LIKE MANY, MICHAEL Molina came out of the pandemic in the worst shape of his life.
The Los Angeles-based technical project manager was working overtime at a new job, while also working towards his MBA. Pair both of those things with a global-wide shutdown, and he packed on a few unwanted pounds. As the gates lifted and his work started to slow down, he realized he wasn’t comfortable in his body, and decided to do something about it.
In May of 2022 set a goal to lose 45 pounds by his 30th birthday—a mere six months away. He did—and kept going. Since the start of his journey, he’s lost a hundred pounds. Here’s how.
MEN’S HEALTH: How did you get started on your weight loss journey?
MICHAEL MOLINA: In 2018, I started working at a healthcare startup, and was working 60-ish hours [per week]. I was also getting my MBA at the same time, and in total I was working upwards of 80 hours a week. Between all that, and then moving into the pandemic, I was eating terribly. I would find myself going to pick up takeout simply because I had a desire to get out of the house and bring a little bit of variety into my day. And, I was only working out when I could.
Eventually, my parents and my family kindly told me, ‘you’re looking a little heavy, you might want to do something about it’. I weighed in just around 300 pounds at the time. This was in early May 2022, and so I told myself I wanted to lose 45 pounds before I turned 30 in October. My work schedule opened up a bit, and I started working out twice a day. I was doing 15 to 20 minute weight lifting in the morning, followed by 30 minutes of cardio, which was an elliptical session. After work, I would swim about a half mile.
My prior health history made me realize that elliptical and pool worked well for me. Back in high school, I was playing football, and I had an ACL tear my senior year. And I tore my other one in college just playing intramural football. So I realized low impact workouts with the elliptical and swimming are two things that work for me with my injuries. My parents had put me in a swim program early in life as a way to build up my lungs when I was diagnosed with asthma. So, I had always been a strong swimmer. And, luckily, I have access to a pool where I’m able to swim privately. So that routine worked well for me.
MH: What tips and tricks did you do to help you stay on top of it?
MM: I’ve always been a huge tech person. Even before [having an] Apple Watch, I was wearing a Nike Fuelband for a few years when I was in college doing some of my more basic workouts.
Of course, any piece of technology is not going to suddenly transform you. You still have to be motivated to do [the work], right? So for me, it was [about] using my Apple Watch as a tool to help me stay on track, and would help me adjust my workouts as I started getting better. So for example, once I hit my 45-pound [weight loss] mark, I realized that my workouts needed to pick up a bit more for me to keep up my weight loss.
So, my half mile swims became a mile swim, my 30-minute elliptical workout became a 45-minute elliptical workout. Because I was tracking my calorie [burn] using the watch, I was able to use it to determine how to I adjust my workouts to keep up my pace.
Plus, it was just great for tracking my workouts, especially swimming. The pool I swim in is about 15 yards long, so it’s not Olympic sized. I’m doing 60 laps, or 120 back and forth, to do the full mile, so it’s really easy to lose count of where you’re at.
And, of course, I knew I had to operate on a calorie deficit [to lose weight]. The watch let me know how many calories I’d burn. With a rough estimate of my calorie intake, I was able to know if I was on track without having to dedicate all my time to calorie counting.
MH: What else do you think helped you?
MM: I just made the real conscious choice that I was going to working out in the morning and not after work. Choosing to get up at 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. every day to work out before work really made all the difference. It’s a lot easier to make before your day officially starts. After [work], I’m more likely to be tired, or for something to come up. Of course, that’s just what works for me. In general, though, getting into a routine that works is a game changer.
Setting little milestones for myself also really helped me stay on track. I set artificial rewards for myself—things that I wanted to buy, but told myself I’d have to earn. For example, I told myself I’d upgrade my iPad if I lost 100 pounds. I haven’t bought one yet, but intend to soon.
Luckily for me as well, I had a huge support system. My family helped keep me going. My friends helped me keep going. I would get compliments every time I saw them, and that really added up throughout the journey.
MH: What kind of nutrition changes did you make?
MM: I figured logging every meal would be overwhelming and time consuming. I would focus on just having a ballpark idea of how much I was eating at each meal, instead. The goal was to keep each meal somewhere between 500 to 700 calories, while going high on protein and low on carbs.
A lot of fad diets try to eliminate carbs entirely, and I didn’t believe that was sustainable for me. So, my approach was simply to keep the carbs low. Meaning, I would try to avoid them when possible, but acknowledged that having some toast with breakfast or sandwich wasn’t the end of the world. When ordering food at any sort of restaurant, I would look at the calories counts. A lot of burgers and sandwiches on their own might be under 700 calories, so the trick was learning to skip the combo meals.
MH: What would you tell yourself when you were running low on motivation?
MM: Just so long as you have more good days than bad, you’re going to stay on track. You’re going to stay ahead. This is a very long marathon, not a sprint. If you don’t have a few cheat meals or take some time to enjoy it, it’s going to be a lot harder to stay on track long term. The important thing is to follow your regimen most of the time, not all the time.
I also had to learn to be patient. The hardest thing during all this was fighting the weight loss plateaus. During the first 6 months I was didn’t really get any, and I lost 50 pounds. But, it took a whole the year to go from 80 pounds lost to 100. I had to learn that weight loss isn’t linear. When you’re 215 pounds it’s going to take a lot more time and effort to lose 1 pound than when you’re 280 pounds—and that’s okay. Just keep trying.
