I just posted on r/progresspics where you can see photographic evidence.
Tl;Dr I maintained a small caloric deficit (about 3-4 days of a 500 calorie deficit followed by a maintenance day) to lose about 3 pounds a month, strength trained 3 times a week for 30 minutes, and did cardio (running, dancing, yardwork, etc) 3-5 times a week. I also used compound contrave for the first 15 pounds then used compound tirzepitide for the last 20 to help with food noise.
Here's the long version:
I've been “dieting” since high school, and I'm 43 now. So basically I've been on this journey for 27 years. For most of that, I was trying to follow restrictive dieting to lose the weight fast. This led to periods of binge/restrict. I never got far with this method. Once I did a water fast for 10 days and lost a bunch of weight, but I gained it right back. For some periods of my life I was a little heavier and some a little lighter, but I never had it figured out.
Puzzle piece #1 I took up running during college and strength training about 15 years ago and those habits stuck, so while I never really lost the weight I never got that big, either. For running I just alternated jogging and walking for about 6 months and then one day I started running and found i could just keep going without needing to walk. For strength training I used (and still use) Beachbody’s 21 day fix extreme DVD's. It comes with 7 different 30-minute workouts but I only do the 3-4 that I like best. (They also want you to use a complicated diet using different color tubs but I never did that, nor bought their protein shakes.) I do the DVDs at home with hand weights I've been accumulating for years and a band.
Here's the thing about working out. You'll never be motivated. In fact, my brain actively tries to talk me out of most workouts. It throws out all these BS reasons why I shouldn't work out, but they're always the same ones. So I expect them and have a counter argument to shoot each one down. Too tired? Ok I'll just go at 10% effort, still counts. Not enough time? I can do something quick before my shower. Too sore? Ok I can go for a walk today. It all counts.
Puzzle piece #2 was Corinne Crabtree. Finding her podcast “losing 100 lbs with Corinne” was huge. She was the first person who taught me I could eat when I was hungry and still lose weight. Until then I just thought I had to learn to be hungry. But denying your hunger signals just sets you up for disordered eating patterns, which i definitely had. I didn't know how to “eat normal.” I thought my hunger signals were broken. I had been in binge/restrict for so long I was really screwed up. She sorted me out. This was probably the biggest piece. I signed up for her program and took her course twice and got so much out of it. I didn't stay in her membership but I still listen to her podcast every week (I recommend the older episodes that talk about eating 2-to-2. That was a huge lesson.) Corinne doesn't tell you what to eat and she also doesn't advocate counting calories, but I've been counting calories my whole adult life, and haven't been able to let that go.
Calorie counting
I used the fatsecret app (free) at first and then macrofactor app (paid) which I'm still using and paying for. These were the only apps I used that didn't give me a ridiculously low tdee. Maybe it's my muscle mass or I just have a high metabolism, but where other calculators told me to eat 1400 calories a day, the fatsecret app (which uses the Gerrior method to calculate) started me at 2100 calories each day (at 169 lbs) to lose weight. And it was right. To maintain was 2600 calories. Sometimes I’d go over maintenance including a few accidental “blowouts” a month when I’d eat 4,000+ calories.
- Apart from calorie counting, I had a daily goal to eat a protein bar (usually in the morning), a raw veggie (usually a salad for lunch), a fruit (usually included with snack time), and a cooked veggie (usually with dinner). I allowed myself one dessert a day. A real dessert, which I tried to keep around 200-400 calories. Alcohol counted as “dessert”. Some days I didn’t eat dessert and that was OK. I wasn’t perfect with this, but it was a general guideline for my eating and I did track it in my journal. Apart from those goals, I didn’t restrict myself as far as what I could or couldn’t eat–I just ate to my calorie goal. I am vegetarian already but that’s not part of my weight loss plan. I check my macros occasionally and have never been able to hit my protein goal of 100+ grams of protein, but I always got at least 80.
- Entered my daily eating plan each morning. Corinne taught me this and I still try to do it, but now I'm eating pretty much the same thing every day so sometimes I don't log until night. Sometimes I make a plan but keep a couple hundred calories open, or make a plan then change it later but before I eat the different food that originally wasn't on my plan
- Ate when I was hungry; stopped when I was full. I'm still learning how to do this. The first part is easy but the second part is a little tougher.
- Kept a weight loss journal with a calendar that I wrote in every day. On the calendar that I drew in, I'd give myself an L if I ate closer to my calorie goal (of 500 calories deficit) for weight loss, M if I maintained, O if I overate (closer to 500 calories over maintenance), and H if I had a haywire day (more than 749 calories over maintenance). At the end of the month, I crossed off an L for each O (since they cancelled each other out) and crossed off 2 Ls for each H. (even though I might have negated more than 2 L days I didn't want to discourage myself). Then I would circle and tally up any remaining Ls and divide by 7 to calculate my weight loss for the month. I also tracked some other things on a daily basis like workouts, my sleep, meditation, etc
- Weighed in only twice a month. On the first day of the month and on the first day of my period. It took me awhile to get to this point. First I needed to feel confident in my caloric needs and calculations. Then I just really focused in on my day-to-day lifestyle and tried not to think about my weight. The scale can really mess with my mind so I prefer to track my weight loss by paper.
