Two Years of Maintenance - An Update with pics!

[F/33/5'7"/SW: 187lbs/GW:150lbs/CW: 147lbs) Two Years of Maintenance

About a year ago, I made this post about why my latest attempt at losing weight was ultimately my most successful. Well, it's been another year year and I'm back with some updates and a few more tips/lessons learned that I hope are helpful! Everything I said in my original post is still true for me more than a year later, but I have some new perspectives on some of it.

1) I still track my food consumption, just not everyday. I know in my original post I said to never stop tracking, but after a year, I wanted to see if I could maintain my weight while practicing eating in moderation and it turns out I could. I will say that weight fluctuations are sometimes bigger, but I know what I need to do after a particularly indulgent couple of days. Moderation for me looks like no more than one carb-heavy meal per day and if I've had a big event (a wedding, or BBQ) where I eat in a way that isn't typical for me, I often skip breakfast the following day, or do a egg/meat/veggie omelette for brunch (combining breakfast and lunch).

2) I still weigh myself every day. I know this is somewhat extreme and some people are anti-scale, but it's always been my best gauge for how I'm doing. I don't let the number on the scale determine my mood for the day, but since I practice eating in moderation moreso than counting calories now, I use the scale to help me determine if I need to cut back a bit or perhaps opt for less salty foods. If the numbers are off without reasonable justification, something isn't right and I can make adjustments quickly.

3) DRINK WATER and LOTS of it. My weight is always its most stable when I'm consistently drinking at least 64 oz of water per day. Even if I eat an excessively salty meal or drink a bit more than usual, the consistent hydration levels help offset the impact. I use a 32 oz water bottle and fill and empty it at least twice per day (sometimes thrice). As a bonus, I sleep better, feel better and look better when I'm well-hydrated.

4) Make sure your reason for losing isn't a temporary one. This is a big one for me. My mom has lost and gained the same significant amount of weight multiple times (like I had) for the last two decades and asked me why this last time was so successful for me. My motivation this time wasn't for an event (my wedding) or simply to look better (which is highly subjective). My motivation this time was much bigger and much more permanent - I wanted to set a good example for my new daughter and I wanted to be healthy enough to be active with her. I never want her to go through the weight issues I did, so I want to teach her good habits from the beginning that she can carry with her the rest of her life.

5) In my original post, the point I made about not wanting to lose weight just to look better caught a lot of flack. From experience, more justification for this is that eventually you may stop receiving compliments on your appearance or feeling as enthralled about it yourself. You get used to seeing yourself at a certain weight and others get used to it too. If you're losing weight only for the validation, you may find yourself disappointed when you stop receiving it. I started strength training about a year ago to enjoy the benefits of my weight loss and found this helped a lot. My goals now are driven by my physical ability rather than just by how I look.

This community was a huge help when I was losing, I hope this update was helpful!

Before Now

submitted by /u/radiogeek22
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2pBUJBO

I am completely stagnant on the scale

I weigh myself every day. The scale is not budging an ounce. I guess I should be grateful that I'm not gaining but I am eating perfectly and there's no fluctuation at all. It's so frustrating because my goal is to look amazing when I meet my boyfriend's extended family at Thanksgiving. I eat between 1220 and 1300 cals per day and my TDEE is around 1900. When I use my Fitbit (15000 steps per day), the app always clocks my TDEE at being around 2100. I just don't understand why the scale isn't moving at all. I'm portioning out my food, I've given up cheese, the food scale is my best friend. I don't know what's going on and I'm super frustrated. I'm about to hit day 800 of my weight loss journey and I thought I'd be done by now. I'm just really depressed. Has anyone else experienced this before?

​

Also, please, no comments about how I must not be eating at a deficit. I know that I am and I find those remarks to be equally disheartening because the person making them wasn't there this morning when I weighed out my Huel and wasn't there last night when I put back some chicken to make sure I only ate exactly 4 oz.

submitted by /u/gritsgirl0389
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2O3w9sq

Lost 25 pounds, quit dieting for two months, and have been slowly gaining the weight back. How do you get yourselves remotivated?

Hi everyone, over the past few months I have joined this community and it has been an amazing support for me in my weight loss. You guys have really helped me in the past and I am hoping to get motivated again with your help.

So we have a classic weight loss story here. I got engaged last December, wasn’t my ideal weight (and was the biggest I have ever been weighing in at 198 pounds), and decided I wanted to lose it by the wedding. By the time the wedding day came I lost 25 pounds and couldn’t be happier! Yay me, I did it!

