I would rather talk more about habits than weight loss. Anyone else?

I do want to lose 10-25 pounds, depending on how much activity I get with these uncertain times. However, I am even more conscious about health than weight. Health (other than weight) isn’t something people usually are proactive about, but I want to be.

I want to eat a balanced diet, keep up the fruits and vegetables, drink enough water, and work up to an end goal of five-digit step counts most days even if I don’t work out every day. I also want to work out at least twice a week.

Sugar is my weakness. I want to cut back gradually on sugar. I already eat 10-13 fewer grams of sugar a day than I used to, and more fruit than I did when I first kept track of sugar, too, so I’ve cut back more than that on the added sugar!

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My resting pulse went from 85 to 56–weight loss is so worth it.

F 22, 5’4” SW 175 CW 143 GW 125, 32 pounds down in 5 months (with a two month long breaks in between)

For starters, I look hotter. But after looking back on my doctor’s visit vitals, I’ve realized it’s so much more than that, even though I’m only 22 and was just “overweight” not “obese”. Let me say a few of the non-appearance related ways losing weight has changed my life:

1. My resting pulse dropped from 85 to 56. No joke.
2. My blood pressure went from 125/79 to 107/66.
3. I used to sleep 9 hours a night and nap for 2-3 hours during the day. Now I sleep 7-8 hours a night, no naps.
4. My waist went from 31 in to 28.
5. I can run a mile (and more)! To be clear-when I was overweight, I thought I could run a mile. I’m sure a lot of people who were athletic in high school and haven’t run since then have the same assumption I did. Then I tried and died about .2 mile in. I told myself I was just bad at running—nope, I was 30 lb overweight.
6. In general, I can say yes to (and enjoy!) activities with friends that I couldn’t before—hiking, long walks, rock climbing, the list goes on.

If you’re a young person like me and are questioning whether you should get your act together or keep ‘enjoying’ your fast metabolism and eating whatever you want, take this as a sign. The extra ten years of life I’ll get get from weight loss will give me plenty of time to eat cake then!

What I did:

May-June, I lost 20 pounds through just CICO (1200-1400 calories on week days and 1500-maintenance on weekends), no exercise. Working out was a million times harder with the extra weight and it was 100 degrees where I live and gyms were closed. As far as food, I LOVE Trader Joe’s frozen meals for calorie counting because I hate cooking. Some faves: chicken samosas (80 cal for 2), reduced guilt mac and cheese and I add in chicken sausage (~330 cal), pork gyoza (7 potstickers for 230 cal!!) vanilla meringues for dessert (90 cal for 3-4) Seriously can’t hype these up enough lol though other go-to meals included Banza chickpea pasta with chicken sausage (~400cal with olive oil and parmesan) and one can tuna salad on those super thin crackers (~230 cal)

I took July off and just did maintenance (went on a roadtrip, barbecues, etc. made it too hard)

In August-now, I started working out (took October off calorie deficit and did maintenance) and seriously toned up. I did C25K and started taking (socially distanced) weight liftinf classes at a gym. Started with a fitbit, upgraded to a used Apple watch. Got a food scale off amazon and actually used it. This is when I started getting a lot of comments/compliments because my physique started to look different not just smaller. I also went to holding a plank for 20 seconds to almost 2 minutes, alongside many other athletic improvements.

If you’re thinking about starting—just do it! I’m SO glad I used this quarantine time to work on my health (and was incredibly lucky to have the time and privilege to do so right now) I’m looking forward to emerging like a beautiful, healthy butterfly from a cocoon when this is all over.

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Is it normal or worrying if you miss a period when losing weight?

Hey there! I'm 29F 5'8 [SW265 CW219.4 GW165]

I'm dieting using CICO and it works great . I consume roughly 1400kcal a day (2500ish on sat & sunday when I have some drinks/cheat meals). I've been losing relatively consistently, about 8-10lb a month now generally but slowing down a little the past few weeks. I also just upped my exercise from 30 min x 5 times a week to 40 min x 5 times a week.

The problem is, i missed my period last month, its now been 7 weeks with no period. I am on the contraceptive implant which I just had replaced 2 months ago (they said it wouldnt interrupt my periods at all as its the same one I had before and there was max 30 seconds when I was without either). I took a pregnancy test which was negative.

Could my diet be affecting my periods? Work is a little stressful but I doubt its enough to cause this happening. Should I be worried at all?

I eat incredibly healthily now compared to 5 months ago. I would like to have children in about 2 years and it is one of my reasons for starting my weight loss journey, so I don't want to do anything to negatively impact my fertility.

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70 day update: 30M 6'1", SW 300, CW 249, GW ? progress pic, story, do's and don'ts.

I'll start with my habits before I decided I'd had enough with the way I looked. Basically, there were no rules, and I ALWAYS had a beer in my hand.

I have three kids. That means a couple things. 1, There's not much time for me to exercise. 2, they don't often finish their dinner, which means that I often finished their dinners after I finished my own. I'd wind up over-eating every single meal. It was no surprise I ballooned to 300, and I used to be an athlete.

