Obesity’s Last Leg: How I’m losing those final stubborn kilos
At age 13 I weighed 130 kilograms. Counting all my yo-yoing, I’ve lost over 100 kilos. And now at 29, my destination is in sight.
But all through my 20s, whenever I lost, I put it back on again.
This was because like most people, I fell down on the last leg. Everything that had worked stopped working. I felt like my body, the closest thing to me, had given up on me. So I had no more motivation, and I ballooned up again.
At some point it gets difficult, you start losing yourself in the hard push for another 100 grams. And your old habits are still there. Food is crack to the obese.
So what needs to change for that last leg?
After losing all that weight, your body quickly catches on that it’s not starving and it doesn’t have to keep eating its fat stores. So it stops cannibalising your pudgy past, it saves the fat for a time when it’s really starving.
That’s why it’s so hard. Obesity is a whole field of science, a galaxy of elements and chemicals inside you. Obesity is an alternate reality where the stuff you need to survive is a hard drug, and you need to shove as much in yourself as possible. Seriously, we react to it like it’s heroin [1]. You’re so damn weighed down by the food in you.
Obese people generally don’t understand their bodies, not in a medical way and definitely not in the way thin people can feel what’s happening in their bodies. They can scan their bodies to see how they feel, and they can stand to look at themselves in the mirror. When I was my most obese, I was either compulsively looking at myself or straining not to see what I was. I was 13.
And with obesity, you’re always in awful shape. You feel bad. You know you’re aging fast. In every sense of the word, you’re carrying too much weight.
Then you lose the weight, 20 or 40 or 100 kilos in a year, but your old habits remain because those morbidly unhealthy bastards are like cockroaches. They survive. They will not go away until your obese self is confirmed killed.
Really. Part of you has to die before the obesity stops. An eating disorder is like alcoholism, you have to own it even when you haven’t binged in years. Even when you look great and have a balanced diet.
Have you ever had a big proud successful week of dieting, then one night you got drunk or heard some bad news? Remember what happened?
Until you kill obesity down to the cell, in your first moment of weakness, autopilot will shove you headfirst back in the fridge.
My Last Leg
I’ll start with the method. My final leg out has been intermittent fasting. There are two benefits here:
- Fasting means less calories, so you’re burning weight. And the actual difference …
- Autophagy. Your strong cells absorb the weak ones. The word literally means ‘self-eating’ and your body naturally does it, it just does it a lot more in a fasted state [2]. This is especially important for people who have been properly obese, because there’s a certain point where your brain, skin and DNA are warped. You need to get rid of those bad cells.
See what’s happening here? You obese self has to die because it has to actually be eaten. You have to move on without it, and that way lies through literal starvation.
When I chose the method, I got my mental and physical supplies.
I geared up for the last leg like a Rambo montage.
1) I needed to be serious, and I needed to be ready for my being to change.
2) I bought potassium, salt and magnesium for the days I wouldn’t be eating but would need electrolytes. I bought keto sticks to check how fast my body was eating itself.
3) I got myself a standing desk so I wouldn’t be stagnant.
4) I practised saying no to drinks and snacks that people offered me until I was a pro at it.
5) I got plenty of caffeine and capsaicin (the part of chilli that makes it hot) to suppress the appetite with hardly any calories.
When I was ready for this road, and not a second before, I stepped onto it.
Here’s my week in intermittent fasting:
On the first day, AFTER TALKING TO MY DOCTOR, I perform a dry fast. This means no water at all. Your body goes into an extra stressed survival mode. I can’t shower or touch water for a certain amount of time.
I usually go around 20 hours. You’ll be a little dazed by the end. I get taste hallucinations. It’s like the life of what I’ve eaten flashes before my eyes. It’s incredible, you can actually watch your psyche shed the bad bits and keep the good bits of yourself.
So at this point I’m in ketosis, survival mode. I keep this up for a few days by not having many carbs. A keto diet is about 70% good fats, 5–10% carbs and the rest protein. There are people online who suggest going zero carb during a fast.
