I Gained Pounds (haha... tear😢)

This isn't going to take long. Suffice it to say that I have struggled with a weight problem my entire adult life. And since my last post I have gone up in a scary way. I am at 286 pounds, which is not terrible now. Last year at this time I was weighing 313 lbs.

NOT GOOD! 

So I guess in a way this is a positive update. 

But the bad news is that I have come up on a plateau. I was losing about .5 lbs per week for the longest time since last February (give or take) and suddenly in December the scale stopped showing this pattern. I got stuck at 286 and the damn numbers won't budge! 

I haven't changed much of my habits that were working for most of 2024, so I don't get it. I do some small strength training but nothing crazy like a body builder who practically lives in a gym. And it's only about two to three times a week at the most. So it can't be muscle gain. 

It's a mystery. A conundrum. 

If someone out there knows what's going on, or got tips on restarting my weight loss let me know. 

I do fast most days. At the most I fast up to 16 hours. But I refuse to go all crazy doing 24 hour fasts or anything that involves depriving myself. 

I eat up to 2000 calories a day and on Saturdays I splurge. Some apps have indicated that for my height, age, and current weight, I should be consuming about 2800 to 3200 cals per day to lose one pound per week. 

That's got to be bullshit. 

At 2k cals per day plus the extra cals on Saturday, I'm well below the 3200 per day every day of the week, and though I'm not gaining, I'm not losing either. 

Damn my fat genes!

Okay, so I'll come back in about a month to update on the effort. What about you? How's your struggle going? One thing I recommend after a lifetime of this is:

DON'T DEPRIVE YOURSELF!  It's not worth it. 

That's my motto now. If my body is comfortable at 286, perhaps it's because my body is smarter than my brain and knows that that is an ideal weight for my size. It's not like I don't look hot or anything...🔥😜

Author Gabriel Hugo

Author Gabriel Hugo: Gabriel Hugo's latest book "Tenochtitlan Must Fall" is book 1 in his collection "The X Series".

Back to Black...Beans

Well hey there, what's up? I'll tell you what's up. My weight. Shit happened around my life and I let it influence my practices. The result: a gain of 58 lbs in the span of the four years since I published an update here. Sucks.

Luckily, I am happy to report that I have recently (within the past month) gotten back to a diet similar to the one I described here on various posts and the results of that effort? A loss of 20 lbs in just one month! Can you believe it? Proof that the diet that I had been adhering to all along when I was actively updating this blog is 100% effective.

So I decided I will return to post updates here from time to time. Sort of as a way to keep track of my progress and possibly impart to those who may want or need a guide some ideas for what to eat. The number one rule that I have discovered in this weight loss/gain/loss journey of mine is this: Food = Results.

It's damn near a law, actually. What you eat determines your weight. It's not even about exercise. And I know that many will be happy to know that. It's true. The 20 lbs I have lost in the past month have been lost solely by eating right. That and trying to have my dinners at or before 6 pm. That's it. Simple. Easy.

So I'll come back at some other time to update with a recipe and pics of foods. I'm discovering a whole new way of cooking that makes me excited again about eating. Especially because this type of eating leads to weight loss. So it's eating to lose weight. How freakin' cool is that?

See you soon. I'll leave a picture here of just one discovery I have made for myself lately.

Cauliflower "Mashed Potatoes" on my plate. Guilt-free pleasure.

Quick update

I weigh 257. I feel like I weigh less but the scale insists on the same reading. I get to eat what I like without gaining. 

Next time I will share a photo and a recepie of something I came up with as a dinner option that involves zero carbs and tastes incredibly good.

The Line-Up

This is the typical breakfast or lunch that I am having these days on weekdays:

It is usually accompanied by a lot more veggies. But the main ingredients are: some kind of meat (in this case salami), veggies like cherry tomatoes, broccoli, snap peas, and in this lunch I used pine nut hummus and garlic herb cream cheese. It was delicious. This stuff really works to make you get trimmed. But you have to be consistent. And like I said, you need to include way more veggies than are shown here.


