No Other Like Me (NOLM) aims to provide relatable weight loss experiences and reliable information to help you make informed health decisions. This blog will provide real-world experiences, suggestions, and tips, but it is not the end-all of information. It is your job to do your own research to ensure you make the best decisions concerning your health.
My Struggles Losing Weight
I was born and raised in the Caribbean, in the island nation of Jamaica. I migrated to Canada as an adult and lived between Canada and the United States for several years. As a result, I have experienced the many challenges of keeping my weight in check.
How it all began.
I can recall having no issues with my weight up to the age of nine. As I moved from one part of the island to another, my living condition changed. By the age of ten, I had packed on some excess weight. Then, after moving in with my dad, I began losing the weight. Slowly but surely, from age ten right into adulthood at the age of 27, the extra pounds started disappearing.
Gaining weight in my adult years.
Unfortunately, my living conditions and location changed once again. At age 27, I was 5 feet 8 inches tall and 127 pounds. From there, I progressively gained weight, reaching 198 pounds by the age of 37. At that point, I changed my lifestyle. My weight decreased to 155 pounds within a few months. Over the following months, it fluctuated between the 140s and 185 pounds, mostly settling in the 160s. With many changes in my life, I got my weight back down to the 140s at 48 years old. However, my goal is to get back in the 120s. I really could stay in the 140s, but I aim to see how close I can get to my youth weight.
My experiences are many, and each is priceless. However, summaries cannot compare to the minute details. Each person experiences something different when struggling to lose weight and keep it off. If I were to share the itty-bitty details of my journey, there would not be a book big or practical enough to hold the information.
My First Radio
I recall graduating from high school and getting my “first” job as a telephone technician in training at the Jamaica Telephone Company. There, I learned many things that I could easily relate to from my high school education. In high school, I had enjoyed the science subjects, so it was a joy to connect with the theory by seeing them implemented in the real world as I learned on the job.
I always liked to relate to what I am learning through practical applications. I recall building a radio based on what I learned while in high school. It was fascinating to see it work. It was also satisfying to allow my friends and family to use it. I enjoyed the expressions on their faces as they listened and looked at me in amazement.
Work for Experience, Not Money
I used to follow my father to work during holiday breaks. I have done many things with him and on my own. For example, I once accepted a position as a security guard at the company where my dad once worked. However, the boss expressed disapproval of my working there because of my progress in school. He thought I was choosing to do a job substandard to my education and intelligence.
My dad could not have cared less about my security guard position. Neither could I. I was getting countless, priceless experiences from my environment and the people with whom I interacted. The experience taught me things I could not have learned in school just by interacting with people with various levels of education.
Going above and beyond your designated role at work.
When I got my job with the Jamaica Telephone Company after high school, millions of experiences, in and out of school, enabled me to learn and understand new things, as I related to my past. I taught myself computer programming on the job by reading and observing how things worked. My boss used my skillset to computerise the department where I worked. After I went off to university, I worked during holiday breaks and even while school was in session.
On one of my holiday breaks, I met a university graduate who was recently employed by the department where I worked. He seemed fascinated by the programs I wrote and wanted to get up to speed quickly with programming. this university graduate looked at me and asked me to teach him everything. He had no idea what trigger went off in my head from that request because what I could do on the job was a combination of my entire life experiences to that point. It would be impossible to give him the details and how I connected things in my head.
Everything Imitates Nature!
From my studies of the human body in Biology, I can relate the human body with a car and how a car works based on man’s understanding of the human body. For example, the car needs gas just like we need food. Cars have a carburettor, or fuel injector, which mixes fuel and air for the engine. It’s like a combination of the functions of the heart and lungs in the human body.
Everything about cars implements or imitates something in nature, whether the human body or other animals or insects. Even if technology seems brand-new, it is always something studied and reused from nature. For example, Wi-Fi came from the way bats communicate. Nothing is new, and everything is related. When we find the connections, our ability to learn and understand ourselves and things in life explodes.
