Let's start with what everyone enjoys. Here's my before and after.
Two years ago I was 273 lbs and wearing a size 24W; today I'm 136 and a size 2.
(Skip this section if you don't want to read my story of weight loss and just want the things I learned at the bottom)
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It wasn't the first time I'd tried to lose weight, and it wasn't the 10th time either. I've been overweight since I was a child. I'd have to go back to fifth grade to remember a time that I weighed less than I do now. I'd tried and failed, tried and given up, tried and became bulimic, and then just gave up.
However, two years ago my mom had a massive heart attack and almost died at 59. My dad died of a heart attack at 65. Everyone in my family was obese and had a myriad of health issues (mostly heart and diabetes related). My health wasn't the best either. Not just physical health. My mental health was awful. I hated and was disgusted with myself. I couldn't look in a mirror and be happy. Still, I didn't want to die. I didn't want to be thinking how at 29 my life was almost half over if I continued on this path. My great grandparents and grandparents had lived into their 90's and early 100s. I didn't want to be looking at death in my 60s like my parents.
So I decided to make some real changes.
I started trying to eat healthier. I started trying to move a bit more. I felt so ridiculous the first time I tried to follow some at home exercise. It all seemed pointless, and I felt like a fool. Still I did it. I also started therapy. I really started trying to work on my self image and to learn to love myself.
For once in my life I wasn't going to look at weight loss as a punishment or some sort of ordeal to be faced due to the "sin" of being fat. I strived to look at this as changing in ways to take care of myself. Changing in ways to be healthy because part of loving yourself is taking proper care of yourself. Some may not agree with it, but I developed the mindset that the most body positive thing I could do would be to lose weight as part of becoming healthy.
The first 40lbs came off pretty easily. It was simply changing my diet to be healthier with more home cooking and walking around a bit more. There wasn't anything special needed. However, it was in the low 230's that I started to stall.
So after some time researching and learning more about CICO and nutrition, I decided to start counting calories. I set a goal of 1500 calories. I also started trying to not just walk, but to actually run as well.
My first attempt at running was a failure. So was the second and the 20th attempt. Finally I went to a doctor, and I was diagnosed with exercise induced bronchiospasms (basically asthma that is only activated by physical activity). Did I give up? No. Past me would have, but not anymore. I got a prescription for an inhaler and kept trying to run.
Meanwhile I didn't just want to limit calories. I wanted to be healthy about it. At 1500 a day I really needed to focus on nutrition. I had thought my diet was good before, but it drastically improved now. I started focusing on getting all my nutrient needs. I learned to cook a lot of my favorite take out meals. I started packing lunch every day. I kept at it.
Running was getting better, and I was inconsistently going to the gym, and that really started to further motivate me. I realized I really love to run. I love how it feels, and I love how different I feel compared to how I used to be.
This continued on for a year and several months until one day I hit a point where losing weight was getting really hard. It was starting to impact my ability to improve in running and fitness. At that point I weighed 140lbs. By then I had set a goal for myself of 130, but I decided I wanted to improve in fitness more than I wanted to lose more weight. So I said hell to my goal, and I decided to slowly build back up to maintenance. Over the next month and a half I lost 4 more lbs and reached my maintenance calories.
Since then I've been maintaining and experimenting with different styles of maintenance. For awhile I was trying to stop tracking calories, but I've started up again so as to do an experiment of seeing what would happen if I ate at the caloric level that my apple watch says is my maintenance. Surprisingly, I have actually maintained my weight for the past three weeks of doing this. It's been weird, but really cool.
Now today, two years later, I am a completely different person. My entire diet has changed. My habits have changes. My life has changed. I went from a 273 lb sedentary, pack a day smoker with a all sorts of health issues, to being 136 lbs, a non-smoker, able to run 10 miles whenever I feel like it, can spend an entire day lifting weights and still function tomorrow, and never feel afraid that I'm not physically able to do something.
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Things I learned:
Make lifestyle changes. Don't do a temporary diet. As you plan out changes, ask yourself if this is a change that can be permanent. Your weight is a collection of all your current habits and diet. Your goal weight will be a collection of new habits and diets.
The one exception to this is if you have a large amount of weight to lose. You're almost certainly going to have to count calories at some point. That probably won't be a permanent thing, but it will be something that you're going to have to do for awhile.
