Today, I Bought A Bike-Desk

I have wanted one for ages and I finally committed!

This is my somewhat-extravagant reward for reaching my first mini-goal, both to reward myself for losing the first 10 pounds and to help me stay excited about the next 10. I bought an Exerpeutic ExerWork Adjustable Bike Desk earlier tonight and I am so excited for it to get here on Friday.

I tried to rig a cheaper DIY version of a cycle desk a few months ago as an impulse project with a set of standalone pedals (the super minimalist $20-ish kind), but that was a gigantic headache in terms of logistics with my current desk setup. I love the idea but just couldn't get it to work with the space/items I had available. The support bars on my desk were in all the wrong places, my knees knocked the bottom of the desk, my non-adjustable chair was at the wrong height, and overall, to make it really functional so I could use it while typing, I would have needed to buy a new desk and chair.... at which point I may as well just buy something made for this purpose.

Which is what I finally did today!

I'm not much of a multi-tasker in general, but cycling seems to be the exception. I used to have a normal recumbent bike (sans desk) at my previous house and I found it very easy to lose track of time while exercising if I turned on a podcast, audiobook or YouTube. When I'm absorbed in interesting work or reading, I can completely forget that I am cycling for an hour or more at a time, and my legs just keep going at a respectable pace on auto-pilot. I actually tend to gradually speed up when I'm the most involved in my work and slow down when I remember that I'm pedaling. If the pedals are there, I'll automatically use them. And unlike walking/jogging, cycling doesn't aggravate my bad knee.

I'm really excited to try this out.

Caveats, because I know someone out there in Internet Land is dying to reality-check me:

I don't expect to burn a huge number of calories doing this. This is meant to replace some of my "sitting still in a computer chair" time, not replace a high-intensity spin class or anything like that. This is more for my fitness and mental health goals than direct weight loss goals, although I expect a modest improvement there too.

They say that the best kind of exercise is the kind you will do consistently, and this is the kind that I'm very confident that I will do. I know that I feel much better when I move more, and that's the main benefit that I'm looking for -- a low-effort way to move continuously while I'm working without having to find extra time for exercise.

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I can cross my legs all ladylike now!

Background: 5’0”. Lost 25lbs, now at 165lbs. 1200 cals, pescetarian diet (just a personal preference!) and 30 mins cardio 5x a week.

It’s just something I’ve noticed in the past few days. I have never been able to cross my legs like a lady and sort of resorted to crossing my legs with my calves/ankles over my knee, but I’ve been noticing I’ve been able to cross one knee over the other with ease and zero discomfort

I know it sounds so silly and mundane but as someone who wears mostly skirts, my mother would be proud!

I carry a lot of my weight on my thighs so I’m really guessing this is thanks to my weight loss? Correct me if there are other factors but this is definitely something I was never able to do before losing a fairly significant amount of weight! :)

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I just found out a lost 30 pounds in 30 days.

I tried out the whole 30 diet with my gf last month. If you don't know what it is its where i did not eat any grains,dairy, processed sugar, legumes, alcohol, juice, fried food for a month. I also avoided potatoes and limited my fruit intake, portion sizes and snacking for a month. The whole time I ate a lot of amazing meals but i never really felt full or satisfied and kinda felt tired. After 30 days i weight myself and i went from 287 to 257. I lost a pound a day. I am really happy lost way more then i ever thought i would.

But now i am wondering how to keep it going without being this hardcore. I don't need to lose weight this fast its not fun or healthy in the long term. But these hardcore rules seemed to be the trick that worked for me. if i lose all these rules I am scared I wont lose weight anymore and go back to bad habits. Any advice on the next step on my weight loss journey?

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[Daily Directory] Find your quests for the day here! - Thursday, 07 March 2019

Welcome adventurer! Whether you're new on this quest or are towards the end of your journey there should be something below for you.

Daily journal.

• [Q&A] "I have a question."
• [Day 1] "I am starting my weight loss journey."
• [SV/NSV] "I have an accomplishment to share."
• [24hr Pledge] "Today I am going to..."

Interested in some side quests?

• [Motivation Monday] Share some motivation, get some motivation.
• [Tantrum Tuesday] Need to vent? People getting on your nerves?
• [Weigh-In Wednesday]
• [Track with Me Thursday] Did we just become best friends?!
• [Free Talk Friday] What's on your mind?

Community bulletin board!

