Losing Weight and Trying Again: Week One of Starting Over in My 30s
A few years ago, I gained around 100 pounds while caring for my dad.
There were much bigger things happening at the time than what I weighed.
Sometimes your body changes while you're simply trying to get through whatever life has put in front of you.
By the time I eventually moved to rural Scotland, I was around 137kg, the heaviest I had ever been.
Since then, losing weight has always been somewhere in the background.
Something I knew I wanted to do.
Something I knew would probably make me feel physically better.
But also this enormous mountain sitting beside all the other things I was trying to rebuild.
And when you look at the entire mountain, it's very easy to decide you'll climb it another day.
So I'm trying something different.
I'm not thinking about the final number yet.
I'm thinking about the next one.
Last week, I weighed 112.8kg.
This is week one.
And for once, I'm not trying to make the whole thing miserable.
If you'd rather watch this part of the journey, I'll put my Week One YouTube video here.
I'm keeping the food fairly simple
At the moment, I'm personally eating quite low carb.
Most days this week I've stayed below roughly 40g of carbohydrates.
That's simply what I'm doing at the moment. It isn't me saying everyone else needs to eat the same way.
I'm pescatarian, so most of my meals have been built around things I already enjoy eating anyway.
Lots of fish.
Seafood.
Vegetables.
Greek yoghurt.
Eggs.
A bit of Quorn.
Nothing particularly revolutionary.
I'm mainly trying to stop food becoming this enormous complicated project where I spend half my life thinking about what I'm allowed to eat.
Because I've done versions of that before.
They don't work particularly well for me.
I'm also not banning food
Saturday is what I'm calling my refeed day.
Which sounds considerably more technical than it really is.
Basically, I give myself more flexibility.
I can eat more carbohydrates.
Have something I've fancied during the week.
Eat a meal that doesn't fit what I've been doing Monday to Friday.
And then just carry on afterwards.
No:
Well, I've eaten this now, so the entire week is ruined.
That mentality has never done me any favours.
I also know myself.
The quickest way to make me desperately want a particular food is to announce:
YOU CAN NEVER EAT THIS AGAIN.
Wonderful.
Now it's all I can think about. 😂
I'd much rather know I can have things.
Just not necessarily every day.
I'm trying very hard not to make losing weight feel like punishment.
Because I want this to be about more than getting smaller
Obviously, yes.
I want to lose weight.
I'm not going to pretend the number on the scales means absolutely nothing to me because I'm literally making a weekly video about it.
But I also want to feel physically better again.
I want moving around to feel easier.
I want more energy.
I want to become stronger.
I want to feel like I'm actually looking after my body rather than constantly putting it somewhere near the bottom of the list.
And that's where exercise comes in.
I've finally sorted the gym
This week I've got the gym organised, so that's going to become part of the next stage.
I'm also planning a 30-minute walk Monday to Friday in the morning.
Nothing heroic.
I won't suddenly be appearing here next week announcing that I've become someone who wakes up at 5am and runs fourteen miles before breakfast.
I respect those people.
I am not those people. 😂
But thirty minutes?
I can work with thirty minutes.
That feels realistic.
And that's what I'm looking for at the moment.
Things I can actually imagine myself continuing to do when the initial excitement has worn off.
I'm going to keep using my vibration plate too because I genuinely enjoy it and like how my legs feel afterwards.
I'm also using a GLP-1 medication alongside the changes I'm making to food and activity.
That's part of my own plan, rather than something I'm suggesting other people should copy.
My first target isn't my final weight
I've deliberately decided not to set my sights on the final number yet.
My first target is:
99kg.
That's it.
I want to see 99-something on those scales.
Getting back below 100kg will feel enormous to me.
And psychologically, it feels much more manageable.
At 112.8kg, I wasn't thinking:
Look how far I still have to go.
I was trying to think:
Let's get to 99.
Then we'll decide what comes next.
So... what happened in week one?
Last week:
112.8kg.
This week I stepped onto the scales and saw:
109.2kg.
YEEYYYYY. 😂
That's 3.6kg down.
Nearly eight pounds.
Now, before anybody thinks I've discovered some miraculous way to lose nearly eight pounds of body fat every seven days:
I haven't.
When carbohydrate intake drops significantly, the body can also lose stored water, so an unusually large first-week change on the scales isn't necessarily all body fat.
And I absolutely don't expect to lose 3.6kg every week.
But as a first week?
I'll happily take it.
The number mattered for another reason
More than anything, I think I needed the encouragement.
Starting at 112.8kg and thinking about the whole journey still felt huge.
Now I'm 10.2kg away from 99kg.
That's still a decent amount of weight.
But suddenly it feels like a target rather than this vague thing somewhere miles away.
And that's how I want to keep approaching it.
Not:
How much do I ultimately need to lose?
But:
What's the next bit?
Get through this week.
Do the walks.
Go to the gym.
Eat in a way that feels manageable.
Then step on the scales and see what happened.
This is really another part of starting over
The weight-loss videos are obviously about losing weight.
But I don't think they're only about losing weight.
They're part of something bigger I'm trying to do with my life now.
I've moved to rural Scotland.
I'm trying to build income streams from home.
I'm building businesses.
I'm writing again.
I'm figuring out what I want the next part of my life to look like.
And somewhere in all of that, I'm trying to look after myself again too.
Maybe that's why starting over in your 30s feels so different from what I imagined it would.
You're not actually starting from nothing.
You're starting with everything that's already happened to you.
So this was week one.
112.8kg → 109.2kg.
3.6kg down.
My gym starts next.
The morning walks start next.
And 99kg is now just over 10kg away.
For the first time in a while, that feels doable.
Let's see what happens next week.
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