Business Insider – Christopher Kaufman grew up active, feeling like he could “eat anything” and not gain weight.
That changed when his mother died in 2005.
The products he started consuming were ultra-processed, which is often linked to weight gain.
Kaufman also didn’t move much throughout the day. He spent a decade working remotely at a technology firm before getting a doctorate in education, spending hours studying.
By 2022, at 57, he weighed about 208 pounds and had high blood pressure. He knew he needed to change.
In two years, Kaufman lost 50 pounds and lowered his blood pressure through changing his eating habits and adopting a more active lifestyle — without strict diets or strenuous workouts.
He got comfortable with weighing himself
Kaufman read studies that found weighing yourself every day leads to higher weight loss, more than checking once a week or twice a month.
“In fact, my weight loss sped up once I started doing that,” he said.
But starting the habit was “really rough.”
“I’m a technical nerd, so I go: ‘Is this scale broken? It can’t be me, right?’ So that was hard,” he said. Over time, though, keeping up the habit changed his relationship with the scale.
“You have to let go of the scale as the enemy and learn the scale is just a feedback mechanism.”
Seeing the numbers helped him better see what was working and what wasn’t.
“OK, what can we tweak here?” he said. “Oh, we can knock 100 calories off here, or we can reduce some carbs there.”
Ultimately, having more data helps him keep his weight down without going to extreme measures.
“It took me almost two years to accomplish it, but now I can manage and tweak meals and mix up exercise regimes, rather than slide … ”
