tl;dr: 207lb to 177lbs (30+% body fat to 22%) in 6 months, 20lbs lost in the last 3 months as i started regularly going to the gym. 196lb in october to 177lb in january
Hey everyone!
I let myself go. Fresh out of college I looked at myself and realized I was in a spot with my body I didn't want to be. When you look down and can't even see your own junk, you know you've got a problem. In June I decided to change that. In June I weighed 207lbs with a body fat percentage of 30+%.
I was eating fast food every day I could afford it and overeating junk food in between those meals. So the first thing I did was download the app Lose It!. I started tracking my calories. I didn't change my eating habits immediately, though. What really motivated me to change was looking at how much I was eating and seeing my goal date get pushed back further and further in the app. Seeing the quantity of bad food I was eating helped motivate my change.
First thing I did was cut soda and juice and traded it out for water. I would drink a lot of soda pretty regularly. I limited myself to one a day and eventually down even further, later on. Now I have a soda only when I drink which is about once every two weeks, and much lighter than I was drinking before.
Next thing I did was hit up a gym. In June I started doing about an hour cardio 5-6 times a week. I did max slope and between 3-4mph each session. This was great because it boosted my stamina. No longer did I feel winded by going up a flight of stairs or walking for more than 15 minutes with people. By the start of september I weight about 190lbs.
Unfortunately I hit some struggles as I decided to move and the stress of that, as well as my inability to go to the gym made it very difficult for me to maintain my weight loss. By october I weighed 197lbs. This killed my motivation, but I was determined to change my body. I got a membership to the closest gym and started doing cardio again. That's about the time I found this sub as well.
About a week into going back to the guy I started going with someone else. He introduced me to lifting weights. I was incredibly self conscious and felt so weak. I went back to cardio after only spending a small amount of time with the weights. When I got back home I decided to start looking up "how to lose weight", "how to get muscle", "how to blah blah blah", you know the drill. I spent hours and days just reading articles and watching videos. This motivated the hell out of me.
In late october I decided I wanted to start doing weights in order to gain some muscle mass and strength. I wanted to focus on getting lean, losing body fat and gaining muscle. I fixed my nutrition to focus on my protein macro. I went from eating a lot of carbs, some fats, and some protein, to eating a lot of protein, some carbs and some fats. I think this really helped me stay on track.
So now, after what feels like forever, I love going to the gym and I love losing weight. I know I'm not where I want to be with my weight loss goals, but I finally feel confident enough to post my progress. I hope everyone else who set a goal is able to maintain it until they get to it. It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.
Here are some things I've done that may help some people... I'm no expert so take it with a grain of salt.
- Count calories, but don't change immediately. Take it slow and ease into it. You don't want to crash.
- Set small goals. I don't think I'd still be actively trying to lose weight if I set my short term weight lose goal to 30lbs. Instead I set my goal to lose 5lbs. When I lose more than that I feel so pumped.
- I never bound my goal to a time limit. I know some people like doing that, but I never wanted to feel forced to go to the gym or eat better.
- I still eat junk food, just way less of it. I never realized how good some junk food actually is because I was just stuffing it down my face all the time. It's now more of a reward to myself. I love eating junk food, its just how I am, so I'm not going to completely stop.
- Find something about going to the gym (or doing any physical activity) that you enjoy. I love the challenge of weight lifting and seeing if I can improve each time I get to the gym. I've gamify-ed my weight loss and I think that's the best thing that could have happened to me.
If you do end up doing weights, I suggest looking up the Jefit app. It's wonderful for tracking progress.
Thanks everyone for reading this stupid brain dump post. I'm just stoked that I finally weigh what I did before I started college (which was over 5 years ago) and I finally am starting to see the fruits of my labor. Keep at it and it'll pay off, trust me!
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2RAwLH6
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