My Weight Loss Journey by George Booth

In April, 2025, I weighed 240 pounds. I was diabetic, I had sleep apnea, I was fat. I've been that weight, or slightly less, for quite some time, and I was fine with it - until I wasn't. At some point, I can't pinpoint exactly when that may have been, I finally realized I had to do something about my weight. So, it's like a switch flipped in my brain. I decided to start eating less than I normally did. And in order to do that, I had to give myself proper portions, rather than letting myself just eat anything like I had been doing. I thought long and hard about how to handle that, and I came up with the idea of a single hotdog for my meals. Not just any hotdogs. These were cheddar cheese filled hotdogs from Sam's Club. Each was a quarter pound. I would cook one in my air fryer and eat it with mustard on a hotdog bun. For every meal. And at first, that's all I would have for that meal. For several months, that's all I would eat, and the weight shed off me. Now, let's not get it wrong - I didn't eat that for my meal on the weekends. When Steve would come down, we'd eat out, and I would have to find something equivalent. And I noticed something significant during this time. Since I was consistently eating less, and getting used to eating less, my stomach shrunk so that I got full much faster than I used to. And while the weight came off, it came off at a good, sustainable pace.

I didn't lose consistently, either. Some weeks, I'd plateau and hover in the same 5 pound weight range. Like for a couple of weeks, I'd hover between 210 and 215. Later, it would be between 190 and 195 for about a month. Then suddenly I'd be 185. At the end of July, 2026, I reached a low of 165 pounds. I couldn't even tell you the last time I weighed that little. And while I was extremely happy to have reached that weight, I didn't feel right. I felt too skinny. I felt like at night when I slept, if I were on my side, that I was cradling a rib cage with my arms.

At that point, I'd lost an average (keep in mind the plateauing, so this isn't entirely accurate) of 5 pounds per month, or just over a pound a week. Very sustainable, very healthy weight loss. Until it got to the point I felt like a skeleton and decided I needed to gain back around 10 pounds. So I did. And now my weight tends to fluctuate between 173 and 179 on any given day. I'm fine with that, for the most part, because even when I feel like I'm fat again, I catch sight of myself in the mirror, or take a selfie, and can see that I have not become fat again.

So, let's discuss my diet during that time. I started discussing it already with the hotdog thing, but that was just for the first 3-4 months. Maybe 6 months, I'm not entirely sure at what time I 86'd the entire hotdog thing, but I came to realize that the hotdogs were fine for losing the weight, but I needed better nutrition that what I was getting. And, of course, as I stated I was eating other stuff on the weekends. I also, at some point during the hotdog craze, switched from 3 meals a day to 2 meals a day. Again, except for weekends. When I made the transition, it was gradual. I'd have hotdogs most of the time, but then have something else for a meal or two during the week. When I ate out on the weekends, I ate very slowly, giving myself time to fill up so that the child's meal I had was filling. My main thought process from the very start was to put myself into a calorie deficit so as to lose the weight in a normal way. A natural way. A safe, sustainable way.

I've mentioned sustainable several times now, and that was my goal from the beginning. I wanted to lose the weight, but more importantly, I wanted to keep the weight off. So I was training myself not to eat quite as much, although the colder months are more difficult for doing that, I've found. My weight loss slowed down last winter, and as we've encountered colder days this year, I've found that I'm eating more than I really should. But I think that's just a side effect of colder weather.

At first, I kept my old clothes. I just wore them very loose. And then very, very loose. Finally I couldn't deny new clothes any longer, so I switched out my extra large shirts for large. My waist size was 36" at the height of my weight, and that of course dropped with the weight. The first new pair of pants I bought were a 32" waist. Then I went down to a 31". I only bought one pair of each of them at a time. The bad thing with the 31" waist pair was I couldn't find any long enough, so I had to compromise with a 30" inseam rather than my usual 32" inseam. Then I hit 30". Like, what? I'd never dreamed of having a 30" waist! So I bought a pair, and fortunately they were 32" long. It was rather weird that my inseam was greater than my waist! Eventually, I bought 3 more pair of 30"w/32"i jeans, and also bought 4 pair of 30"w shorts. The shorts were from Sam's Club, the Weatherproof brand that Steve and I had come to love several years before. I of course gave him all of my larger ones. What's weird is that with Weatherproof, I could wear 34"w in them even though I wore 36"w in my jeans at that time. However, when I dropped down to 30"w, the shorts were also that size. I guess only the 34"w ones ran big lol. The cool thing is that, even though I've gained back 8-14 pounds (depending on what the scales say each day), I didn't gain any inches back in my waist. That's a small miracle!

My meals these days generally consist of 2 eggs and 2 waffles for my morning meal. I prefer my eggs sunny side up. After that, I'll usually have a small tub of yogurt, and then maybe a small bag of chips (small bags for portion control). In the evenings, it would change a lot. Sometimes I'd also make pasta or lasagna, or something similar and have small portions of that. These days, I mainly have some chicken nuggets (frozen from the store, not McDonald's). The yogurt and small bag of chips have become part of my diet now. They help make me feel and stay full.

And that, my friends, is my weight loss journey in a nutshell!