got off the cyclical part of diet and exercise. It simply became a game of learning what works for each of us as an individual. It was the iteration of small changes that allowed us to see and understand changes. These changes lead to sustainability in our weight goals.