Male, 31, 5'11 SW:265 CW:177 GW170ish
Hi All,
I've been coming here since day one and have learned so much from everyone on this sub. Reading both success and failure posts, as well as the encouraging and insightful comments from others really helped to keep me on track and understand the weight loss process. I don't think I'd at this point without this sub.
My journey starts with getting sober, which today is my one year anniversary of that. In addition to quitting alcohol, I made the decision that I had to get healthy both mentally and physically, and that meant losing weight and getting in shape. I started with coming to this sub and after a few days of doing some research here, I found that CICO and IF were the tools I would use. Granted, I lost about 30lbs in a month just from cutting out booze, but the loss continued even after that huge first drop. It definitely become harder as the booze weight fell off, but that's when people's advice and guidance on this sub really came to help me. I'll be the first to admit that I was probably a bit over eager to lose weight and looking back I would probably scale my deficits a bit. There were several hard weeks and months, many plateaus and many times that things felt hopeless. I've learned that patience is key, above everything else. Patience with the rate of loss, patience with yourself and patience with your body are all extremely hard notions to put into action, but they are essential to making this work for the long term. I still want to lose about ~10 more pounds. Frankly I haven't lost much since November, just about 5lbs, but I'm perfectly okay with that. I lost so much weight so fast that slowing down and losing at a more natural pace will be the smart thing to do.
I think most of us already know what it takes to lose weight, so I won't go into huge details, but feel free to ask me. The gist of it is CICO, very strict CICO, especially in the begging. I also did IF for about the first six months, which was helpful in regulating my hunger.
My diet consisted, and still does for the most part, of healthy grains, lean proteins and tons of vegetables. I don't eat a lot of fruit and my sweet tooth never went away, so I allow myself fill those cravings but I try to keep it limited to good dark chocolate, low sugar/low cal cereal or some flavored greek yogurt. I do allow myself some cookies or other treats(addicted to Hi-Chews) on certain days, but I try very hard to limit to single portions, no more than the allotted amount. But I would be remiss if I didn't say that I've had plenty of days where I flubbed that rule. This journey has not been perfect and it's been difficult to not get down on myself. I set very high expectations and I've had to learn (continuing to learn) that if I screw up on a day or even a week, I just need to brush it off and get back on track. There's no need to beat myself up.
As for exercise, I only walked for the first four/five months. In June, I finally took the plunge and started running. I choose running because it was the thing I hated most growing up. At first, I could barely make one lap around the grassy area of my local park and I was extremely embarrassed and self-conscious, I felt like everyone was staring at me, but I just kept coming back and coming back. I started with C25K and within about a month I was running 5K in like 40 minutes three or four times a week. Fast forward to today and I'm up to 45ish miles per week and have a 5K PB of sub-24 minutes. I've run half marathon distance several times and have capped out at a 16 mile run recently. My goal is to do marathons once they come back. Running has become my absolute favorite thing to do, it has filled a void. there's no way I could've imagined typing those words a year ago. I detested running. I don't say any of this to boast, I'm still slow as shit compared to a lot runners. The point here is that you can do it if you really desire it and you stay consistent. I suppose that's also the main key with weight loss, as well.
This has been a helluva year. If anyone out there is struggling, just know that it can be done. Keep coming back to this sub and don't give up on yourself!
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