UPDATE! I've lost 250lbs and had skin removal surgery

Hey all! I've posted some photos of my loose skin previously and I'm happy to report that I've had some removed!

Long story short, I've lost ~250lbs over the course of a decade without the assistance of weight loss surgery.

Four weeks ago yesterday I had a fleur-de-lis abdominoplasty, arm lift, and a breast lift. You can find photos of them here, here, and here. I'm my own Halloween costume!

The most dramatic of the three was definitely the breast lift, and I opted out of the suggested implants. I won't share photos of those, but I have a scar underneath both breasts, one leading up to the areola, and then a scar around both (as they had to be taken in from being stretched out)

All in all I'm incredibly happy with my results! Although I'm still in a state of "this is surreal, I've been waiting years to have surgery" I don't know exactly how much the skin weighed, but the surgeon said not as much as you'd expect as skin doesn't weigh much. He said he removed roughly 3ft x 3ft of skin from my abdomen, which was about 6lbs, and quite a bit from my breasts as well.

PLEASE NOTE: it takes up to six months for optimal results of this surgery. My arms and abdomen are still in the early stages of healing and are fairly swollen. It doesn't help that I had just eaten (food baby!) and resumed cardio for the first time today, which will also result in some fluid build up. I'll post more photos when everything settles down

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Advice much needed: no weight loss after 2/3 months at calorie deficit (sensitive info)

Hello r/loseit, I'm using a throwaway account because the post contains sensitive info. I am 23M, 183cm (6ft) and in mid July I weighed 88kg (194lbs). My weight oscillated around 65-70kg (143-154lbs) last year at this time and it had been like that for around 4 years.

Around summer of 2018 I had very severe mental health issues, and ended up being commited to a psych ward against my will. In the end after many failed drug trials I was put on the only drug that would work for me, and I swiftly recovered after that, although I have to be taking it indefinitely to prevent another breakdown. I was recovering mentally by early April, but in 3 months I put 23kg (51lbs) despite not eating any more than normal, as my appetite was curved a bit by the meds. The drug that I'm taking (one of the tricyclic antidepressants) is associated with weight gain but not to this magnitude.

Around mid July I had a wake up call when my dad, who has always been overweight, told me that his type 2 diabetes had got so bad that he needed to receive weekly injections. Since then, due to this and a stomach ulcer, he's gone from 120kg (265lbs) to 85kg (187lbs) in a few months, doing no exercise, just by portion control and is no longer even considered overwight for the first time since I've been alive. This motivated me to start a diet myself back then to avoid ending up like that.

I set a goal of 1700kcal daily by late July and have been counting calories every day since then. I have been pretty strict with calories, some days not making it to even 1200kcal, and some days above 1700kcal but very rarely if ever, above 2000kcal. In fact, every day since then I have been skipping breakfast and eating for lunch the same 400kcal salad that they sell at the shop near my workplace, and a 100kcal pot of watermelon if I was still feeling hungry. I drink plenty of fluids every day, no caloric sodas, juices or hot drinks whatsoever. No sweets, snacks or any of that, don't even buy them. I go for a 1-2hr walk every day but apart from that I'm physically inactive. On the weekends if there was a social event that involved eating out I would skip the caloric restriction for that day, but apart from that the regime has been iron tight. On the first 2/3 weeks I lost 4kg (9lbs) but the problem is that despite sticking to the same diet my weight has been 83-84 kg (182-185 lbs) since then, no gains but no losses either. The thing is, I am constantly hungry. And I don't mean hungry like "oh I could go for a sandwich", but intense physical pain after a few hours, even resulting in esophageal spasms at the very worst (one of the worst pains in my life). I'm not hungry at all from 7am to 5pm because it's when my ADHD medication is active so if I eat anything it's just the salad that I mentioned earlier. I have been fighting the hunger and it's not too bad now, but the concern is that I'm putting myself through a lot of self imposed suffering and feeling a bit miserable, and I have also been feeling really weak physically, constantly light headed, feverish and dizzy until I eat, it's got to the point where I have passed out on public transport because of lack of nutrients or whatever. I had a blood test done last week, I'm waiting for results, but I don't know how to proceed at this point, and any advice whatsoever is appreciated. Thank you for your patience reading this!

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MFP Is Changing, Time For Reflection (60lbs down)

(tw throwing up, not intentional or deliberate)

"Beginning Nov 1, 2019, the free version of the diary will only save data for the last two years," my inbox tells me. Oh, word? I have been on MyFitnessPal since 2011. Sporadically, I entered data in 2014, 15, 16, 17. Began taking things seriously at the beginning of July, 2018.