• [Running with Loseit] Run with losers. Avoid arrows.
• [Maintenance Monday] Lost it? Work on keeping it.
• [Wecipe Wednesday] Swap and discuss recipies!

If you are new to the sub, click here for our posting guidelines

---

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Eating at Goal Weight Maintenance + Weight Loss Calculation Manifesto

Edit: to change the link to a public one!

Hello, beautiful LoseIt people! I am an avid lurker and infrequent poster in this sub, but I wanted to share a little bit of background about me as well as a tool I made to calculate your rate of weight loss. I am about 8 months into my weight loss journey (29 lbs down) as a 5’2” female. As the observant among you will notice, that is a rate of about 1 lb/week or 4 lbs/month. I have been really honing in on sustainability for this attempt at weight loss, and it has served me well. I have been sticking to an average of 1750 calories per day by eating 1500 calories for 5 days of the week and letting myself eat about 2200-2500 on Friday and Saturday. This has made my progress slow, but steady.

We all know that the smaller you get, the harder it is to lose. As I am kind of an Excel spreadsheet nerd, I created a sheet that calculates my monthly/daily calorie needs to lose 3, 4, or 5 lbs a month based on both a sedentary and lightly active TDEE. I also re-calculated these values every 20 lbs lost, to account for a lower TDEE at a lower weight. This has helped me to have realistic expectations about the rate of my weightloss. If anyone would like to see an example of my spreadsheet, you can find it here.

Today I got curious to know how long it would take me to get to 140 lbs if I ate at maintenance TDEE for a lightly active 5’2” female weighing 140 lbs. To calculate this, I took my current weight (189 lbs) and subtracted my predicted monthly loss ((Monthly TDEE at 200 lbs-Monthly TDEE at 140 lbs)/3500 calories per pound). I then used this to predict how long it would take me to lose weight assuming I ate what a 140 lb 5’2” female should eat to maintain. As mentioned above, I re-adjusted the formula to a new Monthly TDEE when the predictions reached 180 and 160 lbs, which as you can imagine really slowed down the rate of loss. If I ate at maintenance for a 140 lb 5’2” female, it would take me 2.5 years to reach 140! Seeing that made me realize what they say about the last 10 lbs taking forever is true. For reference, the last 10 lbs (150-140) would take me 11 months!

Of course, I realize that there are websites that claim to do this sort of calculation, but the first one that popped up after a quick Google search had a few flaws. First, I wanted to be able to set a calorie goal and then it would tell me how long it would take to lose the weight. This calculator would have you put in how long you wanted the weight loss to take and it would give you a recommended calorie intake. The second flaw from this website was that it did not take into account your shrinking TDEE as you lose weight. Clearly this will lead to you over-estimating how much you can eat, or under-estimating how long it will take to lose weight.

If anyone has any questions about the calculations or suggestions for how to make it easier to use/more accurate, please let me know!

Thanks for reading LoseIt, I hope it helps someone!

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Changes in external genitalia (39F) due to weight loss?

Mods, feel free to remove if this is an inappropriate topic.

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Ok losers, I need a reality check. I'm down about 80 lbs. in the past two years, and of course that's caused a lot of changes in my 39-year-old body (not all of them for the better: hello, bingo wings!). I'm seeing a lot of loose skin, etc., but I'm not terribly upset by it. Spanx and sleeves cover the worst of it, and I'm not particularly vain about looking good naked. Recently, though, I've noticed a really irritating change in my lady parts, and I'm wondering if it's due to the weight loss, aging, or a combination of both. I'm also hoping for some support and maybe some recommendations about how to deal with the clappy flappies. ;)

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Warning: specific details about female genitals to follow.

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I've noticed that my labia majora have, for lack of a better term, deflated quite a bit. I used to be an "innie," with small inner labia and the entire mons area closed. Lately, my outer labia tend to gape open, especially when I'm wearing looser pants or skirts and regular cotton briefs. It doesn't seem to be a problem when I'm wearing Spanx or workout clothes, but I'd like to have the option of wearing looser undergarments on occasion. Even more irritating, it seems like my outer labia will sometimes get "tucked in" or "folded under" when I'm running, and that can be a little painful. It's not causing any health problems yet, but I worry that it might in the future if I don't figure out a solution. My inner labia have not changed and don't protrude beyond the outer labia, but they're getting a lot more air these days because my outer labia no longer stay closed. I haven't noticed any dryness or discharge; it's honestly just aggravating and I'm paranoid that somehow somebody might notice.

