Day 1? Starting your weight loss journey on Friday, 27 November 2020? Start here!

Today is your Day 1?

Welcome to r/Loseit!

So you aren’t sure of how to start? Don’t worry! “How do I get started?” is our most asked question. r/Loseit has helped our users lose over 1,000,000 recorded pounds and these are the steps that we’ve found most useful for getting started.

Why you’re overweight

Our bodies are amazing (yes, yours too!). In order to survive before supermarkets, we had to be able to store energy to get us through lean times, we store this energy as adipose fat tissue. If you put more energy into your body than it needs, it stores it, for (potential) later use. When you put in less than it needs, it uses the stored energy. The more energy you have stored, the more overweight you are. The trick is to get your body to use the stored energy, which can only be done if you give it less energy than it needs, consistently.

Before You Start

The very first step is calculating your calorie needs. You can do that HERE. This will give you an approximation of your calorie needs for the day. The next step is to figure how quickly you want to lose the fat. One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. So to lose 1 pound of fat per week you will need to consume 500 calories less than your TDEE (daily calorie needs from the link above). 750 calories less will result in 1.5 pounds and 1000 calories is an aggressive 2 pounds per week.

Tracking

Here is where it begins to resemble work. The most efficient way to lose the weight you desire is to track your calorie intake. This has gotten much simpler over the years and today it can be done right from your smartphone or computer. r/loseit recommends an app like MyFitnessPal, Loseit! (unaffiliated), or Cronometer. Create an account and be honest with it about your current stats, activities, and goals. This is your tracker and no one else needs to see it so don’t cheat the numbers. You’ll find large user created databases that make logging and tracking your food and drinks easy with just the tap of the screen or the push of a button. We also highly recommend the use of a digital kitchen scale for accuracy. Knowing how much of what you're eating is more important than what you're eating. Why? This may explain it.

Creating Your Deficit

How do you create a deficit? This is up to you. r/loseit has a few recommendations but ultimately that decision is yours. There is no perfect diet for everyone. There is a perfect diet for you and you can create it. You can eat less of exactly what you eat now. If you like pizza you can have pizza. Have 2 slices instead of 4. You can try lower calorie replacements for calorie dense foods. Some of the communities favorites are cauliflower rice, zucchini noodles, spaghetti squash in place of their more calorie rich cousins. If it appeals to you an entire dietary change like Keto, Paleo, Vegetarian.

The most important thing to remember is that this selection of foods works for you. Sustainability is the key to long term weight management success. If you hate what you’re eating you won’t stick to it.

Exercise

Is NOT mandatory. You can lose fat and create a deficit through diet alone. There is no requirement of exercise to lose weight.

It has it’s own benefits though. You will burn extra calories. Exercise is shown to be beneficial to mental health and creates an endorphin rush as well. It makes people feel awesome and has been linked to higher rates of long term success when physical activity is included in lifestyle changes.

Crawl, Walk, Run

It can seem like one needs to make a 180 degree course correction to find success. That isn’t necessarily true. Many of our users find that creating small initial changes that build a foundation allows them to progress forward in even, sustained, increments.

Acceptance

You will struggle. We have all struggled. This is natural. There is no tip or trick to get through this though. We encourage you to recognize why you are struggling and forgive yourself for whatever reason that may be. If you overindulged at your last meal that is ok. You can resolve to make the next meal better.

Do not let the pursuit of perfect get in the way of progress. We don’t need perfect. We just want better.

Additional resources

Now you’re ready to do this. Here are more details, that may help you refine your plan.

• Quick Start Guide - Build your foundation!
• Loseit Compendium - Frame it out!
• FAQ - Answers to our most Frequently Asked Questions!

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How my weight loss landed me in the emergency room

Hey there, Chris here . This is the original script for my videohttps://youtu.be/T2lfzcjotDQ . I decided to just go off of the cuff, but this is was my first draft before filming. This is about what wish I had known when I started my weight loss journey. With this knowledge I would have avoided a lot of pain and suffering.

Cutting calories should be a slow process and the consequences of cutting to much can be devastating and counter productive. The worst for me was weakened immune system, insomnia while exhausted, sleep eating, and out of control irritability. The worst of those being the weakened immune system. here is what happened to me.

