Every year of my life, until 2006, I gained weight. On January 20th, 2006, I had no idea what I weighed - I hadn't set foot on a scale since I was 12 or 13 years old. I had tried literally every diet there is - nutrisystem, weight watchers, even personal consultations with a dietician when I was as young as 9. Nothing ever worked, ever. And, as anyone who knows me will attest, I do not lack willpower. When I take something on, I am incredibly tenacious. I quit smoking 1 1/2 packs a day cold turkey and stayed quit, no problem. Despite my weight, I was always good at sports, a very good musician, did fine in school, did well on my SATs, etc. etc. etc. Being fat, I had a chip on my shoulder, because when you're fat you have to be way better than other people at something to be considered equal. You get treated like [censored] by pretty much everyone pretty much all the time.

So, like I was saying, I had no idea what I weighed. My life was in a bad way - I was supposed to go to NYU for a master's, but the program folded and I was left living at home without an out plan - I'd come back to save up a few bucks before entering the program and found out about its folding after the deadlines to apply for other programs. I was in terrible health - I felt awful all the time, and I'd just turned 28. I was mentally and physically spiralling downwards.

One of my uncles had done a low carb diet and gone from being an on-medication diabetic to being completely med-free and in very good health. So I decided to try it.

My first positive steps towards retaking my health came January 16th, 2006. My parents were out of the country on vacation, and I'd consciously decided to start while they were gone in case I failed before they got back, to save myself the mortification of publicly failing once again. Monday of that week I decided to exercise before I went to work, so - being January cold on the East Coast - I decided to stay inside and get on my father's treadmill, a piece of equipment that he'd used religiously for years and loved. I went for about 8 or ten minutes at 3 mph and was horribly out of breath, literally mentally envisioning my parents coming home and finding me dead in the living room when...

the thing died.

I got off, caught my breath, tinkered with it and tried to figure out what was wrong, hoping desperately that I could fix it. I couldn't. It was dead. I was so heavy that I destroyed the motor in my father's treadmill - again, a machine that he loved. I took a shower and went to work, completely dejected, embarrassed, sad, emotionally broken even further than I had been before.

The next day I woke up and was determined to try and exercise again. Not having a treadmill, I went outside and started walking. I was in AWFUL shape - in about a half an hour I did what would now take me 10 minutes, and I was seriously just dying. I remember vividly stopping at this point that's at the top of a very minor hill along what became my regular walking route and saying to myself, "oh my god, I can't believe this." I started walking again and within probably 10-15 feet I slipped on some ice and fell down, skinning my palms and cracking my head on the ground. I lay there bleeding, looking at the sky and the steam coming off my body, and just wanting to fall off the edge of the earth. But somehow I managed to get up - which at the time was not an easy thing to do, especially with patches of ice covering the ground - and kept going, back around the corner to my parents' house.

Then the next day, I did the same walk. And the day after that, and the day after that. That Friday I started Atkins and continued walking every single day - 1/2 an hour at first, then more when I could. At whatever speed it was that ensured that I was tired when I got home - a speed that gradually increased as the days passed. Longer and further, longer and further, until an hour of walking at what for me was a pretty good clip was no longer doing it for me.

A week into the diet, I was feeling much better. My energy level was higher and more constant, I wasn't ever hungry - which was amazing, like being freed from a prison, as I'd ALWAYS been hungry before that - and people at the office were already noticing weight loss. But I couldn't see it in the mirror (which is not uncommon for people who lose weight), and I still hadn't weighed myself.

So I tried to get on my parents' scale. When I did, I got an -E-. This is something that a skinny person never sees - it's the error message that roughly equates to the scale saying to you "holy [censored], you're too fat for me to measure." So I went on Amazon and ordered a high-capacity scale, one that measures up to 400 lbs. I figured there was no way I weighed more than that...

