Second times a charm?

F/20/5’7 SW: 277 CW: 270 GW : 180

Just after finishing the first week of my new diet and exercise plan and I’m really happy so far with 7lb down. I know this is probably mostly water weight at first but I’m still really proud.

I’ve been a big girl my whole life and have always struggled with body issues and it’s really come to a head now and I’m not happy and want to get healthy. When I was 17 I successfully lost 42lb and was feeling really good about myself then went through a year long depression and ate my feelings and gained it all back and then some. Then I went to university and stopped caring about nutrition and calories when I was just having fun and it has bitten me up the ass big time lol. Throughout quarantine I’ve been eating loads aswell due to boredom and trying new recipes and baking for fun, and I stood on the scales and was horrified that I had gained another 20lb over the past few months and I have decided to do something about it.

I have been aiming to eat a balanced 1200-1400 calories a day and have been doing fun dance workouts everyday for around 20-25 minutes and I already feel so much better. I have a lot more energy, I feel happier and less depressed than before and I even got asked by a family friend if I had lost weight. Honestly just posting here to mark the start of this journey and will keep posting as a sort of journal. Thank you to whoever has read this!! We’re all in this together and we will all get healthier and feel better.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gtebwg/second_times_a_charm/

My stomach hurts after 10 chips.

That's weird ain't it. I used to be able to down an entire big bag of lay's potato chips in one sitting (feeling physically sick after) but today my brother brought home a bag of chips and I wanted a few as I was still under my calorie goal for the day. so I thought, hey 10 isn't gonna hurt and I haven't had these in a while might as well treat myself for how healthy I've been eating. So he gave me a handful, about 10 chips and I ate them and it was really good... but I have this thing where when I nibble on something ill turn into the full-on hungry mode. but I know I ain't hungry I just set that switch off so I decided to go downstairs and have some water to curb the "hunger" and walking downstairs I started to get a stomach ache. As if my tummy didn't appreciate this treat.

I always hear of stories like this and I never believed them till today. My body is physically telling me that it doesn't want that junk which is so bizarre and new to me but frankly, I appreciate it. For SO LONG, I didn't listen to my body and what it needed but I'm finally listening.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gte97q/my_stomach_hurts_after_10_chips/

The most important part of your weight loss journey is not losing weight

When I think about weight loss, I think about the grueling diet (CICO, Keto, Paleo, IF, ...) as the journey itself. But that's really only the first of three phases. It's not overly intuitive; you have 30lbs, 50lbs, 100lbs, 150lbs to lose, so you focus hard on that number to the exclusion of everything else. You drive to that number over weeks, months, even years. It borders on an obsession because there's nothing more personal, and it's your journey to own. We dream about what it will be like to end the journey and adjust our choices throughout the weeks and months; we change our IF hours, adjust our protein intake, reduce our calorie intake to match our changing BMR, incorporate exercise, etc.

But often, our failure in this weight loss journey isn't the weight loss phase. Once you get into a groove after the first one, two, three, N months, losing a pound or two a week becomes commonplace and feels almost boring. And we become complacent. Getting to that magical goal of a healthy weight sits at the back of our mind, and we forget the next two phases. Tapering off and maintaining.

Long before we reach a healthy weight, we should be planning how to taper back to a comfortable maintenance diet and how to maintain that CICO ratio. For a lot of us, this will be a lifelong commitment; a commitment to weighing ourselves, assessing our diets, recognizing when we begin to exercise less, when the scale changes, when stress from a job or a relationship affects us. And the best way to succeed when we face this adversity is to have a plan. As silly as it sounds, maintaining weight loss is as much an amazing achievement as it is a serious responsibility.

Tapering off from your weight loss program to a maintenance program is your training-wheels to this new lifestyle. Adding calories to your diet feels uncomfortable, strange, and almost wrong after you've been so strict for weeks, months, or years. But doing this healthfully, recognizing the psychological walls and discomfort, and talking to the right kind of people (i.e. therapist, weight loss group, chefs, etc) will help manage this transition. And I think this is the most important part of your journey, building the right foundation for your future, transitioning to a stable maintenance program.

I'm 50lbs down so far and in the "boring" part of the week-to-week. If anyone has any suggestions for ways to manage the boredom, I'm all ears; I'm currently trying to build a list of short-term goals to keep the rolling achievements coming. Recognize when I go down a belt loop, have a few pairs of jeans that are 1-5" waists smaller than I feel comfortable in, track my BMI, track my weight, build trend lines off my month-to-month weigh-ins, etc.

I think I wrote this out more for myself, to chew on my own thoughts. I needed to understand where I failed last time, where my next mistake will be in this journey, and what I need to do to ensure my success when I reach my goal. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect and share.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gtdxk4/the_most_important_part_of_your_weight_loss/

I have lost 35 pounds in the last 6 months. I don’t look like it. I’m kind of sad even though I didn’t go into this journey for cosmetic reasons.

Last night before bed I was 149.8 pounds. Officially below the 150 mark, and about 5 pounds away from my “goal” weight.

