22yr 5'10 M 336lb > 216lb! (some progress pics) Extremely happy though still feeling quite overweight and unsure about my weight goal

Hello everyone, first post ever on this sub (apologies in advance for the probably crappy post, not the best writer, ill try to make it short, though any questions are more than welcome), i've been a lurker for quite some time and it's always been a great place to get motivation and get to know other peoples successes and struggles, very common during weight loss hehe.

Like the title says, ive made a huge change in my life and to my body by losing over 130 pounds and counting.

I've been overweight since I was a child, probably obese after 12 years old or so, been on many diets and trained with different people and what not but my first real weight loss success came in 2015, when I was 18 years old and started seeing a nutricionist and going to the gym with a personal trainer, by that time I weighed around 320lb. The nutricionist recommended me a meal plan that I liked, which basically consisted of eating toasts for breakfast, red meat for lunch with a salad and chicken with also a salad for dinner. This was a very basic menu which worked for me, since i hardly ever get tired of eating the same thing every day, I think that made everything way easier, since i wouldnt have to be thinking what I should it the next day and whether it was okay for me to be eating that, etc.

Fastforward a year and I had lost 90 pounds. Was feeling pretty happy about myself, sadly was still leading a very sedentary life style and listen to this: from mid 2016 to feb 2018 I managed to somehow re-gain ALL of the weight and put on an extra 23 lbs, yeah... How did it happen? I stopped doing the meal plan and I just didn't know how to eat properly. So started binge eating again. You get so confident that you won't regain that weight and that's really untrue, especially if you have an eating disorder like I did and still do, at some extent.

So, feb 2018 weighed 343 pounds 49. something BMI, I knew that if i kept on that track I'd have an early death probably and that thought really scared the shit out of me, but whenever i had it, i just tried to think of something else and kept doing other things, mostly playing video games. Thankfully I somehow called my bullshit and began my weight loss journey, again... Started with the same meal plan and began losing weight, though this time around, after losing 30 pounds or so, I began acquiring more knowledge about how weight loss works and of course what helped me the most was this subreddits amazing FAQ and understanding a bit more about CiCo and what not.

I went from 320lb in feb 2018 to 264lb around december of that year and from there to my current weight which is 216lb.

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So, going to todays problems:

(Yes, even after losing 130 pounds, I still have weight problems and have bad days where I feel bad about my body, thankfully its a sensation that goes away quickly for me after reminding myself where I started and looking at older pictures, which is a GREAT confidence booster :P)

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I see my body being a lot skinnier of course but I always thought that around this weight I'd have a different body composition (more loose skin but smaller belly), this brings up the question about what my goal weight should be. My nutricionist insists that I'm at a good weight and should try to mantain it and just keep building muscle at the gym. She talks about my possible weight being around 205/212lb and that there's fat that you can't lose (visceral fat was it called?), which kinda brings me down to be honest, as you can see in the pictures there's still quite some fat visible.

I feel more in control than ever with my current eating (1750 calories per day/150g protein) and really enjoy going to the gym (doing a 3day routine they gave me).

My question is, is it true that there's fat you just cant lose due to all the years of being obese? If so, would it be possible for me to achieve a normal body look? To be honest, i don't mind the loose skin, as you can see in the pictures, there's already some in my waist.

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Anyways, here are some progress pics, (still looking for some full body pics of me at 340lb but i dont know if i have any, didn't go out much and my self esteem was too low, so you'll only see the face gains for now hehe)

https://imgur.com/a/7KDJfy7

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Thank you for reading and sorry for the long post, I feel like i left some things out, so again, feel free to ask me anything! <3

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Free food at new job with no nutrition info - should I give up on CICO?

Hi there! I'm starting a new job at a company where I'm going to have access to free food. I'm not talking a box of donuts in the break room, I'm talking free breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, dessert, you name it. Every day.

I've been on the weight loss journey since December and have lost ~15lbs. I used CICO and started exercising 4-5 days a week. I packed my lunch every day and learned a lot about portion sizes and getting the right kind of macros in my diet.

