I'm down 50 lbs!!!! SW: ~200lbs at 5'5", CW: ~149lbs
I could not have done it without the loseit community, and so I am forever thankful for you guys. The challenges has also been a major thing for me, especially the discord groups. Go team Pleiades! :D
This is gonna be a long one, because I want to help other people achieve their goals too, and reading other peoples experience has helped me a lot. So I want to go through what I learned in my weight loss journey.
TLDR; Progress pics: https://imgur.com/a/Zkgvq9O and https://imgur.com/a/SgVp8Dl
Now here is the long version:
How I got started on my Journey:
My weight kind of gradually creeped up on me. I feel like I had just kind of accepted that I was going to be a big person, and so I just ate whatever I wanted, not really caring about it, and of course, I kept gaining weight. I don't think I realized how big I was getting until I used my mom's scale during christmas 2018, and it blinked at me: 90,2kg: or 199lbs. I had been in the 80kg range for a looong time, steadily creeping up. But that was my first time seeing that number 9. Around the same time, I also realized the XL pants was getting too tight and I ordered a couple jeans in XXL online. They almost fit me. They were a little big. And I thought to myself; "I don't ever want these jeans to fit me". This was enough to shock me into getting my act together.
I joined a gym and went to a training group 2 times a week. At the same time I also found the loseit subreddit and started reading, both the FAQ and a lot of posts, and learned so much from you guys! This was a major help to me and made me confident enough to stick with what I was doing.
The sceince of losing weight:
The information that helped me the most was to learn this: 1 kg body fat = ~7700 calories (1lbs body fat = 3500 calories).
This somehow made losing weight into something tangible. Something I could understand. It was just maths!! I am a scientist and I love data and statistics so this was something I could resonate with. Following this, I made myself into my own science project, and made a big excel sheet where I tracked my calories in and my calories out and my weigh ins, to see if it was actually correct. And it was!
You can see my graph here: https://imgur.com/a/7ZYYEsz
Blue dots = actual weigh ins. Red line = How much I should weigh based solely on how much I have eaten, tracked through MFP, and how active I have been, tracked throug my garmin fitness watch. (P.S; the graph is from I started tracking, I had already lost a little before I started tracking).
Now the tracking IS only estimates! I found that I was over-estimating my deficit by about 100 calories a day, so my graph is adjusted for that. I think it is mainly due to the smart watch over-estimating activity a little, but probably also me under-estimating food intake. So you can see, it is quite sensitive and probably shows a little different results for everyone depending on how accurate your CICO tracking is. But it does work!!
So now I knew that I was losing weight, even when my scale weight was not moving, or was going up and down like crazy. If I was in doubt, I could just check my excel sheet and see that I was in fact losing weight, I just needed a bit of patience. This security of knowing for sure, really helped me to just stick to the program.
The reality of losing weight:
In order to actually stick to my calorie goals, I tried several different approaches to figure out what worked for me, and i changed up my game if I felt like it did not work or was not my thing. There are sooo many strategies out ther, IF, keto, veganism, etc. etc..
To me it was important to feel like I was not denying myself anything. I ate what I wanted and I ate when I wanted. Calories was the only thing that I was caring about. I ate the same things, but much smaller portions than I used to, mainly by weighing the food as I put it on my plate, so I could see the calories before I ate it and adjust accordingly. I tried to find food that I liked and enjoyed eating, but at the same time was low calorie. I ended up eating a lot more fruit and vegetables, and a lot less bread and starchy carbs. I had cake, I had ice cream, I had pizza. I just logged it and kept the portion sizes very very small to fit my budget.
My caloric budget was also very loose from day to day! I did have a daily goal that was quite low, but I made sure to be happy as long as I was in a deficit, however small that may be. Now I did aim for quite a high deficit. But I never went below the lowest recommended at 1200 calories a day. I started out trying to be between 12-1300 calories but eventually my goal icreased closer to 14-1500 with a maintenance around 2-2100 calories. I usually had one day a week where I could eat at maintenance (sometimes a bit above). And I had several days where I ended up between my goal and maintenance, and that was totally fine to me. As long as I was in a deficit I was good.