I was wrong. I got the scale a few days later, got on it and saw that same goddamned -E-. Depressed but buoyed by the way I felt (which was already better than I had in years) and the feedback I was getting from coworkers and friends (which was very positive), I kept with the diet. But I still wanted to weigh myself...I had to have a number to help me gauge my progress. So finally one day at work - 2-3 weeks into the diet - I snuck into the back, where they do production work for the company I work for, and stepped on an industrial scale. My weight was 437 - and this was AFTER the first two weeks, when people (men especially) generally see the greatest weight loss. It is not impossible that I weighed as much as 460, it is virtually impossible that I weighed less than 445 - what I call my starting weight.

Armed with this knowledge, I went out and got ANOTHER scale, this one with an even higher-capacity.

Two months into the diet, and convinced that I was really committed to this because maybe it would work, I finally went and got bloodwork done. My cholesterol or triglycerides weren't that bad - they'd never been particularly bad - but my fasting blood sugar was 140. This was after 2 months of never once cheating and having lost probably 40-50 lbs. For those who don't know, healthy blood sugar is under 100, 100-125 is considered pre-diabetic (or "syndome X"), and 125 and above is considered diabetic.

So I was, imo, an undiagnosed diabetic. Scary. And all the more reason to keep to it.

I kept walking, I kept to the diet - the diet AS ATKINS WROTE IT, with lots of green vegetables and NOT a lot of "frankenfoods," like bars or foods with a lot of preservatives or additives. Whole, natural foods - and, again, a lot of vegetables. I did NOT cheat. I still have not cheated - the only time I went off was for 2 weeks when I had mono a few months ago, when I needed calories but couldn't swallow, so I ate ice cream.

For me, Atkins is a very natural, comfortable, sustainable way to eat. I am not on a diet - this is the way I eat now. There is no endgame where I get to go back to eating Reese's peanut butter cups or potato chips. I do not want to. I now associate those foods with feeling like I'm going to die.

Over time I started mixing in some resistance workouts. At first I used a machine that my friend's parents were throwing out. I did 4 days of cardio a week and 3 days of resistance workouts. Then I flipflopped that and did 4 days of lifting and 3 days of cardio. I virtually never took at day off. I never did less than 45 minutes, but rarely did (or do) more than an hour - I wanted it to be manageable.

Eventually I stopped liking the machine and switched to some free weights that I had. Then, inspired by a lot of hype I'd heard in OOT, I got myself a kettlebell. That was after losing 85 lbs - the first week of last july. I started doing that 4 days and cardio 2-3 days, up to June save for when I got sick or went on vacation, etc.

Since May or June of this year, I've mostly been doing just the kettlebell 3-4 days a week, and that's it. I've been both by choice and by necessity more intense in other aspects of my life - which is healthy, because for a couple/few years before losing I really didn't have much of a life to speak of since I was in such awful shape. So in my new life I feel like 3-4 days a week of kettlebell is just right for me. KB gives me both the cardio and the resistance workout that I want, I can do it in just under an hour and it's not so overwhelming schedule-wise that I'm overly-likely to skip it. It's compact, so i can keep it in the car if I'm not going to be home for a few days. While I don't always love exercising, I love how it makes me feel for the other 23 hours of each day, so I think it's vital. I hold it more dear, I would say, than even the diet. I've gone from hardly being able to walk up a small hill after a 20 minute walk to running up the steps at the Philly art museum two at a time while my skinnier friends have to catch their breath walking it one at a time.

Over the course of the past nearly 2 years I've dropped right around 200 lbs, and done while putting on a good amount of muscle. I've gone from a 6x to an XL (which was my original goal), and feel better than I have in literally my entire life - including when I was a little kid. For the most part my friends - even the skinny ones - can't keep up with me. While they're all complaining about getting older, I'm feeling better than I ever knew was possible.