This reinforces the main point: See a doctor about your last leg. The Internet is full of weird advice, and every time someone on the Internet says something weird they get thrown in the limelight. That makes them money.
On Wednesdays I make sure to get plenty of food. On Saturday and Sunday, I’m back on the carbs. This is to set my baseline again — it reminds my body that it needs a lot of food, and means the fasting on Monday shocks it again. It’s all about shocking the system. By Saturday insulin has dropped sharply through the week and I’m in a high state of ketosis. You should know at this point:
- A moderate and high amount of ketosis make you lose the same amount of weight.
- If your insulin is too low, you can get really sick. You could end up with ketoacidosis or diabetes. Keep getting yourself checked.
The great thing about fasting and ketogenic diets for me, the thing that really gives obestiy that last mortal punch, is that it brings your insulin and leptin levels way down. This means you get full on less food, and you don’t get cravings. The easiest part of dieting for me is during the hours when I’ve eaten least, when my belly growls and I get back to work.
Because when you’re constantly eating, your insulin soars. That makes you hungry. You’ll also get diabetes from too much insulin.
Here’s the thing: Losing weight is safe and so is my last leg. If you’re in a situation that isn’t completely safe, back away. You don’t have to be there. Even in the throes of a dry fast, when you’re in the mental desert and you’re so sure that this is it, you’re safe.
The other great perk is gratitude. I’m constantly thankful, like that first breath through both nostrils after a cold. I’ve been handed a life I didn’t know could exist. Literally, with the gut fading, I can breathe again.
Being grateful for your health is a powerful motivator. It keeps you coming back for the next little victory.
And I’ve lost two kilos a week so far. That’s unhealthily fast, so for the last 10 kilos I’ll be slowing it down to a kilo a week. But it works.
There’s one other thing:
I’m not sure we’ll ever be normal people again.
We formerly obese people need to become that one friend who’s constantly improving themselves. We become the motivational speaker with the YouTube channel, or the guy who’s ALWAYS at your gym.
We are full of energy and life because when you first really breathe, really move yourself, trust your ankles you can’t go back. The novelty never wears off, and now you know what you were missing. It wasn’t normal to be tired all the time, and what we used to think was a lazy nature was actually a disability.
Speaking of,
How did weight loss react with my autism?
You should know that weight loss can come with a little adrenaline. If you try prolonged fasting, you’ll be on edge. In most cases it’s best to take it easy and settle into a long weight loss campaign, a slow win.
If you’re already hyperactive, it might focus you. Most of us need a little caffeine, and in recent years a coffee hit in the morning has helped my anxiety. The coffee also has a few ways of helping you lose weight [3].
But here’s the real power in losing weight:
All this discipline and self-control has given me access to my brain, so that I can change or keep whatever part of my nature I like.
I enjoy my autistic curiosity, which gets me obsessed with something until I have a serious knowledge of it. I didn’t like my shyness, so I slowly ditched it — and learned that a lot of it was because of mental clutter from being dehydrated. The rest was poor self esteem, which is awfully comorbid with obesity.
I stand up straight, I accept myself in public. And people are warmer with me now, more accepting. When a group of people listens to what I say, no matter how autistic I sound (well, sometimes because of it), they show me respect.
There’s no cure for autism, and for me that’s a good thing. But there are parts of it you can control.
I can’t stress this enough. People don’t see your size, they see how you carry yourself. I had a hunch because as a child with growing bones, I physically couldn’t carry myself. Now it’s on its way out.
If you’ve gotten anywhere, you’re doing great. And if you’re reading this, you’ve gotten somewhere. You’ve made a non-zero achievement, and you deserve to celebrate.
That’s why if you message me, I’ll congratulate you and send back some motivation. You deserve more genuine human connection, and I want to hear from you!
Now go treat yourself like someone who deserves good health.
[1] Compulsive eating shares biochemical mechanism with heroin and cocaine abuse
