I'm afraid of myself. What did it take to kickstart you on your weight loss?

Feel free to skip to my last paragraph for the main question.

I've always been a bit bigger than the girls my age since I was little and I believe that instilled in me a major insecurity from an early age. Although I wasn't grossly overweight at the time, if I didn't have a flat washboard tummy then I may as well not even exist. So I of course developed an eating disorder, bulimia, when I was 12/13. It wasn't severe early on but by the time i was 16 I was purging upwards of 6 times, even 10 times a day with a series of "micro" meals and occasional bingeing. I got to about 190lbs in high school at 5"7ft tall and thought that I was so huge. Honestly what I wouldn't give to be 190lbs now.

After high school my bulimia tapered off but I kept gradually and slowly getting bigger until I went to culinary school and hit a high of 235lbs. This freaked me out and during my Summer break I went down to 200lbs on the dot from pretty much starvation (that wasn't a decision I made, I had been living abroad for work and was so terribly overworked that I did not eat that whole Summer). I came back from that Summer internship and my weight bounced from 200 to 220 and I yoyo'd between those weights for about 2 years until this past Summer where I went from my usual 220 back up to my highest ever at the time 240.

Now this shocked me so I talked to my mom and we decided to pay for a diet called "ideal protein". It was a keto diet and although I was fairly apprehensive about keto I dove into it because I needed something to change. I lost 20lbs in less than 2 months and then I crashed. The weight I lost piled on even quicker than I lost it and I gained a few extra pounds for good measure.

Anyway, the Summer ended and I started my first year of (ironically) a nutrition and food science program at university. The stress was too much for me and I pretty much closed off to everyone in my life. Since then, I have been eating on a daily basis to the point of being in pain. It got so bad that in the past 2 months I went from 240lbs to my current 266lbs. This is the point that I'm at right now. I am actually afraid of myself. My weight was only ever a cosmetic issue for me prior to this year, I had some back issues I needed to work on but other than that I was fine. These past few months though, I've noticed that I can't bend over or even sit comfortably, I get exhausted from walking to my car in the morning or just walking in general. I've gotten in the habit where if I have to climb a flight of stairs I mentally have a plan of action where I will b-line it for the nearest washroom at the top floor so that I can sit in a stall and regain my breath just to save myself the embarrassment of panting and gasping for air in public. I'm experiencing acid reflux regularly and brain splitting migraines.

I feel as if I have literally all the tools to turn myself around. I have extensive knowledge about food from a culinary perspective and I am studying nutrition and have a good grasp on that as well. So I know what to eat, how much to eat, and to boot I can make healthy food taste really good. I come from a privileged background and have parents who are willing to pay for groceries and therapy to help me out. I have a loving boyfriend and tons of friends who adore me and support me. But I literally cannot bring myself to even try. I want to, but I feel so tired of it all.

I have been telling myself for years the same old "I'm starting my diet tomorrow and it's all going to be fine." and often I even follow through on a diet for a couple months. But I always end up back to square one and in the end with a few extra pounds. I feel though, as if I am at my breaking point right now. I never thought that I could possibly gain 20-25lbs in 2 months, but here I am. I want to start working on myself again but I feel like i'm going to fail again and that this time is going to be like all the other times I tried then failed.

I am so sorry for the novel, but I guess what I'm trying to ask is this, what was your breaking point? What finally catapulted you into a successful weight loss journey and how did you know that this time was going to be successful? I feel as if I want everything now without the imput of hard work and I know this is my biggest downfall. How did you deal with this?

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Lost 15 lbs in 5 weeks with a change in diet, but that's not the biggest change!

I just wanted to share my personal experience with my most recent battle with weight loss.

Roughly 5 weeks ago, I went to the doctor for a general physical. I am 36 years old and I was concerned that now that I'm morbidly obese that I was pushing the risks of heart failure and whatever other degenerative conditions. At the time, my doctor reassured me that I wasn't that bad and that while it was a concern, that I would just have to taper off some bad habits and I'd be back on track. All of my numbers were above or way above what is the normally acceptable range, but on Guam, I guess we consider a wider more inclusive range as the "norm". While his reassurance was a relief, it left me feeling angry. Angry that I was out of a range that was acceptable and yet he was patting me on the back. I'm not one to be complacent so I told myself "hey, let's really make a vested effort to live healthier."