We are NOT perfect, we are human beeings. We are going to eat the food that we enjoy, even if it is food that is often labeled as unhealthy. Even fruits can be unhealthy in too high quantities, and you can even drink too much water. A little piece of cake here and there, it is not gonna do anything bad to you, it is the quantity that matters. If you try to be perfect, you are going to fail. So try to be nice and forgiving towards yourself! If I had eaten "too much" one day, I did not restrict later, but just started a new fresh day the next day! I was still at a deficit in the long run. Marathon, not a race. I don't think I could have endured for several months if I had been too hard on myself to be honest.
I basically tried to make this process as easy as possible for myself. I read a lot on the labels of my food, and at the store before I bought it, I tried to pick the options with the lowest caloric amount. I decieded that the most dangerous thing for my health right now was my weight, and the only way to reduce my weight was to reduce the calories. So I ate the things that made me get through the day on a caloric deficit. That included a lot of low-calorie ice cream, it included low-fat cheese (I effing love cheese and that was one of my hardest struggles), it included diet soda, low-fat yoghurt, the granola with the lowest caloric density, zero-calorie sauce substitutes, anything really I could find that was the food I liked, but lower in calories. It did not really taste the same, some of it was terrible (zero calorie caramel sauce??? yuck... but the zero calorie BBQ sauce and garlic dressing I found was actually decent!).
And the funny thing is.. I gradually changed from those substitutes, to more real food. I gradually started to eat more veggies, becuse at dinner, I could pile on the veggies and it was almost no calories, but I had to be careful with the sauce and carbs. I drastically reduced how much bread I ate, because it did not keep me full for so long and was quite calorie dense.
Mostly I ate fruits with yoghurt and granola, or oatmeal. And had small and tiny snacks during the day. If I felt hungry, I would eat one apple, or one small handfull of nuts. I tried to eat until I was "not hungry" instead of "full". I tried to be mindful of eating more protein, and healthy fats.
I see a lot of critique against CICO because it doesn't restrict on what you eat. But I think that is what a lot of people need. We can't change overnight to new habits. A lot of people try to change over night but burn out too quick. With CICO it is just facts, it's just maths. Of course it is healthier to eat more veggies, but if you lose weight by eating pizza, you still lose weight, and I think for a lot of people, that is the biggest threat to their health than a little bit of vitamin deficiency. You can take pills for that. I personally did take some multivitiamins + omega 3s to be on the safer side.
The struggles of losing weight:
One of my biggest struggles is that I have a huuge sweet tooth, especially in the evenings, and before I used to raid my kitchen to find anything sweet. And if I did not have anything ready, I would make a "microwave cup cake" or something if I had the ingredients.. I got really restless if I did not have anything. So I tried to find sweet things that would stop my sweet tooth binges. I found a low-caloric ice cream, and I ate some low-cal puddings etc.. anything really. But I weighed it out and tried to fit it into my budget before I actually ate it, and that made a difference for me. Because if I wanted chocolate, I would weight out 150cals worth of chocolate... and that's litterally one tiny piece of chocolate. Or I could have a small bowl of Ice cream for the same amount of calories.. so I went with the ice cream. It really helped me to not over-eat in the evenings. Some evenings I budgeted maybe 200 cals worth of calories for dessert and ended up eating 500 cals, but since my aim for calories was so low, I still ended up at a deficit. It did mean that a big part of my budget was just junk, but it was the only thing that got me through the day so I went with it. I was still losing weight! And gues what?? My sweet tooth has almost gone!! I don't really crave sugar that much in the evening and if I do, I usually make myself a cup of tea with milk and honey worth about 60 calories and it is enough to settle my "uneasiness". Work with your body instead of against it.. it takes time to change! (plus I notice now that when I am craving a lot in the evening is often days I have not eaten that much, so it kind of makes sense. Now I try to eat more in the day so I don't crave as much in the evening, but before it did not help at all, so it was better to go with it and control it, for me at least).
Working out while over weight / getting started at the gym:
Another advice I would give is to be very careful with running if you are heavy. I had huge problems with my knees when I was bigger, and I could almost not walk without some pain. I did find excercises at the gym that would help with increased knee stability, but I think a lot of the pain just automatically went away as the weight got lower. Running and beeing active now is so easy, it's a weird feeling. My legs can kind of just go by themselves, but before, every step was a struggle. I was carrying 50lbs more goddammit, trying to lift that now you can really feel how much weight that is. A lot of trainers or people who has always been fit doesn't understand this!! THey might push you too much because a smaller person can definetly increase the weights in the beginning but you are already in the negative there.
