I tried to weigh myself before writing this, but the batteries in my scale are dead.
Maybe that’s fitting.
The Starting Point
Last January, I hit an all-time high of 260 pounds. At 6'4", I carry weight better than most—I wasn’t completely round—but I knew I needed to change something.
I started simple. Cut the obvious sugar. Cut the caffeine. Then I discovered that “obvious” was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. My daily 11-ounce bottle of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice? Thirty-one grams of sugar. Nearly as much as a can of soda. Breakfast, the meal we’re told is the healthy foundation of the day, was sabotaging me before I got to my desk.
I simplified further: water only.
What Worked
Cutting a daily influx of easy energy was hard. The first two weeks were miserable. But it worked.
Ten pounds a month. Three months. Thirty pounds gone.
I didn’t change my exercise routine, which is to say I continued my highly sedentary existence in front of the computer. I know from prior experience that adding daily exercise would have accelerated things. But I didn’t, and it still worked. Diet alone was enough to move the needle—significantly.
I used a technique that helped me stick with it: bracelets.
I added a simple bracelet to my wrist for each thing I was cutting out. One for sugar. One for caffeine. One for foods with zero nutritional value—potato chips, french fries, the usual suspects. The rule was simple: I could eat any of those things whenever I wanted, but I had to remove the associated bracelet first.
It sounds almost too simple to work. But there’s something about a physical reminder, a small ritual of removal, that made me pause. Most of the time, the pause was enough. I removed a bracelet a few times in those first three months, but not often. The weight kept coming off.
What Didn’t
Then I took a week away from my normal routine.
Being out of my environment made it easy to let the diet slide—it always does—and when I came back, work exploded. The remainder of 2025 became a blur of deadlines and projects—some self-imposed. I convinced myself I needed the caffeine to keep going. The sugar followed. Soon the bracelets were off my wrist and in a drawer somewhere, and I was back to my old habits.
Here’s what I know now: the diet worked, but it wasn’t sustainable without something else. Exercise, probably. Even a long walk several times a week would have given me energy that didn’t come from a coffee cup or the vending machine. But sitting in front of a screen for twelve hours a day, the quick fix of caffeine and sugar felt necessary. It wasn’t. But it felt that way.
The Restart
Now it’s 2026, and I assume I’m back around 260. I don’t know for certain because—again—the batteries in my scale are dead.
I’m choosing to see this as an opportunity rather than a failure. I know the bracelets work. I know cutting sugar and caffeine works. I know what thirty pounds feels like—the difference in how clothes fit, how stairs feel, how much easier it is to move through the world.
I also know what derailed me last time: travel, stress, and the absence of any physical activity to fall back on when discipline faltered.
This year, I’m starting the bracelets again. But I’m also adding the walks. Not a gym membership I won’t use. Not a workout regimen I’ll abandon by February. Just walks. Outside. Away from the screen.
Will I lose weight this year? I don’t know. But I’m going to find some batteries and find out where I’m starting from.
Then I’m going to start.