160kg. Asked a girl out, got my heart broken, pushed myself harder than I ever did before. Lost 10kg in five weeks.

I've been a fat guy my entire life. The fattest I ever got was 170kg, which cost me job opportunities, relationships and my health. A few years ago I went for bariatric surgery and lost about 40kg. Sounds good? Well I was one of the few who backslided and put the weight back on. The guilt I feel about "wasting" this opportunity is immense, but that's in the past.

During lockdown last year, I gained a hell of a lot of weight and I somehow reached 160kg going into 2021. I was aghast at myself. How could I have wasted all the progress I made from the surgery? I felt like a guy who won the lottery and after spending like a madman, waking up broke.

About a month ago I asked out a girl I like and somehow, she said yes. I couldn't believe it. She took a while to answer though, and while she was thinking about it, I decided to go for a short run every day. Nothing fancy, just 2.5km that I could get done in half an hour (I jog very slowly) before work. My thinking was that whatever miniscule progress I could make would give me a bit of confidence going into the date. By the time she said yes, I had already developed a routine of sorts. Again, nothing fancy. But no matter how I busy I was, I would do my 2.5km every day, morning or night.

The date went well. Better I could have hoped. Then the kicker - she didn't want a second one. She was really nice about it, but I somehow couldn't help but wonder if she'd say yes if I weighed as much as a regular person. I was devastated but tried not to show it.

But I didn't stop my routine. Unlike all the previous instances where I would try and get fit, only to lose interest, I just kept running. Every day, I pulled on my shoes and ran. I listened to everything on my runs - rock music, podcasts, YouTube series, even Brooklyn 99. I looked at it as a break from work and from sitting around at home. Instead of wasting hours online like I usually do, I would devote at least 30 minutes of that time to my daily run.

The wonderful thing is the more I ran, the less I felt like eating. I was the guy who would eat a tub of Ben and Jerry's before bed. Order two mains because I couldn't decide which one to choose. I couldn't ever imagine myself doing intermittent fasting. But somehow I forced myself to think of it as a numbers game. I have a set amount of calories per day. Everything I eat - everything, even a cashew nut - gets written down in my MyFitness app. I began looking at calorie counts. It was such a waste "spending" a thousand calories on one burger from BK, especially when I would get hungry again later. It made more sense to fill up on fish and brown rice and garlic-roasted veggies, and eat more of those. It's like the old Limmy joke - which is heavier, a kilo of steel or a kilo of feathers? You need a tiny bit of steel to hit a kilo, but a hell of a lot of feathers to reach the same amount. Same like calories.

It was magical stepping on the scale and seeing the numbers go down. It is magical walking around and not wanting to die from back pain. I fit a little better in my trousers now. I get less bodyaches. And it was absolutely crazy and unexpected that I could begin running longer distances. On the advice of a friend, I dialled it up to 5k. I had run 5k in one sitting exactly once in my life, and collapsed immediately. To my own astonishment, I'm doing 5k runs every day now. Just today, I managed to hit under an hour for my run. This is a timing I have never managed to achieve in my life, ever, and not even when I weighed much less than I do today.

I want to keep going. I want to be the best version of myself. And I want to do this for myself, and not for anyone else. The girl who said no is still a friend, and she sends me encouraging messages from time to time. Somehow, it's different this time. I don't want to stop just because she doesn't want to go out with me. I'm not doing this because I harbour some foolish hope of going back to that girl when I'm fitter and asking her out again, expecting a different answer. No, I respect her decision. Instead, I'm doing this for myself. I'm running because I want to lose weight, because I like it, and because it's better for me than sitting on my arse at home. I'm on the first step of this journey, and I don't want it to be my last.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Thank you everyone who commented, it means a lot to me and I really appreciate it. I hope to update soon with more good news!