I (41F) posted here last year but people thought it was fake, so fine. But it's not, and now another year has passed, and there's probably something in what I'm about to write that will help someone else, so I thought I'd give it another try, because this maintenance phase thing is no joke :)
For context: I do live alone and have no children. I have a salaried, full-time job that often occupies 80 hours of my life weekly. I come from a "broken home" but I'm educated and financially sound. Aside from weighing 400+ pounds when this all began I never had any known physical health issues. My blood pressure has been fine, no PCOS, etc. My mental health has always been in the gutter, never treated. I escaped through food. I was (and still am, I just don't) a binge eater; I stopped to get fast food 1-2x daily, I also ordered delivery probably 5x a week; my cupboards and fridge were fulllll of sugary and salty snacks always. Just food everywhere, all the time.
At the beginning of January 2024 I went on a trip and stayed in a hotel for the first time in a long time. At my house I don't have mirrors, but it was almost laughable how many mirrors this hotel had; I couldn't escape them. I have a thing with numbers so I don't weigh myself (I'll explain more below), but I couldn't stop looking at myself in the mirror, and not for good reasons. Rolls upon rolls; so much of me. I thought I was cute. I didn't realize body dysmorphia worked the other way too.
The hotel's fitness room had a scale and I hopped on, but it only weighed people up to 400 pounds and I error messaged it, so yikes. I was a size 5XL or dress size 28-30 and I'm only 5'7. I had brought my bathing suit with me because the hotel had a pool. Luckily it fit, and luckily I didn't think any further about how disgusting I looked. I got out of my head and into the pool and proceeded to just swim back and forth for the next 60 minutes (more like treading water because those indoor pools in hotels are tiny, but, you get the point). One of my goals was to visit a few bakeries that day and get Chinese for lunch and dinner, and without thinking, I skipped all the food errands and drove around town instead. The next day I swam another 60 minutes and walked 1/4 mile (barely). The next day I swam 90 minutes with a few breaks and walked 1/4 mile again, and better this time, faster. Then I went home and promised myself I'd walk every day; it didn't matter how far. I walked before and after work; sometimes twice after work. I was never a morning person but I realized if I walked before work I was more likely to walk that day, so I woke up earlier and earlier. By May I was able to walk 5 miles in one go. I started doing that before and sometimes also after work. It was fun! I liked the feeling, all those endorphins. I had a good play list and the route was 100% flat. I set myself up to succeed. By August I was walking half marathons in one go, and I got up to marathons. I kept that going year-round, and into 2025.
Obviously what you're eating is even more important. It is not possible to outrun or in my case out walk a bad diet. I realized very quickly that I couldn't have anything sweet or oily in my house. Someone gave me a gift of donuts or a few cookies? I'd wash them in the sink and chuck them in the trash. Birthday cake at work and everyone's pressuring me to eat it? Yeah, I started to lie about food allergies and people stopped pressuring me. No gray areas--gray areas led me to eat and binge again. I kept my same meal menu for each meal for over a year. Breakfast was two eggs on one 100 cal English muffin with 4 slices of thin ham (two slices of ham and one egg on each English muffin half). Lunch was a Granny smith apple or banana with one scoop of mini chocolate chips and 2 scoops of PB2 (powdered peanut butter; it's 30 cal a scoop if you're not packing it into the scoop) and a protein bar (usually 150-200 cals for the bar) and dinner was either white chicken or white fish, a mess of broccoli, and butternut squash. I aimed for 300 cal breakfast, 400 cal lunch, 500 cal dinner. If I was hungry at night I either went for another walk, went to bed early, or ate a low fat cheese stick or individual bag/pre-measured snack. When I started walking half marathons and marathons, I ate more. I learned what volume eating was and consumed a pound or more berries a day when I was doing long walks. Halo ice cream was introduced, and more protein bars. I was always careful not to eat my deficit. That seems to be a common lesson learned too late by other posters on this subreddit, so because those people shared their cautionary tales, I avoided doing that myself.
