NSV: This time last year, I wore XL pants. I just bought M sizes of the same pants!

Hey! So as the title says, I've gone down two sizes within a year!

HOW I DID IT: I started calorie counting February 2018, and I lost 6kg in 3 months. My XL pants became too big, so I bought L ones which fit me just right. I slowed down on the weight loss after this, partly because I hit a plateau and got so discouraged and partly because I got tired and lazy (a.k.a just eyeballed the calories, exercised sparingly and relied more on biking instead of commuting by train). But I still continued to lose, albeit really slow. And now, it's November, and my L pants were falling down if I don't wear a belt. So I went to the same store (I love Uniqlo pants ok) and tried on the M size and THEY FIT! Admittedly, there are still rolls off the sides, but they're not obvious unless I'm seated down. And I think buying them will actually motivate me to lose the last five pounds that I need to achieve normal BMI.

Anyway, this is such happy news for me, and I wanted to scream it to the world. I've been in this weight loss journey on and off for FOUR years! And this has been my biggest achievement of yet. When I started this journey, I wore XXL pants, and I never even imagined fitting into M pants. During those years, I would have been satisfied with wearing an L! And look at where I am now!

Please send me good vibes so I can crush the last five (or ten) pounds that I need to lose!

To everyone who's struggling, let's move together! We can do it!

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Goodbye junk food, Hello spin bike. NSV

Yesterday I went to a birthday party where there was a mountain of free pizza and cupcakes. The only contact I had with the temptations was to help haul them from the truck to the beach.

Instead of stuffing my face, something the Old Me would have done, I burned calories by pitching in to set up and playing with the kiddos that needed adult supervision.

I feel good about that, and I feel even better today because my spin bike arrived. It was a pricy investment, but it was something I felt compelled to do, especially given the air quality in california due to all the smoke from the fires.

When it comes to exercise, I’ve realized that I need to set it up so it’s as frictionless as possible. The Old Me would use any excuse to get out of exercising after the initial burst of motivation died off. Driving half an hour to the gym— gas is too expensive and my car anxiety is too much to overcome today. Go for a walk— I’m not willing to tackle the mountain dubbed Mount Agony I live on. Last time I climbed it 3 days in a row, my foot arches needed months to recover. Time to hit a treadmill— it’s too loud and it hurts my knees, besides, I’d rather be watching TV...

Some of these excuses may have been valid, but the Old Me had no persistence. The Old Me would have folded my hand and hopped on the couch to indulge in my vices at the first sign of resistance.

To make matters worse all my hobbies tend to be sedentary. For example... I freaking love TV. Entertainment is one of the biggest pleasures in my life. So this time, I decided to turn my love of movies and series into an asset for my weight loss journey. I specifically chose a piece of equipment that was fictionless to my needs. This was my criteria: 1) Something I could do without leaving the house. 2) Quiet. 3) No motor or batteries. 4) There couldn’t be anything blocking my view of the tv— like a large display interface. 5) Something I could do mindlessly yet is challenging.

A spin bike seemed to check off all the things. Plus it’s fairly portable which was bonus points. The goal I’m working toward is to burn 500 calories throughout my daily TV binges. That adds up to 3,500 calories a week which most of you know is 1 lb. Its a very good feeling knowing I’ve got this exercise safety net for the inevitable occasions in which I cave and slam down a double baconator. Because let’s face it, there will be those days and I’d be setting myself up for failure by thinking I’ll eat perfectly for the rest of my life.

Anyway, so far I can only seem to ride 2 miles at a time before I need a break. But that’s ok, because I got to write a sweet Reddit post about these positive decisions I’ve embarked on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bike ride and an episode of 24 to get back to.

P.S. movie and tv series recommendations would be greatly appreciated (preferable no subtitles— I don’t think I’m at a riding & reading level yet)

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Weight loss & hormones: anyone else’s menstrual cycles go bananas with weight loss?

Heyo I’m in the process of finding a gyno to make sure all is well, but in the meanwhile I’m wondering if others have experienced this!

