One bad day doesn't ruin your progress but it takes quite many good days to compensate a binge

Hello all!

I've been on a diet for 3 weeks now and it has been going successfully so far. Yesterday I screwed though when I came home from a trip endlessly tired and with sleep deprivation. It wasn't that late but I felt like I was about to fall asleep so when I went to grocery shopping I bought a pint of ice cream. I had also been snacking some chocolate the whole day to keep me awake and a long story short I ended up eating quite a lot of the ice cream too. Luckily not all of it but I estimated about 1000kcal, in addition to 1000kcal of chocolate. And guys that is on top of what I needed that day as I had been travelling and didn't exercise. That's 2000kcal of extra! No wonder I had been piling on the pounds this past year as I have been calming myself down with sugar and fat. If I did every day what I did yesterday, I would gain 2 kilograms in a week!! Two kilograms in a single week, that's insane.

My normal daily deficit is around 500 kcal. That means that it takes four normal days for me to compensate those extra calories. Imagine if I binged every week like this. I should be on a huge deficit to compensate, otherwise losing weight would be impossible!

This was just a huge wake up call. One small chocolate bar or a few extra cookies don't ruin your progress but a whole day of bingeing certainly does harm. My goal is to lose weight slowly and steadily so I don't mind if I don't lose every day. But I don't want to bounce back like this anymore either! I mean, now I can be back at losing only on Saturday because it takes Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to compensate the extra that I ate on Monday.

For me the good days are easy, they go smoothly, I feel good and all that. It's the bad days that change the direction from losing to gaining. From now on my attitude should rather be: Minimise the harm on the bad days and stop bingeing immediately. 500kcal of extra can be undone in one day, 2000kcal takes 4 days and 4000kcal takes more than a week.

I had to add that I know five days mean nothing in long term. :) But just a great reminder that one can't keep doing things like that and expect weight loss.

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6 Weeks. 6 Inches. 9 Pounds. It's Finally Happening.

Hi everyone, this is my first post, so please let me know if I need to fix anything regarding my post.

Quick background: been heavy for most of my 20s. Peaked at 211 lbs when I was 26. Struggled with depression brought on by some setbacks in my early 20s, and I turned to food, soda, and video games for comfort. I'm turning 30 at the end of this year and my goal is to be out of the "obese" BMI range before my birthday.

I took progress measurements for the first time since I started seriously dieting and working out 6 weeks ago. The scale hasn't moved as much as I'd hoped, and it was so frustrating to see that little number hovering around the same 3-4 lbs every week for the 3 weeks or so. Even though I kept telling myself, "It's okay, you're probably gaining a little muscle" I didn't really believe it until this morning, when I took my measurements. A total of 6 inches lost, 3 of which were from my thigh! In an instant, all that work felt worth it. All the meal prep, all the times I drank water instead of the latte or soda I really wanted, it was worth it. I actually cried a little, because that's the most progress I've seen with weight loss in nearly a decade.

As far as my diet goes, I have a daily goal range for each of my macros. For example, my daily protein goal is 140g, but I allow myself +/- 5g. For fat I give myself a range of +/-3g. It makes dieting so much less stressful and flexible. I also avoid processed foods as much as I can, but I don't feel bad if I have some bread or some cheese once in a while, so long as I get my macros within my ranges. I've also quit drinking sodas, and I drink almost exclusively water now. I try to drink about a gallon a day, but that's not always possible. I always make sure to get at least 64 oz though!

Exercise has been ice skating 2-3 times a week (easy skating, nothing really intensive. just working on balance and basic skills), body weight circuits twice a week (one upper body and one lower body), and then one day dedicated to cardio, usually rowing. I might drop the cardio day as I get better at ice skating, because I'll start getting my cardio workouts during skating.

My biggest takeaway is this: take measurements! If the scale isn't moving much, it could be because you're gaining muscle, but without measurements, you won't be able to tell that just from a number on the scale. Also, find a diet that's flexible enough for your lifestyle without indulging your prior bad habits. It took me a while to settle into this diet, but it allows for situations like an impromptu invitation to an office lunch, meeting with a friend after work, an last-second invite to a concert, etc. without feeling bad about it. Just hit your macro range, and you're good to go!

