Hi all,
I just don't know what to say and more or less just discovered by "accident" when stumbling over the settings in my Cronometer.
Was hovering between 93-95kg on 165cm height before I started my weight loss journey in November. Went vegan and started using Cronometer. Operating on a 500 kcal deficit but not sweating it too much, sometimes I'm above that, sometimes I'm below that, the thing I care more about honestly is nutrition (which has been vastly subpar for me before as well) so sometimes when I already reached my calorie goal but when I see that I still am lacking something, I then try to eat for whatever vitamin, mineral etc is needed.
I'm not sweating it with Cronometer too much either, but try to get at least above 70% of whatever, so I will try to tackle stuff where I'm under 50% still and sometimes that means eating a couple nuts or putting extra oil into my salad which then ups the calories, but my weight loss has not suffered from that at all so far.
I'm down to 81.2 kg by now and I honestly am considering to maybe do some fastening over the weekend for a day or two to give me a little boost and get below 80kg asap for a little extra motivation for the things to come.
I honestly cannot even give much advice really I guess but gonna share some anecdotes about what I used/ done anyways, maybe someone finds something of that helpful or gets some ideas for their own journey.
All I did do was counting calories and avoiding the overeating and binge eating, which was super hard in the beginning hence the vegan diet to give me some extra limitations/ rules to follow...and after a week or two it was no problem anymore even.
I think one of my biggest problems really was the massive consumption of addicting foods like salt, fat and sugars, that not only is unhealthy but also always wants you to consume more, in retrospective I feel like I was a junkie back then just running around trying to get "a fix".
In the first 2 weeks in November I even was eating a fair amount of vegan fast food which was tasty but it was SUPER expensive and I did not want to spend that much money, so I stopped buying that kind of stuff and soon moved towards "buying fresh and cooking myself". I never learned to cook really and the first 1-2 weeks were kind of bad, I barely had any spices at home other than salt and pepper, bought that stuff and found combinations I like, did get better with the dosing it as well and once I had that down, I started to not even miss fast food and processed food anymore to be honest.
My diet consists mainly of legumes (beans, chickpeas, peas, lentils), salads (mainly cucumber, carrots and lambs or rucola salad), then whatever else is fitting the meal (or what nutrition I was slacking on the prior days) when deciding if I go for potatoes, rice or noodles. Lots of broccoli, sometimes spinach, eggplants, zucchini.
Fruits I do not eat often through the week, but do make one big ass smoothie on the weekend with 1 banana + ~200gr of frozen fruit (like blueberry, strawberry, cherry or mango), 1 liter soy milk and also add seeds, nuts, linseed, oatmeal, when at home I throw some spinach in it as well. I drink this through the morning, it most times has around 1000-1200 calories, but lasts me throughout the whole day really....and it's easily made and super tasty.
As said above, I use Cronometer to track my nutrition and that alone has been some kind of fun game for me along the whole weight loss journey especially since I started to feel so much better.
I have/ had a fair amount of mental health issues. depression, sleeping problems, anxiety...issues with high blood pressure on top of that partly because of my weight but also because of my diet (lots of salts and fats). I also had issues with sometimes bleeding slightly out of my "poo hole" like once a week, docs said it would be hemorrhoids and I once got treated for them but they didn't fix the bleeding issue really, just reduced it a little bit. I haven't had that happening since November when I completely changed my diet.
In retrospective just a couple months later now, it was so easy to get rid of that stuff and I never would have expected my diet having so much impact on my mood and mental health.
It was eye opening really... depression is almost full gone. I shit you not. I have so much more energy, motivation and my mood is SO MUCH better. Anxiety is reduced A LOT as well because I overall am a lot calmer by default and more relaxed which most likely has something to do with me actually being able to have a normal sleep routine by now. It's just that stressful situations still go make my head explode due to spiking anxiety but in the daily-routine overall, it's no longer an issue....and with the weight loss overall, I feel better and more motivated as well and with feeling better overall it's so much easier to stick with calorie counting because I don't eat my feelings anymore.