MyFitnessPal underestimates my willingness to shove things into an Excel spreadsheet. You think I won't type out 381 entries worth of dates and pounds? I eat archived research for breakfast (or a yogurt, tryna stay on track).

381 entries, creating a similar effect to my life flashing before my eyes. 2011. I am a teenager. My mother has handed me her copy of the Scarsdale Diet. I fucking hate grapefruit. I'm hungry.

1. I have moved for college and I walk everywhere. I have no money, so I eat the terrible, terrible cafeteria food. I am not vomiting on purpose, but I am vomiting regardless. Weight comes off. I write about it. Some time passes. I get money. Weight comes back on.

I cringe at the gains over the years and watch myself lose a handful of pounds in 2017, when I'd first made a conscious effort to lose weight. I was hungry all the time. I ate a lot of white rice. I didn't know how protein worked.

I compare my weight gain with important times in my life. I gain weight around holidays, deadlines, start dates. I gain weight in the winter. I gain weight in the summer. My weight fluctuates over and over and over. I gain more each time.

July, 2018. I am the heaviest I have ever been. I dutifully log for a month. This is my longest streak ever, I think, typing the numbers into Excel. The numbers jump back and forth until the middle of August, when I am stubbornly lighter than I was before. I, sitting in this body now, am shocked that I was that determined, especially without immediate results.

By November, 2018 I have made real progress. I giggle at my weight jump around Thanksgiving and remember how frustrated I was at the time. The graph I have made to visualize this journey indicates a slight tick up. It doesn't matter, not in the long run. My progress is obvious.

February, 2019. I am a firm advocate for the non-linear progress of weight loss by this point, but I hadn't realized just how obvious this was until logging numbers. One less. Two more. One half less. Stay the same. Stay the same. Stay the same. Two less. Stay the same.

June, 2019. Onederland. Peace. July, 2019. Out of Onederland. Frustration. August, 2019. Onederland. Redemption.

September, 2019. Out of Onederland. Despair. Resolution.

October, 2019. Onederland, and then some. Vindication.

I have lost 60 pounds in 14 months, give or take a Christmas. My progress was not linear. I was dedicated. I knew, when I struggled day 1, day one 100, day 250, that I was playing the long game.

Consider converting your MFP data into an Excel spreadsheet and ruminating over every single number. The progress is there, the struggles are there. (And if you do, do it soon, because you've got less than 12 hours before it disappears!)

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100lbs and 1 gallbladder down (a cautionary tale)

I've lost 99lbs in the past 13 months on CICO. 33/F, 295 to 196 at last weigh-in -- but wait, how much does a giant, stoney gallbladder weigh? Because I lost one of those yesterday.

PSA: It's been said many times on here, but, losing weight fast can give you gallstones, and they SUCK. Having your gallbladder removed also, massively, sucks...but you should do it anyway asap because the alternative is worse.

I had my first major gallbladder attack in January, puking endlessly, which sent me to my first-ever visit to the ER. Gallstones were already on my radar from having read up on the effects of major weight loss, so I told the doctor that might be the cause. I got a CT scan and they said everything looked normal, and that I probably just had "some crazy virus."

I continued to have (relatively minor) gallbladder attacks every month or two, whenever I had a particularly heavy meal. Your whole upper right abdomen goes tight and stiff and painful, there's no position you can get in to relieve the misery, you just have to writhe it out for hours.

I felt a lot of guilt about it, thinking my new way of low-cal eating had damaged me and I was stupidly bringing this pain on myself by occasionally overeating (which, technically, yeah. But I don't need more guilt/shame around food.)

Finally a couple weeks ago I had an annual physical, and when my doctor saw me wince from him pressing on my upper right abdomen and heard my ER story, he said he was pretty sure I had gallstones and referred me to an ultrasound. Turns out CT scans are not diagnostic for gallstones! But ultrasounds are, and it was confirmed, I was just waiting for a call to schedule a surgery consult, when...BAM. Passed a stone. Worst pain ever, sent me to the ER again, twice.

A couple days later I was finally able to get surgery. I was ready for it to be no big deal. Laparoscopic, outpatient, done in an hour, no problem. Couldn't wait.

NOPE. Excruciating pain. When I woke up I couldn't breathe. That gas they fill you up with is terrible. For about an hour my breathing was so painful and labored I thought I was going to suffocate. Agony in my shoulders from the gas. And the nausea! Fuck my life.

