F, 40, 5'6", SW 253, CW 173, GW 153
I'm posting this as an alternative to people who want to lose 20 pounds in a month or two, and for people who get upset when they don't lose 20 pounds in a month or two; my goal is to lose 20 pounds in nine months.
I realize I've lost quite a bit of weight already; at one point, I was down to about 148; what I was doing at the time was neither healthy nor sustainable. 2019 was my 2020; drank my way through the end of an abusive relationship, drank my way through the aftermath of that relationship, lost my job, drank through that too, and gained 50 pounds in a year. 2020 was better in a lot of ways - fantastic boyfriend, new job, drank less, but I still gained another 10 pounds. When the scale read 205 after Thanksgiving, I decided that was more than enough of that, downloaded My Fitness Pal again, dusted the food scale off, and stepped the heck away from the alcohol.
I'm down 30 pounds since then, in, what, 7 months? Slightly less than a pound a week on average. Know what's awesome about that? I WEIGH 30 POUNDS LESS THAN I DID AT THANKSGIVING!!!
I recently reset my calorie target to my sedentary TDEE for my goal weight. I'm mildly active during the week, more active on weekends, but no one will ever mistake me for actually being physically fit, so it's not a huge deficit.
It may very well take that full nine months to lose that 20 pounds, and that's just fine. I'm not going to need to change what / how much I eat at my goal weight from what I'm doing now.
I tend to take a very loose IIFYM approach - I take the goals that MFP gives me for protein and fat as minimums (I frequently eat more protein, usually above 100 grams); minimum 25 grams of fiber; and let the carbs happen as they happen. Heck, I welcome carbs with open arms.
I log my food the night before, so when I wake up, all I have to do is open MFP to know what I'm having; if I don't know for sure what I'm having for dinner, I can log lunch, so I at least know how many calories I have to play with. I do give myself room to be flexible - I decided that vanilla bean gelato with Nutella sounded good for dessert the other night, so I decided to not have bread with dinner and mentally forgave myself for being 100 calories over my target that day; I'd also spent a few hours hauling wood for a camp fire, so 100 calories was not going to ruin my day. I measured it all out in grams, I enjoyed it, and I regret none of it. I've been wanting Burger King for a while now; think I'll have some this weekend. The night before, that meal is the first thing that goes into MFP, and I'll plan the rest of my day around it.
I have kids. Everything I wrote there works just fine with kids in the house. I eat the same stuff they do, I just portion mine out differently. My boyfriend is slightly underweight. He can (and should) eat more than I do; we both realize we have different nutritional needs and goals, so we eat different amounts of different things. There are six different kinds of ice cream in the freezer aside from that vanilla bean gelato (I also claim the Ben & Jerry's Whiskey Biz - that stuff is heaven in a pint); if I want ice cream, I make sure I have room for it in my calories, I track it, I measure it, I enjoy it. Life after goal weight will have ice cream in it, I might as learn to incorporate it into my day now.
(For the record, I do eat things other than ice cream. Lunch was edamame & mung bean pasta with baked chicken breast and pesto, with a side of nonfat Greek yogurt; not sure about dinner yet, but it will include a few slices of Dave's Killer 22 grain bread to get me above 25 grams of fiber, and a salad because I've been in a salad kind of mood lately; I'm already close to 100 grams of protein; maybe I'll have dessert, maybe I won't.)
My point is this: slow weight loss is still weight loss. It doesn't have to be deprivation and misery. It might not be as quick, but it'll be sustainable. Building long-term habits may not get you there quickly, but you'll still get there.
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