One year ago today, I started the BSD. It was the first time I’d ever counted calories or carbs. It was the first time I’d ever been on a formal diet of any kind, truth be told, although I had already cut out all bad carbs 6 months earlier. I had soy cereal with soy milk for breakfast, chicken salad with field greens stuffed in a low-carb pita, an avocado baked with smoked salmon and eggs for dinner. It was a more innocent time, when I used a lot more low-carb substitutes and before I started spending days making things like dehydrated seasoned Brazil nuts.
In the 365 days I have gone off-plan exactly once — mom’s mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving cannot be denied — and that was a deliberate choice. Even then I had only two spoonfuls, which took an enormous act of will because I could easily plant my face in the serving bowl and devour it all like a dog. They truly are the greatest of all mashed potatoes. The rest of the time I have been on the Fast 800 non-stop. No breaks. No cheat days. No vacation splurges. No “odd glass” of anything.
I didn’t weigh myself until the 4th week (I figured why break a 15-year streak of avoiding scales just because I was trying something new) so I don’t know the exact figure, but in this past year I have lost more than 160 pounds. I have good reason to believe the total is closer to 180 pounds, but best to keep the estimate conservative. From 300+ pounds to 141.2 as of this morning. Thirty inches gone from my waist alone. Twenty-five from my hips. Twenty from my bust. And I’m not done yet. My goal is 120 lbs, if at all possible. That would put me squarely in the low middle of my healthy BMI (I’m 5’2″) and at my lowest adult weight before I began the slow but inexorable climb into obesity.
This has been a life-changing experience for me. I have discovered strengths in myself that I never knew I had. I faced hard truths I’d successfully avoided for going on two decades. I don’t recognize my reflection. I sometimes think this is some kind of weird fever dream or a sick prank the world is playing on me and Rod Serling is going to pop up out of the bushes with a cigarette and some erudite musing on how fantasies can seem like reality when you cross into … THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
But the BSD Zone is real and I’m living proof.