Hi all,
Back at the end of February I finally had a "come-to-Jesus moment" around my alcohol use and weight. I bought a scale, weighed myself, and was the heaviest I'd ever been—I weighed (I think, more on that below) ~240 lbs (I'm a 29 year old, 5'11'' male)—but also really just saw myself for what must have been the first time in years. I've struggled with body dysmorphia my whole life, but felt like it always only went one way: I always saw myself as bigger than I was (i.e. even when I weighed a healthy 175 pounds I saw myself as much heavier than that). But I realized that it goes both ways: for years I've been gaining weight—I realize now I gained 60-70 pounds—and while I knew I was gaining weight and struggled with it immensely, always "trying" to lose weight, I was still convincing myself my body was just the same.
I decided it was finally time to actually do something. I realized my drinking habits had become problematic over the last 5 years and were the primary, though not only, contributor. I was routinely drinking 800 or more calories in alcohol + whatever food I'd eat while drinking, regularly and repeatedly throughout the week. Add in hangovers and hangover food and the weight started making sense. I first just cut out drinking without making many adjustments to diet and my health started improving rapidly, and I began to lose some weight. And then quarantine happened, and for the first time in years I've been eating all my meals at home, and able to truly count the calories I'm ingesting.
This is just to say that over the last two months my habits have changed dramatically. I don't drink, I cook all my own food, I'm regularly eating 1600 calories, I'm finally getting healthy sleep.
And yet the scale is showing me that I've lost, on average, only 5 pounds since the end of Feburary—my first weigh in was at 238.8 and today it was 233.5, but the average of each day comes out to only 5 lbs over the last two months. My clothes are fitting differently, and my wife is noticing big changes. Is it possible for 5 pounds to change the body that much? And why is the scale change so much less than I anticipate?
I realized that the first time I weighed myself, when I got the 238.8 number, I put the scale on a hardwood floor and in a place I now realize gives me very unpredictable readings. Now it's only on the tile floor in the bathroom (though even that is finnicky). I'm wondering if I was actually much heavier than I realized at the first weigh in—there were several times I weighed myself after that where I came in at ~247, but I figured those were fluctuations/water/scale issues. Maybe I was actually more like 250 lbs? If so that would put me at more like a 2 lb a week weight loss and the numbers would more add up to where I'm at now.
Sorry for the long post—I'm realizing I've had nowhere to think this out loud besides with my wife, and this is such an amazing community that it feels safe to share it all. Thanks.
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