The changes I made:

No bread. No battered/ deep fried food, and then the big one, NO alcohol. Yes, I understand that I could have gone bourbon, but I knew that if I didn't have a clear, sober mind, I would fail.. But to be honest, once you make the decision to be serious about weight loss, you don't crave those things. You find what works best for you and go with it. r/stopdrinking is an amazing place and I highly recommend you visit.

I would typically IF and only eat between 1pm and 6pm. Those meals were light. Lunch would either be a couple hard boiled eggs, or a chicken breast cut up on salad, with no dressing. Dinner would be pretty much anything, as long as it wasn't pasta or bread or fried food, which wasn't always easy to do with three kids. Mac n cheese is a weekly appearance, tator tots stock the freezer.. parents get it. But where I found solutions on those nights was, eggs. I eat so many eggs. To not get sick of them, I would cut up peppers and onions and saute them, add hot sauce, just find ways to keep it new. Occasionally, I would get a cheap, lean steak and eat that for dinner. That worked WONDERS.

The weight fell off. When I would get stuck for a few days at a certain weight, I would go OMAD, which I really didn't enjoy, but it would get me through. I don't really recommend that. If I had made the time to make a healthy lunch, like a couple hard boiled eggs, I could have eaten those and not had to OMAD. My point is, take the time to do what you know works for you.

Mistakes I made:

I pretty much planned a binge day. My 30th birthday fell in there, and I planned to treat myself all day long with my friends. Beer, bar food, all of it. Pair that awful day with the hangover food the next day and I was suddenly facing somewhere near a 4lb set back. It took me a week to work that back off. It was devastating. When I started this journey I told myself that life was just going to suck for awhile, and I shouldn't have relapsed. But, we're not perfect. My point is, if you're planning on giving yourself a cheat day, it's not worth in my opinion. That day came and went, and while it was fun, it was depressing to look at the scale and think I'd failed.

Anyway, my goal is to be able to run again without hating it. I'm not sure what weight that is. Probably gotta be under 220. I ran two miles last weekend without stopping, and it sucked, but I was happy to accomplish that.

I'm on mobile, so I'm sorry if there's typos and crap formatting. If you have any questions I am happy to answer!

Here's me

https://imgur.com/gallery/kmQ3ZZH

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I honestly have no idea how I got this far

19 (M) 6'0 SW: 240 CW: 190 GW: 170

I havent made any real progression in three weeks. I've been overeating a day here, undereating a day there and eating like an average person would and for whatever reason I'm losing motivation and I don't understand why.

It feels like I always tell myself I can splurge today and make up for it tomorrow but come the next day I'm eating way more than I should. I'm not sure if anyone else has had this issue before. Because people always tell me that the beggining of your weight loss journey is the hardest. But in my case I couldn't agree less. The beggining of my weight loss started in May and it feels like it was one of the easiest endeavors of my life but here I am now with 50 pounds lost and I'm getting complacent, knowing if I keep it up I'll be back where I started. I realise that weight loss is a very mental challenge but I've never felt so strained.

My question to you, fellow losers, how the hell did you stay motivated for as long as you did? How do you keep yourself from becoming complacent?

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I think I may have BED and I'm not sure what to do now.

Some of you might remember me from a few months back. In May and June, I was excited to start the weight loss journey, and made it about fifteen pounds down before I hit a plateau. I started working out with a trainer and thought, this is it, I'm getting my life together.

I'm not sure what happened. Somewhere along the line, I started relaxing the restrictions on myself. I thought, this is unbelievably hard and painful. What if I went a little slower? What if I let myself have a bit more, and just accepted it might take two years instead of one?

I've gained all the weight back. Worse, I did it through a series of binging episodes over the last two months. Last night I "woke up" when I was feeling uncomfortably full yet again, having blown money on takeout, and went to weigh myself. I feel so awful. So pathetic. But the rational part of my mind thought, jesus christ, I don't have control over this. This is actually becoming a serious problem.

I've examined the symptoms carefully. Binge episodes are characterized by a lack of control and significant overeating. The control I can definitely sympathize with. I try very hard to live well and have high expectations of myself. These "cheat moments" have turned, unwittingly, into letting go. I can feel myself reaching satiety but continue anyway. Then, when I physically cannot take another bite, the shame sets in.

Hiding, too, I've realized. I don't eat with my partner. I didn't before, because losing weight when he wasn't was difficult and I couldn't eat what he did. Now I eat more, and hide it when he's at work. I even bought junk like sour candy and stuffed it in the freezer so he wouldn't see.

I have a sweet puppy now who is always by my side, and a career I'm trying to build from the ground up. I don't know how I'll be able to give these things the attention they need if I'm eating myself to death in the shadows. But I'm also not an American citizen and don't have health insurance. That and I've been to therapy before; I know how CBT works.

Should I just... idfk... can I do this on my own? The awareness is here, at least. If I attack this with CBT methods on my own, will that be enough? I know there are things that can medically assist - Vyvanse has been approved for BED treatment, and antidepressants are possible - but both will ofc require several appointments with a psychiatrist, who may not even be available in a timely fashion! I'm stuck. I want this to be okay so badly. I want to not be so fucking weak willed.

