Over the past year, whenever I would lose weight, I’d joke that it was due to the Depression Diet of sleeping all the time and not eating. Of course, I know that’s not healthy.

Some time late last year, I had a bit of a wake up call in regards to my health. I have fatty liver disease, which is a complication associated with Type 2 diabetes, which I also have. I’m relatively young (43 is young ok) and I’m taking medication, so everything’s still functioning, but I know this isn’t great news for overall health.

I’ve never been skinny, but I never thought of myself as being too fat either. Maybe it’s a delusion, I don’t know. I look myself in the mirror, and I generally like what I see. I think that’s why I’ve been in denial for all this time that my insides don’t seem to match my outsides.

But you know, it’s never too late to change. It’s never too late to change one’s life.

In September, I embarked on the Burpee Challenge, where I would do a set of burpees every day for 30 days. I figure this would be good exercise and maybe it would help jumpstart my overall health. I also knew I had a UK trip planned for October, and it would be nice if I could lose weight before the vacation.

So I did it. I did a set of 20, sometimes 30, sometimes 40, burpees a day for 30 days. It was great. I felt limber, I felt healthy, and I felt like I had lots of energy. At the same time, I also went back on Noom, a diet and weight loss app, which claims to use psychology to help you eat wisely. It did actually work for me for a while, but I grew tired of it in November. What Noom really thought me was to be mindful of what I put into my body, and once I understood that, I didn’t think I needed to pay more for the daily quizzes and reminders. (We’ll see if this is sustainable!)

I stopped the exercise for a while in November and December due to various reasons, and some of that depression came back. This is also when I had that fatty liver diagnosis. I felt kind of just beaten up, in combination with everything that was going on at work and in my personal life.

I don’t really know what happened, but one day I just told myself that I can beat this. Fatty liver is 100% reversible through diet, exercise and weight loss. If I lose 20 pounds, I can probably mitigate a lot of it, if not outright reverse it.

To help kick this off, I renewed my subscription to CookUnity, a meal delivery service, as well as Future Fitness, a personal training app. Yes, I know how to cook, but it’s just easier to not think about meals all the time (plus CookUnity lets you pick what you want based on dietary preferences). Similarly, I know how to exercise, but it’s easier to let someone else come up with workouts for me and keep me accountable. It allows me the headspace to focus on other things in my life.

Despite the holidays and Vegas and everything else that’s been going on in my life, I’ve so far lost even more weight, and according to my Withings scale (which, I’m not so sure if it’s that accurate), I’ve also lost about 2 percent body fat.

I’m sure I’ll gain some weight over the next two weeks when I’m back in Malaysia, but I’ll continue to work out when I can and cut back where I can. This is a journey, after all.