Exercise
Yes, you don't need exercise to lose weight, but it makes it easier. Plus there have been multiple studies that show that exercise is needed to maintain weight loss, especially for large weight loss. You don't need a lot, but you do need to have a moderate amount. Here's a video that talks about it. Also, exercise is going to be important for giving you the body you want. I see people on here who post all the time that are my height and weight, yet are wearing clothes that are multiple sizes bigger and have a lot more stomach fat than I now do. Exercise is the key defining difference between being fit and healthy, and being someone who ends up being skinny fat and needing to drop to an excessively low weight to look in shape.
You don't have to do the gym and running, but find something that will keep you physically active. Find some sort of hobby you can do that gets you regularly moving. It really doesn't matter what it is, just find something.
Again, the exception here is if you have a large amount to lose. If you're looking at losing 80, 100 lbs, or more, then you're going to have to hit the gym at some point. It's basically rehabilitative therapy for your body. It's the only way to undo the damage that that much excessive weight has caused. You don't have to go every day, but you'll need to go at least 2-3 times a week for awhile so you can rebuild muscle and fix all the muscle imbalances that morbid obesity causes to your body.
Nutrition:
Calorie counting, intermittent fasting, or anything else you use will help you lose weight, but if you want to be healthy than you have to think about your nutrition. You need to make changes to that. You can start small, I did, and let it build, but you gotta get to a place where your diet is like 90% healthy and only 10% (or less) of junk food. Plus, proper nutrition will allow you to be a lot less hungry while on a deficit. So you know, that helps a lot when you're looking at a year or two of having to be on a deficit every day.
Mental Health:
If you deal with emotional issues, I sure did, then give therapy a try. Work on your mind as well as your body. The two are connected. If your mind isn't organized, then your body will be similar. Your diet will be similar. Your physical appearance will represent how you feel about yourself.
I know this will be hard for many, but try to work towards a place where you love yourself. Try to find a way where you are doing this out of love and caring for yourself. If you hate yourself, if you think of yourself as a failure or a loser, then you're going to fail. You've already decided that you'll fail before you even started. You're not a failure though. You're not a loser. The fact that you're here and going about your day shows how strong you are. You can do this, and I truly hope that you can believe that you can.
Most importantly, never give up. There will be set backs. You will have times when you struggle. You're going to feel foolish and anxious. Starting at the gym will feel awkward. Some days your motivation will wane. You'll want to give up. Don't. Just keep going. Make it a habit. This is a part of your day. It's brushing your teeth. You do it every day because you need to.
Remember, you live every moment of every day in your body, that means that you need to spend every day maintaining and caring for your body.
Bonus - transitioning to maintenance
A few weeks into maintenance I experienced a period of intense hunger. It was beyond any level I'd experienced while losing weight. After much research, I found out it is a side effect usually seen as part of ED recovery where your body wants to be refed. (There's not much on what long term deficits do to your body outside of ED research so that ended up being the only info that explained it.) I had to watch my diet carefully for about a month, but then the hunger went away. I don't know if everyone will experience this, but you may want to watch out for it when you switch to maintenance. The good thing is that everything I read, and my own experience, is that it does go away eventually.
Weaning off calorie counting is scary, but the longer I'm at maintenance the easier it is. Yes, I'm still counting calories for my smart watch experiment, but I don't feel beholden to them like I did when losing weight and during the first couple months of maintenance. I'm not afraid of going out to eat with friends and just guesstimating things. That's important to be able to lead a normal life. Go about it at the speed your comfortable. Every so often take a day where you just guess at calories, then move on to taking a day where you do zero tracking. Let yourself see that you're not gaining weight.
As I've experimented with different styles of maintenance, I've discovered that some days I naturally feel less hungry so I end up undereating a bit. Other days I over eat. It all balances out though. Knowing that has been helpful in feeling a lot less afraid of eating too much. It all keeps balancing out so I'm all good.
Don't forget that you lost the weight, and now you know how to lose weight easily. You can always lose again. So don't be afraid to experiment with different styles of maintenance. Just watch your weight. If you start trending up, say 5 lbs above your goal line, then you can simply spend a couple weeks at a deficit and be good again. So it's really not that big of a deal.
Best of luck all.
