About a month back I hit a milestone, I went down to my pre-California weight.

Here’s a chart of my weight since August 2007, a few months before I moved to California.

Here are the events:

1. Move from Minneapolis to SF Bay
2. Visit Minneapolis
3. Visit Minneapolis
4. Leaving Yahoo!
5. Move to San José
6. Try iChange

The Basics

There’s nothing shocking. The more I ate and less I exercised, the more I gained weight. Travel was an easy way to gain weight because I never checked in regularly. Moving to a condo with an awesome gym made regular exercise a breeze.

I tried out iChange which offered one-on-one monitoring. That got me eating healthier food, so it put most of my calories to good use:

• Sugar and saturated fats were all but eliminated from my diet and slowly reintroduced when I could moderate them.
• Counting calories helped reset my internal calorie tracker. I still don’t do it enough, so I try to simply eat better.
• Water tastes better the more I drink it. I drink a lot of soda still, but there are days when I can completely avoid it.
• Exercising a lot is nice. I get to eat more. Exercising early works best for me.
• Eating more whole grains felt better. The food was flavorful.
• Balanced meals were tricky, though eating more fruit and vegetables made me less hungry for higher calorie items.
• I had to start by doing everything: eating better, exercising, etc. Doing one thing at a time was a failure. There were no shortcuts at the beginning.

Now I stay pretty much on track with losing weight. The days I gain a bit of weight, I understand why, and I am usually able to resolve it quickly. Therefore weight loss is no longer stressful.

So with about 10lbs less of weight from the beginning of this year, I can sling on a Moby-wrap with my son (when he decides to be born) and it’ll feel like nothing.