But now, both for financial and social reasons, I'm not willing to keep packing my lunch every day. I want to make friends at my job, I don't want to be the "weird" person surrounded by delicious catering and eating a homemade salad. More importantly, this is going to cut my grocery bill down a ton, and I'm not in a position to turn those savings down - gotta find ways to pay those student loans! 🙃

There isn't going to be any nutrition info on any of the food. While I know I can estimate some things pretty easily (e.g. chicken breast) there might be days where the lunch options will be hard to log (e.g. a salad that looks healthy but could be loaded with a questionable number of highly caloric nuts). Should I just stop trying to log, give up on CICO and try something else (like intuitive eating)?

I've already technically made it into the "healthy" BMI zone (5'8" female, 165lbs starting weight, 150lbs current weight, 140lbs goal weight) so if I was able to maintain at this weight through intuitive eating I would be okay - my biggest concern is just gaining it all back now that I won't be able to track as well.

My understanding is that intuitive eating is best for maintenance because you don't really "intuitively" eat under your daily calories most of the time. It's something I've really struggled with (even now I have a hard time reading hunger and fullness signals I just eat at the right times of day). So I'm not sure I'd be very good at it, but I'm wondering if it would be a better option that trying to track calories of foods where I could be way off all day, every day.

If you made it down here, thanks for reading - i'm open to any and all advice and words of wisdom!

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I found a pictue of my face from 1 year ago

I've been losing weight since January of this year, so far I've lost about ~58.2 lbs! The last month or so has been a bit shakey, I haven't gained weight but there was a couple of weeks of no or very little weight loss. Anyway I'm still on the wagon and going strong! Slow and steady wins the race!

I recently found a picture of my face from 1st September 2018 that I took for an ID badge and I decided to try and re-create the picture now, in the same spot in my house with the same lighting to see if I look any different:

Face picture: https://i.imgur.com/DdgsBQp.jpg

I know there's not a huge difference but I feel like my face looks less... puffy I guess? Haha I don't know! Anyway here is a progress pictue from January to August aswell:

Progress picture: https://i.imgur.com/baagxOn.jpg

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Losing weight and I just feel better (story time about how PCOS sucks ass)

I'm 19F, 5'1", and now 159.8 lbs.

My weightloss journey started at the end of sophomore year in high school. I weighed 180 lbs and my doctor reccomended a barometric weight loss regiment under the supervision of a gastroenterologist. It was 900 calories a day from 4 special shakes and one meal of half a cup of protein (ex. Chicken, steak, egg, tofu) with 2 cups of non-starchy vegetables. I exercised 30 minutes each day. I had checkups once a week for weighing and vitals check and monthly blood tests.

Through this diet I lost 20 pounds in 3 months.

I was supposed to loose more weight within that time but two and a half months in I just stopped loosing weight. The scale wouldn't budge. The doctor yelled at me saying that I was cheating on my diet. That a person in a coma following his diet would loose 2 lbs. a week and a person exercising with it should be losing 5 lbs. I was losing nothing. For two weeks the scale stayed the same and I was given the same speech about how I shouldn't be cheating on my diet.

Except I wasn't. I was fanatic about the diet plan. I weighed everything, exercised exactly 30 minutes, and I didn't eat anything else besides my one actual meal a day. I became paranoid that I was doing something wrong. That there were somehow invisible calories that I was eating. Everytime I ate out with my friends and family where I couldn't exactly measure things, I was on the verge of crying at the table as a ate and my mood plummeted for the rest of that day.

When I started my junior year of high school, I went off the diet. It hit me that I couldn't measure all of my food exactly, and that combined with the stress of school, caused me to have a lot of trouble with anxiety and trouble concentrating and I saw a therapist for a few months to get back on my feet.

I held steady at 160 lbs but I began to experience medical issues later in my junior year (I had already at symptoms of these issues since puberty but they got worse in junior year). I went to see an endocrinologist and a couple tests later I was found to have PCOS, insulin resistance, and Hashimoto's Disease (although, the Hashimoto's isn't far along and isn't causing any metabolic issues according to test results). I thought that that was final and I could never lose the weight long-term.

When I entered college last year, I dieted low carb with 1200 calories a day for 3 months and went from 170 to 153 lbs with help from Metformin. I actually felt sexy in my Halloween costume for once. I lost track over this summer and gained bringing me to 165.

But this semester, I'm incorporating intermittent fasting (16/8), low-carb, 1200 calories a day, cardio (35 min) and strength training (~1 hour) 3x a week, and drinking tea, to make my master diet plan.

