Carrying a Smaller Bag

Reflections on a year of losing weight

It’s hard to talk about weight loss without coming across as sanctimonious in one direction or another — or worse, inviting people to project their own perspectives on diet culture onto you. So let me start by getting a few things out of the way.

• I have no opinion about whether or not you would benefit from losing weight.

• If you would benefit from losing weight, whether or not you try to do so is none of my business. (But I am rooting for you if you do!)

• If you want to lose weight, I realize that what I did (as a generally healthy person with a remote job that is not physically demanding) may not be possible for folks with more restrictions or less-flexible lifestyles.

• If you do try to follow my method, it is important to remember that everyone is different. I do not assume that what worked for me would work for you.

• My not using GLP-1 drugs does not imply any judgment of those who do.

Frankly I don’t enjoy focusing too much on my recent weight loss at all, let alone calling attention to it with other people. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over my years of running this blog, it’s that people appreciate when I write about vulnerable subjects. So I decided to put some reflections into words in case this makes its way to someone with whom it resonates. Please do not read any deeper meaning or morality into my writing than that.

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Last summer, shortly after my 33rd birthday, I resolved to lose 34 pounds by the time I turned 34. With my birthday coming up this week, I am excited to say that I cleared that goal with room to spare.

I wasn’t unhappy with the way I looked, as well-meaning people often unintentionally imply when they compliment someone for slimming down. Rather, my concern was practical: the most-important piece of clothing I owned was too tight.

Five years ago, I bought the suit for our wedding through a (sadly now-defunct) company that sold high-quality custom-tailored clothes for incredibly reasonable prices. In particular, the shirt — far and away the most-comfortable and best-fitting plain white button-down I have ever owned — became a load-bearing pillar of my wardrobe. Until I wore it to a wedding last August and discovered it was starting to pucker. Faced with the choice of banishing such a crucial item to my ever-growing stash of onetime-favorite clothes that maybe will fit me again someday, losing weight sounded like less effort than finding a replacement shirt.

(Ironically, that shirt is now too big.)

The other spark for me was knowing that changes get harder as you get older. I have enough family histories of medical maladies to know I’d need to make some lifestyle adjustments eventually. While weight is absolutely not an indicator of health in every context, I figured shedding some pounds would be a visible marker of my progress on other, correlated tracks. (An instrumental variable, for the statistics folks out there.) At one point I caught myself thinking if this were so important, I would have done it already. I realized that if I were tempted by that logical trap, my choices were either to preempt that cycle now or accept that I might never do it otherwise.

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The title of this post came to me in a dream. I had been struggling for months to come up with language I liked for my weight loss, as the common terms always made me cringe. I was searching for something less rigid than “diet” but less saccharine than “journey.” Then one night I dreamed I was invited to a potluck picnic for a Sopranos cast reunion. (Probably because I impressed them so much with my insight at a Q&A.) James Gandolfini — who in this dream was both still alive and a sufficiently longtime friend to recognize that I looked different — approached me with a smile, gave me a hug, and said “you’re carrying a smaller bag.” Simple, descriptive, kind, and nonjudgmental in any direction. I’ve been saying it to myself ever since.

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I suppose I can’t write an essay reflecting on my weight loss without detailing how I did it. As I unpacked my now-too-tight shirt after the wedding, I set three rules for myself to follow:

1. Get on the bike every day

For the preceding few years I had an aspirational regimen of an hour on the recumbent bike, every other day. I had a whole routine: I’d send my daily in-game gifts to friends on Pokémon Go, write a post on my foodstagram, and play a game of MVP Baseball 2005.¹ I took full advantage of the hands-free nature of the equipment to hold my phone or GameCube controller, and eventually an hour would go by.

I was committed to the routine, but I also had a modest threshold for bailing if I didn’t feel great, or if I were also doing something else physically demanding after, or if I wouldn’t have consistent access to a bathroom later that day so drinking an hour of cardio’s worth of water would create downstream difficulties. It was also often hard to block off enough time for a full workout (and then shower before my next video call) in the middle of the workday, so that hour was frequently cut short.

So I started biking for a little less time every day. My workouts are shorter now, maybe 40-45 minutes on average. Sometimes more, sometimes less; I usually do two of the three aforementioned activities. But I committed to doing it every day, unless I was really sick or didn’t have access to my bike. Even if it’s just a quick ride to get my blood pumping without exhausting myself or overloading my bladder, 15 minutes is better than zero minutes. I also do some work with small weights for the first portion of my ride, when I need only one hand at a time to hold my phone.

2. Have a protein shake for lunch

This is probably the biggest factor in my weight loss. I like to exercise on an empty stomach, so when I first started getting into my every-other-day long-ride routine, I would emerge very hungry and eat an enormous lunch. (I don’t usually eat breakfast.) Eventually I started drinking a protein shake right after I worked out, then eating a more-normal-sized meal after. Still probably worth it for the cardio, but in retrospect this often made my exercising a calorie-neutral endeavor at best.

So what if the protein shake were my lunch? A year ago I decided to try it, and within a couple days my appetite had adjusted. I haven’t been a total stickler about it if I have plans for brunch or lunch, but on average I stuck to it (or a protein bar if I’m worried about having to pee too much) probably six days a week. Most days it’s held me until dinner without issue.