I had been working a lot of hours at work as well as preparing for a vacation. It was my first paid vacation in almost a decade. I was going to the redwood in my camper van with my recently purchased motorcycle on the back. About 3 day into the trip I came down with the shingles. I had pain all over my body and lesions on my skin. I was at least 30 minutes from cellphone signal and 5 hrs away from the nearest in-network urgent care. I had no idea what was wrong with me and I was in imminence pain. I am a person who rarely gets sick and was in good health at the start of the trip. This could happen to anyone who has had the chicken pox. From the campsite I drove 2 hrs at a time and would sleep a couple hours. Once I got to the urgent care in Eugene Oregon. They found my symptoms to be to severe for them to treat. They thought I may have been having a brain aneurysm so they urged me to go to the emergency room for a brain scan. My S/o was terrified. It was a scary, rough and very expensive experience to say the lease.

Next would be the insomnia and sleep eating. Thankfully I was training so hard that I could fall asleep pretty easy. the problem was staying asleep. I was also waking up finding food wrappers around me and spoons still half coated in peanut butter. The body is smart and it wants to keep you alive.

Finally would be the irritability and this was the most trying on my relationship. Every little thing set me off. Even if the things that were bothering me were worth mentioning I would go about dealing with it in the worst ways. It was exhausting being so upset for no good reason.

Now here comes the part where I state what I did vs what I wish I had done. I wanted to lose weight desperately. I was 375 pounds and felt like I was being crushed under my own weight. In my desperation I took myself from about 5000 calories if I managed to avoid a binge down to 2000 calories or less per day. I was shocked when I started tracking calories and realized how much I was eating and made to much of a change. Not only did I cut my food intake but I was also doing 6 day a week of lifting and 7 days a week of at least 20min on the elliptical. What I should have done is find my maintenance calories. Not to just what one of the calculator said but found what it takes to stay the same weight. Then cut that by 500 to 1000 per day while slowly adding in working out. Slowly changing the foods I ate each day. Using tracking and channels on youtube like obese2beast and later coach Greg to find low calorie foods that actually filled me up. I cannot wait to do a video.

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Thoughts on Body Positivity and Mental Health?

(21F, 5'4, SW:180lbs, CW:126lbs, GW:110lbs) About a year ago, I was against the whole body positivity and HAES movement. I thought it was an excuse for obese people to continue indulging in unhealthy habits but I think this is a misconception and the movement has been corrupted by a few loud voices in the media. It isn't as black and white and I think body positivity should be on everyone's mind. I think true body positivity is accepting and loving yourself enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle (ie sleep and eating habits and exercise etc.)

My mental health went down the drain in 2020 and not only did I hate my body, but I also hated myself. My lowest point was probably when my ex said "I'm gonna say it, you're fat and you eat too much" when I was in the middle of a mental breakdown. He tried to justify it later by accusing me of being too sensitive. He said he wanted what was best for me, which was to be at a lower weight. But it is really hard to appreciate that when someone I love says that to my face when I am crying, midst anxiety attack, as if I didn't hate myself enough and as if I wasn't already disgusted with my body every single day. I would have appreciated it more if he encouraged me by communicating maturely instead of degrading my body everyday with unscrupulous insults masked as playful teasing or being consistent himself by going to the gym and eating healthy too. Even so, I have come to learn that your weight loss journey should be yours alone and change is possible only through your own willpower.

In the past, I have tried overly restrictive methods of weight loss too and although it brought me down to my lowest weight (90lbs), I could not maintain it. I wasn't happy then either. I think people really underestimate the importance of mental health and weight loss and it is really refreshing to see this sub actively advocate for a healthy mind alongside a healthy body.

I don't think weight loss is a solution to be happiness but more of a catalytic symptom. I am only happy now, not because I lost weight, but because I love myself and my body enough to improve my relationship with food and exercise. I don't feel helpless anymore. It's also interesting that whenever I try to recall my happiest moments in my weight loss journey, I only seem to smile at my non-scale victories. Like fitting into jeans I would have considered tiny a few months ago or feeling faster and lighter when I run. Just feeling confident in my appearance overall but also in my ability to get what I want.