You CAN do it. Just because you haven't seen progress in a while doesn't mean it will never happen. Start with a small change that's not too hard to do, and work from there. For me, that first small change was going from full sugar sodas to zero calorie sodas. From there, I replaced 3 bottles of soda a week with bottles of water. Then I kept replacing my soda with water until soda was totally gone. It didn't happen overnight. It took about a month, but I never felt deprived doing it this way. Keep adding small changes rather than radically shifting your lifestyle all at once. After a few weeks, you might really amaze yourself with how differently you're eating, how you're working out, etc.

Good luck to everyone else on this journey. I'm rooting for you!

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Day 1? Starting your weight loss journey on Tuesday, 30 July 2019? Start here!

Today is your Day 1?

Welcome to r/Loseit!

So you aren’t sure of how to start? Don’t worry! “How do I get started?” is our most asked question. r/Loseit has helped our users lose over 1,000,000 recorded pounds and these are the steps that we’ve found most useful for getting started.

Why you’re overweight

Our bodies are amazing (yes, yours too!). In order to survive before supermarkets, we had to be able to store energy to get us through lean times, we store this energy as adipose fat tissue. If you put more energy into your body than it needs, it stores it, for (potential) later use. When you put in less than it needs, it uses the stored energy. The more energy you have stored, the more overweight you are. The trick is to get your body to use the stored energy, which can only be done if you give it less energy than it needs, consistently.

Before You Start

The very first step is calculating your calorie needs. You can do that HERE. This will give you an approximation of your calorie needs for the day. The next step is to figure how quickly you want to lose the fat. One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. So to lose 1 pound of fat per week you will need to consume 500 calories less than your TDEE (daily calorie needs from the link above). 750 calories less will result in 1.5 pounds and 1000 calories is an aggressive 2 pounds per week.

Tracking

Here is where it begins to resemble work. The most efficient way to lose the weight you desire is to track your calorie intake. This has gotten much simpler over the years and today it can be done right from your smartphone or computer. r/loseit recommends an app like MyFitnessPal, Loseit! (unaffiliated), or Cronometer. Create an account and be honest with it about your current stats, activities, and goals. This is your tracker and no one else needs to see it so don’t cheat the numbers. You’ll find large user created databases that make logging and tracking your food and drinks easy with just the tap of the screen or the push of a button. We also highly recommend the use of a digital kitchen scale for accuracy. Knowing how much of what you're eating is more important than what you're eating. Why? This may explain it.

Creating Your Deficit

How do you create a deficit? This is up to you. r/loseit has a few recommendations but ultimately that decision is yours. There is no perfect diet for everyone. There is a perfect diet for you and you can create it. You can eat less of exactly what you eat now. If you like pizza you can have pizza. Have 2 slices instead of 4. You can try lower calorie replacements for calorie dense foods. Some of the communities favorites are cauliflower rice, zucchini noodles, spaghetti squash in place of their more calorie rich cousins. If it appeals to you an entire dietary change like Keto, Paleo, Vegetarian.

The most important thing to remember is that this selection of foods works for you. Sustainability is the key to long term weight management success. If you hate what you’re eating you won’t stick to it.

Exercise

Is NOT mandatory. You can lose fat and create a deficit through diet alone. There is no requirement of exercise to lose weight.

It has it’s own benefits though. You will burn extra calories. Exercise is shown to be beneficial to mental health and creates an endorphin rush as well. It makes people feel awesome and has been linked to higher rates of long term success when physical activity is included in lifestyle changes.

Crawl, Walk, Run

It can seem like one needs to make a 180 degree course correction to find success. That isn’t necessarily true. Many of our users find that creating small initial changes that build a foundation allows them to progress forward in even, sustained, increments.

Acceptance

You will struggle. We have all struggled. This is natural. There is no tip or trick to get through this though. We encourage you to recognize why you are struggling and forgive yourself for whatever reason that may be. If you overindulged at your last meal that is ok. You can resolve to make the next meal better.

Do not let the pursuit of perfect get in the way of progress. We don’t need perfect. We just want better.

Additional resources

Now you’re ready to do this. Here are more details, that may help you refine your plan.

• Quick Start Guide - Build your foundation!
• Loseit Compendium - Frame it out!
• FAQ - Answers to our most Frequently Asked Questions!