I’ve always had normal cycles, clockwork 28 days, until about 3 years ago when I started having 50-70 day long cycles with light short bleeding days.

Things returned to normal whenever I’d lose some weight and/or exercise. No PCOS, and my previous docs always just said, “Well, you know the solution, so...”

Unfortunately mental health & food addiction are a royal binch—but fortunately I’ve realized my diet and exercise habits are far more under control than my genetic predispositions to mental health issues!

So I’ve lost 30 pounds.

But now, it’s like the pendulum has swung all the way to the other extreme!

I’ve been bleeding almost 2 months straight, at times super heavy but luckily almost no cramping, my mental health issues are on like brain volume 6000, and my cycles seem to be running 25-28 days based on my mood & bloating fluctuations.

I’m suspecting it’s my hormones re-balancing. But dang. This is really cramping (lmao) my style and good lord do I want my minor semblance of mental stability back.

Has anyone else experienced this or some other type of hormonal madness with weight loss?!

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Advice on how to come back from a bad week?

Hi guys! This is my first post here but I’ve been lurking for about a year now. This sub has been instrumental to my weight loss journey, and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I want to reach out for encouragement and advice.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve lost about 75 lbs going from 219 to the low 140’s. I feel much better mentally and physically, and it’s honestly one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. At the beginning, I just loosely kept a running track of calories in my head and that worked for a long time, but when I needed to get more strict I started counting calories in myfitnesspal. My ultimate goal is between 125-130, which at 5’5” I think I’ll be really happy with.

However, this last week has been brutal. Things have been hard lately. College isn’t easy for me and with depression and anxiety on top of that, some weeks just feel like hell. Over the last 10 days, I’ve gone over my calorie limit 6 times. Last night this came to a head when at 1 am I stuffed myself with almost anything I could find until I was about 1,000 calories over maintenance. I’ve never really been the type of person to have binges, and I understand that it’s a really serious problem for people that do. But I think last night was the closest I’ve ever come to one.. I knew logically I should not be eating, and some of the stuff didn’t even taste that good after the first bite, but I just kept going. It’s like I was watching myself do it but didn’t care enough to stop.

How do I continue going forward? What should I do to not let this bad week turn into gaining weight back? I’m really desperate for advice from people who have been there, and overcome it, because this is my first time dealing with this.

I feel myself wanting to eat like shit again today even though I went crazy last night. I really want to stop it in it’s tracks but I feel like all my usual defenses (drinking a lot of water, intermittent fasting, raising my calorie limit by a little bit, etc) aren’t working 😕

Thank you so much for any help you can give me and sorry if my post was annoyingly long!

TL;DR: How do you recover from a bad week when you feel yourself start to slip into old habits?

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Why does my coworker keep trying to make me eat sweets?

I posted a little about this before about a month and a half ago and there's been a couple other occurrences and I don't know how to handle it or if I even should say anything. I don't even know if this is the appropriate sub to be venting about this on, but I think it might be because it may be a possibility that this coworker is trying to sabotage my weight loss. Either that or she's just a pushy person...

The office I work at has regular potlucks that I don't participate in. There's a certain coworker who acts deeply offended when I don't eat her desserts. I'm allergic to nuts and chocolate, and on the first few occasions, her desserts included them, so I was able to get out of it that way. But at the last potluck, she brought in pineapple upside down cake specifically so I could eat it. I appreciated her thinking of me, but I never asked her to do that. And if she had asked me first, I would've old her not to because I really wasn't interested. But she did anyway, and kept trying to pressure me and guilt me into eating it and acted deeply offended when I repeatedly declined.

Last week, she went to Wendy's for lunch and came back with a frosty for me. I told her "I don't want that." Then she started whining and went off on this tangent about how I never eat the things she brings in and told me to "just eat it," sat it on my desk and walked away. I asked a couple other coworkers if they wanted it and they said no, so I threw the frosty away, which is a waste, but again, I never asked for it! Then just this morning she came in talking about how she'll be bringing in a lot of baked goods since the are holidays approaching. She'll specifically be bringing in a ton of Christmas cookies and told me that I'll need to eat them because she hates left overs.

