I do need to get into better shape as well.
My body type is such that I'll never even approach "normal" BMI. At 6'5", I'm supposed to be somewhere between 190-210#. I think I'd look emaciated anything below 220. My doctor has one of these Inbody scanners in his office, and after looking at my results expressly told me that BMI is completely irrelevant for me. 235# seems like a feasible lean weight for me.
That said, I've been lazy of late, and I'm probably pushing 265# right now. That's just not right.
Luckily, at 40, I'm still in the age range where it's not particularly difficult. I'm planning to cut back on the beer, adding in some strength exercises, and probably do a lot more walking. My diet isn't even bad [except the beer], so if I drop those barley-infused calories, I should be able to get it back into reasonable levels soon.
For me, the biggest battle is diet. Growing up my little brother and I basically ate competitively to get the most before the good stuff was gone from the pantry. We'd have dinner, then a full box of cereal each, then a full bag of chips each. And that would all count as one meal. And we were so lean (16h/day of hockey) that my uncles nonstop joked we looked sickly.
By the time I was a late-teen, it got worse on a social level because my friends were all *amazed* at what I could put away, and I enjoyed wowing them. Nevertheless, my activity level isn't what it was, and my basal metabolism 15 years later is also diminishing. So I need to stop that.
On NYD, I was 250 and got down to 230 by March by simply saying "OK, my fist is this big (a bigger fist than normal), that looks like a "normal people" amount of food to eat at once." And I made this rule. I could eat whatever I wanted. AND I could eat as much as I wanted. With one stipulation. It had to happen in fist sized portions, and in between each portion I had to wait 20 minutes.
And it worked! Because I just stopped being hungry after one or two fists.
Months later it occurred to me that this was not painful and was successful ... and was basically just an unsophisticated variety of counting calories. With that in mind (and mostly emphasizing the fact that I didn't have the hunger pains I expected for "counting calories"), I decided to just get sophisticated.
So I went into a medical lab after hours and measured my own resting metabolism by indirect calorimetry. Which gave me a "break even" point. I know that if I eat less than 2,500 calories per day, I'll lose weight. And that's been pretty reliable.
Best of all, because I was eating a STUPID amount of food before, this has also been really easy. Maybe I've never once spent a day or gone to sleep hungry the whole time.
