Two years ago to this day I joined reddit. I also weighted 250lbs+ (I think 260 but didn’t have a scale) and was extremely unhappy with the way I looked and felt in my body. Even tho I had many very good friends I felt alone because I didn’t find myself attractive and I can’t blame all the guys I liked for feeling the same.
So I decided to change and set my goal: 165 pounds before I turn 30. This gave me 14 months to lose over 90 pounds. I set that goal as 165 would have put me just about in the normal BMI range but tbh I didn’t think I could actually achieve that.
I have been overweight my whole life. The lowest I’ve been was during high school when I played competitively volleyball and it must have been just slightly overweight with an BMI around 26. I used to look back at the pic and think “why couldn’t I see how thin I was, I would give everything to look like that now”. As my BMI 2 years ago was around 39. Today it is 22.5.
progress piece 3 (with sport top and leggings only)
I posted this before but here are my key learnings:
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CICO is the most important thing. However you do it (IF, OMAD, keto etc). All of these are right if at the end of your day you took control over your daily total calories. Find what works best for your lifestyle and what least enables your binge eating (some might feel good with OMAD bc they don’t have to make decisions during work and some might get so hungry they eat way too much at once)
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to succeed in CICO it is important that you track ALL food. I used the NOOM app first but when I switched to Loseit I found it was better. I also bought a scale that links to my phone and weight myself every morning and eventually bought a food scale. Even if you binge one day and you’re ashamed, track everything! The daily weighting helped me stay motivated. After the first two months I didn’t lose as fast and it felt like I’m not losing anything at all - which wasn’t true and when I looked at weekly or monthly trends on my app I felt a lot better. Accept that sometimes weight doesn’t move and try to look at trends (for example during my period & ovulation I hold a lot of water weight so it looks like I don’t lose and then one day of the other I lose 2lbs).
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while restricting your calories (I aimed for 1,200 first three months and then 1,500 when I added more exercise and now eat around 2,000) try to balance your meals. Especially on 1,200 it takes planning to get enough protein, vitamins, fibre and healthy fats.
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prepare yourself for success: bring healthy snacks into the office if you like snacking, only have healthy food at home, cook in small portion sizes etc. If a salad is more expensive than a pizza if you eat out with friends don’t let it bother you. Especially in lockdown: don’t go hungry to the supermarket and just don’t buy anything bad. If you don’t have it at home, you won’t eat it (and if you really need something buy it small. Not a whole bar of chocolate or a whole box of cookies. Personally I realised for example that I don’t necessarily love crisps, I love crunchy food. So a carrot, cucumber or rice crisp will also be satisfying for me)
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even if you have a bad day (I promise you it will happen, it’s normal): forgive yourself and GET BACK ON. I fucked up basically every week in summer 2019 bc I was going out that much but at least I had 5/6 good days that overall made me still lose. Don’t forget that you still deserve to live a happy life, it doesn’t depend on how many calories you ate today.
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try to stay away from processed food even if it’s low calories as much as you can. 1200isplenty offers loads of inspiration on meals. I became a big fan of roasted veggies + chicken. No chewing gum or drinking soda. I noticed that both had a satisfying feeling for me at the start but it made me more hungry in the long run. So when I are eventually I tended to binge more easily. Having said that I eased in. I drank a can of diet soda almost everyday for the first three months bc my cravings were bad otherwise. But eventually I could switch to just water, coffee or tea and i noticed the change.
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you might think about food all the time now but that too will change with time and once it does it will feel great. Only through my change I came to realise I had a food addiction. Understand that helped me a lot. Sugar or fat both are highly addictive. What helped me is to set a three week goal at the start: cut out everything in an extreme manner for 3 weeks. It’s enough time to reset your gut bacteria and then the worst parts of the cravings are gone and three weeks is not an impossible task. Then you can ease up a bit but don’t just fall down in old habits more like ad a treat daily.
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allow yourself to spend more money on healthy options. Appreciate not everyone can do this but as a treat I allowed myself to spend whatever on healthy options. Overall I still saved tons of money bc 1. I eat way less than before 2. I hardly ever order food home anymore and only eat salads at work for lunch (or during lockdown I noticed I just need to eat twice a day, around 11AM and 5PM). But probably once a week I go to a (overpriced) healthy lunch place and pay about £10 for something really healthy and tasty.
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alcohol has so much bad calories, ideally don’t drink. Personally I still drank a lot but changed beer to vodka, lime & soda and the occasional glass of red wine. Since I started to enjoy the gym I naturally hardly drink anymore, especially true during lockdown.
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once you feel comfortable eating on a calorie deficit (for me it took 4 months) add exercise. Try not to make it a reason to suddenly eat much more but don’t let yourself starve. A women should expect to gain no more than 1lbs per month if she starts heavy weight training through gained muscle mass. So if you suddenly stop losing or start gaining after going to the gym it’s likely you suddenly ate more again bc it feels like you’re “allowed”. I added yoga and body pump work out classes, now I do these over YouTube videos. Try to make it not only cardio but also weight lifting, trust me on that!! Muscle will allow you to eat more and stay thinner more easily. During lockdown I use YouTube videos with weight handles or yoga videos. I also added running but only when I weighted less than 190 lbs as it’s hard on the joints (I’m not a doctor, just left like it would be too much before).
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one big problem for me (pre COVID) was that most my socialising equaled loads of food. I basically only met my friends for drinks & dinner or massive brunches. Try to meet friends through non food related meetings too (I got a few friends to go to yoga with me or instead of dinner after work met for coffee before work or doing long walks together, meeting for board games etc). During lockdown it became quite normal for me to meet a friend for a take away coffee and walk through the park.
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sleep is super important. I needed about 9 hours of sleep on a 1,200 diet. And now if I sleep less than 8 I tend to have a stronger urge to snack during the day. Get enough sleep!
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take pic of you at the start, it will feel great to compare them a few months later and you will see the change even if you don’t see it day by day. Also measure your waist and neck. Somethings it’s hard to see changes and the scale doesn’t shift but then it’s nice to see you still lose around the waist. I measure I wasn’t every three weeks or so.
Also reddit was a great source of motivation for me. I looked at this thread, progress pic daily and 1200isplenty. seeing all this success stories from “normal” people really did give me hope. So thanks for supporting me through this journey.
Good luck to everyone & feel free to add more tips for me and everyone as well xx
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