Hey, folks.
So, it’s been a hot minute since I wrote something for this site (and by “hot minute,” I mean 2.5 years). I’d like to knock the dust off, though, and start a new series. I may also share random thoughts here from time to time as well. Maybe even recipes. We’ll just see. The stuff I write on this blog won’t be as scientific or polished as the stuff I write over at Stronger By Science or MASS. This is my quasi-stream-of-consciousness-quality-content.
For the series, though, I’m going to loosely chronicle my current cut. This may be interesting to some people. It may be interesting to no people. I’d like to have a record of it that’s less ephemeral than periodic Instagram stories, and it may be useful for people in a similar position.
So, for some background, I’ve “successfully” lost weight exactly twice, and neither instance was particularly sustainable. When I discovered my love of basketball, I was in middle school, had very few responsibilities, and lost about 30lbs because I was playing basketball 3-5 hours per day. I don’t currently have enough time in my schedule to make that work anymore. When I went to college, I dropped about 70lbs in 4 months (from 260 to 190) by barely eating and doing an enormous amount of low-intensity cardio. When I had to read or study for a class, I’d take my books to the campus gym, get a treadmill going at 2.5 miles per hour up a 5 degree incline, and walk for hours. I was a history major at the time, and so I had a ton of reading to do. I was barely eating because I was mildly depressed (that’s a big can of worms for another day), and had basically given up on lifting at the time after years of dealing with back problems that had only gotten worse and worse. I just decided to aggressively diet the weight off since I didn’t “need” it. Even though I lost a lot of weight, I never developed good habits around food (“just don’t eat” is, surprisingly, not a very sustainable habit), so I gained the weight back once I started lifting and eating normally again.
Ever since then, I’ve tried to cut several times, mostly unsuccessfully. 10-15lbs will come off, I’ll hit a snag, get frustrated, and quit. The source of the frustration differs. Sometimes I start losing strength which messes with my psyche. Sometimes life just gets really stressful, I turn to food for emotional comfort (with poor decisions when I’m sleep-deprived playing a major role), and just gain the weight back. Sometimes I just start feeling shitty and way less mentally sharp; since my work requires mental sharpness, I think I perceive that as a threat to my livelihood, even though that’s probably irrational.
So currently, I’m in the midst of my 3rd most successful cut on record. I’m down a little over 25 pounds, and honestly, things are still going pretty damn well. For this first post, I just want to talk about some of the problems I’ve run into previously, and discuss how I’m doing a better job of dealing with them this time around.
My first challenge was finding my “why.” No matter what type of goal you have, it helps to place it on a firm foundation: why do you really want to accomplish this thing you say you want to accomplish? That way, when you run into challenges, or when you get knocked off course, you can fall back and remember why you’re trying to do whatever it is you want to do in the first place, which helps get you back on track mentally. And for me, I’ve never had a good “why” for cutting. I’ve told myself I want to cut to be more competitive in powerlifting, but that honestly doesn’t matter to me too much anymore. There are still some numbers I want to hit, but I just don’t care about the platform as much as I used to. I’ve told myself that if I lost weight, it may be good for the business, but the business is doing just fine as-is, so making more money isn’t much of a motivator. A common “why” for people who want to lose weight is that they simply want to look better. That’s never resonated with me; I’ve never worried too much about how I present myself and, if anything, prefer to present myself poorly. I think it helps give me a better assessment of the people around me (if you’d treat someone well because they look well-put-together, and poorly if they don’t present themselves as well, I don’t really want to have anything to do with you). Even when I’ve been fairly lean in the past, I was still proud to be a slob.