Back then I was lying in bed for hours before able to fall asleep, hence feeling shit in the morning and throughout the day, by now I go to bed and fall asleep what feels like within seconds to minutes. I usually wake up between 5-6am without even needing an alarm clock anymore (just using one to make sure, but most times turn it off before it even started ringing).
As for exercises: Still slacking massively on that lol, I'm not really a sporty person also due to issues with my back and knees, but plan to pick up running once I've reached 75kg (and after double checking with my doc). I bought some resistance bands but lack the will to do actual workouts at home, I just do a couple exercises once or twice a week but without really pushing it and without a plan to begin with. Maybe I gonna hit the gym once they are open again, but cannot promise haha.
In the long run I plan to get down to 65kg.
All I do really is walking my dog 3-4 times a day and do go between 4-5km per walk or throwing the ball for 2hrs in the dog park (I guess that is some kind of exercise too? At leas for my dog haha) every now and then.
The next thing: I feel like I save a fair amount of money, not only due to not ordering food anymore, but also because I'm putting so much more thought into my diet and plan ahead and cooking from fresh IS cheaper to begin with. I also feel like my body is craving less due to eating healthy and it being provided with all nutrition. I even buy some stuff like cucumbers or tomatoes bio-organic which is more expensive, but I feel like I spend a lot less money overall. Cucumbers I simply like eating them with the skin, and tomatoes imho taste better when bio-organic, but this could be my own bias though.
I did buy a couple of those glass containers to store food in the fridge and keep it fresh for a bit longer and it honestly is working like a charm. It also gives me the option to eat less since I e.g. can open a can of chickpeas, cook some lentils and then just use 100gr of each and store the rest in the fridge. "Back then" I would have eaten all at once or eat until I'm stuffed, put the rest in the fridge, then throw it away a couple days later because stuff was soaked, rotten or I simply was not interested in eating the same thing again. Which not only has been a shitton of calories I consumed but also a shitton of money I wasted.
Now I can make different dishes with the same ingredients by using different additional stuff and different herbs and spices...and it makes counting calories and eating healthy so much easier when you can grab e.g. a container with 100gr edamame and have 1 more container left in the fridge for the day after. It also is more fun.
I also use a lot of stuff for " fantasy salads" by now, like today I gonna cook some noodles and use the stored carrots, edamame and pepper to make a noodle salad, not need additional fat for cooking and simply add 1 tablespoon of some oil together with some vinegar and spices to make a salad.
In regards to oils: I use A LOT less than before now because of that and actually have 5-6 different oils at home by now to use different oils for different things, to get different tastes or simply get differnt nutrition (like linseed for omega3, sunflower for vitamin E, sesame oil (Yeos, expensive but a goddamn dream) because it tastes fucking AMAZING, walnut oil, olive oil and peanut oil for when I need it for actual cooking).
The only thing that is kind of expensive is the Tofu (compared to meat that is). With chicken breast you e.g. could get an insane amount of protein and no fat, with Tofu, you have more fat and less protein so you need to use other sources, but overall I do not have any issue at all with proteins and get the daily target above 100% almost every day.
Some days I'm kind of struggling depending on what I decided to eat but then I do make me a nice shake with 300ml of Pea-milk (Vly unsweetened), 20gr of rice protein powder and some cocoa powder and that alone gives me 33gr of protein which then most times boosts me above 100% or brings me very close to it.
Yeast flakes also give a fair amount of protein and B vitamins, I can see some people might not like their taste but I personally love it and I throw ~10gr of them in basically every meal I cook and even most salads.
For other stuff I have different nuts and seeds at home which I throw into dishes as well or e.g. snack some almonds in the evening when I see I lack e.g. some vitamin E. I personally have become a HUGE fan of chia seeds, they give good nutrition, food fats and you honestly don't even really recognize them in a dish really when you use 10-15gr only.
Dog now is angry with me I did sit here so long to write that post, so I hope it maybe is helpful for some of you. If you got any questions I happily will answer them once I'm back from our walk.
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