Last week i got diagnosed with pre-diabetes and severe obstructive sleep apnea, both secondary to obesity. I'm 23 years old, so obviously this was quite a shock to me because i thought due to my age i was doing OK, save for the part where i'm obese (166 cm and 181 lbs).
What makes it more ironic is that my lifestyle of being a premed student -- sitting down to study all day, studying for the MCAT, etc. may have contributed to this over the past 5 years. Don't even get me started on trying to get the most value out of my meal plan and probably eating 3,000 calories a day during my four years in undergrad. I was 160 lbs in 2016, and 140 lbs in 2012. My lowest was 125 lbs in 2011, but that was when I was very young (13 years old) and swimming every day. My highest weight was April 2020 when I weighed in at 192 lbs after binge eating during the beginning of the pandemic.
I decided that if I want to take care of people's health, I have to be healthy as well to set an example. I work in internal medicine as a scribe, and I see a lot of patients that have diabetes, chronic kidney disease, fatty liver disease, etc. Some of them are frustrated at the fact that they have this diagnosis, but they keep on pushing to be healthier and to get off the diabetes meds (like Metformin). I saw a patient's A1c drop from 8.0 to 6.0 over the course of three months. There was another patient that I met who was in the ER for a heart attack (in early 30's). One month later for a followup, and the patient had lost 15 pounds. I didn't even recognize them when I checked them in and took their vitals.
When I got the diagnosis, I was initially very disturbed and all I could think about was: how am I going to lose weight? I had already been trying to get to 175 from my 181 and that was a struggle. I was honestly ready to accept my baseline weight to be 181 forever. But now I realize that it is a slow and steady effort, not something done in bursts.
I definitely do not want to get diabetes and I'll be doing everything I can. Mostly, it will consist of working out more often, for longer periods of time, and not giving up 3 days into a 21-day workout challenge. Nutrition wise, for me it really gets down to calorie counting and watching out for carbs, which is hard. Chinese/Korean food is difficult to estimate calories for, but I'll try my best. That being said, I rarely have time to make those kinds of foods and I'm the type of person who likes to eat 10 oz of roasted kale/spinach/yam/carrot/beet salad daily lol. I think maybe I need to work on portion sizing because as healthy as 10 oz of salad is, it still can have more calories than a 8 oz portion of salad, for instance.
I think I'll be living with my new CPAP machine forever, but I'll take any wins that I can get.
For the past month, I have been working out for 1 hour daily using YouTube videos, sometimes 2 (the other hour is walking). I eventually wish to run a 5k, but I cannot run due to my bad knees (thanks unwanted weight... lol). I hope to come back with an update in 3 months and then 6 months on my progress.
Well that's it. I just wanted to make an accountability post here.
181 to 125 let's go :) !!!!!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/qp0p08/on_and_off_again_dieter_but_this_time_im_going_to/
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