Had to return multiple clothes I ordered. To my great surprise, I had gone down 2 jeans sizes and one top size. I have been on the weight loss journey for 1.5 years now. Although I'm still overweight (~20lbs away from my goal weight), I also wore a swimsuit for the first time outside and it felt great. Lessons are: 1) don't just go by the scale, go by measurements and clothes fitting. 2) you don't need to be thin to show off your body and be sexy.
What's helped: CICO with a lot of water. I have been eating a lot of fiber, eating whole grains, paying attention to the tastes I craved and fulfilling them with healthy food (e.g. sweets - fruit, salty - salted nuts, sour - lemonade without sugar, or yogurt), not being strict but consistent (e.g. it's okay to eat a potato once in a while, or skip veggies for one meal out of 21 meals a week). Before lockdown I would also exercise at the gym. During lockdown, I did 30 day fitness app's home workouts, bike rides. More recently fell out of it and been doing long walks. The important part is to be consistent. You don't have to do the same exercise and eat the same foods everyday. Allow yourself flexibility and listen to yourself when you're too tired to work out.
Another important thing is to realise what is the blocker to your good habits. For me it was deciding what to cook for every week. So I made it simpler by precompiling a list of balanced and healthy meals which I actually wanted to eat. That took away a large barrier to meal prepping. It's the Pareto principle. Find out the 20% of issues (e.g. unable to decide what to eat) that are causing the 80% of negative effects (e.g. ordering unhealthy Uber eats for the whole week).
What really actually helped though was not comparing myself to others (deleting all social media helped), realising weight loss is not linear and not beating myself up when the scale was up (saying "it's okay, it's probably a daily fluctuation due to water weight"), not letting the guilt seep in every time I ate something not perfectly healthy, and realising I'm in it for the long run, that even if I don't hit my goal by a certain date it's okay because I know I will eventually hit it, just slower. Also I looked in the mirror and gave myself neutral descriptors e.g. I have a symmetrical face, I have almond shaped eyes, I have even eyebrows, I have legs that let me walk, I have hands that type fast, etc. That took the attention away from my weight and calling myself fat.
Another tip is to reach out for help whenever you notice yourself slipping more or feeling less motivated.
Eating healthy and exercising during lockdown is hard, but the clothes return motivated me a lot. Good luck to everyone out there! We got this!
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