Friday, January 1, 2021

3 Years of Weight Loss

MyFitnessPal Chart

I see a lot of people on here saying how they lost like 150lbs in a year, so I figured I’d show my longer journey. It’s not as much weight as others, but I’m still proud to have lost it.

Growing up I was always on the upper end of a healthy weight. I gained a little more in college, but after graduation I got an office job and steadily put on weight due to lack of exercise, free office treats and too much pasta/sugary drinks. During this time I also learned about HAES and decided that my body just wanted to be at this weight and there was nothing I could do about it.

Then in January 2018 I moved to a new job and made a friend who had lost a lot of weight through diet and exercise, so I thought maybe HAES was wrong. I was around 185, so I made it my New Year’s Resolution to get back down to 170 to fit into my jeans better, which I hit in May 2018 through lazy CICO.

I maintained until August 2018, when I decided I wanted to get down to 135 before a vacation in April 2019, and an ultimate goal of 125. So I got serious with my weight loss. I tracked, keeping to 1200 calories/day and walking 10,000 steps/day. This was a great way to lose weight, but unfortunately I wasn’t in a very healthy mindset as I did it. So when I got down to 137 in February, even though I was close to my first goal, I realized I was too obsessive so I quit tracking.

I gained a bit over the 2019 holidays, and decided to track again in January 2020. By February I was back down to my previous weight, so I stopped tracking and just tried eating healthier and walking more. I got down to 130 in July without really trying.

I maintained 130-135ish for a couple months, but then in October my doctor had me go to a nutritionist for high cholesterol, and she told me to limit myself to 120 carbs/day spread evenly throughout the day and walk 10,000 steps/day. I was eating 200+ carbs/day and only walking 5,000 steps/day so this was a big change for me. I ended up tracking again both for the carbs and calories to make sure I was eating enough. I still ended up losing some weight and was down to 127 at the end of November. But now I was getting obsessive counting carbs, so in mid December when I had the holidays as an excuse I stopped counting and went completely off track, eating tons of carbs and not walking as much.

So my new years resolution is to get back on track with walking 10,000 steps/day, and replace carbs with more protein in my diet to get back to that 120 carbs/day while eating enough calories to not lose more weight too quickly. I’m not going to track carbs this time in MyFitnessPal though (weighing and logging my food was what made me obsessive). I know the general average carb amounts, so I’m just going to estimate it in my head to get close, and not worry about the carbs in non starchy vegetables.

The things I regret most about gaining weight are how it affected me mentally and physically. I felt really large and not very confident at 185. I didn’t feel like I could wear clothes and look cute (which I know now was a lie, anyone can look cute no matter your size). I got tired out all the time and had trouble just walking up stairs or standing up from sitting on the ground. Also, After losing weight I don’t have a ton of loose skin like some people do, but I’m definitely a lot more jiggly, especially in my arms, thighs and butt. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older, or if it’s because I lost so much fat so my skin is sagging. Weight training would help, but I doubt it’ll look as tight as it would have if I hadn’t gained all that weight in the first place.

I’m very happy I lost the weight, I just wish I hadn’t gotten myself to the point where I needed to lose it in the first place. And after a few rounds of gaining and losing, I’m confident that when I gain weight again (because I’m probably going to be yo-yoing 10lbs forever) I can just eat healthier and exercise more for a few weeks to lose it again.

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