So, went home, went online, bought a keto recipe meal plan based on some generic stats of my body. Been eating recipes from this meal plan as well as occasional meals at restaurants that I assume are keto for about 5 weeks now.

I was 271 when I started. I am 255 lbs as of today.

That weight change is not a big thing for me, as I've lost more weight in shorter periods of time and I'm really looking for the long-term weight loss and the ability to finally keep it off instead of ballooning to something higher in the future. The big things for me were the changes in my test results.

My A1C profile thing went from 6.2 to 5.7%. That's still on the borderline of what they say is a risk for a diabetic profile I believe, but it went down half a percentage point. I did not expect that at all.

My lipid profile changed in this manner:Cholesterol 167. Was 231.Triglycerides 97. Was 186.LDL 110. Was 153.HDL 38. Was 41.That's pretty amazing I think. 60+ point drop in cholesterol. 100 point drop in triglycerides. A steady decline in the others. These numbers are still not good by any stretch of the imagination, but they are way better than they were 5 weeks ago that's for sure.

I'm still out of shape. For real. I have a lot of work to do and a lot of weight that I NEED to lose in order to be healthy and live longer. I'd only planned to do the whole Keto thing for 2 months, but I think after that time I may look at doing Keto 6 days a week and having some carb-heavy meals on the remaining day. IDK. I wish there was a qualified nutritionist who is experienced in Keto where I live that could help me. Or, maybe a reputable online resource with an actual person that I could converse with to get advice on how best to fit my diet going forward.

I'm not on the health craze thing. I'm not telling you guys Keto is the way to go, or that you need to intermittent fast, or that you should go paleo or whatever. You can be you! But, I think, at the end of the day, we all should aim to be better than we were the day before.

I hope that maybe this inspires someone to look into cleaning up their diet or at least reading up on some options. Keto seems to be working for me (I'm not even sure if I've ever experienced ketosis as I don't know how to recognize it, but the scale and the bloodwork are a plus), but it isn't the only option. I honestly don't know if i'd ever even attempt to get in shape if it wasn't for subreddit's like this one showing people's progress. I hope one day I can show a great photo that inspires a change like many of you have done for me.

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Starting weight lifting and gaining some weight

Hey there! So for a long time I was hesitant to get into weight lifting because I doubted my knowledge and ability to do it. 3 weeks down and I'm happy to say that I joined a cheap gym and love thinking about how much I can press or squat. It's a really good feeling!

Anyways all I wanted to ask is that I've gained about 6lbs or so since I started and I'm not really upset about it. I understand there will be some water retention, but what are the best ways to go about this?

Do I track all my calories? I'm definitely worried I'm undereating when I go to work out. I'm also doing 20 minutes of cardio every 4 days mixed in with weights for fat loss. Also I'm thirsty literally all the time and I feel the amount of water i used to drink just doing a 45 minute spinning class is way below what my body is craving.

Anyways just looking some advice on where to go with this. Part of me hates weighing myself, So I'm wondering if measurements might be the way to go. I know I'm getting leaner because my typical weight loss areas are getting smaller.

Thanks for any advice!

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One month of blind maintaining completed, time to start losing again!

Bit of back story: I started losing 3 months ago after really finally accepting that my eating was getting out of control. Over the following 9 weeks or so I lost 35lb just through CICO. I really wanted to make a change in my relationship with food, so I mostly kept my CO about the same - walking, little bit of cycling, not really going all out to lose weight at the gym basically. This was based purely on personal experience with my own struggle - many times I’ve dieted and hit the gym and lost weight, but I don’t solve my problem eating, so when the effort at the gym tails off the weight comes back.

When I was a bit over 30lbs lost I started to feel like I understood portion sizes, and what calories looked like and such, and I wanted to start swimming again, but was scared of that leading to increased appetite. My compromise was to try and maintain without counting calories for a month, I’d just check the scale once per week and see how I was doing.

Well good news! It’s been a month, and my biggest variance has been just over a lb! Currently I’m half a pound less than when I started the month. It hasn’t been always easy - 5 birthdays and two Christmas parties have happened plus our anniversary,so have had to really get in the habit of planning ahead. If I know we’re going to our favourite Italian restaurant for example, I eat a smaller breakfast and a snack for lunch so I could still eat the gnocchi lol. I’ve also definitely noticed that I think I need less food now. I’d been putting off eating pizza because that used to be my biggest weakness and I could eat a whole large one with sides no problem at all... actually I don’t think I’d not finished a whole pizza in about 20 years. But, last week I ordered a large half and half pizza with my wife, enjoyed it, and had two slices of my half left over the next day.