If you’re wondering, here’s the basic recipe that I’m still not sick of after drinking it almost every day for a year (and several times a week before that):

• 1 banana

• 1 cup milk (or enough to reach desired consistency)

• 2 scoops chocolate protein powder²

• 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1 tbsp peanut butter powder

• 1 tbsp powdered fiber supplement

• A few ice cubes

Blend at steadily escalating speed for 30 seconds or until thoroughly mixed.

3. Be more mindful the rest of the day

On the surface this was the easiest rule I set for myself, because there were no actual restrictions. But it often felt the hardest, because my brain is much better at optimizing for specific constraints like how do I minimize my calorie intake while still feeling nourished? (which was stricter than how I approached my diet) than it is at balancing vaguely defined competing goals like how do I reduce my calorie intake while still enjoying the things I like to eat and drink?

I had made some gradual changes along these lines before. I default to whole wheat pasta when I cook. I cut out drinking at home during the week. I usually keep my ritual single spoonful of ice cream before bed to two or three bites instead of absent-mindedly eating half the carton. On the other hand, it’s telling that I eat enough pasta that switching to whole wheat made a significant difference.

When I started this new chapter, the way I tried to frame my post-protein-shake choices was to ask myself how much I cared about them. Did I really want to order a giant burrito for dinner, or is that just what I typically do on a cozy night at home? If it truly made me happy, I would do it. But if the craving felt more Pavlovian than earnest, or if the midnight snack didn’t actually sound nourishing, or if the poultry option were almost as appealing as the red meat, I would save my indulgence for another time when I’d appreciate it more.

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I couldn’t figure out how to string the rest of my thoughts into a cohesive essay format, so here is a smattering of additional reflections and advice.

We live in a culture with an unhealthy fixation on personal responsibility and a perverse obsession with (twisted visions of) biological determinism. This is part of why this subject is uncomfortable, as losing weight generally requires burning more calories than you are consuming, and it can be hard to acknowledge that fact without sounding like a judgmental chud. I struggled with this a lot — the line between giving myself grace and pretending not to understand physiological realities can get blurry. I often tell myself that calories don’t count on vacation, or while I’m drinking, or on special occasions, but they do. It can be worth it, but they do.

To that point, the single most-efficient driver of my weight loss was unintentional and miserable: I got COVID at Christmas. The pounds melted off while I was stuck at home with no appetite, especially relative to what I would otherwise have gained at the parties I instead had to bail on. I don’t recommend this! On the flipside, I came back heavier from a week in Barcelona than I was before I left, and it was well worth it. There is more to life than losing weight. There is more to health than losing weight. I can’t tell you what your priorities are, but I bet what the scale says isn’t the only one.

And the error bars around that reading are bigger than you may realize. I’m a numbers guy, and now that I’m paying more attention I have been fascinated by how the scale fluctuates on a day-to-day or even hour-to-hour basis. Some of this is intuitive: I weigh a little more at the end of a weekend than the start of it, and I lose a couple pounds between when I eat dinner and when I finish my workout the next day. But metabolization and fluid retention can vary for biological reasons I won’t pretend to understand. Even that assumes your bathroom scale is reliably precise, which it probably isn’t; ours adds three pounds to the next reading every time you move it. All of which is to say that the trendline matters a lot more than each individual weigh-in.

You hear a lot of unsolicited comments when you are visibly losing weight. People usually mean well, and occasionally it lands that way. Sometimes it’s encouraging to hear that I’ve made enough progress that others can perceive it. On the other hand, it’s strange when even people you don’t know all that well feel compelled to comment on your body. (As a cis man, I understand this is less-unfamiliar to folks of other gender identities and experiences.) I think presuming how significant the change feels to the person you’re attempting to compliment, or even that it’s a positive at all (weight loss is not always intentional or desirable) is an example of being nice, but not kind. “Have you been working out?” is the most-affirming phrasing I’ve heard in real life. My favorite is still Dreamworld James Galdolfini’s “carrying a smaller bag.”

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I will close with two encouraging thoughts. The first is something I alluded to above. If there is a change you would like to make in your life, be it a health-related habit or some other category of self-betterment, inertia can be a powerful obstacle. I haven’t done it yet, so it must not be worth doing would be ridiculous to say aloud but can sound seductive in your inner monologue. The best time to start doing something hard but beneficial was before. The second-best time is today.

The second is how good it feels to achieve a goal like this. The physical benefits are part of it — I suppose it’s unsurprising that dedicating a year to increased exercise and more-intentional nutrition has left me generally healthier and stronger. But more than that, I feel empowered. I set a target and a deadline for myself. I wasn’t sure that I could achieve them, but I knew they would require persistent effort and sustained commitment. And I did it! My haters are hootering and hollering, because there is significantly less of me.

If I can do it, you can too!

1. In my save file, it is 2015, and the Cleveland Guardians are the heavy favorites to win their 11th consecutive championship. B.J. Upton has a real shot to hit both .400 and 70 home runs, Tim Spooneybarger has far eclipsed Mariano Rivera as the best reliever of all time, Mike Maroth has apotheosized into the most-dominant pitcher the game has ever seen.

2. My favorite brand is Orgain, though I cannot recommend it for frequent consumption without noting the risk of lead exposure.