Every time I see an article about losing weight, it asserts that one cannot lose weight by exercise alone. And yet the only times in my life when I have lost a significant amount of weight, it was due to exercise.
This wasn’t ever a planned program, just the side effect of a significant increase in exercise. The first couple of times, I lost weight because I was suddenly doing a lot more walking.
That happened when I started college and lived on campus without a car at the University of Texas (the original one, in Austin), which was a large campus. The summer afterwards I also worked at the state capitol and walked to work as well as around campus.
My second year in law school, my financial aid didn’t come through, so I loaded trucks for four hours for UPS every morning before school. I dropped a lot of weight and got into good shape despite the fact that I stopped for donuts for breakfast on the way to work and drank Coke from the machine while I was there. And then often got biscuits and gravy from the cafeteria when I went to school.
(That may sound great, but I also recall I never got enough sleep that year and also had several colds. The exercise was great, but the lifestyle wasn’t.)
I’ve always been on the large size, sometimes in great shape, sometimes fat, never skinny. I have a large bone structure and am relatively tall (though I seem to have shrunk a bit in recent years).
It’s not all exercise that works for weight loss for me. I spent forty years in martial arts without that alone having any effect on weight. Generally, I lose weight from doing a lot of walking or running, though it seems to be even more useful if I’m also lifting weights (as with loading trucks).
Bicycling does nothing, though I did notice back when I did a lot of running and biking that the combination did wonders for my aerobic capacity.
I got in the best shape of my life – which involved a great deal more than losing weight – with a combination of running, biking, weightlifting, and karate. I was only working part time, though, and couldn’t keep that schedule up and make a living.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that after a certain point I stop losing weight from exercise, though I still have to keep it up if I don’t want to gain weight. I gather my metabolism shifts to expect that level of exercise.
So for the last ten years or so, I’ve been walking about 4-5 miles a day. I dropped a fair amount of weight at first, gained some back, and now just do it as part of staying in shape. I also try to get to the gym to lift weights a couple of times a week – I keep seeing that weightlifting is good if you’re old – as well as doing some Tai Chi and an assortment of physical therapy exercises.
The walking takes time, but I run a lot of errands on foot, which helps. And I don’t have a day job anymore, so I can afford to take the time.
As for diets, nah, especially the extreme kind. They don’t work for me. What I notice about food and weight is that I can avoid gaining if I pay attention to what I’m eating, which corresponds very nicely to eating lots of fruit and veggies and whole grains and avoiding ultraprocessed food, excess salt, and added sugars. I’m an omnivore, but I try to emphasize the plants.
I don’t worry a lot about weight, but I do pay a lot of attention to getting enough exercise and eating well enough to stay healthy.
This works for me. It may not work for anybody else. Bodies differ a lot. The key is to figure out how your own body works and then do what you can to keep yourself happy and healthy.
I’m not giving advice here – except for the part about understanding your own body. I am suggesting that various kinds of conventional wisdom may not apply. Pay attention to your own body, your own self. After all, who knows you better?
OK, I will add just a little advice: get all the vaccines you can – viruses are bad for you. Get regular medical checkups – some problems aren’t obvious. And get treatment if you’re sick.
Oh, and definitely go to the dentist!
I’m a big fan of healthy lifestyles, but there are things that will bite you in the butt no matter how well you live. You can’t neglect those either.
The first time I fell in seriously in love, I lost a lot of weight. Some of that was simply because we were poor as church mice and walked everywhere (this was when I was living in Boston). And I was too busy–with a new job and a new beau–to graze constantly. Excellent weight loss program, at least at the time.
The other thing that worked effortlessly–and this is not a program that works for everyone, metabolically or situationally–was when my kids were born and I was breastfeeding. Especially with my first daughter, she just sucked the calories out of me. I lost my pregnancy weight almost immediately, and then began losing the weight I’d carried before I got pregnant (to the extent that a stranger on the subway offered me a sandwich “because you look like you could use it”).
When I was doing stage combat–classes and practice and walking around New York City with a twenty pound bag of swords and related items on my shoulder–I not only lost weight but got pretty strong. For a few years I could do a running dive with a rapier in my hand and come up en garde. But as kids and jobs and life took that time and used it for other things, the weight came crawling back. It doesn’t help that I like to eat, and like to cook, and–fatally–I really like to bake.
I also love to eat. I do not understand those people I see go by on social media reminding others to eat. Who forgets to eat? I have skipped meals because I was sick or had too much work to stop, but I have never ever forgotten to eat. It helps that I actually like collards and beans and tofu and broccoli (a day without broccoli is like a day without sunshine), and I like the way I cook such things. Of course, I also like ice cream and pizza and barbecue and beer and other people’s cooking in general. Eating out is where I have to pay attention, especially when traveling since it’s really hard to find good vegetables when traveling.
Though I discovered last year that a lot of truck stops, at least on Interstate 10, have Indian restaurants. We stopped in one while traveling and while we were trying to decide what we wanted, the server said “Most people like the tandoori chicken” and I said, “I’m sure it’s good, but we want vegetables,” of which they had a very nice selection.