This is what an occasional late afternoon snack or dinner substitute looks like (depending on how many servings):

 

This is a great way to have your fruits with all those micronutrients. Plus it is very refreshing and really sweat and tasty. The ingredients are: banana, strawberries, blue berries, papaya, cinnamon, stevia extract (sweetener), purified water and ice.


You stick to this pattern of eating and you are sure to lose weight like crazy. For me, though, lately it has been about maintenance more than continued loss. And the reason for this is....:

Yes, good eating on the weekends. It is inevitable. In my part of the world, it is a ritual to grill or barbecue meat EVERY WEEKEND! And it's really not the meat but the bread or tortillas and chips and sides like potato salad and rice that are the culprit. Oh, well. The good thing is that I am still NOT gaining. But I realize that to begin to lose weight again, weekends must be sacrificed. It's coming. I'm trying to psyche myself for it. Mmmmmmm...argh! There goes this weekend's battle. The barbecue won the day. Hahaha. Don't judge me!

So long.


GHS

Just an Update

Last Saturday I weighed 256 lbs. I am anticipating another two lost by this Saturday. The trick is a little exercise and eating a lot of veggies, some canned fish, cheese, avocado and spices. No soda. Just diet green tea.

This coming weekend I will try not having soda even on my day "off" and also no alcoholic beverage. That's going to be a tough one. But I think it will make a significant difference for the following weekend's numbers. Let's see if I am strong enough to resist beer this Saturday.

Ahh, but beer tastes so good, the sound of a can being popped open--simply beautiful! It will be difficult but I am feeling more motivated than I have been in a long while. I hope you all have had some positive effects in your diet/weight loss efforts from reading this blog. I will try to write consistently on weekends at least.

Hasta la proxima.

If you ain't gaining, then You ain't lost

The title of this post is exactly what it's all about. I was getting quite depressed this past month, because for exactly one full month I have been doing nothing in regards to the plan I lay out on past posts in this blog. The reason being, as I have stated before, personal problems I have been going through.

I have been feeling a lot better these past few days. I have begun a very light activity routine, otherwise known as an exercise regimen. This is only to speed up the process of recovery. In the past month I undid all the progress I had achieved since I started in April to write this blog. I had lost 15 lbs. and was weighing 250 lbs. But after a month of no discipline and a lot of booze, I have gained 9 lbs.

You might be tempted to call this a failure. I was, too. For that whole month my mind was plagued by thoughts of failure in my weight loss and in my personal life. But just last night I realized something hugely important.

And that is

IF YOU ARE NOT GAINING WEIGHT, YOU ARE NOT A LOSER!

In other words, it has been over a month that I got terribly sidetracked by life's unexpected changes, and still I have maintained myself at or below the weight I started off with in April, which was 265 lbs. Not only that, but I am actually still weighing 6 lbs LESS than what I started off with. That, my friends, is a

RESOUNDING VICTORY!

That's right. Not only am I six pounds under my initial weight, but I seem to have gotten past the worst part of my depression and stress that I was going through during that month of difficult life changes.

I feel myself recovering my funk, getting my groove back, finding my mojo again! I am starting to gain confidence in my abilities and resolve in my goals. But life is hard when you are trying to lose weight without the use of products of any kind, and are a single father of two boys, and have to worry about work and chores, etc.

So I can only hope to continue on this increasing optimism and motivation which seems to be coming back to me. We'll see in about one month. I think I had said I would give myself until sometime in August to lose the intended weight of 30 lbs. However, I know this is not going to be possible, even if I give myself and extension of one more month, which technically I do deserve, since I was out for a good reason.

So then there it is. I am giving myself until September 23 to see how much of the 30 lbs. plan I will be able to lose. And in the end, if I only manage to keep a couple of pounds off, then even that will be a cause for celebration.

Remember:

The goal of weight management is always one of two. Either you need to lose some, so you focus on that for a while. Or you at least change your habits so that you can stop the gaining process. When you can manage to halt that process, that in itself is a huge improvement.

GHS