My Weight Loss: One Year On

Hey everybody, Antoni here, and I have something to let you all sit in for a spell on.

What you are seeing is what I used to look like back in late August 2019 and what I look like today.

Last year, as much I was really happy to have been accepted in university, I was seriously piling on the pounds due to all of the anxiety I felt when applying for both the public and the private universities of Berlin. I pretty much comfort ate anything and everything I could my hands on ranging from sausages to cakes to burgers to cookie dough because it was a way for me to cope with the anxiety and stress I was feeling when I graduated from my A-Levels with a solid average of 1,8 and trying my luck in every single university. Throughout the months of June to August, I felt myself getting heavier and heavier thanks to my takeaway habit and the fact that I was feasting on palatable foods, despite me being in a lot of denial about my weight and how I looked.

It was not until August that I realized how much weight I put on, in spite of my joy of being accepted in Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the Bachelor’s Program of English and Musicology and obtaining my extended residence permit to go alongside that. After getting all of that sorted, when I finally weighed myself, I found out that I was no longer 14 stone 2 lbs (198 lbs or 90 kg), but 17 stone 3.64 lbs (241.64 lbs or 109.6 kg). I realized just how much I let myself go and how much I let food take over my life and used it as a way to comfort myself.

Mind you, this was not the first time I have been in an odyssey with my weight because I gained an awareness of it when I did ballet when I was a child and it increased by the time I was twelve years old, thus becoming completely immersed in all of these weight loss products and weight loss methods I saw in a lot of infomercials.

It even got to the point where when I was thirteen years old and in my final four months of being in the seventh grade, one of my New Year’s Resolution was to be thinner like Edmund Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe played by Skandar Keynes and Jeff McAllister from Home Alone 1 and 2 played by Michael Maronna who was also Big Pete Wrigley from The Adventures of Pete and Pete. To me, being thin also meant that I wanted access to have a go at dressing in more goth/punk clothing, let alone going the goth route, because the ones who rocked those items of clothing were the ones who were really slim be he man or be she a woman. Additionally, I was influenced by a lot of my favorite anime characters to want to look thinner, especially where the Japanese diet was concerned, and I did receive a few compliments from some of my middle school colleagues saying that I did look younger than I was, with one of them saying that despite me being a fourteen-year-old eighth-grader, I looked like I was a twelve or thirteen-year-old sixth or seventh grader to add to the encouragement I gained to lose weight and look so much younger.

Throughout the rest of my teen years ranging from freshman to senior high school, I have found myself going back and forth, constantly yo-yoing from losing weight to gaining weight and trying every single slimming tea and slimming product to make sure that I was meeting the slimness I wanted to obtain. Whenever I lost weight, I would receive compliments mostly from my paternal relatives, despite some of my eating habits being an issue to be judged on from time to time. I was even judged by some of my former high school colleagues about the rolls in my stomach and some of the features of my face they found fault in. At the time, in spite of certain judgements I received on a nearly daily basis, it made me feel good to hear some compliments about how I looked good for my weight from my relatives.

However, graduating from High School and getting myself into vocational training as an actor, I ended up piling more pounds, despite my best efforts or lack thereof, and I did give myself to comfort eating as a means to alleviate the crap I went through when I was in my senior in high school, which was both the most cathartic year yet the worst year for me as a teenager. This got to the point when my weight shot up, but I was still being in denial and being such a huge conundrum with everything I was eating ranging from foods I knew that were healthy to foods that were really not that great complete with large portions. There was something within me that told me I had to stop piling on the pounds, especially when I made the move to Berlin.

I could give you all more context of what I had to go through, but I would be here all do, so I would like to go back to what happened to me last year. Thankfully, I ended up using my FitBit as a graduation and late birthday present my mom gave to me, as I knew in the back of my mind it was going to play a huge role in my life and in the weight loss goals I have been wanting to achieve ever since I was a teenager. At twenty-seven years old, I knew I had to make changes to my weight, hence I started walking a lot more, paid more attention to what I was eating, and did everything I could to make sure that the weight was going to stay off me.

It all came to fruition before I started university when I began tuning in to various programs on YouTube with my personal favorites being Supersize vs Superskinny, Fat Families, Secret Eaters, and a whole bevy of weight loss documentaries and documentaries which talk about various eating disorders, especially when I was traveling to Paris, Bordeaux, and Dresden. In barely a month, thanks to all of the walking I did in Paris going to the opera houses and the many sites as well as living on smaller portions than I did, considering that I would buy my salads, fruits, and smoked fish in the nearby grocery stores, I found out that I lost 1 stone 2 lbs (16 lbs or 7.3 kg). Even when I got back to Berlin to start university, I made sure that walking from university to home was part of my regimen, which was a huge blessing, considering that Humboldt was situated in Alexanderplatz and it was just an hour’s walk away from my home in Schönhauser Allee.

