I have been working to lose weight for 600 days now, and wanted to give a little update/recap on how I'm doing and what I've learned. I'll start by recapping the biggest lessons I learned during each 100-day chunk so far. Each lesson/main takeaway from each portion of my journey so far has "rolled over" into the next segment, and only gotten better over time! First things first, here is a picture of my weight loss progress, from Happy Scale
Day 0-100: Food tastes amazing. If you had asked me why I was fat, I probably would have said "because I love food." While that wasn't untrue, those first 100 days of eating at a calorie deficit made food start tasting better to me than it ever had before. This shift probably came about because I was really, genuinely hungry every time I had something to eat. Limiting my food made me appreciate it a lot more. This is also the time period when I really started getting used to experimenting in the kitchen, and scrutinizing my recipes to see what was adding flavor (and what was just adding calories).
Day 100-199: This is going to be a long-term process, and a grind. But it works. During this second hundred days, I had to adjust my calorie target a little lower (I think I started off around 1900 calories a day). After the initial quick losses/whooshes of water weight, and general adjustment to this new lifestyle, I realized that I wasn't going to be finished any time soon. I got into habits of updating here regularly (shoutout to the daily accountability threads!), and trying to become better at the process of losing weight (estimating calories when I needed to, eating out once in a while, using My Fitness Pal more effectively etc.).
Day 200-299: Whoa, I look different! During this part of my journey, I was down about 50-60 pounds. I had just started my job (as a postal carrier), and I was still wearing the pants I'm wearing in what I consider to be my official "before picture" to work. Then, seemingly all of a sudden, they went from "baggy as hell" to "definitely not appropriate to wear while leaving the house." A funny story on that point: I deliver mail by bicycle, and I went with someone a few days, to learn the route. As we got back up onto our bicycles, to go to the next street, my baggy pants got caught on the bike saddle, causing me to inadvertently moon (well, I was wearing underwear!) anyone who happened to be standing behind me. While definitely funny, it was also a new, and kind of weird experience for me. I was not used to clothes being too big -- that was just not a problem I had ever had in my life before. I definitely wore ill-fitting clothes for way too long (as evidenced by the wardrobe malfunctions I was starting to experience), but it took a little time for me to get used to that (as well as to get used to wearing smaller, more fitted clothing). This has been an on-going process: getting used to the changes in my body, and actually evaluating how clothes fit. I went from "this fits, so I better buy it" to "this fits, but I don't think it looks great; maybe I should try a different style." It has been a weird adjustment for me!
Day 300-399: I'm ready to see what my body can do. After losing a huge chunk of weight through calorie counting and taking a walk a few times a week, I decided to step up my physical activity. I started the couch to 5k program, and stuck with it for the whole 8 weeks. I kept doing my mail route and added in the running on top of it. I was starting to feel reasonably athletic, and the 5k was a great goal to chase.
Day 400-499: There is such a thing as diet fatigue. I had been going hard for a little over a year. I had a trip planned to visit my family in the United States, and I wanted a break. I allowed myself to just guess at calories while I was on a vacation I took during this time, but kept up with my athletic goals, and ran a 5k with my sister, which was one of the coolest things to happen so far in my weight loss journey. I also needed to contend with getting new clothes, for the second time. This was wild, as I was finally out of plus-sized things, for possibly the first time in my life. I went back to my deficit after the vacation, but also was a little more relaxed around the holidays. I also joined a gym during this time, to keep the good habits of physical activity I had built up during the summer and fall months going.
Day 500-today: This is my new normal, and I'm fine with it. There is a second big blip upwards on my weight chart, which is from a vacation I had planned for a while to take with my family in February, (again back to the United States). Since I had fairly recently had a "diet break," I packed my food scale and my weighing scale, and did my best to eat around maintenance (or slightly under, when possible) during the vacation. I kept up with my athletic goals (I am planning on running a 10k, whenever race events are safe to be held again), and went running on about half of the days of my vacation, even setting some new running-distance records for myself. Even though I was counting my calories, and maybe ate 10-15k above my maintenance calories (for an expected gain of 3-4 pounds), my weight spiked like nobody's business while I was away (I took that photo from Apple Health, which Happy Scale writes to everyday; Happy Scale smoothed out that spike, but I thought it was worth showing it in all of its terrifying glory).
I realized that part of that huge spike was my period (which happens, along with an associated spike in weight, every month--no big deal), but part of it was just from eating more than I normally do -- I have a fair amount of loose skin, and I realized that I am probably going to be very prone to water weight fluctuations. But, I'm glad I know this now, and not panicking in maintenance. Another thing I learned while on this vacation is how much less sleep I need when not eating at a calorie deficit. It was almost easy to wake up first thing and go running, because I had too much energy to sleep in.
Speaking of maintenance, and my "new normal," I don't plan to change very much about the way I eat for a very long time. I eat about 15-1600 calories a day, and I work out quite a bit/have an active lifestyle. But, even if my job isn't always as active as it is now, someone who is my height, and wants to maintain somewhere around 65kg (~143lbs), should eat about 1600 calories a day (if they're sedentary). Maybe it will take me forever to get there, if I stick to this level of calorie intake, but -- isn't that the point? To find the way that you want to (and can) eat forever? To that end, I am not really worried about my rate of weight loss. I am trying to just enjoy eating the right amount of calories for my body, and not be afraid to eat a little more when life's occasions call for it.
I have learned a lot from each distinctive phase of my journey so far, and I am sure I have a lot left to learn. I am really looking forward to hitting a healthy BMI, which will hopefully happen sometime this year.