But honestly, nobody can tell. And it’s not that it was so gradual no one noticed- even people that (due to corona) haven’t seen me since the weight loss really took off (I would say 30 of those 35 have been since mid March) were shocked that I was ever as heavy as I was.

I can tell in the ways my clothes fit that I’ve lost a lot of weight but a simple visual observation doesn’t show a drastic difference. But I was 185 pounds and 5’3”. That’s OBESE, and no one believed me when I started declining seconds and such that I was that far overweight. And now I’m only 5 pounds away from what my doctor said was a healthy weight for me, and the main reason for the weight loss has been achieved and I am no longer pre diabetic. Because honestly, while I did this because my health was a mess because I was overweight, I haven’t had any face gains, no dramatic before/after shots, and even though they fit differently, I didn’t even need to buy new clothes. And I still just look slightly chubby.

I am grateful I can keep my cute wardrobe, I am grateful my health has drastically improved, but I am a little sad I am not getting the recognition that “hey, you look like you’ve lost weight!”

I guess I’m posting here for a little discussion about celebrating milestones when everyone else around you doesn’t even see there was an accomplishment to begin with. I’ve been doing very simple CICO and I don’t exercise much. I just kinda eat when I’m hungry, am mindful of portion sizes, and don’t force myself to finish when I order out. I think cutting back on restaurant sized portions was a huge part of why this weight loss has felt so achievable to me. But it also makes it feel like even less of an accomplishment because I didn’t get extremely strict with my diet, I didn’t even exercise, I didn’t follow any meal plans, and nobody notices the weight loss, so it’s all just so intangible.

Side note: I have worked with a therapist to ensure this weight loss didn’t just cause me to develop a different sort of disordered eating (I have been anorexic before my obsession with food turned to bingeing) and this very casual method is the only thing that works for me before bringing up disordered thoughts and actions. I know that the very fact that I managed to lose so much weight by just asking myself “are you sure?” before I ate that cupcake or got a second helping is, considering my weight has previously swung from 85 to 185 pounds, an accomplishment in and of itself and my only advice to everyone else on a weight loss journey is don’t underestimate the help of a therapist to work through your food issues. Whether you use CICO or keto or IF, a nutritionist, a doctor, and a therapist should all be on your weight loss team if you have the privilege of good health insurance. But out of the three I would rank the therapist as the most important.

Editing to add: I should mention I never disliked my physique. Honestly, I was one of those lucky women who didn’t notice the fat because it all went to “sexy” areas, and thick thighs and fat asses are “in” right now. I still very much have that hour glass figure. It’s not an issue where I feel like I was/am ugly and want to change. It’s more of... I wish there was external validation that this was hard and people would oooh and aaaah over me the way I see people do over other peoples weight loss.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gtcpy5/i_have_lost_35_pounds_in_the_last_6_months_i_dont/

Losing Weight and Mental Health (tw: bulimia)

Hi guys, I think I need some advice here.

I'm 19, 5"6, 260 pounds and one week into my weight loss journey. The first few days I kept below 1800, and now for the past four days, I have been keeping it at 1500.

It's been difficult, but rewarding too. My days are more structured. I savour and take my time with my meals more. I feel like I'm working towards something.

However, I hit a stumble today. Both my parents are also obese. At lunch, my Dad brought home KFC. Immediately, I felt anxious as I thought about all of the calories. My Mum caught onto my pacing and nail-biting and advised me to have a small portion and leave out the chips. I did, but even so, I ended up consuming around 580 calories.

That's not much. I know it's not much. I know I have over 600 calories left for dinner later. But the problem is this: for a long time in my life, I suffered from bulimia. It was how I punished myself for my binge-eating. Now I've been clean from purging for two years. But after my lunch today, I had the strong urge to throw up that I hadn't felt in years. I still feel sick and nauseous now, even though I know I'm not sick.

I think my brain is counting my lunch as another binge, and because I'm hyperfocused on losing weight right now, its retriggered my bulimia. I have good coping mechanisms but I'm worried about my mental health. Does anyone have any good advice or experience with this? I want to be strict on myself, but if I'm too strict, I'll fall back into old habits. It feels like catch-22 - stay the way I am and be unhealthy, or keep pushing to lose weight, redevelop bulimia and be unhealthy that way too.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gtct4c/losing_weight_and_mental_health_tw_bulimia/

I [F27 / 5'8 / 162lbs] lost 50lbs in 5 months, which means I'm finally back at my original 'starting weight' from 5.5 years ago!

The worst thing about tracking progress in MFP is realising that you now have a bank of photos of yourself at different starting weights, each one bigger than the last.

5.5 years ago, at 5'8 and 162lbs, I first started using MFP to lose weight. I had just come out of a relationship and was trying to get a "revenge body". It worked, and with a few decent looking pictures at 150lbs on Tinder, I met my current boyfriend, (now fiancé!) and so begins 4.5 years of a happy relationship without a care in the world, feeling like my lifestyle had no consequences.