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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2Kg1p2w

Down 19 kg now thanks to fasting and OMAD

I have to say it takes a lot of experimenting and time, and energy, and resilience, and resolve, and...... What I can take away from the first half of this journey is that you need a large toolbox to get through weight loss. I think the tool that moved me forward the most was my resolve while what helped me most on my journey was experimentation with diets and the specifics of diets. For years people said eat 5 small meals a day. That is compleat s***. I was hungry all day and ate more than 2000 kcal. When I discovered the fasting community my life changed and I saw extreme results immediately, and I saved money. Who knew dieting was so cheap?

The experimentation with fasting went beyond vitamins and eating schedules, everyone thought I would die by not eating every day. One person tried to have me sent to the psyc ward because they thought missing meals would end my life. Fasters hear this all the time. So the social aspects were often against me but Reddit was always there for me. The physical aspects of fasting: I found that at the core I really needed a few things daily, a multi vitamin, electrolyte tablet (you need to replace your electrolytes you pee out daily), plenty of water, and coffee/tea.

Butter coffee/fat coffee: burning fat is difficult but saturating your system with fat helps the body switch faster to burning fat and not using up whatever carbs you have left (I know you'll be here to fix this Reddit) . I good a shot class and mixed ~.5 g avocado oil, coconut oil, and 2 g butter and filled with coffee. I experimented with the mixtures and found that the taste is the most difficult part so this blender was the easiest for me. After I chased it with water.

Thanks to all who have helped along the way!

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Feeling very discouraged

I keep messing up on my weight loss goal. I used to be overweight, lost about 100 pounds several years ago. I remained super skinny for several years. I definitely had some form of anorexia looking back. I would only have a can of soup a day for the better part of a year. Well, I gained it all back over the past 2 years and then some. I was on medication that made me gain weight like you wouldn't believe. I kept binging like crazy. I am off the meds now, and have lost around 30 pounds. But i stepped on the scale to find that ive gained 10 pounds back. I keep having this happen. I restrict so much and then eventually cave and when I do its a lot. I feel very discouraged. First time posting in here, if this isn't where to post this I apologize. Can anybody else relate to this?

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265 to 187 to 256 to 206 all in 4 years...

The body pictures aren’t of me at my highest weight. I didn’t want to post that in Imgur because they’re a bunch of assholes. I only uploaded there so I could post here... but damn! Anyway, here’s the goods:

https://imgur.com/gallery/2Cj1dns

Long post.... not expecting anyone to read this whole thing, but I’ve been thinking about doing this for a looong time. If this post can help even one person on their weight loss journey, I’d be happy!!! If not, oh well, this was cathartic lol.

I have struggled with my weight for 25 years. I’m 31, so that means I had a glorious 6 years of life where I wasn’t concerned about how fat I was. I was 6 and in kindergarten the first time a kid called me fat. I went home and cried after school almost every day because it became a constant thing from 2 particular girls in my class. Fast forward to the summer between 8th grade and freshman year of high school. I became anorexic and stopped eating except for a few pieces of lunch meat and maybe a slice of cheese. I lost so much weight, a few of my classmates didn’t recognize me. I spent my high school years believing I was a fat cow, even though I look back at my high school pictures and can’t BELIEVE how skinny I was (5’7 about 160 to 170 which for my frame looked good).

Fast forward to college. I met a guy who was 2 years older than me... charming, funny, quite heavy himself. I was still in pretty good shape. But then the abuse began. As I became more depressed, I ate and drank and I gained and I gained and I gained. The more I gained, the more I hated myself. People around me were nicely trying to make suggestions. I wouldn’t hear of it. I made excuses like “I can’t because I have no will power,” “I tried but nothing works,” “I don’t look THAT bad” or whatever else I came up with. I ate when bad or sad things happened to try to make myself feel better, I ate when my boyfriend yelled at me, I ate when great things happened, i ate as a reward for something I did, I ate when I was bored. Basically, I was always eating.

5 years of that shitty relationship and 1 restraining order later, I was free of the asshole and moved north to Boston. I was so ecstatic to be in a new state for a fresh start, but I was so angry at myself for letting myself get that way. I decided to forget losing weight on my own. It wasn’t possible since I had gotten so bad. My only option at this point was to get surgery (or so I thought). There is no other way. My sister had it done 5 years prior to that point and she still looked great! I went through the whole process. I went to Massachusetts General Hospital, attended the support meetings and informational sessions, met with the nutritionist, the psychologist, and even the surgeon... I made it all the way to talking to the financial consultant to determine medical insurance vs. out of pocket cost. She told me that I wasn’t fat enough for the surgery. Apparently you had to have a certain BMI, and I was short by maybe 2 or 3 points? I was heart broken. I would never be able to lose weight on my own. I’d have to be fat forever. So what did I do? I decided I’d eat more to get up to the right BMI and get the surgery done anyway. If that’s not messed up...