It's been 24 hours since the surgery and I'm starting to feel halfway human again. I still can't breathe deeply, and my abdomen is so sore. But I know I'll never have another gallbladder attack, so that's worth a lot.

And between the organ removal and days of liquid diet, I'm sure I've hit my 100lb milestone in the process! Yaaaay.

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Extreme Weight Loss

Hi,

New member, long time weight loser.

F/27/200 pounds/5'9

I used to do a great job of losing weight, but ever since I started crash dieting a year ago for my weigh-ins in the military I've had a really rough time just eating normally. Anytime I now try to restrict a little because I've gained a lot of weight since spring my body freaks out because it remembers all the extreme crash diets and I end up bingeing. This cycle has seen me gain and lose something like 100 lbs since October last year but I have been unable to lose weight since May and I am freaking out. Now I am up 30 from my lowest weight and I need to get back to the 170s or I will face the consequences (in the mil). Unfortunately, my deadline is next month. I am overweight (not obese) so I wanted to know if it's even possible to lose 20-30 pounds in a month with say 1200 calories a day, alli pills, a low-fat protein heavy diet, two gym visits a day. Feeling hopeless at this point, but I am going to try anyway. I don't even want to lose weight, I just don't want to face repercussions at work :(

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Becoming afraid to eat. Has this happened to anyone else?

I "started" my weight loss journey back in May, but was very noncommittal - I started at 270lb (female, 27yo, 5'4''), lost a little, gained it back, plateaued for a few months around 268. It's only been in the last three weeks that I've tracked + weighed every day, worked out 3-5x per week, and as of today I'm down to 251. It's exciting, and it feels good, and I want to rush through the next 6 months like this so I can look down at the scale and see a number below 200.

But I'm addicted to the momentum of it, and I'm afraid I'm developing a fear of foods. The first several days I started tracking I was hitting around 1800cal/day (slightly under the number MFP recommended for my eventual goal weight). I decided to speed things up and reduce my limit to 1600/day, and then convinced myself that to be doing well I had to come in below that. I wasn't satisfied with that either, so about a week and a half ago I lowered my calories to 1440, and have been ending up between 1000-1200. And now, today, it's midnight (I live in Hong Kong for the time being) and I'm at 800 calories. I'm hungry, but I don't want to eat because "now it's too late" and "I'm having breakfast soon anyway" and "it will go away if I chug a lot of water and sleep".

My calorie counts are starting to feel like a ceiling I have to keep ducking to stay under. I'm terrified of going back to binge behavior, even though I'm sure it will happen at some point on this journey to ~170lb.

Has this happened to anyone else early on? How do you develop a good relationship with food / eating? How do you keep the long-term view in perspective?

​

Thanks so much - even as a mostly-follower, this community means a lot to me.

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I just had a small epiphany on how I look at water weight.

I have been on a weight-loss journey for the past 5 months. Initially I started changing my eating habits because I knew that was the best place to start.

I started on the keto diet for the first 2 months. I enjoyed the way that diet made me feel but eventually I got tired of limiting myself to certain foods. In addition, I dropped a solid 10 pounds in the first two weeks and I wrote it off to water weight.

I then switched to IF and clean eating to see how that made me feel. Long story short, I really enjoy this eating lifestyle. I have come to absolutely love vegetables and cooking and all that jazz. I have lost another 15 pounds since.

This past weekend my SO and I went to a Halloween party at a new friend’s house. We just met this couple roughly a month ago and we were really excited to get to know them and their friends more. Anyways, I consciously threw my diet aside that night and extended my eating and drinking way past my normal feeding window.

In addition, I had no reservations about what I was eating or drinking.

Long story short, I woke up the next morning feeling extremely bloated and gross. I got on the scale and noticed that I literally gained 10 pounds overnight.

I’m sure this was due to a handful of reasons but I think a lot of it was water weight. The amount of refined carbs I took in the night prior must have activated my ish to store as much as it possibly could.

I got back on my IF and clean eating routine and over the pass 5 days I watched my weight fall back to where it was before the party (188.5).

Long story short, I just had a small revelation at work.

When I started both Keto and IF I saw similar drops in weight initially and I wrote it off to water weight. Almost dismissing it as if that weight wasn’t a part of me.

The thing is, water weight is your weight. It is a direct byproduct of the way you eat and how your body responds to the food you take in.

Do not ignore the quick weight loss you experience when you start or get back on track. Do not just assume it’s water weight and wait for it to plateau before you start to “see” progress.

Losing water weight IS progress. It’s a sign that you’re treating your body correctly and making the right steps to better yourself.

Edit 1: grammar

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