Well, that didn't quite go to plan... and I skyrocketed to 221.2lbs and felt truly terrible about myself. When my boyfriend proposed, something flicked a switch in my head, and I decided that I needed to get serious about losing weight now, otherwise I wouldn't look like the bride I had always wanted to be.

I'd had a semi-successful run of dieting in 2017 through CICO, but after 4 months of tracking and probably restricting myself more than I should, I got cocky and thought I could get away without tracking. I've come to realise that I will probably always have to track calories to be accountable, but I think I'm okay with that.

This week has been huge for me and I've reached a few key milestones:

• I'm down 50lbs since January, which is when I started seriously tracking again
• I've beaten the weight loss from 2017
• I've finally reached a "healthy" BMI after years of being obese or overweight
• I've finally got back to my original starting weight from 5.5 years ago

I still have some way to go until I reach my goal weight of 140lbs, but I feel really positive that I'll not only reach that goal, but maintain it this time. I've been reflecting this week on what's different this time, and thought I'd share some of the things that I think have been key for me:

1. Tracking average calories over a week
   Rather than trying to hit my calories every day which would lead to me feeling like a failure and like I may as well give up, I'm being kinder to myself. If I'm slightly over one day, that's fine because I can be slightly under another day. If I'm going out for a birthday meal, I'll just eat a couple of hundred less for a few days and 'bank' myself a bit of a blowout meal. This is so much sustainable for me.
2. Being realistic with my calorie goal
   For me, I need to average 1,300 calories a week otherwise my body feels like I'm restricting too much. As soon as I drop my goal calories to 1,200 or less, the urge to binge kicks in and I fall back into my previous Binge Eating Disorder ways, racking up days of eating 4-5k calories. The difference is, this time I'm aware of what's causing it, so instead I'm being kind to myself and letting myself start fresh the next day, I'm not trying to make up for this binge, and I'm just trying to go back to 1,300 calories a day again (on average). I'll get there if I keep trying, but 1,200 or lower, for me, is just not sustainable.
3. Walking more
   I track calories burnt using my fitbit which I will continue to do until I reach my goal weight, but won't do forever. On the days where I only manage 2-4k steps, I really struggle to hit my calories burnt target. Simply getting out and going for a walk not only burns way more calories than I could have expected, but it's helped my mental health too. If I'm feeling down, I'll take the dog to the park and I instantly feel calmer, more relaxed, and more positive in general. If I feel an urge to binge coming on, usually it's because I'm bored. Now I'll try to put some earphones in, listen to a podcast or music and go for a walk. It's the single best way to beat the urge to binge.
4. Skipping breakfast
   Some people call it intermittent fasting, but I don't like the mindset that this can often encourage of strict rules and restricting. I simply skip breakfast because I'm not hungry in the morning, and it helps me to eat fewer calories in the day. If I'm on holiday and eat breakfast, I feel like it "wakes up" my stomach and I'm hungrier throughout the day, so I prefer not to do it. I'll have my coffee and I'll be fine until lunch. When I start upping my calories to maintenance I will still skip breakfast, and will probably introduce more afternoon snacking to get the additional calories.
5. Eating more protein
   When I'm aiming to hit 1,300 calories, if I use that up on junk food it just won't keep me full. My parents raised me as vegetarian so I've never really had a protein-heavy diet, but now I actively try and have protein shakes, Quorn or other meat substitutes throughout the day, and the difference it makes to my hunger levels and overall satisfaction with meals is insane. Everyone told me to eat more protein and I shrugged it off, but it's really really helped me stay fuller for longer.
6. Weight lifting
   When I'd previously tried losing weight, I'd mainly focused on cardio as my main form of exercise to get the biggest calorie deficit possible. I still absolutely love spin class and the feeling of a runners high, but as I'm losing weight now my body just looks so much leaner this time round than it did in 2017 at the same weight. The shape I'm seeing is more what I wanted to be, and less "skinny fat". People also say that increased muscle leads to a higher BMR, and if that means I can eat more calories when I start eating at maintenance I am all for that! I also just feel so good about myself lifting weights. It's nice to feel strong, give it a try.
7. Reddit forums
   Finally, checking in on these subreddits every day keeps me on track. Seeing all the amazing things other people post about, laughing at relatable memes, sharing successes, it all helps me to remember what I've been working for and what I'm still working towards. The support you feel even from just anonymously reading other people's stories is so incredibly valuable. I've just realised how long this post has gotten now and I'm going to have to wrap it up! If you've read this far, thank you so much, and good luck with whatever journey you're on!

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gtbpeh/i_f27_58_162lbs_lost_50lbs_in_5_months_which/

Daily Q&A Post for Saturday, 30 May 2020 - No question too small!

Got a question? We've got answers!

Do you have question but don't want to make a whole post? that's fine. Ask right here! What is on your mind? Everyone is welcome to ask questions or provide answers. No question is too minor or small.

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• Include your stats if appropriate/relevant (or better yet, update your flair!)
• Check the FAQ and other resources in the sidebar!

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