I really don't know what the deal is. I thought it was sweet in the beginning, but now I find it super annoying. She's actually pretty mad at me for not eating the sweets she insists I have. I don't like being pressured to eat things, especially things I never asked for in the first place. I don't mention my weight loss journey every day, but she knows I'm on one. I can't tell if she's trying to sabotage that or what. Even if I wasn't trying to be healthier, I still wouldn't want the things she brings in because I'm a picky eater. From what I can tell, she's not nearly as pushy with my other coworkers, but then again, I guess they're more likely to eat whatever she brings in. Maybe she just doesn't like to be told no. Either way, I want the pestering to stop, and I'm not sure how to get her to understand and respect that.

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Our great-grandparents would be proud of us

I often think of my great-grandparents as I continue to succeed at weight loss through CICO. There are so many parallels to how I'm living now and how I know that they lived their lives; I was fortunate to know both of them well, but I never thought of their simple lives would someday be a goal of my own when I was around them as a child and young adult.

Not overeating on a daily basis. With so many modern distractions and obligations, we over-complicate our lives in so many unnecessary ways. For me, nothing better demonstrates the best way to declutter than the dietary simplification that CICO drives you toward. Although my great-grandparents would've just called it "watching what you eat" or "not taking more than your share," I think they'd be proud of us using modern technology (online tracking, r/loseit) for the support we need to rediscover these timeless truths.

Simplicity. My family uses our mobile phones for internet, so we don't have or need Wi-Fi at home. We also don't have cable TV or landline phones, and we use the monthly $150 we save to upgrade to organic groceries. We don't have anything against TV (we'll buy or rent shows and movies from the library or Redbox), but controlling our media intake frees up a lot of money ... and time (see next bullet).

Preparing fresh and nutritious foods from scratch. We order pizza once a week, order Indian or Thai every other week, and go out to eat about once a month. But other than that, we use most of our time at home to discuss, plan, shop, cook, eat together, and clean up together. We probably save a lot of money doing this, but even more importantly, we control what we're putting in our bodies, and it's a family project. The situation isn't perfect; my SO still loves to bake, and there's more of that sitting around than I'd like.

Relying on a large garden. My great-grandparents grew a lot of what they used. Or, they traded for it or bought it at the local grocer. Our garden today isn't large, but the satisfaction of growing our own basil, beets, and swiss chard this year--and planting blackberries and grapes for future years--brings us a little closer to the land and the simpler lives that our great-grandparents led. A big plus is that weeding and watering are active, outdoor family activities.

Only eating cake and pies on birthdays and holidays. This one doesn't need much explanation, but sweets then were for special occasions, and they just weren't as cheap, available, or ubiquitous. When I started eliminating 85-90% of my added sugar in late August of this year, it wasn't to emulate my great-grandparents (it was originally part of my weight loss effort). But now I view my reduction of added sugar as an echo of the simpler and more controlled times they lived in.

I wouldn't want to emulate everything about my great-grandparent's lives, of course. My great-grandfather smoked cigars and argued a lot. My great-grandma liked to gamble and was a little too nosy for her family and neighbor's tastes. But they were both rail thin and healthy into their eighties.

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Tips from Stay at Home Parents Wanted

Time for round 3 of weight loss! I lost 25 pounds initially, just in time to get pregnant, lost it again after baby 1, and now am ready to do the same after baby 2. I'm so pumped and ready to do this! I feel confident because I have done it twice before, but life circumstances are a bit different now.

I stay at home with my 2 year old and 6 month old. That means my fitness routine has to look at little different because the 2 of them are always in tow. It is also harder to prepare snacks/meals at times, so I'm looking for more things I can just grab from the fridge to munch or curb hunger. I would love some tips and encouragement from other primary care givers! What are your habits that work well that can include your small kids or work around your kids? Thanks!!

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