Trying to find a healthy, sustainable method for weight loss.

Basically, I don't know how to lose weight in a healthy way.

I was skinny in high school because I restricted myself to 1200 calories a day most days, and ran a minimum of 5 miles a day. I went crazy on the weekends, and then would eat even less to make up for it. Some days I would even fast for 24 hours or more if I had really f-ed up. Basically, I was in an unhealthy place of thinness obsession, and it wasn't cool.

Eventually I snapped and gained all that weight back.

Then college came, and I went back on the same thing, and lost weight again. I remained like that for a year, until the weight slowly crept back up.

This time, I decided that I was going to try to lose weight in a "healthy" way. Unfortunately, although I started to follow a healthier lifestyle, the weight just didn't come off at all, and I became extremely frustrated. I tried not to restrict myself too much, but at the end of the day, I don't know how to eat healthy without feeling deprived and completely going off the rails. Most days, I'd eat well, others I'd eat 500 calories extra and mess up my deficit. Even on weeks where I ate healthily with no mess-ups and exercised 5x a week, my weight stayed the same! And because I wasn't making up for things with extremely low calorie/low carb days with lots of running, my weight wouldn't budge.

The very last time I lost weight, I did it by going on a no-sugar, low carb diet. Lost 11 pounds in one month, and gained 14 back!

Now I'm at a loss. I don't think the fight is over, but I'm so confused about the conflicting advice that's coming my way. Cheat meals or no cheat meals? Cold turkey, or no cold turkey because "dieting doesn't work"? Low carb/macro tracking, or calories in/calories out? Should I try to cut out sugar again and eat low carb again, and hope it works this time, or am I guaranteed to fall off the wagon once I get tired of my diet? Most of the time, when I hear about healthy weight loss, people just talk about developing a "lifestyle you enjoy and can continue forever", but if I just did a lifestyle I enjoyed, I'd probably just eat sweets and bread every day and never work out. In my mind salad = restriction, and pizza/dessert = freedom, relaxation, etc. I know I could just go back to the way I was in high school, but that always resulted in weight regain and general unhappiness lol.

I'm currently thinking that maybe I could start off losing weight this time by eating no sugar for 2 weeks, and then having a cheat meal once a week until I get to my goal. Maybe my week could be eat healthy until Saturday, then back on the horse starting Sunday? My biggest fears are that I'll

A) not lose weight

B) lose weight, but get tired of not eating the things I like/only getting to eat the things I like once a week.

So long story short, what is the best method for losing weight and keeping it off without feeling deprived or crash dieting? I just want to not be overweight and fit back into my clothes.

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Tantrum Tuesday - The Day to Rant!

I Rant, Therefore I Am

Well bla-de-da-da! What's making your blood boil? What's under your skin? What's making you see red? What's up in your craw? Let's hear your weight loss related rants!
The rant post is a /u/bladedada production.

Please consider saving your next rant for this weekly thread every Tuesday.

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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.

​

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)

​

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.

​

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

​

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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