I was big into MFP/CICO a couple years ago, lost about 20lbs, maintained for a few years, and gained most of it back in the last couple months. I'm not really worried about the gaining back because I still had a good BMI pre-weight loss. I ultimately wanted to lose a few pounds for aesthetics and was too lazy to work out. Right now my husband and I are trying for a kid so those 15-20lbs aren't really going to matter. I'm more focused on not overeating and maintaining a healthy uhh host body for a hopefully soon-to-be tenant.
Anyway.
This post isn't about me though. My husband [35M, 6'2", 270lbs] has always been overweight and right now he's technically obese. Then he developed gout. More recently we suspect plantar faciitis which prevents him from any meaningful workouts involving the foot/leg, which is pretty much anything one can do right now (walking/running) since gyms and pools are closed. Despite being overweight, my husband enjoys exercise at least twice a week.
For as long as I've known him, my husband has gone back and forth with weight loss, but with no huge results. Reasons for attempting weight loss included gout and slimming down for our wedding. He insisted he'd had great results in the past with cutting out all carbs, so he did that for a while. It didn't work that well because my husband loves to drink. He's a social drinker in that he almost never drinks alone or with just me at home but he'll go balls to the wall when he meets friends. He refused, for years, to cut out booze from his diet altogether but he's slowly seeing the effects of gout and aging and developing bad hangovers so he's come around to the idea of slowing down. Booze is indeed carbs, he knows this, but he rationalizes his drinking... somehow... as one does when they really don't want to give up something they love.
In the past, I've suggested that my husband start counting calories as I did. He attempted it for like a week, but he is a "food for fuel" eater of large portions proportionate to his large body and it was too annoying for him to log everything he ate when on a carbless diet he felt could eat as much as he wanted as long as it wasn't carbs.
Then a few days ago, amidst the depressing social climate of quarantining (my husband is super duper social and would be so sad if I ended up being his only social outlet lol), the lack of exercise available to him due to his health and external factors, and a general desire to lose weight due to those reasons, my husband woefully asked me to start meal planning for him so that he can lose weight. Which I was excited about, because I've offered to do this for him in the past but he declined because he wanted to do it his way.
And now that we've both been quarantining/working from home, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to dust off the old calorie-counting skills and start cooking meals for him. Yesterday for lunch I cooked him a giant noodle stir fry under 600 calories. He was shocked that all of it was just for him and was delighted that counting calories could be so easy. I think he expected he'd have to starve himself, which I think he was feeling for a while with intermittent fasting (which didn't last long either). Then for dinner I made a huge zucchini casserole, half of which was around 900 calories. He had one cookie and one apple for snacks throughout the day and he still ended up way under his calorie budget. I told him he could have more snacks if he wanted but he declined (like I said, he eats for fuel and not necessarily because he loves to eat/is bored/etc.). We also went grocery shopping for some fruit/veg/other items. I wanted to get some Ranch dressing and my husband looked over my shoulder as I was comparing the regular dressing to the low fat and he commented how big the calorie difference was.
I changed my MFP profile to fit his needs. This morning he announced to me that he was eating an apple so that I could log it. He then asked how many calories are in an apple and I told him around 100, to which he expressed surprise that it was so many calories.
For his lunch today I'm making a turkey wrap which is usual go to but I'll be making it lower calorie as opposed his "let me just fit whatever I can into this wrap with like 4 slices of cheese and a ton of mayo". It's so much easier for me because I had to fit all my meals into 1200 calories when I was losing weight, but for my husband I have up to 2600 to work with, though I'm shooting more for 22-2300. There's the gout which makes it a little tricky with ingredients, but there's still so much leeway for me. Stringent cooking for him has also gotten me mindful of my meals again.
I just wanted to share, because I was really into /r/loseit when I was losing weight but left after it was done. It's nice to look through this subreddit again, but from a different perspective.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2M5XsPl
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