I recently decided it was time to start being more healthy. I hit near my highest weight ever (203 lbs at 5'9.5) after quitting smoking (about to hit 5 months off the smokes.) My fiance and I are (well, were) awful snackers and when I stopped smoking I piled on weight faster than I thought possible. I'm also in my mid-thirties now and my metabolism seems to have slowed down. I had maintained a technically-overweight-but-high-end-of-normal weight for about a decade but was tall enough to mostly carry it off. And it was a bit of a triumph to me to be happy in my body without thinking much about food or exercise, because much of my teens and early twenties were dominated by an eating disorder. But "just not worrying about it" wasn't working anymore, especially since I now have a sedentary job and work from home. It was too easy just to absentmindedly eat all day and not move much.
So, for a lot of reasons, I wanted to get control. I looked up my TDEE, I downloaded MyFitnessPal, and I've told the dog to get ready for more walks. MFP wants me to eat 1200 calories a day, although it usually bumps that up to around 1600 with exercise. I know you're not supposed to eat back your exercise calories, but I mostly have. 1200 calories feels very restrictive to me...not because it's not enough food (I know how to fill up on greens) but because there is just no wiggle room to "win" the day without being super serious about every single choice. I've started feeling guilty if I put milk and sugar in a cup of coffee. I hate feeling like a piece of cheese is going to fuck up my dinner. I am willing to make a change and make sacrifices and make healthy choices, but (at this calorie level) I feel like I don't know how to limit myself and restrict unhealthy food without feeling deprived or feeling like the choice is "this treat" or "an actual lunch".
I really want to do this in a healthy way that doesn't trigger all my weirdness. And I really want to get good results, so it's a bit of a tightrope. Weighing things and restricting things doesn't feel great but I've managed for the last two weeks by just thinking of it as science and not judgment. I don't feel triggered (I'm much much much more mentally healthy in every way now than I was then) it's just more that it feels uncomfortably familiar. I'm trying to take care of myself, not punish myself, but it just brings up memories of when thinking about food and calories was such a desperate thing, and that's uncomfortable.
Exercise: right now I'm walking 5k in the morning and that usually bumps up to nearly 8k with various other walking. I've found some low-impact HIIT videos on youtube which are about 15 minutes long. I want to do one every day but so far its been every other day, partly because I'm so unfit my muscles and back and joints are really sore. I have extremely hypermobile joints which get injured very very easily so I'm trying to build up strength instead of going whole-hog and injuring myself (my usual "get fit" sabotage.) I'm also on a streak of doing a Yoga with Adriene video every day, which helps a lot with the muscle and joint soreness. It has been a massive lifestyle change to devote so much time and thought and energy to this stuff. I'm still trying to find a balance.
I'm only weighing in once a week at a scale in our grocery store. In two weeks I've only lost 0.2 kg which is a bit discouraging but I know it is early days. I do feel a lot more energy already, just with the good food and exercise. I feel like I can't even remember what I was eating before all these piles of vegetables and chicken, hahaha. A lot of doritos, I guess.
I am getting married in a year. I have goals in mind for my weight and my wedding dress. I also spent more than I ever expected to spend on that dress and was shocked to learn that they want my final measurements by the end of August, because my dream dress is being discontinued. That's never going to happen that fast, not in a healthy way. So I'm feeling conflicted. I don't want to push myself so hard that I burn out: I could stick to the 1200 a day MFP has allotted me and triple my exercise or whatever but that feels like a slippery slope. Or can I do that and it would be okay, just something new to get used to? After years of ED and then years of never ever looking at a scale or a calorie count. I don't even know if my goals are reasonable. And there's even a part of me that's like "well if you can't lose all the weight you want to lose by Aug (and I know I can't) then what's the point, your wedding dress is going to be way too big and you'll have to spend more money on alterations!". Yeesh.
My question for you guys is how you balance a sustainable, enjoyable lifestyle with serious weight loss goals, especially if you've struggled with disordered eating, and whether my approach seems healthy to those who have been on this road a while. How do you handle "treats" in a sustainable way? Cheat days (I don't like the term) or calorie sacrifices here and there? Is this calorie count too low? Is this exercise enough for a start? Is it reasonable at my height and weight and age (mid 30s) to lose 20kg in a year (which would put me at the top of the "chart" BMI range but my lowest weight since I got healthy) and how much of it can I reasonably lose in two months (LOL!)
Anyway thanks for reading all this and for all your super inspiring stories and knowledge. Lurking here for months is a large part of what gave me the courage to get started again myself.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2XkU33n
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