Watch out for weight gain after early retirement! A recent early retiree’s tips and observations…
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| Cucumber Falls, Ohiopyle State Park, PA |
Johnny Damon: “I’m gaining weight the right way: I’m drinking beer.”
In July 2020, when my wife and I were preparing to sell our home in anticipation for our early retirement, I weighed 172 pounds. That was probably due to the stress of downsizing and the need to lift heavy objects like furniture. Few months prior to that, I had weighed around 175 pounds.
Even though downsizing was hard work, I did appreciate the fact that I was trimmer going into my early retirement. Fast forward to around May of 2021, when I weighed (gulp!) 180 pounds! How did this happen?
There were many reasons for this weight gain:
- I was celebrating our early retirement early
My supervisor had given me a 12 pack bottle of Sam Adams beer for my retirement gift on my last day. Of course I couldn’t let that go to waste!
A week prior to that gift, I also purchased a 12 pack of IPA (India Pale Ale) beer from a local supermarket to celebrate our retirement.
I was having a beer feast for the last 2 weeks prior to us needing to move out of our home. I guess that was the start of my weight gain.
- Our family kept feeding us when we visited them!
Our first destination as soon as we sold our home and left our home of 14 years in Pennsylvania, was to our brother’s place in North Carolina. Soon as we got there, we started to eat like pigs! My brother is an awesome chef. He had prepared pasta with chicken parmigiana for us to eat that first day, and we didn’t stop eating for the next two weeks.
He would cook us more delicious food and in gigantic portions. Well, the portion thing was on me. I was the one who ate so much…
We also did local take out food ranging from pizzas, Cajun food, and to fast food. I would say the food I ate those two weeks probably equaled my usual food intake for a typical month.
When we arrived at New York City where our parents live, eating in huge portions didn’t let up! Our moms would feed us meats, seafoods, fritters, and noodles all day. We would also eat fast food takeout much more often.
- Even when we were away from family, we ate a lot!
When we arrived at our first destination, Ocean City, for a month, it felt like a vacation. We felt happy that we were actually doing this retirement thing!
We bought way too much food and snacks to celebrate our retirement. We ate too much takeout food as well.
This continued on to Atlantic Beach where we bought beers and sparkling wines to celebrate the holidays. We did sober up after the holidays, but not the food. We still ate takeout food on a regular basis after that…
All in all, all these food and drinks we enjoyed added up. I started to feel lethargic and slow come April and May (2021). When we went to Claysburg (Pennsylvania) for the month of April, I was winded after lifting our luggage to our Airbnb rental, which was on the second floor.
I had to take a good few minutes to catch my breath! This was something I rarely noticed up until then…
Month of May was even worse. I must’ve eaten more fast food that month (McDonald’s, Burger King, Five Guys, Chick Fil A, Chinese food) than I can ever remember.
I don’t have to tell you what that did to my health and to my waist. It ballooned my weight to 180 pounds, which was the highest weight of my life.
I needed to change that!
By some luck, we saw a documentary called “What the Health?” on Netflix. This is a documentary about the food industry and how it affects our health. I was sold on going vegan after watching this and one other documentary called “The Game Changers.”
I knew my health wasn’t going to get better on its own, and I needed to change my diet. Even though I was eating whole grains, no sugar, and limited meat/seafood, I knew in my heart that food we eat has lot to do with how we feel and function.
We started our vegan journey early June. We couldn’t completely wean off of seafood which we had already bought, so we did the transition slowly.
We did however cut out all animal products including meats, poultry, eggs, and milk based products (yogurt, cheeses, dressings made from dairy).
Instead of animal products, we bought lots of beans, tofu, vegetables, and fruits. We cooked more often. Our usual go to takeout places like Chick Fil A, Jimmy John’s, Subway, and pizza joints have been replaced by Chipotle, which offers vegan options, and Chinese takeout, which offers limited vegan options.
The end result of that is by end of June (2021), I had lost about 3 pounds (Yes!). The summer shorts that was so tight I couldn’t button, is now loose enough that I can button!
I’ll be the first to admit we’ve only started this journey few months ago, so we’re not sure how it’ll turn out. What we can say is that we both like this diet (so far) as we’ve already noticed two things:
- I am no longer out of breath moving our luggage to our rental.
- We both lost weight since we started this journey.
Believe it or not, I am not missing meats, cheeses, or eggs. I thought I was going to be hungry all the time, but that hasn’t been the case. So far, I feel energetic and feel lighter. The last point may be a placebo effect, so I’ll see what happens after say a year later…
In conclusion:
Diet, or choosing what to eat, is a personal choice. We did our own research on what is considered the healthiest diet, and time and time again, vegan diet came out near the top. Do your own research and figure out what works you, as everyone is different.
We do not wish to impose our new diet on anyone else. We just want our readers to know what we’re up to and why we decided to go vegan. Our choice to go vegan was for personal reasons (wanting to lose weight I had gained). We may or may not stick to this diet in the future, as we’ve only done this for few months…
We’re so thankful for our early retirement. It had given us so much positives so far. Weight gain, unfortunately, wasn’t one of the positives!
Because of much less stress from not needing to work, coupled with the fact that we’re living a lifestyle we used to dream about, weight gain, in retrospect, was an inevitable conclusion. The negative effects of weight gain were noticeable and we needed to change.
We’ve taken the first step to getting healthy and we’ll see how this lifestyle goes…
Please root for us as we embark on this journey to go vegan. Please stay tuned for more updates on our journey after retiring early and after going vegan!
Thank you all for reading!
Jake
Wandering Money Pig
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