Again I ate and drank and had a grand old time. On weekends, I would go out to eat dinner, drink with my buddies, then call Dominoes to order a large pepperoni pizza and cheesy bread (don’t forget the garlic sauce!). I’d eat the entire bread box and half the pizza on my own. Which I’d usually finish for breakfast the next day. Weekdays I’d have Dunkin’ for breakfast, pizza or chipotle for lunch, and 15 wings and fries for dinner or KFC. Plus something for dessert of course. It was a disgusting routine.

A couple years later after I gained enough weight plus some, well turns out I got a different job with a different insurance. I no longer felt like bothering to do that whole process over again.

I was at the Boston Marathon during the bombings in 2013. I worked at BU, and they provided grief counselors for us which was incredible. I remember talking to the woman and telling her about the guilt I felt that day for not doing more to help.. and somehow we got on the topic of my weight. And I gave her one of my old excuses, “I’m just so lazy.” She turned around and said, “You are working a full time job and got a promotion all while taking extra classes to apply to grad school? You don’t sound lazy to me.”

Now, that comment didn’t fully sink in until a year later. Out of no where it popped in my head after I failed yet ANOTHER diet. I wasn’t a lazy person. I was only lazy when it came to my health and eating habits. Once that sunk in, I snapped. I realized if I could be motivated in other aspects of my life, I could be motivated to improve my health.

Oddly enough I discovered LoseIt shortly thereafter. I read about people like me who had struggled their whole lives, who also had ridiculously unhealthy relationships with food. And they lost weight. Lots of weight. Suddenly, things were in motion and I felt like there was a way to gain control over my life again.

Long story short (because this has been so damn long already lol), I lost almost 80 pounds. I was the happiest I had ever been.

I met my (now) fiancé in March of 2017. He is one of the most incredible, compassionate, loving human being I have ever met. I got comfortable with him, and unfortunately gained back everything save for 8 pounds... I was so happy to have found someone who treated me like I deserved to be treated, I didn’t care. I was (and still am) so unbelievably in love.

September 2018, he proposed. It was amazing, he took us to where our first date was, proposed, then both our families and a few friends showed up (I had no idea!!). We took a bunch of pictures... that’s when I saw myself in the long skirt and was mortified. I couldn’t get married looking like THAT! I’d look awful in a wedding dress.

I set a goal to be 199 by the wedding. Our wedding is October 12 (less than 3 months). I am now 206!!! So far, I have lost 50 pounds since September 2018. And I did not diet straight through... I took some time off in order to take it slow this time. And I will most definitely lose the rest of the weight in the next month.

I’m not done, I’d like to continue losing weight even after the wedding and get down to maybe 180. Additionally, I’ve realized I most likely will never be done dealing with my weight and food issues. I unfortunately will probably always struggle with my weight. But I am better equipped to handle it now. If/when I mess up again, I know how to get back on track. Hopefully that will never happen again, but if it does, I won’t beat myself up and hate myself for it. That doesn’t do anyone any good.

All we can do is try our best and set our mind to it taking it one step at a time.

Feel free to ask me any questions!! I love helping people on their weight loss journeys since so many people helped me on mine. Some didn’t even know it... referring to those who post in this sub 😂.

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Update: 20 pounds lost

Hi everyone!

I posted here when I lost ten pounds, so I decided to post that I have lost another ten. Yay!

23 yo F 5'4" / SW: 270 / CW: 249 / GW: 180

I haven't been taking traditional comparison photos, but the first photo is from around the time I started losing weight, and the second is from a week ago. They are similar poses, but I am dressed totally differently in them. When I lose another 10 I will post another pic. Maybe I'll work on actual comparison photos with the same location, pose and outfit.

I am calorie counting and going to the gym 3-5 times a week. In the second photo I weighed 252 compared to my starting weight of 270, and today I weighed 249!

Weight Loss - 20 Pound Difference https://imgur.com/gallery/7uptivX

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