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I can't imagine that there are any toning exercises I can do to target that area, but I'm open to suggestion. Pilates, maybe? Tighten up the lower abs and maybe pull everything down there a little tighter? Inner thigh exercises? Does anyone have any underwear/activewear recommendations that would keep everything contained but still be breathable?

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Mostly, I'm hoping some of y'all will chime in with "OMG, it happened to me too! It's totally normal and not because you're just becoming a saggy old woman, and it will definitely get better over time!" Or at least reassure me that it's not as gross and embarrassing as I think it is.

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330 -> 195, my seven year journey

330 -> 195, my seven year journey

obligatory picture here

I used to be a skinny kid when I was very young. My parents called me a monkey - because I'd constantly be climbing things, from the trees in my garden to the outside of an airport escalator! (don't ask, long story)

At ten years old I moved from Dubai to Scotland. It was a massive lifestyle shift for my parents, and they got fat. Being fed by them, naturally, I got fat too. Throughout primary and secondary school there was no connection to me between food and weight. I was just fat because that's who I was.

After I left home and gained control over my diet and life, I started to lose weight.

Starting at 330lb, which must have been in 2012, my first foray into losing weight was keto. I lost about 20lb in a couple of months, but the diet was too expensive for me - as a student, I couldn't afford to eat expensive meats like bacon and steak and other things. For a few weeks, I transitioned into a student diet which consisted solely of McCoys salt and vinegar crisps and bread, which, while effective for losing weight, was definitely not healthy!

Six months later I tried again. This time I convinced my parents to fund me a couple of months on the Diet Chef food plan. This was also pretty effective, knocking off 30lb more, though this was mostly because I hated the dinners and would only eat breakfast and lunch, eating about 600 calories a day for six to eight weeks. This was the start of the crash diet / binge cycle of weight loss that plagued me for a long time.

Over the next five years, I lost some weight and gained some back, going through a cycle of eating very low calorie diets (800/day) for about a month and a half then binging for two weeks before transitioning to eating slightly above my maintenance for another three months. It wasn't healthy at all and it's one of the things I regret. Eventually, I hit about 190lb which I was able to (more or less) maintain before stressful times hit at work and I gained 30lb back. I quit that job, moved half a country away, got a new job, and decided to try a different approach.

Instead of losing weight through a very low calorie diet with no exercise, I decided to eat at 1800 calories each day, keep my protein at 160g, and hire a personal trainer with whom I weight train twice a week (and do an additional three days of HIIT cardio each week on the cross trainer). Rather than completely depriving myself of delicious food, every Sunday I eat 500 calories, usually from protein shakes, and in exchange, Monday and Friday gets 650 calories extra which I spend on something tasty.

In the five months since starting this new routine - which is over triple the length I've been able to maintain a routine before, e.g. it's a lifestyle change, not a crash diet - I've lost 35lb and gained significant strength. I feel better, stronger, and more confident than ever. I attribute the weight loss to the diet, but the confidence comes from the exercise. And I don't crave food like I used to because I still allow myself to eat delicious things. I still have about 20lb of body fat to lose and I'd like to gain 30lb of muscle. I have a long journey ahead, but the hardest part is over now; I've established a new lifestyle that can last.

If there's one thing you should take away from my story, it's this: if you want to succeed, you need to change your fundamental approach to eating, not just what you eat, and you should turn hitting the gym into a habit.

Here are some things I've learned along the way:

• You don't need to exercise to lose weight, but you SHOULD exercise. I lost over 100lb from diet alone, but nothing beats what exercise can do for your health and your confidence.
• If you value your strength and sanity, don't fix your weight via very low calorie diets, and make sure to keep your protein intake high. A very low calorie carb-based diet works. I did it - over 100lb lost that way! But I lost a lot of muscle, too, which I have to fight hard to gain back. I have big, strong legs, but my upper body strength is weaker than it ought to be because I neglected my protein intake and ate far too much of a calorie deficit. Don't be me.
• Maintaining a healthy weight is much easier than losing your weight if you change your outlook towards food. Sticking to 1800 calories a day for a year seems impossible to someone who is overweight and regularly eats 4000, but after that year, when you're at your goal weight, you can up your intake to maintenance (2500~ for me), casually exercise, and stay there forever.
• Losing weight = look ten years younger. I'm cursed with baby face now!
• Doing my hair takes way too long in the morning now that I actually bother. :(

tl;dr: Exercise, lots of protein, calorie counting, and keep eating tasty things in moderation.

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