PCOS sucks, and it scares me that over half of women who have it will develop type two diabetes before 40. And, I will one day have to deal with the metabolic effects of Hashimoto's Disease as it progresses.

But I want to focus on what I can do right now. If PCOS makes me gain muscle a little bit easier, I'm taking full advantage.

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How can I stay patient when I am losing weight and accept myself now?

I have gone from 95 to 86 kg in the past 2 months. Weight loss is going pretty well.

However, I notice that as time passes, I am becoming more and more hyperfocussed on losing weight, and it's making me impatient. This is totally unneccessary, I fully trust myself that in 2 more months that I will reach my goal weight, and in the meantime I can already enjoy the process.

After this, I expect to maintain for a while, stay exercising and eating well, and then I will aim to build more muscle, so another period of a few months is ahead where I can be impatient again to see the progress.

What I have learned in the past year is that my lack of self-acceptance does more damage to my happiness and what I want to do in life than how my body looks. Sure, becoming leaner and stronger will be very good for me, but I want to do this from a position of self-love and acceptance, thus enjoying the fruits of my labours while feeling positive about myself.

In the end, I think what matters most is my character and how I treat the people around me. I want to be an authentic, relaxed and stable person. Does anyone have any advice on how I can do this?

The first step that I have in mind myself is to start journaling tomorrow, to write about my life right now, and not only about what I want to change, but also the positive things I enjoy every day. A second thing that I want to do is to actually open myself up more to that positive side, to have more fun. Invite people to come have dinner or to relax, let myself get lost in hobbies, hang out with people that I love and just have a good time, exercise with people, etc.

During the past 20 years of my life I have wanted to change myself more and more, and I have never been able to accept me as I am, and my life became heavier and heavier, as my expectations of myself kept rising. I want to break this cycle. That's why I am asking you, particularly how you deal with this while losing weight.

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I lost 40lbs in three months. Here's how.

Hi guys, first-time poster, but long time lurker. I started my weight loss journey at 280lbs, and I'm currently at 242lbs, lost 7 inches around my stomach, I'm 5 feet 9 inches, male, and 23 years old.

I'm going to start off by saying right now that this isn't going to be about what I did externally, but rather what I did internally. Because I could tell you right now that I counted calories, I did intermittent fasting, and I worked out intensely and ran every day, and it would mean absolutely nothing to you, the reader. If you're a regular of this subreddit, then you know how to lose weight. Here are five tips on how I was able to stay so motivated, ambitious, and disciplined while doing it.

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1) Be honest with yourself

This is absolutely one of the first things you should do before you even think about losing weight. I was VERY HARSH with myself. I was brutally honest about everything that was going on. The very first thing I did was admit to myself that I have an eating disorder. I wasn't fat because of an unrelated issue. It was because I'm a fat fuck with no self-control that eats fast food and drinks soda for nearly every meal. I feel like garbage all the time. I was in college but barely had any friends because I was so insecure about myself. I was a fat slob. I spent all my free time in my basement on the computer only leaving to stuff my face. I was unhappy with myself, and I've felt unhappy for a long time. I've watched my soul get destroyed time after time, and I had nothing left to lose.

You need to ask yourself: "do I want to live this way for the rest of my life? Am I fat for no reason or is it because I eat like crap? Am I unhappy with myself?" Because if you don't make a change now, I can guarantee it's only going to get worse.

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2) Allow yourself to express emotions freely

This one was hard for me, and will probably be hard for you too, especially if you're a man. Men are taught from a very young age that showing emotion isn't manly, that you have to be stoic and impartial to everything going on around you. I say fuck that. EMOTIONS ARE POWERFUL. ALLOWING YOURSELF TO EXPRESS EMOTIONS FREELY, BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS, WILL EMPOWER YOU (more on that in #4).

When I was being honest with myself I mentioned I was very harsh with myself. I let myself cry. I had a fucking breakdown. I was sad, angry, jealous, fed up. I let myself bask in those emotions, and I vowed to myself that I never want to feel this way again, and I will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make sure I don't. Every single day I'm honest with my emotions, and acknowledge that they are all valid. I feel this way for a reason and I'm going to let myself feel this way. Allowing myself to remain vulnerable has ironically also empowered me. This also builds emotional intelligence, which is very important for keeping yourself in check. It allows you to express a variety of emotions and know how to act accordingly when they happen.

