Formerly Fat, Formerly Skinny, Now Just Jon 2.0

It’s been over a year since my last Weight Loss / Fitness update (Click here for the whole story), and I figured I’d put down an update on where I’m at, and where I’ve been.

When we last left off, I’d completed the “weight loss” part of my journey, going from 415.6 pounds to my lowest, 189 or so. That was in June 2022 when I last updated everyone.

Since then, I’ve looked at what I want the rest of my life to look like. To stay around 190-195, I would basically have to keep most of the restrictions of my diet plan (e.g., macro balancing, lower carbs, etc…) and physical activity at a high level. Is that what I wanted? Not really. What I did want was:

1. To be able to eat whatever I wanted, in moderation, mostly whenever I wanted. After all, why lose a bunch of weight if you can’t enjoy the foods you formerly felt guilty over.
2. Related, I didn’t want to be “that guy” in any group of friends. Now it’s fine to have particular needs / tastes and to share them with your friends (e.g., “I try not to eat too much meat” or “I don’t like Brussel sprouts” and especially “I can’t eat that due to my allergies or immune system”). But I think we all know the “That Guy” – he or she is the person that you worry about because they seemingly have nothing they can eat. You try to support them, you try to do everything you can, but ultimately it can totally stress a host out to have them around. Plus it’s not all that much fun to be “that guy” when you know you kinda sorta got yourself into that mess. Mr. “I can’t eat carbs because my body can’t process them anymore because I’ve been keto for too long”. Yeah, I didn’t want that for me.
3. I wanted to be able to engage in physical activities that required muscular strength and stamina. I bought my Rad Extend 5 power bike in April 2022, and I wanted to be able to bike around without pedal assist (The bike weighs 70 pounds, so it does require some effort!). I’d always thought about jogging and running as goals (At 190, I could jog for perhaps 10-15 minutes at barely faster than my walking pace – 14 minute mile or so). So have the muscles I need to do the jobs I want to do.
4. I wanted to get to a point I looked at my weight but it didn’t dictate how I felt about myself.

So this leads me to today, where my weight hovers around 210, and my body fat percentage is about 1% higher than it was in June 2022. And I can do this:

More or less I’m at a pretty happy place right now. All of the clothes I bought in 2022 at 190 still fit, which gives me an indication that I’m recomposing rather than gaining back the fat, and I feel great. I’ve accomplished 1-3 (as my colleagues who watch me chow down on Fried Chicken every Wednesday at lunch can attest), and am still struggling a little bit with #4 (It’s hard when you got used to being 190-200 and know you’re 20 pounds up, even if those 20 pounds are good pounds and not what you had). But more or less I’m in weight maintenance, training for whatever adventures I want to try next, and happy to share my journey as always!