My bloodwork is impeccable, despite the BS you hear about Atkins spiking your cholesterol and the like. The last time I got it done (this summer), the most important number (to me), my blood sugar, was down to 65. That's pretty awesome, as 65 is the lowest end of normal (normal's 65-99). My cholesterol, which was never high but which is what all uninformed parties worry about with the diet, is 134 total, which is very good, and my triglycerides are and excellent 61 (you want them less than 149). My ldl (bad cholesterol) is 84, which is good. My hdl (good cholesterol), for which I have a genetic predisposition for being low, is 38 - still a little low (you want it 40-59), but that's a strong improvement from my first bloodwork when it was 28. My resting heart rate has gone from an average of 92bpm to always under 60bpm and often under 50 bpm. There is literally no number in my bloodwork that is of any concern. My doctor - who was a little hesitant when I started - said "just keep doing whatever you're doing."

Life-wise, I've gotten a new girlfriend who's very supportive of the diet, am preparing to re-apply to grad and law school, and am just getting it together generally. Things get tense and relax, back and forth with normal ebb and flow of life, but I never cheat on the diet and I do what I can to make sure that my life is moving in a positive direction. Life as a much-thinner person is incredibly different and takes a lot of getting used to, because people treat you ENTIRELY differently. I'd never, ever been anything but the heaviest person I knew, so for me now, just being treated "normally" is like being treated really nicely. Which is weird and messed up in its own right, as I am exactly the same person I was before I lost the weight. It makes you a bit suspicious of people, although I do enjoy the benefits of it. I also feel like the experience has shaped me in some positive ways, as I am far more sympathetic to things like discrimination than most people because I know what it's like to, for instance, walk into a job interview and know immediately that the person will not hire me because of what - not who - I am, or what it's like to be singled out by a pack of people for being different.

So, ask away. My only restriction* is that I'm not going to answer or aknowledge degrading questions. Otherwise, I'll try and get to as many questions as I can.

-bb.

* - I reserve the right to expand my restrictions as I see fit.

tl:dr

-bb.

vn job, good read

Nicely written and an enjoyable read.

I'm gonna be a little cruel and pull you up on your first paragraph though. You say you have great willpower yet how were you continually putting on weight until last year? Were you really throwing yourself into your past diets or was it half-hearted? Also, if you were good at sports, why were you so shocked when you found yourself completely out of breath after a short walk?

Anyway, I hope this didn't sound too negative. I'm sure you're rightfully proud at what you've done. Nice work. BTW, what's your longterm goal now?

Very impressive. I think it is more impressive that you did it with solid diet and exercise rather than some quick fix like lipo.

congradulations. youshould post some before/after pics.

great read.

I tried literally everything you can name. I ate the pre-packaged foods, etc. etc. etc. NOTHING worked.

I DO have great willpower - anyone who knows me will attest to this. I seriously am a pretty tenacious son of a bitch. But the problem - for me - is and always was carbohydrates. I honestly believe that over time it will be bourne out that a certain segment of society has a genetic predisposition to carbohydrate addiction - just like there's a genetic predisposition to alcohol addiction. Because I literally can not describe to you the despair I've been through in my life trying to lose weight and then hitting a wall and just breaking down because - even if I did lose a little weight on another program - I was just so hungry literally all the time.

I once saw a weightloss special on PBS where a doctor used the following analogy - for some people, losing weight is like running up 5 flights of stairs and then not breathing hard. You can stop yourself from doing it for a little while, but eventually you WILL break down and start huffing air. Your body will always win.

For me, it was JUST like that. I'd have to fight constantly with myself to avoid eating. It would dominate me. The thing that's different about low-carb is that it takes that all away. When you're doing Atkins properly, you're in lipolysis, the by-product of which are ketones, which are a natural appetite suppressant. It's a state that is commonly known ketosis - and is NOT AT ALL THE SAME THING AS diabetic ketosis - and your body runs much more cleanly.

Your body is big on self-preservation. It will use the easiest form of fuel first. The easiest fuel to turn into glucose (which you body uses to run) is carbohydrate, so if it's in a state where that's what it's being fed, that's what it relies on and that's what it craves when you haven't had them. It wants to preserve itself, and body fat is a good way to do that - until it becomes a liability.

