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250 pounds to the high 170s
Losing sight of health
He had dropped tennis for ten to thirteen years after a bad concussion kept him from playing in college, and he put on fifty pounds in his twenties while focused on making money and being successful in business. The realization came in the mountains, when his wife wanted to go hiking: his joints ached and he was out of breath. He had completely lost sight of his health.
Rebuilding everything
His thirties were a struggle of yo-yo dieting. At forty, he decided to treat it as his job until he figured it out. He broke it down and rebuilt everything: a lot of counseling around food, exploring family history and why he wanted to eat so much, and completely rebuilding his habits. He went from working out once every two or three weeks to working out every day, a complete identity shift.
The results
He had called himself a fat kid for so long that it had become an excuse for fat kid behavior, and friends told him he could be fit and healthy. He is now in the high 170s, and tennis is a lot easier without a fifty or sixty pound dumbbell to lug around the court. He is playing the best tennis of his life, and a surprise son arrived five years after the last of his children, so staying in shape means being able to play with him.
How much strain does weight put on knees?
A 2005 study led by Stephen Messier at Wake Forest University found that each pound of body weight lost reduced the load on the knee by about four pounds with every step. The participants were older adults with knee osteoarthritis. Forces across the knee during walking are generally greater than body weight itself.
Why do yo-yo diets so often rebound?
After weight is lost, the body lowers levels of the hormone leptin, which raises hunger, and it burns fewer calories than expected for its new size. Rudolph Leibel and Michael Rosenbaum of Columbia University documented this drop in energy expenditure after weight loss in a 1995 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. The pull toward regaining weight can persist for years.
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