With new year coming around I was thinking about some of the things I have achieved during 2019, And in a year of personal highs and lows for me there is nothing that quite parallels my pretty successful weight loss journey over the past couple of months. I am 16 (soon to be 17 come January) and in the last 221 days or just over 7 months I have lost 7 stone 8lbs or 106lbs total.
When I think about it I’m not to sure why I’m writing this post as I doubt many people will see it or gain anything from it but I feel it’s somewhat necessary as some form as self celebration or pat on the back so to speak.
My starting weight was a quite honestly embarrassing 301lbs and after just over half a year of blood, sweat and tears I’m now down to a more modest but not perfect 195lbs.
Now before I get into any major detail of how I’ve managed this I do have to say I am by no means a dietitian or personal trainer (as a matter of fact I’m probably as far from it as possible) and I’m not sure if my methods so far are healthy or would cause anyone harm in the long term so I do not recommend you try this without doing your own research and encouraged our to find what works for you personally.
I stared my weight loss journey as a bit of a spur of the moment act, I was on exam leave and meant to be studying but after about a month of constant mental stress I decided I had to leave the house and just do something physical to clear my head. This was extremely rare and out of character for me as a person and despite being willing and able to play football, rugby etc and enjoying sports as a whole I was definitely not someone who would go out for a run not only for the fact of the incredible lack of stamina that you have when you are that size but for fear of people looking and judging me what would cripple me more than I’d let on to anyone who’d ever ask.
However after a matter of minutes of jogging in a fairly secluded cycle path I was absolutely exhausted and needed a break. And in this realising how out my depth I was doing basic exercise, in that moment I finally realised how far I’d let myself go and decided to take action.
I started by joining the local gym and figuring out how many calories I would eat in the average day. I downloaded MFP (MyFitnessPal) and started to track my calories and was absolutely appalled at how much I ate without realising the amount of calories inside all my favourite comfort foods and snacks and the effect it was having on my body. I am also extremely fortunate to have a good fairly cheap gym so close to my house, meaning I don’t need to worry about transport there and back or talking myself out of going down to the time it takes to get there what I believe really helped me in the early stages.
I believe these to things to be the two main fundamentals of weight loss, experimenting and finding the balance of diet and regular exercise that worked for me helped me more than any online diet or magical pill advertised in the TV ever would.
I started by cutting down from around 3000 calories a day (consisting mainly of carbs and fatty foods and general snacks between meals) down to the recommended 2000 calories a day for someone of my age and size (at the time 15 and 5’8) and replacing a lot of these carbs with lean meat like chicken or turkey and or fish and when I felt hungry would drink more water to help satiate the hunger I felt. I would also go to the gym roughly 3/4 times a week doing a mix of cardio mainly the exercise bike and walking on a gradient on the treadmill and the weight machines for around an hour at a time.
I found this a good baseline for starting of as it’s didn’t consist of any massive changes and were all reasonably manageable and that is ultimately what is most important, as I mentioned before finding what works for you personally.
Now one thing I will say that some people may not agree with is that loosing weight as a concept is incredibly easy. In reality all you need is a calorie deficit (burning more calories than you intake) and you will lose weight that is a fact. But what Is difficult is sticking to it and having the will power not to stray of course and I know a lot of people do struggle long term with this and as a result end up doing really good work early days and have a few “cheat days” here and there and suddenly all there good work is gone and there left scratching there head how they have put the majority of the weight back on. Now that is why I think that motivation and willpower are pivotal to losing weight and without either of these two things I would say 99% of people fail to achieve the goals they set out for themselves.
Now the good news is the longer you are being successful and keeping up the good work, loosing weight the motivation comes along hand in hand. Wether it be random compliments from people like friends and family or whatever they help massively to motivate someone to carry on making the positive change to there health and life as a whole.
I have now reached the point where I will preemptively reiterate that I am not a professional and do not know the long term effects of this so try this at your own distress ion but it’s if you have the kept the diet and exercise going strong and you start to plateau and can’t seem to break past a certain weight this is when you incrementally drop the daily calorie intake by small amounts. As a man I would not recommend going below 1500 calories or dropping the amount by anymore than 200/300 calories at a time but I have adapted to life on around 700/1000 calories a day and regular exercise and I have experienced no negative side effects to date but as mentioned before once you find a level you are comfortable at and works for you I would stick to that and not push yourself to far and potentially harm yourself long term.
As a summary.
Step 1. Find out your average calorie intake pre lifestyle change and then work out your maintenance calories using a calorie calculator online
Step 2. Put yourself at a small calorie deficient of 200/400 calories to start of with and increase the deficit over time
Step 3. Exercise regularly (or as much as you can with you schedule) and stay consistent with what you do
Step 4. Try and think about all the reasons you want to loose weight daily as this will help for motivation.
Rinse and repeat. It really is that simple...
In conclusion as I mentioned I am still not finished loosing weight (I ideally want to drop a something between 13lbs minimum and 27lbs maximum) but I just made this post mainly for self indulgence but I would love to see it help anyone who believes they need it. (It would really make my day)
I encourage any questions anyone may have but I don’t really know what I’m doing as I’m new to reddit :).
Depending on how this does I will update this post whenever anything of note happens and maybe even before and after photos if anyone would care to see them.
Have a good day x
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