All in all I’m feeling in a good place. I’m half way on my weight loss journey, and a couple of people have started to notice. I also found taking this break and maintaining for a month really took a lot of pressure off - the people who watch what you eat/get annoyed by you being on a diet/don’t want you to lose anymore all chill out and leave you alone again!

The plan from here is to keep eating about what I am now, but add in the swimming and go from there. If I start loosing too fast again, I’ll up my calories, if too slow I’ll decrease. As I say I’m really looking for a positive, long-term change in life style and attitude from myself. I don’t care about being ‘ripped’, I just want a healthy relationship with food and to be active and healthy for a long time in all honesty.

Just sharing because all your stories help me so much, and I hope this can be of some help maybe to someone.

Starting weight: 247 Current weight: 212 Goal weight: ~180-190

(I’ve changed my goal weight to around 180 instead of a strict 180 as through doing this my biggest lesson learnt has been that BMI and TDEE are super inaccurate for tall people, so I’m first gonna aim for my better body mass index goal of 190 and see how I feel and plan from there).

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How to deal with pictures you don’t like

I’m about 1/3 to my weight loss goals and feeling okay. With the holidays food has been tough but I’m at least maintaining.

I hosted an event for a friend today and a mutual friend took photos and tagged me on social media. I hate these photos. I look huge and feel like I look just totally disgusting. My friends look so tiny compared to me. It’s making me feel awful on what should be a happy day. I also try really hard not to talk negatively about my appearance around my kids and I’m failing at that too.

Ugh. I know I’m making progress, but days like this make me feel so bad about myself, then I feel bad about feeling vain, rinse, repeat.

Any strategies for dealing with this?

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Losing weight while super obese, disabled, and mentally ill?

Throwaway account. I don’t really know what I expect to hear; I guess I just want to talk about it.

I am nearly 30 and I have a BMI of 57. I’ve been obese for the past 20 years. It’s strange because I actually hate food—I can name foods I like on one hand. I have neurological issues that make many physical activities extraordinarily difficult or impossible. I also have severe psychiatric issues (hereditary, not related to weight) which have me living with my parents because I can’t take care of myself anymore.

I have been on every diet and used every weight loss method you can think of since I was 9 years old. I’ve gone to counseling, therapists, motivational seminars, taken weight loss pills, etc. My family even made me go to a hypnotist because nothing worked. Fasting was something I did for a while but backfired because I’m okay with not eating, but once I start, I can’t stop. I would finish the 16 hours and then gorge myself uncontrollably.

Then psychiatric medication made me gain 100lbs and now I’m at where I am now. I can’t walk through a grocery store anymore and the insides of my thighs have turned brown permanently because the chafing got so bad when I was still working that the rashes scarred. I can’t even walk around the block because we live at the top of a big hill and I can’t get back up it from the halfway point.

When I counted calories, I’d become so obsessed with them that I planned my day around my calories and would become enraged if plans changed. The only way I’ve ever lost weight with the least stress was to just not eat. I managed to lose about 35lbs when I was a teenager by only eating a few days out of the week. Then I started working in retail and was forced to be so active that I would faint if I didn’t eat. I got so paranoid about food that I missed my own high school prom because part of it was a formal dinner and I was horrified by the thought of being seen eating. The stress from work was also making me go into hours long sobbing sessions with pints of ice cream every day.

I haven’t done that in many years and I’m still gaining weight by tens of pounds yearly. I usually eat twice a day and cut sugary drinks out of my diet 11 years ago. I eat sweets or ice cream maybe once a month. I am so exhausted from living and breathing that I admittedly find it difficult to eat anything that requires preparing or anything that’s too hard to chew or eat. I get unvelievably tired thinking about eating meat off the bone because it requires too much effort. There are some days where I don’t eat because it’s too hard. I’m on stimulants—which don’t help me lose weight—to stop me from sleeping 18 hours a day.

It got so bad in my early 20s that my doctor went looking for something wrong with my organs or hormones. He found that I have a nonfunctioning parathyroid but he said there’s nothing that can be done about that and it wouldnt affect my weight and sleep anyway.