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Accidentally became obese in quarantine

Just making this post for myself.

So I finally stepped on the scale yesterday for the first time in about 2-3 years and was shocked to find I had gained 50lbs--went from about 125 to 175. As a woman just over 160cm, this puts me right at the start of obesity. Wow!

For the last 3 years I was studying abroad in a city that didn't agree with me. I moved every year (as is normal there) so I never had a sense of stability, definitely didn't own a scale to lug around. I wasn't really happy with my studies. I was always cold and always tired. My diet was 90% soylent for the past two years, but I ate a lot because I thought that was the way to sharpen my cognitive capacity and stay warm. I thought eating 2000kcal was the baseline for a woman of my size because it's what my GP offhandedly told me and it's what it said on the bottle. I didn't exercise because it barely even crossed my mind with everything that was going on. I considered it for mood benefits but I was constantly overwhelmed. I was saving every penny I could and tried to pour all the time I could into studying, so no gym or anything. For my 2nd year of university I didn't have central heating at all (which was later found to be illegal and only fixed in the summer) so I spent a lot of time waking up in the middle of the night with cold-induced headaches and generally just mewling and not getting out of bed because it was actually painful to. (Ask me about my landlord!) I didn't do well in my studies and I wasn't happy.

When March of this year hit, I took quarantine extremely seriously. I was living in a shared house (hellish arrangement) and before we knew how COVID spread, after I would wash my hands, I would grab nylon gloves from my pocket to use them to close the tap and the door. I did not leave the house at all for about 2 months, not even for brief walks. The extent of my movement was from my bed to my computer to the bathroom and back. This must be what really did it, and I didn't even realize it at the time. I was still trying to study (but ended up deferring for a year because I was so fucked up and unhappy and alone) so I was still trying to eat the same amount of calories (again, literally did not know this wasn't a good idea.) Once I finally felt comfortable leaving the house (and did quite a lot! had to do tourism before I went back home) I noticed a lot of my clothes that I hadn't touched since before lockdown weren't fitting. I figured I had shrunk them in the wash.

I just came back to my home country about a month ago and the first thing my parents did was remark on how much weight I'd gained. The last time my mom had seen me was when she visited me a year prior and she said nothing of the sort so I think shit has really hit the fan in the past year.

I've never been this big before. I remember vague but not overly serious worries about, as a very young kid, being too skinny. My metabolism has always been good and I've always had a fairly low appetite, I can go long periods without eating. I've always been unselfconscious and self-indulgent. I'm glad I had a childhood full of chocolatey snacks. But I'm a grown woman now (22) and it's time to start shaping a life free of heart disease and all the other problems that will plague me. The thing is, although I have had a healthy weight, I've never exercised or been fit. I was an antisocial terminally online kid who never left the house. I'm a single child and my parents were always working abroad as truck drivers so I was sort of left to my own devices from early on. I've slept like shit since I was about 12 and didn't set any healthy patterns or anything diet-wise or exercise-wise. I've always, *always* been the slow kid who found gym class unbearable and who could sprint the shortest distance. So I don't have a go-to sport or anything. I've been speedwalking through the park before winter comes, but after the frost I'm not sure what to do besides fast.

I wrote all of this just to track what got me here in my own mind. It all makes sense. It's obviously an unpleasant surprise but I guess I'm feeling lucky I'm so young and have been made to think about these things this early. I feel grateful I became a vegetarian two years back, because otherwise, going plant-based after my ethnic diet that's so heavy in meat and fats would have looked much harder. I feel like losing it will be challenging, and I'm panicked because now I know the weight isn't just cosmetic, it's a legitimate health concern, and that makes me want to hit the brakes really hard. But I'm worried about going too hard and burning out and falling into a yo-yo situation. I hope that obesity doesn't start to become a really serious health problem until it accumulates for a while and with age. I'm happy to go at a slower pace. I just don't know how to balance it. I don't know whether to buy gadgets or a treadmill or whether my lizard brain will process spending money as weight loss progress and it'll gather dust and set me back. I'm lucky that, while I'd say my relationship with my family is somewhat rocky, they've been creating a supportive environment in this regard. (And seriously, not being around them when there's a fight is a great motivator to go and exercise.) And I'm upset that I'm actually now at about the weight of the average USAian (more than female, less than male I think) and what an unhealthy society we all live in. But, it is what it is.

It's easy to feel serene and rosy when I haven't really done anything but I sort of do feel I'm in a good position to start living in a more healthy way. I just don't want to hit a bump in the road and be discouraged and done (since my main goal in life was getting to my uni program & working to pay for it, and then the program turned out to suck, I haven't really had a goal in any part of my life and the feeling of "determination" is foreign at this point.) Getting down to an actually healthy and not overweight BMI looks like a really long-term and difficult goal and I do intend to move out again within the year (hopefully sooner) and that may mean new jobs or whatever new stressors. So I would like to set my goal to, say, 145lbs, but that seems too ambitious given I can't expect long-term consistency in my life. I guess we'll see.

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