Another year has passed. Unlike previous years, the most important goal I set for myself has been a success. I started 2023 with a goal to discover and implement a sustainable, consistent lifestyle of eating mostly whole foods while limiting food cravings to just once a week. In previous years, I’ve tried various diets (intermittent fasting, keto, low carb) and lifestyle changes (mainly exercise more, more weight training, go to bed earlier) always with limited success (maintain weight or lost weight only to gain it back). Through these past experiences, I’ve learned what kind of eating works and doesn’t work for me, what “full and just right” feels like for me, and more importantly what are the underlying thoughts, mental patterns and impulsive habits that can sabotage progress by reverting back to the norm. This year I was able to take the past successes and other lessons and put together what seems to be a sustainable lifestyle. As a result since the start of 2023, I’ve lost 20lbs (again).

Going into 2024, I plan to continue and improve on this lifestyle.

How did I even reach this state? Unfortunately, much of the weight gain over the past few years have been due partially to COVID-19 lockdowns where minimal exercise while maintaining the same eating habits really packed on the weight. During this time, I had a chance to really focus more on the diet aspet (and less on exercise aspect) to lose weight. Identifying what type of foods, the variety of fodd, and how much and how frequent I ate helped lead me to where I am now. Ultimately, this 2-3 year time frame helped me see and adjust to a healthier diet lifestyle.

I’ll document my “lifestyle” in a separate post.