I talked to my doctor (different than the one above) about what to do and it looks like I’ve run out of options. She suggested I get weight loss surgery. My insurance doesn’t cover it. A couple of people in my extended family have had gastric bypass done and weren’t able to maintain long-term weight loss. I’m also wary of doing anything that will affect nutrient absorption because I’m going to be on psychiatric medication for the rest of my life and I don’t want to mess with the way they get absorbed.

I’ve been looking at my options and just feel really miserable about it. Nothing looks like a good option. The “tried and true” methods seem to come with permanent side effects that would make my life even more miserable. Plus, I’d never be able to eat any of my favorite foods again, which is the only thing that makes me even a little happy. The newer methods with fewer side effects either have super suspect scientific backing or can’t be used long term.

I know the adult thing to do is stop caring how I feel and do what will make me look good, but all I can think about is how much worse gastric bypass would make it to live when I’m already barely hanging on. I don’t care about myself enough to really care about the health aspect of weight loss—I’d just like to fit into cute clothes before I die. I’ve gone to counseling and gotten CBT and all that to try to make me care about myself but it made me feel worse than I did when I started.

I’m at a loss for what to do. I feel like I’ve tried everything. I don’t know if everything failed because I lack the positivity and motivation or support system, or if I’m just doomed to be like this forever and have my parents outlive me.

Has anybody managed to go through this same tunnel and come out on the other end? How did you do it?

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2018 has been the year of me. I’ve owned the shit out of it!

M/23/6’0” [422>251=171]

My story is not one of overnight success. I didn’t take a magic pill. My results were not from a fad diet or a product from an infomercial. My journey has been more like a roller coaster ride but heading mostly towards the ups. a few errors, but also a collection of small milestones along the way, eventually leading to more than I ever expected my weight loss journey to be.

My life for as long as I can remember it I’ve always been big, some would say ‘I’ve struggled with my weight’l but in all honesty, it’s very easy to load on the pounds. Unfortunately it became the norm, a running joke. “I’m going on another diet, this time this is it”. Knowing that it would probably result in it lasting for a few weeks, and back to the norm.

Well, New Year arrives, I love a good New Years resolution. Every year “This is the year I lose weight for good”, it almost became just as big a tradition to break it, as it was to make it. However… This was the year I’d finally get my act together.

I knew what I had to do, and how I had to do it, the trouble was actually having the motivation to do what was needed! Strip back the eating, go back to basics, focusing on protein and carb based meals. I love meat, and I love good carbs- pasta, potatoes and rice are some of my favourites, so I always aimed to eat lean meat and carbs, with vegetables occasionally, but I’ve never been a big fan of them, and did not plan on teaching myself to like them. I began eating breakfast, which is something I’d never done before, eating yoghurt set me up for the day and also helped me cut out the snacking. I decided not to allow myself any cheat meals, as from previous experiences, one cheat meal, turned into two, and completely back to square one. Surprisingly I didn’t have a problem with this. I could not miss what I was not eating.

In the first 3 months I was eating extremely cleanly, regularly hitting the gym, I was becoming more and more confident, I’d managed to lose 56lbs in this time. I’d never stuck to a ‘lifestyle change’ for this long before, this was new territory for me and it felt amazing. The people around me were no longer joking that i’d soon fall off the wagon and go back to my old ways, but now spurring me on to reach my target. I’ve never had so much support and it gave me the confidence to crack on and smash this! Which is exactly what I’d go on to do!

In the following 3 months I’d lost an impressive 52lbs. Although I was not going to the gym regularly, the weight continued to drop off. My self confidence was improving daily and the support from those closest to me was only improving to! The key was clean eating, I’d not cheated and I was so happy with my progress. Cooking fresh food had never been so tasty.

I’d lost 40lbs between July and September, although i was losing weight at a slightly slower rate than the first 6 months, nothing would stop me from reaching my goal!

23lbs lost between October and me writing this. Easily the most difficult part of the year, celebrating birthdays and Christmas. In the last week of November i had my first gain of the year! 1lb gain, but enough to knock me back, I’d realised I’d began to relax slightly, but knowing this caused me to go straight back to basics and prevent it for spiralling out of control, this was solved with a 3lb loss two weeks later to get me to where i am now. The happiest i have ever been, more confident than ever before!

I’ve kicked 2018’s Ass, 2019- I’m coming for you!!

Attached is a link to my transformation picture, two work Christmas parties, exactly 1 year apart! Progress Pic

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