The third thing that isn't talked about as much in the context of losing weight is the amount of stressors in your life. Mental health is different and also a valid factor, but I feel like other posters on this sub talk about mental health often in their posts, and I have no business talking about mental health personally because I acknowledge I have untreated issues. But general stress, I am good at identifying, owning, and eliminating. 90% of my stressors were that I happened to have a TON of toxic people in my life through work, my family, and even unfortunately some one-sided "friendships" that I allowed to take up space. Within the first month of the weight loss and changing my diet, I completely axed all the soul-suckers from my life, cold turkey. "I know longer have space for you in my life" was the harsh-sounding sentence I chose to use, but I had to be brave for myself and take my life back from these people. The other 10% of my stress came through my job, which I needed and didn't have the bandwidth to change, but because I dropped 90% of my stress pretty much overnight, I had more mental space to deal with the remaining 10% work stress. I did make some changes to how I approached my work that helped me take control of my life and I figured it out.
At first, the weight was just melting off. I skipped sizes. I learned early not to buy a lot of new clothes (but it was a lot of fun and I did it anyway because my confidence was sky high and that helped me stay motivated). I never weighed myself so I have no idea what my TDEE was or is now. I have an idea what it is now because I've been maintaining for a year, and because I'm numbers obsessed, I know how many calories I'm roughly consuming. I'm a size 6-8 or S-M now; in the summer I'll probably get closer to a 6 because I walk more. My leg muscles are insane because of all of the walking so I'm not sure I'd look great smaller than a size 6; my face looked skeleton-like when I was testing out losing more weight this past summer, so I'm happy where I'm at now. I also learned that having a size range is a better approach because the smaller you get, the closer the clothing sizes are together and I completely understand why so many posters on this subreddit get so sad when they start gaining weight. It only takes me a few pounds of weight gain to outgrow clothes. My body changes all the time, I'm also peri menopausal, so while I do have some skin tight dresses and jackets, most of my clothes have a little give while still highlighting my curves and flatness : )
It's most likely more, but I "easily" lost 250 pounds in a year. And then I naturally stopped losing weight because even though I'm still a walking machine (at least 20,000 steps every day), I increased the amount of food I was eating daily and the treats I allowed myself to have during my walks so I wouldn't have to carry food with me. And I just maintained. I still eat the same food above, but I've added more to my repertoire and I also eat salads, shrimp fajitas (with those carb smart tortillas), salmon, and tons of different fruits and vegetables. I will never drink juice and soda again, and I never drank alcohol before so that's a non-issue. I don't deprive myself but I know if I bring candy, ice cream, or chips into my house that I'll plow the whole bag. I still have no self control, I still have food noise like crazy. I own this, I don't view this as a bad thing--it's just who I am. The walking helps, but when I stop walking, the food noise is back with a vengeance. I have to occupy myself with work, my pets, cleaning, showering or sleeping. All the food in my house is in my kitchen, I have rules about never eating upstairs.
I know this post is a bit all over the place, but I don't talk about weight loss with anyone in my life--that's one thing I also learned. I had tried to lose weight twice before. I lost 100 pounds 15 years ago, and put it back on in 3 years. The looks of pity my "friends" gave me when they would see me after a while and notice my weight gain just made me gain the weight back even faster. During COVID I also tried to lose weight but I wasn't smart enough about tracking calories and serving sizes, so while I was walking miles a day, I was actually gaining weight. This time around some people assumed I was sick instead of actively trying to lose weight because of how fast I was losing it, and I never corrected them because they stopped asking/talking about it, and that was a big help.
Regarding all of the walking. I thought I knew myself before this weight loss process, but spending all that time alone with myself was really intense. It brought up some bad thoughts, some repressed childhood anxieties, etc. I started asking friends I trusted to join me on short walks, but I still walked alone most of the time, and that helped ease my mind. Now I only walk by myself--I look forward to the solitude. I'm having a hard time finding the words to describe this, but I think when I first started losing weight, I was feeling loneliness on my walks, and now I embrace the solitude. I learned the difference between those two things and how healthy solitude was/is for me during this transformation. I have some good play lists and podcasts on deck to listen to when the silence is too much.