But once your body switches over to using fats and proteins as its primary fuel - in lipolysis - if I haven't eaten enough calories to cover the activity I've done, my body uses body fat WITHOUT first craving carbohydrates. If I eat sugar, my blood sugar spikes and drops out - leaving me hungry. This does not happen when you follow a low-carb plan.

I'm not, incidentally, advocating it for anybody - I think it's wonderful, a godsend, but I'm also keenly aware that different things work for different people.

But no, it was NOT a lack of willpower that stopped me before. My attempts were not half-hearted. I would have never, ever, ever, ever chosen to be fat, especially not as fat as I was. It was awful. I would have done anything to avoid it.

At a certain point, however - in my early 20's - I just gave up. That lasted for a few years. I literally just couldn't bear it anymore. It was "I'm miserable and I'm fat, I'm miserable about being fat, I've tried everything, I'm going to BE fat, I'm just not going to try anymore." Which is a very, very dark place to be.

I was good at sports - I HATED exercise. If I didn't have to exercise, I wouldn't - but at the same time, if I could find a pickup basketball game or a soccer or baseball game to play in 7 days a week, I'd do it. I'm smart, so despite my size I was always able to keep up. I knew how to play the games so I could stay one step ahead.

Now I WAS shocked at how far I'd fallen. For probably 1-2 years before I started this I fell into a deep depression and did nothing. And while before I'd been very fat but in some relative shape (at least good enough to play some pickup basketball with friends), I'd fallen from that during that time.

I do think that it's possible to be fat and in shape - I always had been, until the recent past before starting Atkins. But I think if you STOP exercising and you're heavy, you fall WAY out of shape REALLY, REALLY fast. And I think that that's what happened to me. And it was unspeakably awful.

One of the things that got me started on this was playing with my 4 year old nephew and just feeling like I was going to die after 15 minutes. I literally needed to take a nap. And I realized, "this kid is going to put me in a box, and he's barely going to remember my name." It sucked.

I'm proud of what I've done but constantly mindful of the fact that I was the same person who got myself in that boat to begin with. For that reason I know that I will have to be vigilant about this for the rest of my life.

My longterm goal is to drop around another 20-30 lbs. The thing is, I don't really know what I'm going to do...I wear smaller clothes now (at XL) than I did when I was literally 12 years old. I don't KNOW where I want to end up. I'm not concerning myself with an ultimate goal. My determination is to stay on track and be healthy. I have no real endpoint in mind beyond that. I want to feel good and not die before I'm 35 (which I'm positive I would have).

Thanks for the congrats.

-bb.

Having come from where I've come from, I honestly don't look down on anyone doing anything. I'm just happier than I can describe that I didn't have to do that, because the mortality and complications rates are so incredibly high, and I don't think that you really learn how to live and eat properly by doing it.

But for some people it may be the right option - people who are physically incapacited, for instance, and who need to lose weight just so they can start to move on their own again and regain their personal freedom and the physical ability to move on their own.

So I don't have a problem with anything anyone does. I think it's a testament to how horrible it is to be morbidly obese, however, that people are willing to undergo that surgery. They all know the stats, but they still do it. It's that bad.

-bb.

Thanks.

I didn't really doubt anything you had written, I just suspected there were some timeline points you hadn't highlighted. You pretty much confirmed my hunch; that you had fallen into a really bad hole for a couple of years before doing this. Nice work getting out of that.

Do you look down on people who don't do anything?

I was considering it, but I really don't want to. It's not that I'm not proud of what I've done, it's that I know how mother[censored] cruel the internet is - including some people on this site in particular, and my before pics are VERY, VERY unflattering, as you can imagine. Look how much [censored] Dids had to swallow from everyone on here for years. I'm not interested in that.

Thanks to you and everyone else with the congrats, though.