My weight loss journey was met with ups and downs because there were moments I would lose weight and gain a bit more and there were times my weight loss progress plateaued. This even came to be after I spent my holidays in Tallinn, Estonia where there were times I did go back into some old eating habits where I went from 15 stone 7.39 lbs (217.39 lbs or 98.6 kg) to shooting back up to 15 stone 13.78 lbs (223.78 lbs or 101.5 kg). Nevertheless, compared to what I weighed back in August 29, 2019, I still managed to be over my 1-stone (14-pound or 6.35-kilogram) weight loss goal with my new sight being set on a 2-stone (28-pound or 12.7-kilogram) weight loss goal.

Fast forward to this year and I am proud to say that I am now 14 stone 1.76 lbs (197.76 lbs or 89.7 kg). From August 27 to September 14 of last year, I smashed my 1-stone weight loss goal in the best possible way. On February 21 of this year, I met my 2-stone weight loss goal, which I accomplished in less than six months overall. I may have met my 3-stone weight-loss goal back on August 16 of this year, but my total weight loss from August 27, 2019 to today on September 6, 2020 is 3 stone 1.87 lbs (43.87 lbs or 19.9 kg).

My goal right now is to end up between 11 stone 3.41 lbs and 8 stone 13.89 lbs (157.41 lbs and 125.89 lbs or 71.4 kg and 57.1 kg) with 10 stone 1.65 lbs (141.65 lbs or 64.25 kg) being in the middle as my healthy weight for a man like me who stands at 5 feet and 6.5 inches (169 cm) tall, therefore making my ideal weight fall between 11 stone and 9 stone (154 lbs and 126 lbs or 69.85 kg and 57.15 kg). Moreover, I want to continue looking a lot younger for my age probably five to ten years younger than I am. Sure, I still have 3 to 5 more stone (42 to 70 more pounds or 19.05 to 31.75 more kilograms) to go, thus making my total weight loss goal range from 6 to 8 stone (84 to 112 lbs or 38.1 to 50.8 kg), but I am more than determined to make sure that I do not go back to my old, pathetic ways ever again.

Ever since I embraced a high-fiber, high-vitamin, high-mineral pescatarian, vegetarian, and fruitarian diet complete with all of the good stuff I need while completely bidding farewell to meat, high-fat cheeses, pork products, burgers, chips, Döner kebabs, fried chicken, fatty steaks, crisps, biscuits, cakes, sweets, all the foods laden with excessive salt, sugar, and fat, and even eating out hopefully for good and for all, I felt a million times better than what I did before. I feel like I can seize the day with confidence and joy everyday and look forward to losing a lot more of my excess weight so that I do not end up so poorly.

As I said before, I may be happy that I am below the 14-and-a-half stone or 200-pound or 90-kilogram mark, but I have a long way to go if I want to attain the youthful appearance and the slimline frame I have been yearning for ever since I was a very young lad. I am fully aware that the amount of weight I lost in a year is nothing compared to what the participants of Supersize vs Superskinny or Fat Families accomplished in a year let alone what Bennett the Sage accomplished with his 7-stone 2-pound (100-pound or 45.45-kilogram) weight loss, but I can still feel proud of myself for losing this much weight within a year and I will continue to do so. This me for life and I am never ever ever going back to those ways which have initially brought me to my doldrums.

For someone like me who has been living and dying by the media and entertainment world ever since I was a child, I know how fully imperative it is for me to lose the weight and lead the skinny life I have been wanting to live. My figure is not only constantly under huge scrutiny, but my eating habits are too. Losing weight would mean being in more auditions as an actor, voice actor, and singer, more gigs as an online reviewer, journalist, columnist, and writer, and more energy for me to push through as an artist. Even if my artistic endeavors and passions are not going to push through with flying colors, I can keep in mind the day job I intend to have teaching English to adults, young adults, and people in professional jobs who want to improve their grammar and overall expression of the English language and even be an English-language coach to actors. This means that I need to ensure that I do not let myself go, otherwise there is no way I will ever be having another professional gig if I were to go back to 15 stone (210 lbs or 95.25 kg) or worse. Ergo, I want all the great gigs, the awesome photo shoots, phenomenal job opportunities, and the professional career life and I cannot do it appearing like some big, horrible-looking, fat person.

In the immortal words of weight loss expert, host of Fat Families, and FATnosis specialist Steve Miller, I am too gorgeous to be fat and it’s time for me to get off my wobbly bums and melt that lard. And in the immortal words of Dr. Christian Jessen, it’s no longer what I’m eating, it’s now about what’s eating me.

There is no way I am ever going to wave the white flag on my weight loss goals and the skinny life I have been yearning for and dreaming of for longest time.

I hope you all enjoyed reading my post about my recent weight loss achievement and I will see you in the next submission.

Take care, stay fit, stay safe, and radiate with confidence even in these continuously trying times.