But as the years went by and my weight crept up, my wife, and my concerned parents, occasionally said things about my weight and eating habits. “Are you sure you need another piece of cake?” my wife would ask. “You know, Hillel, you’re getting heavier,” my mother would note.

I spent a good many years getting insulted by these comments. Why weren’t people willing to accept me as I was? Why did my eating habits have to be a bone of contention?

They didn’t understand — I needed that much food, and all they were doing was distancing me.

I was not interested in hearing from anyone that I ate too much cholent or too many hamburgers, and the more comments I heard from people about the amount I was eating, the more I told myself that it was none of their business, and I’m not fat. I wasn’t the guy who had trouble fitting through the door, or who had to wear oversized suspenders to keep his pants from succumbing to gravity. I was just a regular guy with a regular potbelly. Who doesn’t go up a couple of sizes after they get married? I told myself. It’s normal.

It was a cycle. Someone would make a comment, I would get annoyed with them, I would convince myself that my weight wasn’t really a problem — until I would be faced with stark evidence to the contrary, such as when I found myself huffing and puffing up a flight of steps or groaning as I got out of the car. Then, I would decide, of my own accord, to do something.

At one point, I went on the Weight Watchers diet. But that lasted only three months, because I couldn’t handle the thought of having to live in a world of dietary restrictions while everyone else was eating whatever they wanted.

Another time, I went on the South Beach diet, which did not restrict calorie intake. I quit after 24 hours, because I couldn’t handle the weird eating patterns the diet recommended.

Once, a friend of mine told me that he lost quite a few pounds after cutting out sugar and replacing it with Splenda. I decided to do the same, switching from regular soda to diet soda and buying industrial quantities of Splenda. But I didn’t lose even one pound as a result.

After each failed attempt to lose weight, I comforted myself with the thought that I wasn’t really fat. This is just the way Hashem made me, I thought. I have to accept it, and so does everyone else.

My weight reached new highs —or lows, depending how you look at it — when I started preparing the kids’ snacks at night. As I packed potato chips and wafers into their lunch bags, I packed plenty into my own mouth at the same time.

When my wife was in a different room, or after she went to sleep, I would sneak my own snack bags and then hide the wrappers in the garbage. Potato chips were particularly addictive for me: once I started eating them, I couldn’t stop. In general, it was easier for me to cut out a particular food than to try to partake of it in moderation.

Four years ago, when I weighed about 240 pounds, I decided to cut out all candy, potato chips, and juice. I don’t even remember what triggered that decision. No one was breathing down my back at that point, so I wasn’t feeling defensive. Maybe I read an article about diabetes and started thinking about the link between eating and health. Honestly, I can’t pinpoint what made me do it. But I really stuck to my resolution. Instead of noshing on Sour Sticks and Dipsy Doodles, I bought myself mangoes, pineapples, and watermelon.

I started my new eating plan in the winter, and that summer, when I went out to play baseball, I had none of the cramping in my legs that I had experienced in previous years. That motivated me to push myself even further.

I came across a program that calculates the caloric values of some two million foods, from chopped liver to potato knishes. Unlike Weight Watchers, where you have to constantly count points, this program works on a simple mathematical calculation: the number of calories you eat minus the number of calories you burn equals the amount of weight you lose — or gain.

Until I saw the numbers in front of my eyes, I never consciously recognized that my weight gain was purely a function of the excess calories I was putting into my mouth. Oh, of course I knew that eating too much makes you gain weight, but seeing the stark math — if you eat X calories in a week, you’re going to gain Y number of pounds — forced me to confront the reality that I was eating far more than my body needed. Cutting out junk food was a good start, but until I stopped overeating, I’d never reach a healthy weight.

At that point, weight loss became an exercise in balancing my calorie “budget” and making sure I burned more calories than I consumed. I would input my planned food intake for the day, using saved settings such as “Monday supper” (hamburgers, mashed potatoes, and green beans) as shortcuts, and then adjust the amount I ate to match the calorie allowance I had based on my body mass index and the amount of weight I wanted to lose every week.

I was still eating whatever types of food I wanted — I was just limiting the portion sizes. On Shabbos, I didn’t pay any attention to portion sizes, but I did continue to skip the extras, avoiding cake and other junk.