-bb.

No, not at all. I know what it's like to be on the other side of either that pity or disdain. It is awful. It colors every single interaction you have with every single human being you meet.

Maybe they've not yet come on that thing that will work for them - Atkins, Weight Watchers, surgery, whatever. Maybe they've given up because, like me, they've failed so many times. Maybe they just don't much mind - which, to me, IS FINE. I'm concerned with the content of someone's character - how they treat others, whether or not they're ignorant jackasses, whether or not they're hard workers. I know from personal experience that none of that is conveyed by the size of a man's pants.

-bb.

Incidentally, on surgery - just the other day I met someone who'd lost 170 lbs through surgery and kept it off for 4+ years (which is the hardest part). For her, it was what worked.

Not everyone is the same. Not every diet works for everyone, and surgery doesn't work for a lot of people - they regain, or they have side effects. But it does work for some, and I certainly don't judge anyone for doing anything they can to try and get themselves out of that hole.

Atkins was great for me - I lost all my weight, my girlfriend, who wasn't big or anything, lost some weight and looks great, one of my friends lost 50-60 lbs, etc. I'm a whirlwind of self-improvement. I've also sold like 10 kettlebells for those sonsabitches through my recommending them to friends...I should get an affiliate kickback. Or at least a second bell on the house.

-bb.

I read the first comment and was like what a jerk, then realized it was you.

This is a phenomenal achievement OP, you should be proud. No real questions, just wanted to say good job and good luck.

Great story, saving your own life. Thanks for sharing.

Is there anything you have done in the last year that you had wanted to previously, but your size had stopped you?

Thanks, both to you and diddy.

Yes, a LOT of stuff. The best example would be a cross-country trip I did last New Year's where I flew to San Francisco. First, I flew - and flying when you're big is AWFUL, so I hadn't done it since I was 16. I know it's bad for the people you're next to, but believe me, it's just as bad or worse for the overweight person because they feel terrible and self-conscious and depressed about it, ALONG with being extraordinarily uncomfortable.

So flying was a big step forward. Then I drove from SF to vegas and spent a few days there before coming back. The whole trip, both in SF and in Vegas, I burned the candle with a blowtorch - barely slept, drank, ran around, etc. etc. etc. Things that I wouldn't have been physically capable of before.

I also go to more movies and sporting events than I used to, because I don't have that fear of having to sit next to other people in cramped spaces.

I'm much more likely to go out generally, too, because I don't have to worry about drunks or the like starting [censored] with me. I've been harassed in bars enough that it stopped me from going out, or harassed in the subway by groups of ghetto kids. I don't have to worry as much about that kind of crap, so I'm much more able to go out socially.

One other very notable thing is being able to shop in normal stores. Big and tall stores are EXPENSIVE and generally of lower-quality. Just being able to shop in an Old Navy, for instance, is fantastic. It's cheap, it's easier...it's great.

Also, if you're not constrained to the big and tall, you can wear more kinds of clothes. I was constrained my entire life to those clothes. If you've never been in a big and tall, they're basically geared towards the widest demographic possible (ha-ha, pun not intended, get over it), so you end up wearing only, pretty much, 3-button polo shirts and khakis, because they can sell that to both 60 year old and 15 year olds. In recent years the selection's gotten a little better, with a lot more ghetto-kinds of clothes that I'd never wear, but for the most part if you're overweight you're just stuck wearing awful clothes at insane prices.

So clothes are another good example. I also do a lot more physical-but-not-sports kinds of things, like hikes in state parks, etc.

So, yeah, my quality of life is way, way, way better. These are just some of the things off the top of my head.

-bb.

is there some particular kettlebell workout routine you used? i don't know that much about these things, but i'm interested.

btw, great job, i'm looking to lose a bungload of weight as well.

