Lost a Digit in Kilos

Hooray! My weight is down to two digits in kilograms: below 100. This is a big deal for me. I reached the desired number of digits. In pounds it means I weigh less than 220 and I’ve lost 25 pounds.

My friends have started to notice. The chubbier ones ask me to tell them about my Yellow Road. And I don’t actually know what to reply, because the Yellow Road is not a solution. I took many steps before I approached the Yellow Road. The Yellow Road is, I hope, the end of the road.

The idea of the Yellow Road is simple. If I weigh more than I want, I decrease food. All my skinny friends have always lived that way. The problem is that the rest of us do not know how exactly to reduce food intake and then how to sustain that reduction.

So today, I would like to explain to my friends and my readers what I really think helped me to lose weight.

1. I got desperate. I was ready to do whatever it takes. I was prepared not to ever eat again. If I had to extract my calories from the air, I was prepared to do that. I was ready to be hungry and restrain myself for the rest of my life. In short, I was totally motivated.

2. I fought my sugar addiction. I used to crave sugar. I used to think that sugar helps my brain. But once I looked into it, I realized that I might be wrong. I decided to experiment and cut off my carbohydrates intake significantly. That was the most painful thing I had to do. But after a week of withdrawal symptoms, I felt better and stopped craving foods and sugars as much.

3. I wrote my weight down everyday. Having numbers staring me in the face reminded me what I ate the day before. This moment of reflection allowed me to understand what causes the increase or decrease in my weight. Now I know that some foods provoke my appetite: carbohydrates, dairy, mayonnaise. I eat them in small portions, but I do not start my day with them. It’s better to have an increased appetite for a couple of hours in the evening, than for the whole day.

4. I had already changed some bad habits. I tried to build new healthy habits before I started my Yellow Road. These alone didn’t help me lose weight, but I think they contribute to my weight loss. I still do the following:

  • I get organic fruits and vegetables delivered weekly from Boston Organics.
  • I buy no more than one item of desert when I shop.
  • At a restaurant, I divide my portion in half. I eat one half and wait for a minute. More often than not, I take the other half home.
  • I talk to myself. Currently, I am persuading myself that at a party, I don’t have to try every dish: I can try half of them, hoping that the other half will be at the next party.

I feel that an internal switch was turned off. I don’t feel that hungry anymore. My son thinks that I’m in my hibernating state. I wonder if he is right and I will awake one day as hungry as ever.

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7 Comments

  1. Amw:

    Congratulations ! Well done!

  2. swiety:

    I was reading your blog since several months. Congratulations and go ahead!

  3. pax:

    Here are two simple tips:
    Always have fruits at home, but keep snack and everything non-healthy to a minimum.
    Never buy food while hungry.

  4. rasim:

    hi i have a question can you help me ?Q:A and B are playing a dice game with rolling two dice and recording the sum of two dice numbers.
    Conditions:
    A wins when two consecutive rolls are 7.
    B wins when three consecutive rolls are in ascending order.
    Rolling will continue until A or B wins.

    What is the probability of winning A?

  5. Tayyab:

    I must say that you are really very lucky. I tried losing weight around six months ago, but no positive results were shown.

  6. Jason:

    That’s awesome man! I believe that you really have to have a lot of motivation, and cutting out sugar is key!

  7. Brian:

    Tanya,
    I have been following a program very much like yours since April, also with great results. I must lose one pound each week, I weigh myself every day, and any day my weight is over target will be a “diet day,” similar to your red days. Other than that there are no rules. I had devised the system on my own, so it has some minor differences from yours. My system didn’t have yellow days, but after reading about them on your blog, I think I will add something similar to my plan. My red days are more flexible and, I imagine, more enjoyable than yours: Instead of limiting myself to one food that I don’t like, I can eat any quantity of these low-calorie foods that I do like: fruits, vegetables, low-cal soup, and SlimFast. Because I am not tempted to binge on these things, I always lose weight on red days, getting back on target in a day or two.
    I had searched the internet and found no mention of a diet plan like mine (ours), until I came across it on your blog. I’ve been reading your blog off and on for many years, because I too have a math degree and I enjoy the way you look at things. But I hadn’t visited for some time now, and so looking in yesterday and reading about your diet was a pleasant surprise.
    I’ve lost 53 pounds in 35 weeks, which is about half way to my ideal weight. (I’m a 6’1″ male, so my proportions are different than yours.) I have never failed to lose at least one pound every week. Slow but consistent.
    This system is very low stress compared to other diets, because we diet only a few days per week instead of seven, and we’re not restricted to a menu of boring foods. And looking ahead, the system should easily adapt to the period after we’ve reached our ideal weight, instead of going off diet and ballooning back up. This technique is so simple that I wonder why it’s not better known. Maybe it only works for people with a mathematical way of thinking?

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