I’ve been slightly overweight pretty much all my life (80–95kg / 175–210lbs with 175cm / 5ft 8in). I’ve lost weight three times so far.

#1

The first time I lost weight was in 7th grade, during summer break. I was playing a MMORPG non-stop and pretty much forgot to eat. I’m not sure how much weight I lost then, but it all happened in a few weeks and it took a toll — I got stretch marks that won’t heal. Losing much weight in a short time is not a very bright idea apparently.

#2

This was in my 2nd year at university. It wasn’t exactly planned, but I’ve been able to consistently eat just slightly less than what my body wanted for ~2 months, and I’ve lost roughly 10kg in the process. This felt great — every night I would go sleep feeling very slightly hungry, and that was it. Looking back, this all happened by chance, and I couldn’t do it at a later time — I would starve for a couple of days then start overeating.

#3

This time it was very deliberate and it turned out great. In December 2015 I’ve started tracking calories and exercising (gym and cycling). In May 2016 (~6 months later) I’ve lost 13kg in what feels like a very sustainable way. Namely:

• I wasn’t counting on exercise helping me lose weight — it’s all about the diet. Exercise is there just to get fit and feel well.
• No food restrictions whatsoever. No calorie number restrictions either. Just had to make sure I track everything and be honest with myself.
• The calorie counts didn’t have to be accurate. Firstly, a lot of times there’s no good way to accurately measure, and secondly, as long as I would provide a very generous count, I would always eat less — which was the actual goal. For example, if I had a coffee, I would count that as 140 calories, which is way more than the reality (a bit of milk and a sugar cube), but at the end of the day if the count was at 1900, I would be extremely sure that I ate at most 1900 calories, which was the goal. In fact, if I’ve had a lot of food in a single day, I’d just suck it up and add a single 2000–3000–4000 calories item, instead of trying to split it up.
• The count doesn’t reflect calories wasted — some days I’d burn 2000 calories and eat 2500. The count goes up, when I would actually undereat by a large margin. This was not a problem since I just wanted an upper ceiling for the count.
• Instead of using a calorie tracker app, I’ve rolled my own spreadsheet on Google Drive, that I’ve fine tuned over time. This was great because I got both desktop and mobile versions out of the box. The main components are the sheet where I input my calories — the first column is the date, the second is the total for that day, and the rest are individual items.

The second component is a graph that shows 7 and 30 day rolling averages — I’ve found that individual day graphs don’t show much and are too hard to understand.

• Unfortunately I haven’t recorded any weight measurements in the process, but the bulk of the weight loss (10kg) happened between January and March.
• 7 and 30 day averages are good indicators for my eating patterns, but still not perfect. For example, if I consistently eat 2500 calories during the weekend and 1800 calories during the week for a few weeks, the 7 day average stabilizes at 2000 — which is not correct, as it should reflect the fact that during the weekends I eat more. Maybe a decaying average where as you go back into the past, the counts influence the average less and less would be a better solution.
• In time I’ve started changing my diet for a few reasons: firstly, the count would “shame” me into trading higher calorie foods (desserts, sodas, alcohol, etc.) for lower calorie ones (yogurt, cereals, sparkling water). Secondly, as I ate less and less, my body started punishing me for overeating — every time I ate more than usual, I would sleep terribly and regret it the next morning.
• As I started doing more exercise, I would need to eat a lot more (well, duh).
• After losing weight, I have trouble sleeping: with a fat padding, I’d sleep on fat. Now I sleep on muscles, organs, bones and nerves. A lot of times I’d wake up with something hurting because I slept on it.

Now I consider it mission accomplished and I’m stopping the count, because it’s giving me no benefit anymore — also since I have to eat more because I’m doing more exercise, I don’t want the graph to “shame” me into eating less than what I actually need.

This was a great way of losing weight, and I’m pretty sure I can sustain it, since I’ve started craving for different foods, and I never felt like I was starving or that I was “on a diet”.