I enjoy reels of people on their weight-loss journeys. I read one yesterday morning: “Eat less sugar, you’re already sweet enough.”

Fat doesn’t need much in the way of calories to sustain itself—it’s a storehouse, not active tissue. Muscle, organs, and fluids in your body do need energy to survive. A person fifty pounds overweight can eat exactly what another person with the same body but fifty pounds lighter eats and neither will drop an ounce. They are both eating for the same core. It’s why an overweight person can eat a perfectly reasonable diet but not lose a pound.

Taking that weight off is really, really hard for most people. There’s a good reason for that.

That “overweight” person didn’t gain weight because they are greedy. They might not eat any more than the next person, but their metabolism works differently. Maybe they were too busy to eat properly. Maybe it was inattention—they ate a little bit too much over a long period of time and the weight literally crept on. It’s important to appreciate that gaining weight for most people is effortless. For example, a latte in the morning will add 16 pounds in a year, 32 in another year. A cupcake once a week? A slightly larger portion? It’s easy to gain.

Unlike losing, gaining weight is super easy, regardless. It’s easy to gain. The body is designed to do that—stash calories for times when food is scarce. Some “lucky” people eat and burn calories in absolute tandem, never gaining or losing an ounce. [Be aware that in ancient starving times, they might not be the ones who lived.] The body is trying to store fat in order to safeguard life against the coming famine. It’s biology, so don’t blame the body for trying to survive. Outsmart it.

The key is to figure out how many calories you need to support your goal weight [the core weight of necessary organ/tissue/fluid] based on height and activity and BMI*, deduct 500 calories a day. That will result in a 1 pound loss/week, but it’s better to give yourself a full-calorie day every 5-7 days so your body doesn’t think it’s starving and respond accordingly—about a 5-pound loss in a month. [Your body can and will adjust to fewer calories if you starve yourself for weeks—everything your body can do to save you from “starving.”] So every few days have a serving of mac&cheese or a burger if you’re so inclined… once in a while. Keep moving. Wake your body up twice a day with a walk. Don’t just sit. Remind yourself over and over that feeling hungry is not the worst thing to feel. [You already know that.] Feeling hungry means your body is forced to burn those excess calories.

Losing weight means you will set pounds down instead of carrying them around all day, every day. Oprah Winfrey probably isn’t the best choice as a weight-loss model, but I recall the first time she lost weight—more than 80 pounds! She pulled a kid’s little red wagon onstage piled with raw beef fat and announced how glad she was that she wasn’t carting that around on her body anymore. I watched that show decades ago and it made a huge impression. I’m too old to be carrying extra pounds around all day and night.

Food tastes good. It feels like a reward. It feels like a treat. But I know that too much and especially too much of the wrong foods can kill me.

I’ve lost weight four times in my life, twice accidentally, twice deliberately. The first accidental time was the summer before high school when I lost 7 pounds in five days from failed post-surgical care—the hospital was remodeling and forgot I existed for a few days and I felt too rotten to care they weren’t feeding me. The second time I deliberately counted calories after weaning my first child. Next, caring for my mother, I gained a lot of weight, but when she died and I couldn’t eat properly for months I lost the forty pounds I’d gained. Most recently, when I retired, was unable to run, and feeling sorry for myself and depressed, the weight and more came back. I followed my own advice: I figured out how many calories I needed to sustain my goal weight and deducted 500 calories/day for most days of the week. It’s what I did after birthing and I knew it worked. I wasn’t in a rush but soon enough, a few pounds down, I was running or walking every day. It took a year to lose almost 60 pounds. Five pounds a month, average. I tracked everything I ate (still do) and sometimes my weight went up, more often down. I didn’t give up on myself when my weight bounced up the wrong way. I focused on plant proteins and dairy and vegetables and fruit. I ate nuts. I cut down on salt and drank a LOT of water because as I burned fat I was also releasing any toxins stored in that fat. Often I found that when I felt hungry I was actually thirsty.

Eat [real] food, not too much, mostly vegetables. The mantra from a man who flails around pop-culture but got that bit right.

Ultraprocessed foods — such as refined starchy snacks, cereals, crackers, energy bars, baked goods, sodas and sweets — can be particularly harmful for weight gain, as they are rapidly digested and flood the bloodstream with glucose, fructose and amino acids, which are converted to fat by the liver. Instead, what’s needed for maintaining a healthy weight is a shift from counting calories to prioritizing healthy eating overall — quality over quantity.—food writer Sophie Egan in The New York Times

It wasn’t easy. I won’t even try to pretend it wasn’t hard to lose weight. But it was worth it not to haul all those extra pounds, which was harder in many ways. I feel better. I feel literally and figuratively lighter.

---

*Body Mass Index (BMI) may not “accurate” but it is a pretty flexible and useful estimate. The estimate for my height at 5′ 2″ is that I should weigh between 101 and 136 pounds. I never weighed 101 at full height because I have bigger bone [I used to have “large” bone, but now at a 6.25″ wrist, I’m at the top of “medium”], and 114 pounds was once a good weight for me when I was 5′ 3.25″, but I’m old now and have shrunk. I like about 121 pounds as my goal weight. As another example, a man of 6′ 8″ might aim for 168 to 227 pounds. There’s a lot of room there.

note: I celebrated as I achieved each arbitrary goal: when I lost ten pounds, dropped below an overweight BMI, dropped to my old running weight, and then, realizing I could do it, when I had dropped 40 pounds from where I started after exactly 1 year. I have my daily plans from 2020.

If I’m good six days a week, I can have pie for my birth day. I might make myself my traditional (and high-calorie) lemon angel birthday pie or the apple cake from a recipe I’ve been eyeing and I’ll add a photo below later today if I do.