Monday, May 23, 2022

3 months and 12 pounds of progress, mostly exercise.

So, I started Febuary 23rd. 13.5 weeks ago. Primarily with exercise. I'm 5'6 and I started at a stable (I was not gaining weight) 220 pounds (100kg) and am down to 205 (93kg.) For me, that was the best place to start and I wanted to share why.

I've lost weight via diet before. Went from 200lbs (90kg) to 160 (72kg) but I gained it all back in like 18 months. The strictness of the diet required to sustain it was just miserable, I was always hungry, and always angry about how hungry I was. I was eating right too, lots of vegetables, measuring the salad dressing, snacking on low calorie foods like cucumber, ect. People told me my stomach would shrink over time and I'd stop being hungry all the time and to add sweet potatoes to the salad to make it heavier ect. I don't want to call them liars but for me none of it made any difference at all. After ~8 moths of being constantly hungry I got fed up, I ate enough to not be hungry and miserable all the time and it all came back. (If exact numbers help give context, to maintain the same rate of weight loss then that I'm getting now I had to cut down to ~1400 calories a day. )

When I decided to try again I was determine to avoid a 'yoyo' diet type situation beause those do more harm than good, so after like a year of bouncing off various exercises (treadmill, exercise bike, eliptical, yoga) because they were really boring, I found an exercise I like (rollerblading in this case) and decided to really stick to it. I've gone from barely being able to go 1mile and it taking 30 minutes to do it to being able to work hard for ~10 miles (takes about an hour) or less hard basically until blisters force me to stop (2+ hours.) I do an hour a day 3-4 times a week, sometimes longer if i decide to replace a 'workout' session with a 'go run errands' session. I'm doing exactly the same diet control I've been doing since before i started the exercise (eat until I'm not hungry, avoid processed sugar) and the weight started coming off, and kept coming off.

I hit a bit of a plateau last week so I started putting some effort into dieting properly. (Side note: my scale has one of those electric body-fat-% things built in and while they're not the most accurate that did continue to drop last week so I suspect part of the scale not moving is is muscle gain. I cannot see the weight loss in the mirror, but I *can* see how much stronger/larger my backside and thighs are, and if it's obvious to me it's probably super duper obvious to everyone else.) People say 'you can't out run a bad diet' and it's true, but there's a big difference in my attempt to diet this time. I'm burning 3000-4000 extra calories a week. I lost all the weight so far while still eating more or less whatever I want (as long as it's not like, icecream or a big mac) so now because I have that I can make comparatively minor changes and still be able to sustain the loss. I don't have to eat like 30-50% less food and be constantly hungry. I replaced 2 500 calorie meals with 2 350-400 calorie meals (I eat 4 meals a day to manage blood-sugar) and boom, weight loss starts rightback up even though all I changed was wrapping my tuna in lettuce instead of a tortilla.

I'm sure there are other things that might have worked for me and I know the diet is going to become a bigger issue as my weight goes down so I'm going to have to make increasingly many small changes to it as I progress, but so far my approach is working out really well. I'm losing a bit under 1 pound (~.45 a kg) a week which is like 1/2 the speed I'd like, but it works. After like 5 years and a dozen attempts, I've found a thing I think I can stick to, it's way easier for me than diet alone and it makes me happy instead of miserable to do it. Fingers crossed for 3 more months and 12-24 more pounds.

submitted by /u/Princess_Pilfer
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