Today marks my one year of logging. That's one year of trying to be a healthier weight! I have a bit more to lose and a lot to learn about maintenance, but I'm celebrating nonetheless.
I went from morbidly obese to a BMI of 22. I weigh 123; 2 pounds less than my original goal weight. I lost 104 pounds. I ran 20km this Sunday and will run half a marathon next month. My life has changed, hopefully forever.
Even though I started with the best intentions, I would never have believed you if you told me I'd get down to this weight. I had a goal weight, but it didn't sound realistic at all. Like 'if I'm ever president, I'll definitely implement sugar tax'. A healthy goal, but the premise is off.
I realised I've been overweight or worse since the start of high school, this is the lowest weight I've been as an adult. I've been 'big' since about age 22. It's weird to be just a regular person.
I don't have a lot of new information on how I lost the weight because it's the same way everyone else here uses, CICO and counting the CI. I literally read the quick start, read a bunch of studies, researched some motivational techniques and applied all of them, but that's it. What's working is just CICO.
So instead of telling you how I did it, I'd like to emphasize some points that made me feel lucky. I read so much on this subreddit and I felt almost guilty for being fat, because so many people had so much working against them and I did not. My friend told me that that's stupid, it doesn't devalue my experience. So I'm calling it reasons I'm lucky:
- I was raised in a fairly healthy household and my parents allowed me to become a vegetarian when I was 11. The ground work was pretty good. Eating veggies was not a problem for me, and although I am not an amazing cook, I have the basic skills to make healthy food.
- Everyone in my close circle of family and friends has always been thin, or at least not overweight. This made being fat especially horrible (always the odd one out). It made losing weight easier. They eat smart. They cook (moderately) healthy. There is a lot of veggies involved. They like the healthy food I cook now. Losing weight has had little impact on my social life.
- I have amazing friends and family and even if they didn't understand what I was doing or why it was so hard, they accepted it. They did not act jealous, they kept encouring me and did not try to sabotage me. They kept saying how great I look, didn't push food, even cooked special food for me on occasion.
- I live in a country that has made it very easy to do casual exercise (cycling, mostly. I do not own a car, I cycle everywhere and if I can't, I cycle to a train or bus stop). I do not count that as exercise, but it has ensured my weight loss has gone faster than the couch potato live I lead would suggest.
- The metric system we use and the obligation to put kcal per 100 gram on food has made my life much easier. And although fast food is readily available everywhere, I also have access to plenty of healthy food and even some great low cal dishes.
- I had a month between jobs, the month in which I started. I had enough money during that month to buy a scale, food scale and healthy food. That month gave me the opportunity to build some habits, experiment a bit with food distribution and recipes without any stress. Those habits made sure I could start a new job almost 15lbs lighter, convinced of CICO and motivated to keep my new behaviour up. Since I'm very sensitive to stress, I really needed that time to build a foundation.
- Although I've had plateaus, most of the time my weight kept going down. Even two week plateaus are hard, every weight fluctuation that can't be explained is hard. I see people doing everything right and being stuck on a plateau anyway. It's way easier to to eat right if you see results.
- I have lived alone most of the time I was losing weight. Although support of a family or a spouse can be amazing I'm sure, for me this has been really helpful. I'm making all the food decisions, if I want to skip a meal to save up I'm not hurting anybody, there is no extra food in the house. No-one is telling me I'm not eating enough or too much.
But though I feel lucky, you could also flip all those reasons. I had the very best of circumstances, and still got really fat. Like everyone, I will always need to be very careful. I eat quickly, too much and unhealthy if I don't pay attention. I still crave food, I can always eat more, sugar and fat still taste great. One year of being careful did not erase that.
Losing weight did not solve any of the underlying problems, I knew this in advance. It didn't solve all the problems in life, either. But some of my problems are definitely solved by some extra confidence and the knowledge that I f*ing did it! Although I would never judge someone of being fat, to me feeling fat felt like I had failed as a person.
Thanks everyone on Reddit who helped me! Reading r/loseit was so helpful!
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