Also: SW: 235, CW: 208.8, GW: 180 25 YO, Male, 6’0”
When i was 16, I was 5’10” and I weighed 235 pounds. I was grossly overweight, extremely unhealthy, and I knew it. I hated myself. Hated looking in the mirror, hated that I felt like my identity was as “a fat kid,” and that, especially as a high school student, that’s all people saw in me. In the summer between my Junior and Senior years of HS, I decided to change that. I started running every day in the morning and in the evenings I’d lift weights. In 3 months, I dropped down to 200 lbs, in 3 more months, I dropped down to 190. I wasn’t slim, but I wasn’t fat anymore, and I was in good shape. I went from being unable to run a mile to being able to run a 6 minute mile. I felt good, girls noticed me for the first time, and I was happy with what I looked like.
I maintained a weight between 190 and 200 for about 4 years, and then fell off the horse. I never really stopped running (in fact, in the past 4 years I’ve run 2 ragnars, 3 half marathons, and a Spartan Race) but I ran less or slower, and I started eating more and more. Even when I lost weight, I’d always been bad at dieting. I lost weight not because I ate better, but because I exercised myself to death (or to deficit, as it were). At one point I swore I’d never get above 200 again, but I jumped up to 210 and then 220 and then 230 and then 235. I’m older and taller now than when I was 16, but I was back to where I had once been and I was ashamed of it. Last year I had a trail running race in November down in Arizona, and I knew it’d be tough. It was good motivation for losing weight, and I lost 10-15 pounds, but after the race was over and the holidays hit, it almost all came back. Still, I needed to lose weight and set a goal to do that this year.
As you can see in the graph at the top of this post, there’s been a sharp weight loss in the past few months. For the first time in years, I’m losing weight and it’s not really erratic or based off of exercising maniacal amounts (because I rarely have more than an hour a day to exercise anyway). It’s because for the first time in my life, I’m eating well and tracking my calories. I didn’t track my calories for YEARS, because i thought i didn’t need to or because i figured exercising and eating my version of “healthy” would be enough. When i first started tracking, I’d often estimate and those estimates nearly always came out low. It wasn’t until i tracked precisely every day that i started to see results—right now I’m on a 50+ day tracking streak, which for me is huge. When I’m on vacation, I track, even when I’m sick, I track. I just had a tonsillectomy—even being in terrible pain every day, I tracked every bowl of soup and every popsicle I ate. It hasn’t been easy, but over the last 6 months, I’ve come up with methods that work for me, and I’ve been able to eat foods I really enjoy and still maintain an 800-1000 calorie deficit almost daily. I’m hoping to hit 200 lbs by the October/beginning of November, and 190 by the end of the year. Today I weighed in at 208.8, which is the lowest weight I’ve been since probably 2014.
Everyone here has heard it a million times, but no doubt someone out there is still like I was and still doubts it, so I’ll add my voice to the others: if you want to lose weight, there aren’t a lot of valid excuses. Literally all you have to do is CICO and the weight will go away. Granted, you should probably exercise as well, and there are tricks to making running a calorie deficit more pleasant, but it’s really not rocket science.
I’m no expert, but I’m happy to share tips with anybody that has questions! I’ve been a long time lurker here and on r/progresspics. Both have been inspiring and incredibly helpful to me and I wanted to pay that forward for anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation to myself. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel! You can do it! Thanks for everything, guys.
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