Well... now I have caught myself going downhill. I have gained 5 pounds in the past 2 months and have lost my motivation to count calories and stay on my fitness routine. I feel like my only motivation has been these outward goals/dates and I really want to change that. I felt so much better and more confident when I was treating my body well, but can’t seem to keep on track.

So lose it fam, how do you guys keep yourself motivated AFTER you reach your original goals? Any tips on how I can keep moving forward instead of starting all over again?

submitted by /u/hoffdog
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2yaUfXo

I'm Confused

So I try to use various ways to track my weight loss. I weigh myself every Wednesday morning and because I know weight is only one variable in the weight loss journey I also measure my chest, waist, abdomen and also use a body fat measurer to track body fat. I only measure myself and track body fat every couple of month because I know this can be slower to see results.

​

So today I did it. I weighed myself: down two pounds, yay! I measured myself: lost an inch in my chest, an inch in my waist, and an inch and half in my stomach, yay! And then I measured my body fat: up 1%. I know I'm getting caught up in something so small but I'm just so confused! Why did my body fat go up? Would anyone know why this would happen when it seems like I'm making progress in other aspects of my weight loss? I'M CONFUSED :(

​

Sorry this is long and ranty and there's probably a ton of spelling errors:

​

submitted by /u/ulymora
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2Rr3dsk

Progress Updates

hey everyone! So I was just messing around with my webcam trying to capture some angles of my face for references for sculpting. And then it hit me just how much I had lost in my face! Pictures of my face

I really have been having a hard time noticing my weight loss. But I get alot of comments on it from people I know. After looking up some old photos (I don't have many from when I was bigger) it hit home even harder.

The key to my weight loss is a little odd. I had to fix my mental heath first. Took me awhile. But i've been unmedicated (both doctors and self-medicating) for uhhh... 6months? might be more. I stopped counting. And im thriving. Not every day is a cake walk, I do have the odd horrible day. But my quality of life is 100x times better.

The real kicker for me was when I read the book Wheat Belly. Instantly understood SO much about wtf was going on with me. Cut out the wheat the next day. Lost lbs overnight. I was hooked. Not only that but I clearly have a huge issue with wheat. I finally stopped shitting my self all the time. It was a serious problem that is very embracing to admit. But HONESTLY, I can't even look at wheat the same. I've caved a few times since I first gave it up. And every time. The next day. I'm bloated, Gross feeling, Coughing, and my bowls are just unmanageable. It's crazy because before that I just assumed everyone had issues down there. NOPE JUST ME. (I argue almost everyone is having issues with wheat. I think it's one of the most overlooked causes for alot of problems. Go look at everyone's bloated bellies. It's not just the beer that causes it.)

But yeah after I cut out wheat, I decided to just go full keto because I was super close to being low carb anyway. And Stevia tastes great. Mostly just alot of chicken and beef. Mayo instead of ketchup. And I've taught my self to bake alot of carb free deserts. Oh and CHEEEEESE alot of CHEEEEESE.

And on top of all that, I started at the gym after new years and have been going since. Yes. I am one of those rare people that actually upheld there new years resolution. I started with rowing. Was hooked. Was going 5 days a week well I wasn't working (was out of work for a bit got an exciting new job at an escape room a few months back!). Now I only have time for 3 days a week if I'm lucky between classes and work. But it really is 70% diet 30% exercises anyway.

That being said, Thanks for hearing me out. I could talk for hours about all the shit that has happened to me this year. Its been an odd year. Never going to forget 2018. and it's still not over! I hope to be down to at least 215lbs by the end of this year. Good luck everyone!

submitted by /u/tubjunk
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2OAuNon

NSV: Knee doctor said my weight loss was “the very best thing” that I could have done

I’ve had knee problems since age 12 and three years ago at age 50 it had progressed to degeneration of the cartilage under the kneecap and inflammation that has now gotten inside the bone of the kneecap. My knee doctor then (3 yrs ago) told me I would “almost definitely” need total knee replacements of both knees “in a few years.” That freaked me out and I got serious about weight loss then (oddly the doc didn’t even mention my weight as an issue, but the PT did; I was quite overweight and closing in on obese). I couldn’t even walk up stairs anymore without these sharp stabs of pain on every step, like my knee was being stabbed with an ice pick with every step up, and could not rise up easily out of a chair.