Find the connections in life!
Our ability to form connections allows us to read a single mathematics book, practice a bit, and then solve complicated problems in life. Problems we have never seen before. Therefore, we should aim to understand and apply natural principles, as opposed to cramming information. If we “cram,” we will likely forget because we cannot relate and connect what we are learning to anything in nature.
We need to restore nature's course.
Going natural is key to restoring normalcy. We can see this from our observations of nature. As man, we have destroyed the natural world in countless ways, resulting in major problems. When we look at the number of animals that have become extinct and many others on the verge of doing so, we only can blame ourselves for interfering with nature.
Sometimes, we do our best to care for abandoned animals because their parents got killed by us. We take them into a semi-natural environment and nurse them to health. Then, when they are at an acceptable stage, we reintroduce them to nature. However, when we release them into the natural environment, they may not survive. They may not adapt to gaining the vital skills they need to survive, skills they would have gotten from their birth parents.
Such situations can be very challenging but are similar to weight loss. We can damage our natural system through unhealthy living habits. In doing so, we may destroy our body’s ability to function as it should, resulting in various symptoms and illnesses, including becoming overweight. Being overweight is just one consequence of our unhealthy lifestyle, resulting from our deviation from what is natural to us. By fixing this deviation, we will lose weight. Also, as we become healthy, we realise that other illnesses, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, become less severe or even go away.
The (Unfortunate) Issue with Most People
Doing chemotherapy as cancer treatment makes no sense if we are unwilling to adjust our diet and lifestyle to prevent it from recurring. Unfortunately, this is the issue with most people: they only fix a single result of the problem and not the problem itself. Being overweight is a result of the problem of an unhealthy lifestyle. If we only intend to lose weight, it is like putting a band-aid on a gaping gash in our side. If fast weight loss is your aim, I suggest you stop reading at this point.
Adapting to a healthy lifestyle is easier than you might think.
As hard as lifetime adaptation may sound, it may be easier than we initially think. On many occasions, I have introduced my children to food that they initially refused, only to taste it and realise it tastes better than they thought. I have seen others making serious decisions to eat less and remove unnatural foods from their diet. Then, after a while, they decided to treat themselves to some junk food and realised that they lost the taste they had for it. If we give ourselves enough time to adapt, we are likely to be surprised by the results.
Adaptation is natural and key to us surviving and losing weight. Animals in the wild constantly adapt to changes to survive. Those of us humans who do likewise will likely outdo those who don’t. As I moved from country to country and city to city, had children, changed jobs and battled several other changes in my life, I had to adapt to my environment. For me, adaptation meant finding ways to eat right and exercise enough to keep in shape. My objective is to help others stay motivated and adapt to changes so they may maintain good health.
No Other Like Me aims to deliver relatable experiences and information.
As an individual who was in great shape and then packed on some extra pounds, I became aware of the fact that I felt different, in a bad way, as I gained the weight. Sometimes, I felt like I would die attempting to do things I effortlessly did when in great physical shape. This frequent exhaustion was one thing that prompted me to go back to my former healthy lifestyle. However, those of us who have always known ourselves to be overweight may have no idea of how great we can feel until we have lost the weight. I have had the pleasure of seeing people I helped reach a healthy state be amazed at how great and energetic they feel.
It is invigorating at 50 years old to run after a bus and leave your teenage child in the dust, shouting, “Daddy, wait on me!” All of us may not be able to get to this stage. On the other hand, some may even surpass it. Whatever progress we make, however small it may be, should be of great encouragement because our situations are unique.
My objective is to give others enough relatable information that will allow them to form their own connections and come up with their own ideas of what is required of them to get healthy and lose weight. Weight loss is not about a few weeks or months of self-deprivation but about adapting to and maintaining a natural lifestyle that we enjoy and can live with for the rest of our lives.
To continue reading, visit the post on optimising results.