The most important thing to work on at the gym as a heavier person is actually posture and technique, with only body weight or very low weights, and using e.g the elipse machine to do cardio because it's softer on your knees. You can also WALK on the treadmill with an incline to get your pulse up :) Now if you keep working on your technique and posture, but lose weight, you will see A LOT of progress once your weight starts to come off! So it will be very small steps in the beginning to build a foundation, but you will have more muscles than you think because you have been carrying weight. So you might feel like the gym is no use in the beginning. I went to the gym MAX 2 times a week. Often just 1 time a week + walking every day. Aim for something you can actually follow through on. You will not lose weight in the gym unless you do a crazy cardio regiment that is not sustainable. Focus on diet first to lose weight, and use the gym to increase your health.
Moving into maintenance: (+ avoiding disorderly eating)
Now I weigh in at around 149lbs and I am at a healthy BMI. Maintenance is a whole other game! I have logged every single day, except maybe 4, since january 14th. But now I saw that I was actually a bit scared of NOT logging. Because logging = control. It meant I knew for certain I was eating enough or little enough. I was not trusting myself. This scared me because I knew that this could very well be signs of me moving towards disorderly eating if I really needed that control. I do NOT want to go down that route and all along I have tried to be very aware that I want to avoid that, because I have read so many stories of people starting out overweight but then ended up with anorexia and restrictions. That is also why I have been so little restrictive with my diet as possible. So I have decided that I am not logging my food anymore!
My last day of logging was Friday the 26th of july, and the last couple of days have been new to me, to not log. It is honestly a little scary. which means it was the right thing to do. But it is going very well so far and I am just eating what I have been eating lately, enjoying my food and at the same time just listen to my body and feed it what it needs to be healthy and happy :)
A journey of self care and self acceptance:
Another thing that really led me to go on this journey, was actually that I started to finally accept myself. I have been at my current weight before, through high school + some years after, and I always hated my weight and looks at the time. I really started gaining in 2015/16 and through 2018. But once year ago, summer of 2018, I was bigger than ever, hating it and looking back to how stupid I was before. And something really clicked with me. It clicked that I was good enough, just the way I was. I was beautiful and worthy. I was worthy of loving myself. So accepting myself at my bigger size, led to me starting to caring about myself again, about my health, about the way I presented myself to the world. And through this caring about myself, I then, eventually, realized that the ultimate and most caring thing I could do was to get to a healthy weight. So to me, my motivation has always been health and self care. You are beautiful and worthy no matter what size you are. But a heavy weight IS something that will reduce your health and mobility.
Self acceptance, confidence, mental and physical health after losing weight: I have struggled with periods of feeling down and depressed, low energy and tiring out very easily, not beeing able to do all the things I wanted to do, for many years now. I think some of it can be due to the weight beeing a strain on the body and not taking proper care of myself.
After losing weight, I have actually gained more energy and I have felt less depression. It is not completely gone, other factors do affect depression and mental health. Losing weight is not a miracle cure. But it has definetly improved my quality of life, my mental and my physical health.
My self image is still a work in progress!! Getting to a lower weight will not automatically make you love everything about your body. Don't get me wrong, I do like what I see in the mirror a lot more now. But I am not and will never be what magazines and media portrais as the ideal body. I am a woman now, I have stretch marks and sagging boobs (yes the boobs shrink :'(). But you know what! I do accept myself, just as I did when I was heavier. I have days where I feel good, I feel more confident now, but I also have days where I don't feel like walking around in a bikini or feel like my tummy and thighs are pudgy. Self acceptance is needed at every size. You are good enough just the way you are.
Another thing is that buying clothes are not cheap!!! I go thrifting as much as I can. lol. Buying clothes ARE much more fun now though to be honest.
I think I have covered most of what I wanted to say and share about what I have learned. Remember that we are all so different. This is what has worked for me, but I tried different things all the time, I checked in with the community to get advice if I was struggling and read other peoples experience but I also had to disregard a lot of advice because it did not work for me!! So yeah, I hope you can do the same for yourself and not follow things blindly but listen to yourself and your body on your own journey.
I think that was all. Thank you for listening to my TED talk :D
Also sorry about spelling errors etc., english is not my first language.
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