Hello!
I’m a college senior and unfortunately due to stress from school and an abusive relationship I ended up weighing 210 lbs as a 5’6 male. After my breakup ended I started focusing heavily on weight loss and exercise and I’m now down to 145 lbs from January. I just wanted to share a few things that really helped me along the way.
Routine Wise: * Daily weigh ins for me was a MUST for me, I used an app called Happy Scale (Libra on Android) and would weigh myself and record it everyday. This held me accountable. (Now that I’m at my goal I only do weekly weigh ins)
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I practiced a light form of intermediate fasting, I would go workout and get my day started before eating and not eat until around 1 - 2 in the afternoon. I found this eventually helped suppress cravings.
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While a gym routine isn’t necessary I found I am far less likely to binge eat after exercising. For me, I found exercising actually suppressed my appetite.
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I cut out fast food and restaurants as much as possible. I made all of my meals at home and tried to avoid eating out — whenever I would eat fast food randomly I would definitely have cravings for more!
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Realizing just because I eat a chocolate bar and go over by 100 calories doesn’t mean I should sabotage myself and eat whatever I want for the day. It’s okay to eat a few extra things every now and then, but it doesn’t mean you should go overboard.
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Realizing I will sometimes gain weight and fall of track, but as long as I hold myself accountable and start back the weight will drop right back off. I recently moved out of state and had my whole routine changed, gaining 10 lbs. However, I’ve been able to quickly drop the 10 lbs in a few weeks after getting serious again.
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Using My Fitness Pal and logging everything I eat was essential for my weight loss.
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Using a food scale to weigh everything.
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I started taking fish oil and vitamin d (recommended by therapist). Blood levels later showed I was low in vitamin d which can cause a decrease in mood (which for me is a food trigger).
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“Fasting” before big get togethers. Occasionally when I knew I’d be eating a lot with a group of friends for a special event I would just not eat that day until the event and then maybe skip breakfast and/or lunch the next day to mitigate the large calorie surplus. This made it so I didn’t have to worry and calorie count for special events.
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I would read r/loseit and r/1200isplenty daily. It really helped me to read others going through the same journey, and both communities give amazing tips and tricks from others!
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I would check r/progresspics weekly and look for men with similar builds to me to see how weight loss could improve my appearance. For some this may not help, but for me it was very motivating.
Food Choices: I love to eat so the biggest tools I’ve gained from this weight loss is learning new, low calorie food options I can eat in large amounts and be satisfied. I’ll share a few of my favorites below!
- Miso Soup w/ Dumplings (65 Calories):
- 1 Cup Trader Joe’s Miso Ginger Soup (15 Cals)
- 1 tsp Trader Joe’s Green Dragon Hot Sauce (0 cals)
- 4 chicken & cilantro Trade Joe’s dumplings (50 cals)
Add 1/2 cup soup to a bowl and the four dumplings and heat on high for 1 minute, remove from microwave and add remaining soup and hot sauce and put back in microwave for 1 minute and ten seconds, or until hot.
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Trader Joe’s Bamba Peanut Snacks (160 calories per 40 pieces)
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Quaker savory rice quakes single serving bags (BBQ and sour cream & onion are personal favorites) (80 calories per bag)
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Substituting Cashew milk in cereal. I absolutely love cereal, so I would substitute normal milk with cashew milk which is 25 calories per cup.
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Green Giant Rice & Broccoli ( 240 cals per bag) + 4.5 oz canned chicken (90 cals) = total calories at 330 for a large serving of amazingness.
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Turkey Wraps (250 calories for two wraps)
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2 extreme wellness tomato basil wrap (100 cals)
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2 slices of pre-packaged turkey (80 cals for the brand I bought)
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2 Laughing Cow Pepper jack Wedges (70 cals total)
Spread one wedge of cheese on edge wrap, add turkey and enjoy. I also added lettuce, you could add any vegetable with minimal calorie variation.
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Using 0 calorie flavored water drops (I would usually use Kool-Aid) and flavored sparkling water in vodka when with friends for lower calorie drinks.
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The Laughing Cow Cheese Wedges: 30 cals
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Add to flavored tuna creations (~70 cals) for a savory 100 calorie snack.
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Add to Quaker rice cakes.
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Sunsweet Prunes individually wrapped (20 calories) (high in fiber and kicks a sweet tooth)
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Boom Chicka Pop Sea Salt Popcorn (35 cals per cup)
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Pickle Spears (5 cals per spear)
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Light Mozzarella String Cheese (50 cals)
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Fiber One Coffee Cake, warmed (90 calorie per bar)
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OPA Greek Ranch (The OPA ranch is superior to any normal ranch I’ve ever had in my opinion) (40 cals per 2 tbsps)
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Dip with mini carrots or other veggies.
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Coke Zero, even though it’s not the healthiest thing I love soda so I would usually drink Coke Zero for my daily caffeine.
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Tazo Delight Dessert Tea, my favorite is butterscotch. (0 cals)
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Halo Top Ice Cream & Skinny Cow Ice Cream (calories vary)
These aren’t the only foods I ate, but I have issues with wanting so snack and these lower calorie options have given me better alternatives to high calorie snacks I used to eat.
Additional Recommendations: * Couch to 5K is an amazing app. I hated the treadmill so I started running outside with this app and have fallen in love with running.
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Instant Pot. This was a great purchase which made making rice, boiled eggs, and other annoying foods I would make weekly extremely easy and hassle free.
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Group Fitness. I don’t like going to the gym and making my own routine so I joined CrossFit and love it. You could do any group fitness such as yoga, orange theory, cycle bar, and several other options! It makes working out fun and you don’t have to worry about programming.
Hopefully someone finds some of this interesting! I just wanted to share what helped me with my weight loss journey. I’ll now be applying these to my journey of maintaining the weight lost.
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