A man gained weight eating ultra-processed foods he thought were healthy. Now, he’s 50 pounds lighter thanks to 3 habits.

Christopher Kaufman’s 50-pound weight gain didn’t come all at once. If anything, it took over a decade to steadily climb.

“I was about 10-15 pounds overweight once we got into my 40s,” Kaufman told Business Insider. But it was in my 50s when I said ‘Oh, we’ve got a problem here.'”

Kaufman grew up active, feeling like he could “eat anything” and not gain weight. That changed when his mother died in 2005 and he was exposed to toxic mold when cleaning out her house.

Shortly after, blood tests found he had developed a sensitivity to gluten, dairy, and yeast. He changed his diet to gluten-free and some cow-free dairy alternatives. While they reduced his symptoms, he started gaining weight. The tapioca-flour pretzels and coconut milk products he was consuming were ultra-processed, which are often linked to weight gain.

Kaufman also didn’t move much throughout the day. He spent a decade working remotely at a Fortune 100 technology firm before getting a doctorate in education, spending hours studying.

By 2022, at 57, he weighed around 208 pounds and had high blood pressure. He knew he needed to change his lifestyle. “I said, well, you know what? I’ve run a marathon,” he said. “I can do this.”

In two years, Kaufman lost 50 pounds and lowered his blood pressure through changing his eating habits and adopting a more active lifestyle — without strict diets or strenuous workouts.

“I’ve got the skills to look at the activities versus the calories and now I can just play around with these,” he said. “It’s continuous improvement.”

He cut down on ultra-processed foods

Kaufman started focusing on whole foods and reducing his ultra-processed intake. While he didn’t follow any one specific diet, his most closely resembled a Blue Zones diet, based on a study of the world’s longest-living populations.

He started to examine the ratio of carbs on his plate to protein and fiber. Back when Kaufman was a runner (he ran the LA Marathon 20 years ago), he got into the habit of loading up on carbs for energy. Now, he realized, he wasn’t moving enough to justify as many carbs as he ate.

“That first step of lowering the carbs so that they balance with the protein and fiber, that started the weight loss,” he said.

Now, he said he adjusts his carb intake based on the day and the planned activity. He’ll eat more if he plans on doing yard work for two hours and could use the energy. He also changes how much he eats based on the time of day, eating a bigger meal at breakfast or lunch depending on when he plans to exercise.

He said being mindful of what he eats — and how much of it — helps him indulge in treats. “I’m going to have salmon with steamed cabbage, but that’s just zero carbs,” he said. “So I can have 3 ounces of some coconut chocolate ice cream.”

He started taking walking desk breaks

Kaufman, now an adjunct professor at both Westcliff University and Southern California State University, follows the pomodoro technique whenever he researches class lectures or writes his book. He works for 25-minute sprints before breaking for five minutes.

He started using those built-in breaks to get up and walk around. “I saw that when I made myself get up and walk around consistently, I lost more weight,” he said.

He also works out about once a day, either swimming in his pool or walking through his hilly California neighborhood. “It’s not the kind of serious swimming that I used to do when I was younger,” he said. “It’s just flapping around, freestyle.”

The only other activity he does is house chores, like cleaning the yard or pool, building something, or carrying heavy objects in and out of the house. The small movements add up and help him burn more calories.

He got comfortable with weighing himself

Kaufman read studies that found weighing yourself every day leads to higher weight loss, more than checking once a week or twice a month. “In fact, my weight loss sped up once I started doing that,” he said.

However, starting the habit was “really rough.”

“I’m a technical nerd, so I go, ‘Is this scale broken? It can’t be me, right?’ So that was hard,” he said. Over time, though, he said keeping up the habit changed his relationship to the scale.

“You have to let go of the scale as the enemy and learn the scale is just a feedback mechanism,” he said, looking for a “rolling average” rather than fixating on one number, which could greatly vary by what he ate that day.

Seeing the numbers helped him better see what was working and what wasn’t. “Ok, what can we tweak here?” he said. “Oh, we can knock 100 calories off here, or we can reduce some carbs there.”

Ultimately, having more data helps him keep his weight down without going to extreme measures.

“It took me almost two years to accomplish it, but now I can manage and tweak meals and mix up exercise regimes, rather than slide,” he said. “It’s slow, it’s gradual, and it’s for life.”

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