I had to tighten my belt this morning.
Not in a dramatic, infomercial “before and after” kind of way. I just grabbed my belt, went to the usual hole, and my pants started sliding. So I went one more. Cinched it down. Stood there for a second like an idiot, staring at the extra leather hanging past the buckle, thinking, “huh.”
That’s it. That’s the big moment. A guy in his bathroom realizing his pants are looser. Hallmark isn’t calling.
But here’s why it matters: the scale tells you a number. The belt tells you the truth. You can argue with a number. You can blame water weight, you can say the scale is wrong, you can weigh yourself three times and pick the one you like best. The belt doesn’t negotiate. It either fits in the same hole or it doesn’t. And today, it didn’t.
Then Someone Said Something #
I’m at work later that day, and a teammate looks at me and goes, “Hey, have you lost weight?”
I almost dropped my coffee.
Six weeks. Thirty-seven days on the streak. Sixty-four days without soda. Eighteen pounds down from my peak of 249, and this is the first time another human being has said something about it out loud.
I played it cool. “Yeah, a little bit. Working on it.” Like I haven’t been obsessively logging every meal and doing yoga in my bedroom every night before bed. Like I don’t have a whole dashboard tracking my protein intake. Just, you know, working on it. Casual.
But inside? Inside I was doing a victory lap around the entire building.
Why It Hits Different When Someone Else Sees It #
Here’s the thing about losing weight. For the first few weeks, it’s completely invisible. You’re doing all this work, showing up every day, saying no to things you want, eating protein powder for breakfast like some kind of gym bro, and nobody notices. Not a soul. You look in the mirror and you look the same. Your clothes fit the same. Your face looks the same. The only evidence that anything is happening is a line on a chart slowly going down.
That’s the hardest part. Not the exercise, not the diet, not even the soda. The hardest part is doing the work when nobody can see the results, including you.
I wrote about hitting under 240 three weeks ago, and at the time I said nobody had commented on the weight loss. That was 238. Now I’m at 231, another 7 pounds down, and apparently somewhere in those 7 pounds, the change crossed a threshold. It went from “only the scale knows” to “other people can see it.”
That’s a big deal. Not for the ego (okay, a little for the ego), but because it’s confirmation. It means the work is real. The boring, repetitive, unglamorous daily grind of showing up is actually doing something.
The Math of Boring #
Let me tell you what the last six weeks have actually looked like, because I think people imagine some kind of transformation montage. Rocky running up the steps. Sweaty gym sessions. Meal prep Sundays with matching containers.
Nope. Here’s the real version:
- Wake up. Two scoops of protein powder in coffee. Clif Bar. That’s 71 grams of protein before I leave the house.
- Go to work. Try to eat reasonably. Sometimes succeed. Sometimes there’s pizza.
- Come home. Log everything I ate. Look at the numbers. Feel good or feel bad about them.
- Before bed. Roll out the yoga mat. 15 to 20 minutes of Yoga with Adriene. Go to sleep.
- Repeat.
That’s it. That’s the whole program. There’s no secret. There’s no supplement. There’s no hack. It’s just doing the same boring things every single day and trusting that the math works out.
And the math does work out. 400-calorie daily deficit times 42 days (since the real push started) equals roughly 16,800 calories, which is about 4.8 pounds of fat. Except I’ve lost more than that, because the early weight comes off faster, because the soda elimination dropped water weight, because consistency compounds in ways the simple math doesn’t fully capture.
The method isn’t complicated. Four pillars. Show up. Track. Repeat. The only hard part is doing it when it feels like nothing is happening.
What the Belt Actually Means #
A belt notch is maybe half an inch, maybe three quarters of an inch. In the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing. But it’s physical proof that the numbers on the screen translate to changes on your actual body. It’s the difference between believing the data and feeling it wrapped around your waist at 7 AM on a Tuesday.
The scale said 231 this morning. That’s 18 pounds from my peak of 249, 13.3 from my starting weight of 244. My BMI went from 34.7 to 32.2. All of that is great, all of that is progress, but none of it made me feel as good as that belt sliding past the old hole.
Keep Going #
I’m on Day 37 of Streak #2. That’s 41% of the way to my 90-day goal. I’m 64 days without soda. I’m eating more protein than I ever have in my life. And for the first time, someone who isn’t me or my bathroom scale has noticed that something is different.
This is week six. The work is boring. The results are not.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up, put protein powder in my coffee, go to work, come home, log my food, do my yoga, and go to sleep. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before. Same as every day for the last 37 days.
The belt don’t lie. Keep showing up.