In the beginning, I was hungry. I just didn’t feel satisfied after eating one chicken quarter or one sandwich. I had to keep telling myself that what my body craved and what it needed were two different things. My stomach didn’t have to feel full in order for me to stop eating.

At one point, my wife mentioned to her friend, who works as a personal trainer, that I was using this program. “Does he use the nutritional part of it, or just the calorie-counting part?” she asked.

When my wife posed the question to me, I had no idea what she was talking about. But the question opened up a new vista for me. I began looking into the program’s nutritional-planning function, which categorizes foods into proteins, carbohydrates, and fats and gives nutritional facts about each food. Previously, I had looked at food primarily as a way to quell hunger and please my palate. I had always known that certain foods were healthier than others, but that knowledge hadn’t really trickled down into my eating habits. Now, I began to internalize the idea that the food I ate was meant to actually do work for my body and keep it in good working order.

From the program, I also learned that appetite isn’t just something that happens to you — it’s something that you can gain control over, by eating the right foods at the right times. Upon learning that sugar makes you want to eat more, while protein and fiber provide a feeling of satiation, I began introducing more of the latter into my diet and cutting out much of the former.

In the past, I had eaten whatever was available, or whatever I was in the mood for. Now, for the first time, I actively planned what I was going to eat, based on what my body needed, not necessarily on how hungry I felt and the type of food I craved. It was a completely new way of eating.

This isn’t about weight loss, I realized. It’s about maturity. Little kids eat junk. They also make messes, throw tantrums, and forget to do their homework. Adults control themselves.

As my diet shifted to include things like whole grains, low-fat cheese, and vegetables, I started to hear a whole new variety of snide comments from relatives and friends who kidded me about the “dog food” I was eating. Or maybe they were just jealous of the weight I was losing. In any event, I ignored them. I wasn’t changing my eating habits for anyone else; I was doing it for myself. Yes, I was giving up some gastronomic pleasures, but in exchange, I had the pleasure of feeling good about the choices I was making.

I also felt better physically. No longer did I have to reach for Tums every night after supper; heartburn was a thing of the past.

In a year and a half, I went down four sizes, and my belt tightened by five or six notches. As the inches melted away, I gave away 12 suits. My wife was delighted with my new appearance. “I don’t think you realize how bad you looked 40 pounds ago,” she remarked.

In the process of adopting healthier eating habits, I realized that my sedentary lifestyle had to change as well. As a typical yeshivish guy, however, I wasn’t about to sit on the floor and contort my body into weird positions. Nor did I have the time to get out to the gym. I started doing the treadmill, but I found it monotonous and aimless, so I did some research to find a better alternative. In the course of my research, I learned about high-intensity interval training (HIIT), in which you alternate short bursts of intense exercise with low-intensity activity. The HIIT workout was under 30 minutes — short enough to fit into my lunch break — and its varied routine kept the workout interesting. I also started doing strength training twice a week, watching a male fitness trainer and following his workouts.

Exercise helped me lose weight, but not as quickly as I would have liked. I consulted with a dietician, who explained to me that my muscle mass was probably increasing, and since muscle is denser than fat, it made sense that my weight loss would slow down or plateau. But at that point, I wasn’t as concerned with weight loss as with taking good care of my body. Even if the scale didn’t register progress, I looked good and felt vibrant and alert. I no longer felt tired after walking up two flights of steps, nor did my body groan each time I bent down.

With time, I stopped feeling hungry after eating a normal-sized meal. Today, I can’t even imagine putting a candy bar or a potato chip into my mouth. I’ve lost all craving for that garbage.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy eating anymore. I still eat foods that I like, but they’re healthy foods, and in controlled portions. I now substitute sweet potatoes for regular potatoes to go along with my schnitzel and have more salads than fries with my hamburgers. When I go out to a simchah or a restaurant, I eat what everyone else is eating, because I don’t want to feel deprived or be the only nerd eating Brussels sprouts. Shabbos is the only time of the week that I eat plain sugars; I eat cake on Shabbos morning and ice cream at Shalosh Seudos. On Yom Tov, too, I allow myself to eat whatever I want, even though it means I suffer from heartburn and feel shleppy after every seudah.

People comment that I’m good at sticking to my diet (not the same people who josh me about the dog food). “I’m not on a diet,” I tell them. “I’m just eating as a human being should.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 643)