I think I’ve finally found a “why” that resonates with me, though. Cutting is hard for me, and I like a challenge. That’s it. That’s my “why.” I’m a grossly competitive person, and if something matters to me, even a little bit, I want to be very, very good at it. I don’t have “casual” hobbies; if I’m not good at something, I am incapable of enjoying it unless I’m actively getting better. Based on the amount of times I’ve tried to cut in the past, it’s clearly something that matters to me on some level (though I still haven’t psychoanalyzed myself enough to know why), so if I’m going to do it, I may as well treat it like a hobby and try to get good at it. That shift in mindset has been surprisingly productive. I’m viewing my current cut not as a “thing I’m doing” but rather, as a “skill I’m mastering.” It’s been pretty motivating.
When, for example, I get the munchies but resist the urge to grab a snack, instead of it being a neutral act, I see it as evidence that my skill at cutting is improving. It’s less, “hey, you did what you were supposed to and didn’t mess up,” and more, “get fucked past-Greg who would have gotten a snack. You suck ass at cutting compared to present-Greg.” Yes, I’m also competitive with past iterations of myself. Yes, it’s probably weird. No, I don’t care if you think it’s weird. It’s been a very productive shift in mindset.
Another challenge I’ve run into in the past is that I really, really like food. There’s research indicating that obese people simply find food more pleasurable than naturally lean people. I don’t think I fully “got” that until I started hanging out with Eric Trexler more. If you follow the food segments of the Stronger By Science podcast, you know how differently Trex and I approach food and cooking. I think to him, the stuff I cook seems way over the top. To me, the stuff he eats seems like an anhedonic nightmare. On the flip side, though, I can tell that I experience a level of rapture from eating really, really good food that he just wouldn’t reach (from eating something).
This love of food is both a blessing and a curse. The positive is that, no matter what, delicious food can make me feel really, really good. I could be having a godawful day, but if I eat a great meal, everything is immediately copacetic. However, the downside is that, when I consistently eat bland food for every single meal, I start getting the blues pretty fucking bad. I think that’s just a thing that naturally lean people won’t understand. And when I eat bland stuff all the time, when I finally have the opportunity to eat really good food, I find it incredibly challenging to not overeat.
In the past, I’ve tried to rein in my urge to eat delicious food. I’d heard from bodybuilders that eating mostly bland food will make you less likely to overeat. I’ve tried that (many times), and it just doesn’t work for me. What’s been working better this time around is simply eating delicious food, but eating less of it. Yep, moderation baby. Just as exciting as it sounds. For me personally, when I’m consistently eating good food, even in smaller quantities, I’m less tempted to overeat when I’m around good food in large quantities. And if I only cook small quantities of good food, the barrier of needing to cook more food has proven to be larger than the desire to eat more food.
It’s hard to overstate how important this change has been. Case in point: a couple nights ago, we had dinner with friends. I made some donuts. They were incredibly good donuts. I had one bite of a jelly-filled donut, and two bites of a cream-filled donut. That’s it. It wasn’t particularly hard to keep myself from eating more. They were good, I got to experience them, and I was perfectly satisfied with that. If I’d been eating bland food in the days and weeks leading up to those donuts, I definitely would have eaten AT LEAST a whole jelly-filled and a whole cream-filled donut.
Another challenge that’s derailed me in the past, related to the prior issue, was having fixed protein targets. Protein still has calories, and the foods that both taste good and have a lot of protein (eggs, full-fat dairy, fattier meat) have a lot of calories. When I would cut the “right way” with a relatively high daily protein target, it would generally either lead to overall over-consumption of calories (if I was eating delicious protein-rich foods), or contribute to the eat-bland-food-then-binge issue (if I was eating less delicious protein-rich foods). Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still eating enough protein to make the folks at the USDA blush, but I’m probably eating about 160g per day instead of the 200-300g (0.8-1.2g/lb) I used to aim for. I still eat protein-rich foods at each meal, but I’m not forcing myself to limit food choices to hit a certain protein goal while staying under a particular calorie goal, or eating extra calorie-dense foods that blow up my caloric deficit. I still think I’m eating “enough” protein generally, but not focusing on it has made it easier to eat less overall.
I think that’s enough for this entry. I may write another post in a few days. I may write another post in 2.5 years. We shall see.