I used to weigh 320 pounds three and a half years ago. My weight loss journey isn’t over yet, but it surprises many people whenever I talk about it. Not because losing all that weight is an achievement, even though it is, but because I still love food. I love cooking it, eating it, learning about it, and everything in between. I love food so much that I’d marry it if I could. However, ever since my weight loss journey started, my view of my beloved has changed.
My nervous eating habit started when I went to study hospitality in Europe. It was a demanding course because of the physical toll your body goes through. You work long hours in the kitchen, wake up at 3:30 AM for breakfast shift at the bakery to make croissants, and you bartend until 1 AM. Although my unhealthy eating habits didn’t start until a few months in, it got bad, really quickly. I didn’t notice my meal routine had escalated from having two to three meals a day to about eight to ten meals, with almost no breaks in between. It wasn’t healthy at all. The more I ate, the more unhealthy my diet became, the more I felt comforted. I became bigger and bigger, and bigger, until one day, I couldn’t see my feet walking underneath me. My ‘walk’ became a waddle, there was a haunting pain on my knees the longer I stood during kitchen duty, and the more I sat, the lazier I became. It was horrible. I felt horrible.
I came back home from Europe and decided to lose weight. A decision that has now changed my whole life. Jack, a family friend, was a personal trainer in Hong Kong (HK) and agreed to help me through my little predicament. I went to the gym, and weight-trained three to four times a week, with him. It was absolute hell, and I’d die just 20 minutes in, every single session for the first two months. I started to portion my meals, train my stomach to eat less, and after a few weeks, my diet normalized to the amount it used to be.
A few more weeks passed, and I exchanged my breakfast and dinner for a protein shake. I chose Herbalife because it was designed as a meal substitute and not a meal supplement to increase my caloric deficit. This meal routine fit me the best because I was going to school, and lunch was the meal I couldn’t control, as I’d be outside. But, this allowed me to have anything I wanted for lunch, so I could still eat my favorite foods without too many inhibitions.
After four months, I began to see changes in my body. I started to breathe easier, my movements became less clumsy, and my knees didn’t hurt anymore. I could go to the gym for two and a half hours at a time and not feel tired. I was elated when I lost my first 30 pounds. Just before moving to Atlanta, I lost a total of 100 pounds, and my muscle mass increased from 38% to 58%, as well.
Although my family was supportive of my choice to lose weight, they were skeptical. I’ve tried to lose weight four times before, and it never worked. The big difference between then and now was that all the other times I had tried to lose weight for someone else – my mom, or my dad, my grandmother, my grandfather, and friends. But, this time, it was for me and no one else. At the start of losing weight, my dad always said, “Hey, you should stay at the gym longer,” or “You should do more, you know, move more,” or “You should walk or run more,” and all that crap. He said these things over and over again. One night I was more tired than usual, and he said something along those lines. I snapped and said, “You aren’t losing it for me. I’m doing it at my own pace. Don’t rush me!” He still said a few things here and there from time to time, but when I dropped my first 30 pounds, he shut up; and never brought these things up again. He finally got the memo that I was serious this time.
When the pandemic started, everything was on pause. I took up intermittent fasting and was continuing to lose weight, even though progress was slow. If I lost weight for someone else, as I did in the past, I would’ve gained more weight than when I started. That was how it was like before. My Achilles heel has always been food, and I used to look at it like I needed it. You may argue that we all need food to function, but it was all or nothing for me. It didn’t help the fact that I grew up bigger than most people. So, foods like cookies, or ice cream, or cake, or chocolate, were rationed. For most of my childhood, I craved these foods. But, when I lost that first 30 pounds, my idea of food, or at least the urge to eat these ‘unhealthy’ foods, had changed.
I realized I always wanted unhealthy foods like ice cream, for example, was because we never really had it at home. Now, just knowing that I have ice cream in the freezer is enough to calm me. In my head, I now know that I don’t need to crave it because I have it. But if I do have a craving, I satisfy it right then and there. All I need is a spoon or two, and that’s enough to keep my sweet tooth away for three months before I get that craving again.
The past few years have been immensely life-changing. My confidence has come back, my self-esteem has increased, and I now understand why loving myself should be my priority. My eating habits have changed, and my ‘self-investment’ has changed a lot for the better, too. Weight loss journeys are touchy subjects to write about because you relive moments you never want to remember. Self-confrontation is never easy. Even though this was a life lesson that I had to learn, and it’s a part of me, even if I try to forget about it, this is an achievement that I can be proud of, for as long as I live.
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