First glancing at this chart above might make you think I’m a bit dismayed about my current weight. The reality, however, is that I’m actually pretty happy right now with this chart.

Why? The trend line. Yep, I’m up 1.6 pounds so far this year. However, I am also down from where I peaked at in May during the height of the pandemic lockdowns. Through some concerted effort, especially over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been gradually moving myself into a more fat loss driven state.

I haven’t been trying to do this overnight. It’s a gradual change as I move back towards habits I built 4 years ago and away from habits I’ve unfortunately built up over the last couple of years. (Did someone say cake? Donuts?) Little by little, I’m shifting my activity levels and my behaviors towards food to build a healthy lifestyle that is sustainable long term.

Between getting back to concentrated meal prepping, changing my diet a little bit, and lowering my caloric intake, I’ve begun to move things in the right direction regarding my weight.

Most of my weight gain actually happened in the year and a half after moving to Richmond, honestly. I reverted to some bad habits as I didn’t have a focused gym life, no social outlets at all, and the stresses of life in general. Since then, I’ve been able to stabilize the weight gain but not mitigate it.

Now, I’m focused on the next six months being a concentrated effort to bring the weight down. It doesn’t mean I will be eating zero junk, but it means building back those efforts where a donut is a treat, and I eat one… instead of a weekly run of a half-dozen donuts for the house. It means buying cake will be more resigned to holidays and events instead of “Friday Cake Day!” which has become a regular habit in years.

As I move forward, I’ll also be watching my diet closely as it relates to my recovery rates on my Whoop band, as well as how well I sleep. What we eat and drink is as critical as the work we put into our workouts every day.

Cutting calories has meant some hunger pains. I then evaluate if it’s real hunger, hormonal hunger of expectation, or simply boredom disguising itself as hunger. I can’t count how often I forget to eat while at work simply because I get busy; if I’m not busy, my food driven mind goes to “hey, food?” which is not the best solution for hitting my long term goals.

It will be a continued effort, tweaking along the way, as I work to get my weight down. The good news is that I’m headed in the right direction.