Anecdote/Where I started:
When I decided to lose weight, I never took any pictures of my current weight. I thought that those kind of progress pictures were vain, and I didn't want to see the picture if I failed. I was wrong on both counts. Those kinds of pictures are powerful motivators, and not only that, but one of the only visual ways you can track progress. As a result of my decision, the only validation I've had over this past year has been seeing the number on the scale lower, and people giving me compliments on my weight loss. Last night I went to a organization dinner with a few friends and their parents. The last time I had seen their parents was thanksgiving a year ago. As we were talking my friend's mom began asking me about my year and the dad asked where we knew each other from. When I told him about thanksgiving, he said the title. The funny thing is, it was over 2 months later that I hit my max of 210lbs and decided to lose the pounds. So he never even saw me at my heaviest. It was probably the best validation/compliment I've received all year.
My flair when I last posted here (9 months ago!) was:
20sM 5'9" SW:210ish CW:200 GW:160-170 white collar but runs.
At that time, I had already dropped 10 lbs before ever posting. And now, 9 months later, I've dropped a further 25. The lowest I've been is 168ish (that was before I took a big vacation to Europe a month ago and ate a lot). But right now I'm back to 175 (a drop of 35lbs), and ready to start up again.
What I did:
So what did I do? I don't think that I did anything particularly special. In late January/early February, I stepped on the scale and realized that I weighed 210 lbs. Now, I had been meaning to start dieting and working out for a while, but 210 lbs was my limit. I decided "No further" and immediately set upon trying to lose weight. For the first week or two, I drastically dropped my calorie intake to about 1k per day, and started walking/jogging upwards of 2 miles per day. Although this did work and give rapid results, I was told literally everywhere that it was unhealthy and unsustainable. So I went to a dietician and instead settled at 1.8-1.5k calories per day. And I increased my walks to more like 4 miles per day. However, I quickly learned that weightlifting is better for burning calories than cardio. I worked with a personal trainer for 4 months, ending a month before I took my vacation. I actually would not recommend getting a personal trainer. I only got one because I have a bone condition, and I found that I lost more weight doing my own workouts than I did doing the ones with the trainer. The average person can learn what they need to workout online, or just find someone at the gym who will take you under their wing. Trainers are just inconsistent. I worked out 2-3 times a week, and tried to do cardio on >50% of my off days (probably more like 75%).
The thing that I think really helped me, and made the drop in calories a lot more bearable, was meal prepping. Meal prepping is great because 1. you can learn how to cook 2. It allows you to prep your calories in advance instead of just tracking them as you go 3. It removes most of the temptation of fast food because you already have something decent in the house that you don't have to cook right then and there and 4. its supposedly cheaper (and probably is). I used Eat This Much because it allowed me to prep a whole week easily. Originally, I prepped for 2 weeks at a time. I setup for 2 meals a day, trying to get intermittent fasting in too. 1 Meal at 10-12, 1 meal at 5-6. I did it such that I would have 2 sets of 2 meals for alternating days, one simple to cook, one harder to prep. So for example, on day one, a sandwich (easy) for brunch and chicken teriyaki (hard) for dinner, and on day 2, a salad (easy) for brunch and salmon fried rice (hard) for dinner. I prepped on Saturday. This worked for like a month. And then I cooked something that I didn't like, and realized the problem of making 2 weeks worth of food at once. There were also some issues with vegetable heavy dishes staying fresh over such a long amount of time. So instead, I reduced the term from 2 weeks to 1 week and its worked for me ever since.
That's not to say that I've always and/or consistently been losing weight since 9 months ago. Progress has certainly been slow, especially compared to my unhealthy and, more importantly, unsustainable, "What if I eat almost nothing and do a bunch of cardio" strategy I started with. There have been weeks where I ended slightly higher than I was the last, or didn't follow my plan completely because I missed tastier (read: Unhealthy) food. But what I realized is that every day that I eat out, even for one meal, is worth 2-3 days + of sticking to the plan. I found that I tend to lose in bursts. So for example, right now, I'm (~175lbs) preparing to start again and power through until I reach 165lbs. And once I reach that goal, I'm confident I will never hit 170 lbs again through gaining weight in unhealthy ways. In the end, I believe that I have built a sustainable habit that will keep me healthy for years to come.
Future plans:
Now, my original goal weight weight was 170-160, and at the moment I think I'll be aiming for the lower end of that spectrum, 160 lbs. At that point, I plan to shift gears from losing weight to gaining muscle, and begin learning about the bulk and cut stuff. Right now I am changing up my meal planning to be less... planned... Eat This Much is great because they do 90% of the work for you (which makes them easy to get into), but I've found that I haven't been learning as much about cooking as I would like to using them. Their recipe selection is limited, and the tool for adding recipes from online seems broken for me. I want to cook more diverse cuisines (I'm starting with spanish food!) and work on taking more responsibility for my own meal prep. On that note, if ya'll have any good suggestions for meal-tracking/planning app/software with a good online-recipe copying feature, I'm all ears. Thanks!
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