It’s three years later. I have lost 52 lbs and am holding steady at a BMI of just under 20. (I picked a target weight 10 lbs above the underweight boundary, the idea being to minimize weight on my knees as much as possible, while still having a safe buffer from the underweight zone). My knees have gotten so much better - I can do stairs now no problem. In fact I just realized today that I’d actually forgotten that stairs used to be painful. I can get down/up out of chairs with reasonable control.

But weight loss didn’t solve everything. I was still having a lot of persistent aching, and a recent MRI showed that the kneecap cartilage is still all hashed up. I realized then that you can’t undo 40 years of damage to cartilage no matter how much weight you lose. So I was feeling a little discouraged. I went to a new knee doc today, a specialist who I hadn’t seen before, & he was looking through the MRI and was laying out all the options for me - cortisone shots and gel shots and more PT and so forth - and finally I just had to ask, “By the way, I lost 50 pounds hoping that would help. I was just wondering, was that really worth doing?”

He stopped dead in his spiel and kind of spun and looked at me, and I explained “I used to be 190 pounds and now I’m 138.” He got this expression, like, laser-beams-of-intensity coming out of his eyes, and said, “That is the very best thing you could have done for your knees. Better than every other treatment option I’ve outlined.” Then he explained, “In any weight-bearing position with your knee bent [like going up or down stairs, getting up out of a chair] each 1 pound of body mass translates to 7 pounds of force on the inner surface of the patella, so what you have done is remove 350 pounds of force from the damaged surface of the kneecap, every single time you do that sort of motion.”

He went on to say that he thinks my knees are actually in pretty good shape! They’re still inflamed but not too badly. There’s a bit of arthritis but not too much. Basically he thinks I have halted the progression of the damage! I still will need other treatments (PT, 1 cortisone shot, maybe a gel injection) but he thinks I will not need knee replacement surgery after all. (not that that would be the end of the world, but it was nice to hear that I just might not even need it!) He said “stay at 138 pounds, keep doing what you’re doing to maintain that weight, do your PT religiously and we’ll give you 1 cortisone shot” and with all those things together, there is a very good chance I’ll have usable and 100% pain-free knees for years. He even approved long hikes and bike riding and even some very light jogging.

So though losing weight didn’t magically cure all of the damage, it turns out it has really helped halt the decline, and is a key piece of the treatment plan.

I was just so happy to hear that it was all worthwhile! I mean, I kind of knew it must have helped, but it was so rewarding to have it verified.

edit to add: CICO all the way. Minimal sugar/booze, boosted protein & high fiber veggies, made myself give up all forms of salty chips (my biggest binge trigger), and I don’t drink any calories. Used an Ozeri food scale, My Fitness Pal & my trusty fitbit HR, and a lot of Pokemon Go to keep me walking. I weighed everything for a couple months. During maintenance I have found I no longer need to weigh & track everything because I now have a better intuitive sense of portion size, but I never went back to my old favorite foods. I still weigh myself every day and track occasionally just to be sure I’m on track. My rule is that I have stay within 2 lbs of target weight; if I drift outside that I go back to full tracking till I am back at target. (Oh and I ended up becoming the first Mystic player in town to hit level 40 in Pokemon Go, lol)

submitted by /u/NorthernSparrow
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2pxUbNk

Scared of the scale

For the last month or so I've been working out a lot as I joined my university's handball team. I'm the worst in my team. I'm the biggest, the one with the worst technique and the worst stamina, but I'm getting through it and getting visibly better at the sport.

In the beginning of this semester I was weighing myself everyday, to try and learn about my own body's fluctuations, and try to use it as motivation to lose more weight. Unfortunately, I was only gaining weight, for no specific reason, even though I was working out hard up to 5 times per week, and eating quite healthy. I got really sad by this, and stopped weighing myself completely. I gave up trying to track my weight loss, and stopped looking after what I was eating, even though I was still working out a lot.

Today I bought myself a food scale, so that I can start tracking my food properly again. I have been doing this over longer periods before, and I want to get there again. I want to lose weight and get more fit so that I can perform on the handball court, so that I can run faster, and so that I can feel like I look good and beautiful.

But I am still scared of stepping on the scale again, I'm afraid that I haven't lost any weight since the last time, or that I have even gained weight. If I've gained weight, its most likely muscle, but with the amount of fat I have on my body I really need to lose some of that as well. I just need to build up my mental strength, and step on the scale tomorrow morning.

I need it. I really need it.

submitted by /u/glowspore
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2Nnk5wP