Regarding lifting weights. I wanted to maximize cardio and knew I wouldn't be patient enough for lifting weights and I would probably lose focus on the weight loss effort as a whole if I spent time lifting weights instead of active things, so I never did. Now my arms are very flappy and I have to either embrace a tank top or wear sleeves to conceal the "wings." I think my arms are quite the badge of honor from how far I've come--I see it as a thing that shows off my hard work. Other posters talk about how they are disgusted by their "wings" and other flappy areas, and I empathize, but I don't view my own that way. I was lucky that my face/neck figured itself out and I don't have extra skin there. I have a whole lot of extra skin on my stomach and wear things sometimes to keep that sinched in. It's shrinking over time though and it's hidden so I'm not too concerned. My tip is to use deodorant underneath the extra stomach flap to cut down on the itching, chaffing, and other unpleasantness; I know some people use baby powder, but I don't like smelling like that.
Regarding mistakes made. About 8 months into the weight loss when I shifted to half marathon and marathon walks a day, I didn't increase my calories enough. I lost weight REALLY fast, but I also lost my hair REALLY fast. I lost almost all of my toe nails, which I just assumed was because I was walking more. Once I realized my body was in survival mode, I increased the calories immediately, but my hair is STILL growing back nearly two years later. I know now that other bad things weren't too far behind, like organ failure (kidneys and I read about gallbladder a lot on this sub). That's pretty scary. I wish I knew the signs a lot sooner, and it took another post on this sub about someone going through hair loss and the commenters raising the red flags to teach me what I was doing was dangerous at that point.
Regarding Non-Scale Victories. There are so many of them. A lot of posters on this sub write about them often, so here are a few lesser discussed.
* My skin is amazing now. I had a problem with acne from teenager to late 30s but now I haven't had a pimple probably for 18 months.
* I walk faster than all of my friends now so I have to slow down when I'm hanging out with them
* I can fit into all men's clothing sizes now and probably 90% of women's clothes. There will always be a hoodie, cute dress, or shirt that will fit me (it might be extra baggy, but I like things extra baggy). That means I don't have to purchase something just because it fits me anymore. When I was a XL-5XL or size 18+ I didn't have a lot of clothing options and had to buy whatever thing actually fit over my body; it usually was a gross color or looked bad. It took a while to break the urge of buying all clothes that fit.
* I'm saving so much time and money by not taking as many showers. I don't sweat constantly anymore and I'm saving money on shampoo, etc. It's amazing.
Regarding Unwanted Attention. I do sometimes miss my old self because people ignored me. I get a lot of attention now. I guess I've always had a pretty face, but now it's noticed very frequently without it being hidden behind all the extra pounds. I get hit on by men and women weekly, sometimes days in a row, which is a first. It took me a few months during my maintenance phase in 2025 to realize I needed to figure out if I was open to dating and if so, what I was looking for in a person. That was a topic in my mind during a ton of walks in 2025, and still is. I am dating someone now--we're taking it VERY slow--but it's exactly what I need. It's my very first boyfriend--at 41 years old. But it took me a while to figure out what I wanted, to have the confidence level I needed to date, and I made mistakes as I was trying to figure out how to meet people and how to avoid the bad ones. But at this moment it looks like it's working out : )
Regarding how easy it is to fall back into old habits. I'm still the same person; I still have the same compulsive/binge tendencies. I know that the habits I practiced to lose weight are no longer habits; they are now my lifestyle. I don't have a therapist; I should have one. I don't take anti-depressants or anything for the ADHD I probably have. I know I could still be taking better care of myself. But I'm freaking proud of what I've just accomplished, and continue to accomplish each day when I still go for walks and block out the food noise. Some weeks I nail it; some weeks I eat lots of cookies. I am consistently in touch with myself; I listen to my body; I know when I'm full. When I'm hungry I get up and only get one snack at a time. If I finish that snack and want another one, I get up and get one more snack at that time. I stay away from full bags of chips or cartons of pastries; I portion everything out. I don't weigh food but I measure any powdery things I consume. I don't weigh myself but I let myself look in the mirror to see how my face looks and if I'm getting too bony or swollen looking, and I adjust accordingly, either to my diet, the amount of physical activity, or stress levels.
I think this is all I want to share; there's so much more what I've already written a ton. If you made it this far, thank you for reading. This took me about two hours to put together and I avoided eating an extra Chocolate Cupcake LUNA bar. Because I've already had 3 for lunch and they're so damn good! Guess I won't be buying any more of that flavor in bulk : )
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