Backstory: I'm 36, 5'2", and trying to tackle about 30-40 pounds I packed on from my mid-twenties on. It's kind of a bummer that it happened; I lived in a city and walked everywhere, took up inconsistent running and swimming, but I also used being vegetarian and a mild drinker as an excuse to, well, eat crappily. ("I don't booze and I don't steak: BRING ON THE ENTIRE CHEEZE PIZZA!") And so here we are. I don't actually look that different than I did at 120: maybe a little chubbier in the face, but I think most of the weight is concentrated in my midsection and ass, so I see it more in clothing fit than I do in photos. Nevertheless, I have a family history of diabetes, heart issues, etc so it's time to dig in on this.
I tried Noom in February because a friend had a lot of success with and started dropping weight very fast. I actually lost about 10 pounds in just about four months. The main thing with Noom is how it changed my look at portion size: I bought a scale and was flabbergasted by how tiny a morsel 200-300 calories can actually be. I quickly developed a menu of foods that lived within those calorie confines but left me satiated. One challenge, though, was learning how to eat for exercise: Noom makes some accommodations for the extra calories you need, but it's not much. I often found myself too hungry or tired to go exert myself more at the gym. So most of the weight loss was diet-based.
What surprised me was that the weight stayed off when I traveled. I got a chance to spend some time visiting some European cities (Paris, Warsaw, Dublin, etc) and walked many miles a day around all of them, ate without monitoring calories and didn't gain anything back. Maybe there's some sweet spot in those environments where the combination of walking and portion size and general Euro-ness (not having to worry about health care costs?) keeps the body systems in check, idk.
Then, this fall, it started creeping back. I started feeling kind of confined and frustrated by the Noom calories limits and letting myself eat more. Work was incredibly stressful/busy and I was eating on the go/grabbing a lot of takeout. Then I got a knee injury which really limited my movement and mostly kept me on the couch this month, drinking cocoa and eating comfort food (I just couldn't be bothered with food monitoring while recovering). So all the weight's back -- I'm back up to 150, where I started.
I'm kind of discouraged, but see a couple bright spots: I now know exactly how I lost weight before (I can just look up the meals I had between February and June), I made some longterm changes to my eating habits, I naturally avoid most processed foods and sugar now, and am just doing a better job of listening to my body overall. I'm also learning to anticipate certain situations and how they throw off my eating (work stress, etc).
My hope is, once my knee heals up, I can continue building on these habits and resume the path down to 120.
Any advice from those who've lost it, re-gained it, and lost it again much appreciated!
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