Feeling pretty excited this morning.
I'm male, 28 years old, about 5' 10" (178cm).
Starting Point (July 2018, 240 lbs)
In spring and summer of 2018 I weighed 240 lbs (109kg). My goal was to get to a healthy BMI of under 25, which was about 175 lbs (79kg). It took me many months before I really personally bought into the idea that the discomfort of dieting was something I really wanted, but by late July I had begun my weight loss journey. It started with telling myself if I tracked my calories for three weeks in myfitnesspal then I could buy myself a pair of airpods. It was quite a lifestyle change. I remember spending a week on a lake with my family for vacation and constantly resisting the urge to eat more than I wanted to track. But that's the power of tracking your calories, it makes you mentally acknowledge all the food you eat and by default makes all eating mindful.
First time hitting goal weight (April 2019, 175 lbs)
Anyways, I kept up the discipline (with lapses for sure, but was always able to get right back to my healthy habits) for about nine months and hit 172-175 in about April of 2019. That was a loss of 65 pounds (30kg) in about 40 weeks, or about 1.5 lbs per week, aka an average daily deficit of 750 calories. It felt amazing to achieve that goal and was an enormous boost to my self confidence and self pride.
That summer I played on a competitive ultimate frisbee team (relevant username), felt healthier than ever and maintained pretty close to my goal, like always under 180 lbs (82kg). Though to be honest, I really did want those numbers to be a few pounds lower and found myself being really calorie conscience even during tournament weekends when people can eat thousands of calories of snacks during a day of games, then have a huge dinner with a beer or shake. I would try to stick to about 2000 calories, and probably end up a few hundred more.
Celebratory Asia Trip (September 2019, 175->185 lbs)
After the season ended in September, I had a few weeks off between jobs, and had a trip planned to Thailand and Taiwan. This was my first time in Asia, after a lifetime of loving all Asian food. I had been dieting for over a year, and it was a constrained three week trip, so I decided to give myself cart blanche and eat whatever I wanted for three weeks. It was phenomenally delicious and freeing to eat everything, but I for sure went overboard. I ended up gaining about 10 pounds (5kg), which I really think was actual weight gain, not water weight. That, plus ending the season about 5 pounds over my goal weight meant I was about 15 pounds (7kg) away from where I wanted. The past 6 months has been an effort to shed those 15 pounds and today I reached my goal.
Explicit definition of new goal
My criterion for declaring the end of cutting and the beginning of maintenance is a bit complex, but I'm happy with it. I want to be safely in the healthy BMI range (<25), so if the cutoff for my height is 174 lbs, I set a goal of having a true weight most days around 172 lbs. To account for daily fluctuations, I like using an average of the past 7 days. I like the free Happy Scale app on iOS, the default "average" function is more wonky, but you can change to settings to make it a simple 7 day trailing average. And I didn't just want to dip down, I wanted to really hit and stick at this weight, so I decided to go for 7 days straight with a 7 daily trailing average under 172. Today was the 7th day!
I'm officially out of weight loss phase and into maintenance. I have a lot of thoughts and anxieties around this phase. For now, my goal is to aggressively track my calories, weigh in every day, and check in with myself every week. I don't know if I will try to consistently eat more (like 2000 calories) every day, or go for a daily goal of more like 1500 but have more budget for desserts and special occasions. I think the latter, but that's a lot less controlled, which gives me some pause.
How I lost 15 pounds this time
What I learned from reading this forum almost every day for months and months is that the advice and stories are almost never novel, but that just means if you're unsure where to start, good news: there are tried and true techniques and learnings! Read the quick start guide, it's gold!
My steady state for losing weight ended up like this:
No breakfast, but hot black coffee if I'm in the mood for a hot drink. It also works for me as an appetite suppressant. Mid size lunch at noon at around 500-600 calories. No snacks at all. Start cooking dinner around 6pm, eat at maybe 6:45. Eat 1000 calories for dinner.
Track track track my calories so I know what 500 calories and 1000 calories looks like. Often, that means planning out my meals component by component and adjusting amounts to fit the calorie goal.
Lapses
They happened to me. It's tough, because you want to be able to rebound from it quickly, but acknowledging it as a big deal failure might make it less likely to happen again? Certainly capping high calorie events at a day is far easier to recover from than a week. Another thing is that in the same way you might have an unplanned high calorie day, see if you can have an unplanned extra healthy day. Maybe you get a run in, have a normal lunch and a slightly smaller than normal dinner.
Exercise
I've slowly but surely become a big runner and having a few runs a week burn off an extra 500-1000 calories is great. I try not to eat back those calories as a general rule, like I will often go for a morning run and not eat until lunch. But there is definitely a correlation between doing a big run and then binging that day or the next day. It's an ongoing process.
Cooking
I've gotten really into cooking. I find spending a good 20-30 minutes (sometimes more) making a meal has become an important part of my routine, if I were just given a plate of food and ate it I think I'd have a harder time convincing myself I was satiated.
I recognize that I have a lot of free time and no kids or other constraints that make things much harder for many others.
One last piece of advice
TRACK TRACK TRACK
Tracking calories (for me) has really been that one weird trick diet companies don't want you to know about. When I track, I have confidence in my choices, I sometimes get to eat more food than I thought, especially if I'm going big on vegetables or lentils or beans and light on pasta, bread, oils, cheese. But also, if I try to guess what looks like a reasonable portion and then look it up, I was probably wrong. Calories add up and knowledge is power (France is bacon, which you should track).
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