Last summer, I decided I was going to try to lose some weight and get healthier. I’ve been a healthy weight most of my life, but in the last year the combination of the stress of my job and family and starting to brush up against 50, my weight started to creep up into the overweight category.
I made my resolution when I went clothes shopping and realized if I bought medium sizes (I’m 5’2’’) I’d fit my overweight frame, but have ridiculously long sleeves and legs on everything. If I went down to a small or extra small, my clothes would fit and would feel better about my appearance.
5 months later I finally hit my goal weight of 120. I haven’t been this weight since before I had kids. I went out and bought a bunch of clothes that fit and look great.
I know in comparison to a lot of folks who post on here my challenges have been small, but I will say I’ve tried off and on to get to a lower weight for 15 years without sucess, and I’ve finally done it and it looks like it is sustainable and healthy.
I wanted to share the stuff that works for me:
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Get a calorie tracking app and a food scale. I use lose it, and I splurged for the pro edition. This was the most important thing to use to learn what I was eating that was causing me the most trouble.
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Take some time off if you can. When I was starting out, I changed jobs and I put three weeks between the end of my old job and the start of my new. This let me spend that time adjusting to my new diet in an otherwise nonstressful environment, and to focus time on learning to cook new low cal healthy meals and read up on reddit and other sources about weight loss.
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Do some food prep. I wouldn’t want to prep all my meals every week, but I have found that cooking a couple of things on the weekend that are healthy, low calorie and easy to reheat is essential for me.
I’m just too exhausted at the end of many days to cook a decent meal with a lot of prep. A lot of weekends I just cook some tasty veggies, or a dish of sweet potatoes or refried black beans that make it easy to up my veg content during the week. And I like to cook some easy one pot meals like chili or split pea soup. That small effort makes a big difference for me.
- Try to find easy to make, healthy snacks and meals. I invested heavily in trying new foods. I think it’s a lot easier to start a new good habit that displaces an old bad habit, than just simply stop doing something unhealthy.
I found that miso is easy to keep in the fridge and mix with a bit of hot water for a super quick, tasty, low cal soup broth. I found I like snacking on raspberries which are super low cal and high fiber. Both these things are new things that I would chose to do, and the displace other higher calorie foods in my diet.
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Keep away from restaurants, but if you go have a plan. This was a big one for me. My family likes to eat out and I often eat out with colleagues at work. I avoid eating out if I can, but if I want to go with others I try to look at the restaurant menu before I go to find the low cal option. Deciding at the restaurant makes me freak out and just get comfort food. Generally soup is an acceptable choice. Salad is sometimes ok. In general restaurant meals will take all your calories for the day :(
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Have a treat plan. I can’t really go without treats, so I worked to find small indulgences. My go to are chocolate and almonds. Trader Joe’s has delicious almonds covered in dark chocolate and salt. I like choco crispy crepe cookies (20 cal each) and sometimes just some of the mini altoid mints or a stick of gum is what I need.
If I’m really out of calories, I make some green tea. I found a really tasty sencha.
I found I have to keep some healthy quick snacks at my desk in case time pressure keeps me from getting a meal and turning to the vending machines. I like a dark chocolate and peanut butter KIND bar or some Finn crisp and laughing cow cheese as a quick snack.
I also keep a can of high quality tuna in my desk along with a shelf stable vacuum sealed pack of precooked lentils and barley for a super quick, super healthy high fiber meal when I am unexpectedly pressed for time.
I also added a lot more heat to my meals with hot peppers and cayenne. That makes me a lot happier and the food much more delightful.
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Focus on the healthy and the sustainable. As I approached my target weight I’ve changed my focus from just calories to overall health. I try to stay in the calorie allotment now, but I also try to hit my daily protein and fiber every day. I’m hoping this will help me stay on track. If I track those two things, my diet ends up having very little refined carbs and relatively little sugar. I’d love to push my sugar even lower.
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I didn’t really exercise while making this change. I generally walk bout 5 miles a day just in the normal run if things. I didn’t change that. Now that I’m holding to a good weight I’d love to exercise more and maybe lift some weights for extra strength.
I avoided big changes on this front while doing the diet, even though it could help to lose quicker, I think making to many changes at once risks losing focus and just abandoning everything.
I’m hoping to stick to everything as time marches on. I’m nervous about abandoning the food logging. I might stick with it for a full year just to get those good eating habits really ingrained.
Thanks loseit community. Good luck with your own weight loss goals!
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