Hi guys,
So I don't really post much on here, other than the odd comment and occasional update on r/progresspics however I wanted to thank you guys for giving me the information and support I've needed over the past 13-14 months.
In November 2018 I'd recently turned 29 years old, stepped on the scale and saw a massive number: 153.5kgs. I've always been big, my whole immediate family is (something a lot of us can relate to I imagine) and with a family history of diabetes, dementia and other obesity related issues on my dads side of the family I decided that it was time to change.
In my search for first steps I came across Loseit and became familiar with CICO and intermittent fafsting. CICO quite literally blew my mind as for some reason it had never occurred to me that I already had all the information I needed to lose weight, I just didn't know how to apply it. I didn't know how many calories/kJ made up a kg of fat, I didn't know about TDEE, I didn't understand macro/micro-nutrients. Loseit was the conduit that allowed me to discover all of this information and more importantly what I could do with it.
Armed with this knowledge I made a plan that I could implement to get to where I wanted to be. I set myself a caloric budget of 1500 calories and implemented a 16:8 intermittent fasting schedule to allow me to manage it. Snacking/grazing has always been my biggest problem. After I ate breakfast I would graze all morning until lunch time, then have lunch and graze until dinner, eat dinner and then probably eat again before I would go to bed. After about 2 weeks of adjusting to intermittent fasting I was able to stop with the grazing and I would simply have a substantial meal (750-800 calories) at around lunch time and then use my remaining budget at dinner. While this approach was successful for me I don't believe in hindsight that I would do this again. I think just jumping straight to a 1500 calorie budget was way too aggressive for someone my size and seeing such quick success has likely had an impact on my mental state as this slowed down.
As time progressed I added walking and hitting 10,000 steps per day into my routine. This definitely helped with weight loss, but the biggest thing I noticed was an improvement in my mental state. I really felt horrible as I was doing it, but after completing a walk I would feel a lot better. After about 6 months of walking I decided I wanted to step it up a notch and I started couch25k. I was never good at running, even growing up, and whilst the same is still true and it was probably the hardest thing I'd ever done physically, I completed the program in 9 weeks just before the Christmas period. After a couple of weeks off running I'm still easing myself back into the process, but I know now that I can do it which is probably the biggest thing I've learned, not just with running, but with the entire journey. I know that I can do it.
I weighed in this morning at 84.9kgs which puts me at a BMI of 24.8 and into a healthy weight range for the first time in at least my adult life, if not my life in it's entirety. Whilst I type this post I've noticed that my memory of the process is a lot more positive than what the reality perhaps was. I too experienced days where I broke down and overate, or broke my fast hours early, skipped exercises and the like. At the time these moments felt like failures, like they were the worst thing that could have ever happened, like this was going to be where I start putting all of the weight back on again. I think we all feel moments like this and it's important to realise that it's an illogical fear. Keep doing what you're doing and eventually you will get there. Perfect is the enemy of good. Progress isn't linear. The cheesy cliches are completely true.
So again, I want to thank you all for sharing your experiences, your successes and your struggles because reading them and drawing encouragement from them has allowed me to get to where I am today.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2FqoHAJ
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