[/quote]

I use the adjustable one from US kettlebells (seriously, can't they just toss me one?! I'd like to get into double-bell exercises! ). I started at 35 lbs and now use it at 64 lbs. Typically my routine is pretty simple - one day I do clean and presses (5 sets of 10, each arm) and swings (5 sets of ten, each arm), then the next day I do passes and curls with an easy bar (6-8 sets of 10 at 80 lbs).

The passes consist of passing it around my body 9 times, then in one motion squatting and passing it through my legs 9 times, then standing up and going around my body, etc. If you do odd numbers on the passes and go back and forth between doing them standing up and doing them between your legs you automatically switch directions. It's brutal, both on your muscles and cardio-wise. I typically do that 5 times per set (so 9 high, 9 low, 9 high, 9 low, 9 high, 9 low, 9 high, 9 low, 9 high, 9 low) before stopping, and do 5-6 sets total.

Thanks, and good luck.

-bb.

Good read. Thanks for posting. I'm back on a diet (just losing vanity lbs, not anything as worthwhile as your goal and success), but don't think your plan would quite work for me; eating is too much a part of social-life for me, so imposing restrictions on what I can cook for friends and what they can cook for me sounds no fun.

I've been mostly on the "Eat less. Exercise more." diet, which has worked for me in the past. Still your post is definitely good inspiration, and I appreciate the candid trip report. Good work.

That's fine - good luck. My diet was/is an "Eat less. Exercise more." diet. It's just a different kind.

Incidentally, while there may be restrictions, there are also benefits. For instance, my triglycerides and cholesterol are excellent and I can dip bacon in hollandaise sauce and still lose weight. So it's not all bad. I can eat lots of things that would kill me if I were also eating carbs - because instead of using the fat for fuel, which my body does, it would be using the sugar for fuel and storing the fat in my gut and the cholesterol in my arteries.

So it's a toss-up, and one that I'm quite happy with. Good luck.



-bb.

Incidentally, no one's brought it up yet, but I'm sure they will - this is a good article on the "calorie-in, calorie-out," thermodynamics argument that often comes up.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/2...d-************/

-bb.

Someone asked me this in a PM, but I figured it belongs in the thread:

My advice on where to start is, to use an internet acronym, RTFM. The main thing that screws people up with Atkins is NOT READING THE BOOK. This drives me insane - people do their own little variant of a "low carb" diet, where they go an eat a ton of bacon and pepperoni and "sugar free" foods with tons of additives and sugar alcohols and then call it "Atkins," when the truth is that even Atkins bars are NOT really Atkins food. It's a product put out by a company that bought the man's trademark and then made things that would have him spinning in his grave.

Atkins - the guy - believed in eating whole, fresh foods, with lots of vegetables. He did not like foods with ingredient lists as long as your arm, nitrates, etc. etc. etc. If you stop eating refined sugar and starch, yes - you'll probably lose weight. But you're not doing Atkins.

So the place where I'd start is by reading his book, Doctor Atkins' New Diet Revolution (aka DANDR). It's a great book. The iTunes audiobook is what I used - I've probably listened to it 10 times. If you really want to do a low-carb diet in a healthy way, reading and following the book is my best advice.

The same goes for any plan - weight watchers, south beach, whatever. DO WHAT THEY SAY. I'm also on a weight loss support board, and here's what I wrote about the commonalities between people who fail at losing weight. Note that none of them have anything to do with the mechanics of the diet:

-bb.

Absolutely amazing. Though I am not overweight myself and have no experience dieting, I've always been really dismissive of Atkins when speaking to friends on the diet. I've seen research showing that the Atkins diet only works because people on the diet consume less calories (so it is the low-calories, not the low carbs, responsible for any weight loss).

Your story makes me want to take another look

"
One other very notable thing is being able to shop in normal stores. Big and tall stores are EXPENSIVE and generally of lower-quality. Just being able to shop in an Old Navy, for instance, is fantastic. It's cheap, it's easier...it's great."

To me, this is the worst part of being fat. It is serving as my primary motivation to continue losing weight. .