The Real Benefit of Weight Loss
Over the past year or so, I lost 30lbs and I have to say I really recommend it. Now before I get pilloried for fat shaming, I have to specify that I didn’t lose weight to be considered more attractive in accordance with mainstream tastes. I feel like I’m very firmly in the average of attractiveness and I just don’t think losing weight is really going to move the needle as much as a crisp suit or a sharp haircut would.
I also didn’t lose weight to “feel better” because honestly, I don’t. I’m constantly sore from exercise and often vaguely hungry from my diet. I would feel much better eating a cheeseburger and just generally loafing about. I could drink a whole milkshake right now plus the steel cup that has the extra milkshake leftover in it and feel like a million bucks.
No, I lost weight as a side effect of trying to lower my cholesterol. Some time ago, I got a primary care physician to deal with a cough that lasted several weeks. During my examination, my doctor saw that I was very nearly 40 and suggested I get a routine physical, which involves getting your labs done. My labs found that all my levels were good except that my overall cholesterol and my LDL cholesterol (which is the bad kind) were “Very High”. This is very bad and my doctor recommended that I try to lower my levels via diet and exercise over the next three months before exploring my prescription medication options.
Now my initial reaction was to stand up and yell “It’s October! How very dare you ask me to lower my cholesterol through the very heart of treat season!?” but this was all happening through messages via my patient dashboard on their portal, which was a canny move on her part. I’m sure once I explained all of the Halloween candy, Thanksgiving desserts, and Christmas cookies I was missing out on, even she would lose her zeal to see me lower my cholesterol. I would have done a whole ten minutes on how I perfected my brandy to eggnog ratio and at the end of it she probably would have decided it would be better to raise her own cholesterol instead of getting me to lower mine.
However, after doing the research, I found that I just needed to avoid saturated fats by cutting out red and fatty meats, dairy (except cheese doesn’t raise your cholesterol for some reason), and sugary treats from my diet, take a fiber supplement, and to engage in rigorous cardiovascular exercises for a half hour five days a week.
NB: I should add that I didn’t do MY OWN research, I did THE research. When you do your own research, you can find whatever dubiously sourced website touting whatever cockamamie advice that suits your needs. I’m sure there’s a website that says eating a plate full of bacon covered in lard every day will actually lower your cholesterol and make you more virile. No, I did THE research from reputable sources like the National Institute of Health and the Harvard Medical Journal who said I should actually have one to two alcoholic drinks per day to help lower my cholesterol. Now that’s news I can use! (ED Note - Yes, I’ve been made aware that the studies supporting alcohol’s health benefits were flawed and it’s now considered unhealthy to even so much as think about alcohol, but at the time it was true!)
So, despite this being the only time of year I can get eggnog, I religiously followed the above plan. My trick to staying on the path is that if I was ever tempted to eat something that I knew could raise my cholesterol, I simply told myself “If you eat this, you will instantly die.” What could be healthier? After three months, my overall cholesterol became “Good” and my bad cholesterol has been downgraded to “High”, which is progress, but still needs to be lowered.
Unbeknownst to me, lowering your cholesterol is also a sure fire recipe for losing a ton of weight. Pretty soon, I was getting a ton of flattering comments about how good I looked, which was very nice and all, but I noticed something else people were doing that is really at the heart of my recommendation: Everyone listened to everything I had to say.
When you lose weight for health purposes, everyone has to listen to everything you have to say on the matter. No matter how long and how involved the story is, people just can’t get enough of it and even if they can get enough of it, they’ll still listen attentively and not casually check their phones mid-conversation.
It’s no secret that I am rather verbose and have a tendency to over explain things. I don’t see this as a character flaw and have no intentions of changing, but I also accept that people are just going to generally tune me out once I really get going. However, deep down, this pains me deeply and I would actually love for people to hang on my every word. Well, I finally found the secret and it has been phenomenal.
Why is this happening? Well, after significant analysis of the matter, there are a couple of reasons, which I will enumerate now.
You accomplished something - Everyone knows (usually from personal experience) that losing weight is difficult and unpleasant. The fact that you actually did it is worth celebrating, so your listener will go out of their way to show their admiration. This is partly because presumably they like you, but more importantly now when they do something special you will have to laud them in equal measure. You gotta give praise to get praise.
This technically counts as a health scare - Even though this isn’t even remotely on the level of cancer or surviving a shark attack, having high cholesterol can be deadly, so your story has to be treated with gravitas by the listener. They don’t want to come off unsympathetic or callous even if they don’t think it’s a very big deal.
The fact that you weren’t trying to lose weight makes the whole operation feel very doable - Fatphobic or not, the average person over 30 is constantly worried about losing weight and the fact that you could pull it off without trying means you must have “one weird trick” that they could replicate in their own lives. So, they need to listen to your whole spiel to make sure they don’t miss it. I’m told that’s how MLM’s start, but I promise I won’t start one.
So, if you’re looking to lose weight or just want people to pay attention to you while you’re talking, I really recommend lowering your cholesterol. If your cholesterol is already good or low, maybe try gaining weight? I’m sure people would love to hear about that too.