“You're getting thinner,” my cousin complimented me when we met at my parents' house before Christmas. I have indeed lost some weight since we last met, however, my weight has been stagnant for the last three months. I know why. I've lost weight. Fortunately, that doesn't mean I've returned to my original eating habits.
A year ago, I decided to pay more attention to what I eat and on the first day of January, I started changing my bad habits. I weighed 123.2 kilos then. I tried a different approach to eating, went on a few runs, and by the end of the year I had eased up quite a bit.
“How come you're good at everything you do?” A friend asked me in November in a slightly reproachful tone. She asked the question at a time when I had stopped watching myself and didn't feel like I was successful in my endeavors. Looking back, however, I realize that a few things have changed.
First and foremost, weight. After 365 days, it reads 109.9 kilos. I had less than that during the year, but I'm glad for the loss of over thirteen kilos of mass. The weight was dropping fast especially in the first half of the year.
Other indicators that my smart scale tracks have also dropped. My BMI is 32.8 (compared to 36.8). Body fat makes up 30% of my weight (35.8% a year ago) and my subcutaneous fat has dropped 4.8% (from 30.4% to 25.6%). I hope that in a year's time the values will be even better. But I have to continue to carefully control what I eat.
I wrote at the beginning of the year that we make our eating habits run in the family. If they are bad, we need to acknowledge that and work on changing them. Lukáš Roubík also talks about eating, the (in)effectiveness of New Year's resolutions or sustainability in weight loss in the Deep Talks podcast.
During the fall, I was also intrigued by the six-part podcast The Edge. A documentary show about men who are unhappy with their bodies. Psychologist Jan Kulhánek says, among other things, “Psychogenic overeating is the most common eating disorder in both men and women. These are people who get into the habit of eating unpleasant emotions. They don't vomit, they overeat when they feel unwell. Then it usually goes to weight and goes hand in hand with obesity, which doesn't help them.”
At the beginning of the year I needed to lose 40.2 kilos to my ideal weight. Today, twelve months later, I am 13.3 kilos closer to my dream weight.