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3) Keep yourself accountable

This is one of the biggest incentives to keep me on track. From the get-go, I made an Instagram account about my weight loss journey, and I aggressively promoted it to my friends so they could follow it. This may not have been the healthiest/wisest solution for forcing myself to stay on track, but it worked. I post regularly on it and I'm allowed to watch myself progress and get better. Your accountability tells a story that can inspire and motivate other people, and it personally brings me fulfillment when I see I've inspired other people, which I get messages very often saying that I have.

Another way you can stay accountable is through apps like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting. Like I said, I won't talk too much about externalities.

This may come off as an unhealthy coping mechanism, and take it with a grain of salt, but I started to have the mindset that everything that happens around me is because of me. It allowed me to have more control over my successes and my failures. Even if something isn't my fault, I'll take responsibility and think about ways I can improve myself or that situation at that point. Weight loss isn't just about dropping the number on the scale or the inches on your measurements, it's a complete lifestyle overhaul and intense character development.

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4) Turn negative experiences into positive energy

It's very easy to allow setbacks, pitfalls, and other negative experiences to consume you and put a stop to your progress. I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about a negative experience that happened to me very recently and how I turned it into a breakthrough.

3 days ago, a friend invited me out to hang out, and I met up with him, his girlfriend, and 2 other girls I've never met. The night goes fine for the most part but somebody brought up my twitter account and one of the girls I just met asked to see it. I handed her the phone from across the table, let her scroll for a couple of minutes, then she handed it back to me. I'm the type of person to always have my apps closed, so when I went to close my twitter app, I see 4 or 5 other apps open, including my photo gallery. Every month I take a shirtless video showing off all my angles for weight loss accountability, and I just happened to take a video the day before the incident. They weren't meant for anyone's eyes but my own. I wasn't hovering over her, but I knew for a fact she saw it. I was mortified, but I didn't say anything. I also saw her casually swiping left on tinder, and I knew I was one of those undesirables she'd swipe left on. I waited for the other two girls to walk away, said goodbye to my friend and his gf, and left. I got back to my car, deleted my tinder, and vowed I would go harder than I ever went before when I get to the gym the next day, and I would never let anyone violate me like that again.

The next day came, and I did as I promised. I ran on that elliptical harder than I've ever ran, and I didn't feel tired or the desire to stop once. I could've easily let my misery, my resentment, my anger, and my jealousy consume me. But I knew why I was doing what I was. I wanted to be better. I was fed up. I was tired of being tired. I've been bullied and overlooked my whole life, and I've had enough. It's been 4 days since that incident and I'm still riding that wave.

Don't let anything set you back. You're playing the long game. You're going to experience failures somewhere down the line, and you're going to want to give up. But, you have to tell yourself "fuck that, I'm never going back to the way I was" and keep goin' on.

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5) Do it because you deserve it

It's no secret that this world is unforgiving. Even if not out loud, people ridicule you. People judge you. You're thought of as less because you carry more weight. The harsh reality is if you're down, you're going to stay down until you do something about it. Because the world will keep kicking you in the ribs until you grab that leg and break it. I want to tell you, the reader, that you deserve so much more than this world could ever offer you. You deserve to be happy with your body. You deserve to be successful. You deserve to live your best life. Most importantly, you deserve to be loved.

You don't deserve to be ridiculed, or thought of as less. If you're struggling to lose weight, don't give up. You're going to do great things. You're going to be world-class. You're going to be the envy of the people that used to ridicule you. You have to keep going. If you haven't started, then you need to start. You need it more than you know it. You are going to be so thankful to yourself when you look back one year later and see how far you've come. This life we're given is so precious, you deserve to have the best time of your life.

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Has a serious medical diagnosis kick-started your weight loss?

I’m a 42yo female, 197 lbs/5’7” (BMI is borderline ‘obese’). Like many I’ve started healthy habits to lose weight many times before but it typically lasts a few weeks before I lose focus. However - last week I received a serious medical diagnosis of breast cancer. Being overweight increases one’s risk factor for breast cancer and being at a healthy weight would certainly bring a better prognosis for future health. Not knowing yet what treatment road lays ahead or how my health will be affected, I can’t ignore this as a MAJOR wake-up call to get to and maintain a healthy weight. Curious, have others been in this boat with a similarly-serious medical diagnosis? How has that affected your weight loss?

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