Puzzle piece #3 medication
At this point I felt like I was doing everything as best I could. I was eating realistically, I was strength training, I was running, I had reduced my alcohol intake to no more than 1 drink or maybe 2. And then I went an entire year when I was just *barely* losing weight. I was having just enough screw ups that I was negating my progress. My weight was stable and I wasn't gaining, but I wasn't really losing. At this point I felt confident in my ability to maintain my weight but needed help to lose the 10 pounds that I was still overweight plus 25 lbs of vanity weight. I turned to medication. I signed up through hers and got put on a compounded version of contrave which quieted my food noise and helped me become so much more consistent. I was still working just as hard as I had been, but without the setbacks. I lost 15 pounds in 5 months. Then it kind of stopped working. I tried a different med through hers (metformin) which did nothing for me. Hers wouldn't prescribe me tirzepitide since I wasn't overweight anymore, so I got compound tirz prescribed first through willow and then through brello. I only purchased 5 months of product in total, but a low dose worked great so I didn't titrate up unless I felt I needed it. My 5 months of product lasted 9 months and thankfully didn't run out until the week I hit my goal weight.
-meditated. I'm not great at this but I do have a goal to meditate each morning for 15 minutes. I'm still working on it. I tried several methods and even paid to take a transcendental meditation class (I don't recommend it and could write a separate post about it. I complained and got my money back.) I liked the book called “into the magic shop” for meditation and manifesting, although I'll say the book is flawed and pretty cringe-inducing at points.
-sleeping. I'm still struggling with this. It got a lot better when I ended binge/restrict and went to bed on a neutral stomach. I take a mouse nibble from a unisom every night. It's not a long term solution but I've been doing this for a few years and it still works. Occasionally I'll take a week long break when it feels like it's not working but then it starts working again after a week. My doctor prescribed me something else but I'm still doing the unisom. I plan to get off it eventually. (Long term unisom use is associated with a higher risk of dementia later in life)
What I didn’t do:
Restrict my eating, or follow any kind of Keto, Noom, Intermittent fasting, etc. I tried them all, and they all hinge on restriction (of carbs, calories, and the time of day you can eat, respectively) which wasn’t going to work for me with my history of eating in the binge/restrict cycle. I am vegetarian but I don’t find that to be restrictive. I have been listening to Stacy Sims and she talks about cortisol in women and how prolonged fasting can actually make weight loss harder for us whereas it might work great for men. Just a thought.
Change my diet. I'm busy and don't cook hardly ever. I wasn't going to be able to follow any "diet plan" recipes apart from one or two I might see that I like. Some nights I ate frozen pizza and a sweet potato cooked in the microwave. Some nights I ate a quesadilla and asparagus cooked in the air fryer. I excel at finding healthy foods that don't need to be prepped. My favorites are pre-washed tubs of power greens, cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, canned garbanzo beans, Ken's lite Caesar dressing, all the fake meats that probably aren't that good for me, cheddar snacks, indulgent Greek yogurt, quest protein bars, steamable bags of frozen broccoli, pre-sliced mushrooms that I just steam with a squirt of liquid aminos, Rana brand ravioli that’s so good I eat it without sauce, berries, quaker protein granola (I know it's not that healthy but I only eat a half cup), protein almond milk, plastic wrapped potatoes I can throw in my bag and microwave at work for a quick snack.
Ignore hunger signals. Yes, I counted calories, but if I needed more, I ate more. With my more realistic TDEE, I was able to eat semi-“intuitively” and still stay within my calorie allotment most of the time. I found that it was actually worse to my program to undereat on calories (even if I was only eating when hungry) so I was glad to have that calorie count as a backup to make sure I was eating enough calories and not too many.
“Punish” myself for days I overate by shaming myself or restricting the next day (although I would track my overeats and journal about it the next day to try to understand better what caused the overeat and how I could help myself avoid them in the future)
Things I had to let go of:
My “diet brain” thinking. This was the hugest step for me. Corinne Crabtree really helped me understand how this was holding me back.
The idea that I had to lose 1 lb a week or it wasn’t working. What worked for me in the long run was losing weight slowly and not getting too obsessed with the scale.
Things I still need to work on:
I’d like to get to a point where I don’t count calories at all. That probably won't happen until I'm comfortably in maintenance for several years. Through guess and test I've relearned how to eat at certain places. Like Taco Bell is my favorite and I always thought I needed 2 items plus a freezie, but I've learned I can just get a bean burrito and that's enough food for my stomach. I still have to reassure myself at times. I still struggle with pizza. I made some food rules, like Corinne Crabtree gave me the idea that when eating out, I could decide beforehand if I was going to do fries OR wine OR dessert. And when eating at someone else’s house when I had no idea what the food would be, I would limit myself to one plate of food (and the dessert had to fit on the plate, too). These were some non-calorie counting strategies that I used to help myself eat more intuitively. None of these rules felt restrictive and just helped me stay on track.
Non-scale victories:
Learning how to tell if I was hungry or full. I literally didn’t think my body was capable. When you’ve spent most of your adult life ignoring hunger signals during the “restrict” cycle and ignoring your fullness signals during the “binge” cycle, you get pretty messed up. Getting out of that cycle felt so great. I learned that any hunger pangs I had within an hour or two of my last meal were fake, and if I ate during that time, it would cause me to get really tired and would often kick off a binge.
I learned how to cut food in half! I learned how to stick uneaten food in the fridge! I EVEN learned how to throw food away. Not just junk food but real food, too. It still hurts, but I do it. I think when you've restricted for so long, your body literally gets scared you won't feed it. I spent a long time reassuring my body that I would feed it before my emotional ties with food started decreasing
My emotional bond to food went down so much that I can now keep ice cream in my freezer without being tormented by it. Ice cream used to be my best friend when I was emotional eating, but now we have a healthier relationship
My mental health is so much better. I don’t turn to food when I’m in a funk. I know maintenance is its own beast. If I need to, I'll go back on tirzepitide. I still have a little bit of compound contrave I plan to take while I transition off the tirz, since I tend to struggle more in the summer.