Often we forget that we can control a lot more in our lives than we realize. So I think true body positivity is realizing that you are not helpless, losing weight is not impossible and you are not alone.

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[NSFW] 5 YEAR PROGRESS M/27/5’10” 240ish>160

progress shot

Hi everyone!! First timer here I just wanted to share a bit about myself and maybe some helpful advice!! My weight loss journey began by having my coworkers constantly make joking comments about my weight and saying I have “nice tits” at first it didn’t bug me but after awhile it really got under my skin. I thought it was time for a change. I started by making basic changes in my diet. My diet at that time (my heaviest point was absolute garbage) almost a 12 pack a soda a day and eating out at least twice a day. Completely cut sugar out and switched to (almost) all Whole Foods and picked up a cardio habit. Dropped weight really fast after that and packed on some muscle with a weight training routine. Overall my journey took about five years. A big point of this post is to help anyone who is struggling with not seeing immediate results. It will take a long time, and you WILL have some mess ups (I had a lot!) but In the end it’s 100% worth it physically and mentally! I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has!! Thanks guys!

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I won my gym's challenge! After a year of weight gain and body image issues I'm very proud of myself!

I've always been out of shape, and this year definitely made it worse (ty corona).

I gained about 20 lbs due to quarantine and just mindless eating, which led to an unhealthier body image and insecurity that I thought I had left behind in high school. I would burst into tears seeing myself in the mirror, and have avoided photos this whole year.

I decided I had enough, and I joined a new gym in October and they had a 30 day challenge, and I can't believe it but I WON FIRST PLACE! The weights felt easier to lift, and I shaved 4 minutes off of my total time.

I still have a ways to go on my weight loss but I'm proud of myself for making it this far! To top it off, I ran the fastest mile of my life this morning!

So to anyone who's feeling down about their fitness/health this year, keep going and remember that you're not alone but you can always improve! consistency is everything!! If I can do it EVERYONE CAN!!

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I look at myself in the mirror again: emotionally healthy weight loss

(tw: suicide mention)

For as long as I can remember I've been trying to lose weight. From approaching chubbiness as a kid to first becoming obese as a teenager to rapidly becoming underweight through disordered eating to becoming morbidly obese as I became an adult, I have been at war with my body for more than half my life. I thought about my body more than I thought about anything else in those years: the shame, the guilt, the constant obsession, the fantasy of what it would be like to have a body that I desired. My life went on. I moved away from home and went to university. The day I finished my degree I sat in the graduation hall picking through every other student in the audience, hoping that I wasn't the fattest person in the room. Out of the hundreds there, when I found one other student who looked heavier than me I felt nothing resembling relief. The night before graduation, I had made a plan to kill myself if nothing had changed by the time I turned 25.

The truth is that by that point I didn't believe anything could change. My mind and body were out of control. I was too anxious to leave my apartment, too depressed to leave my bed. Eating -- alone, mindless -- brought me solace. Even then I wasn't naive enough to think that my weight was the sole root of my problems, but it was the most visible and constant of what I considered to be my personal failings. And I was still ashamed to talk about it or look for help. As I grew fatter and more miserable, I still had friends and family and successes and support. There were still things I wanted to do, or remembered that at one point when I had feelings I had wanted to do. Somehow I kept going.

When I look back now, dissociating from my body in those years is how I survived. I never left those struggles behind but as much as I could I left my body. My mind and I moved to a new city and started working on our next degree, body and emotions in tow. I was always just a look in the mirror away from falling apart.

About a year ago I moved on to my next degree and my next city. I was at my highest ever weight last Christmas: 280 lbs. I can't put my finger exactly on when things began to change. There was a class I was taking at the top of a hill and suddenly I was walking more. I took up journaling again. I helped a friend move and was too anxious to Uber home so I walked across the city. Another friend needed a place to stay during lockdown and we started cooking together. One morning I woke up afraid to leave the apartment again and I didn't blame myself. I told myself that it was alright to just do what I could when I could -- and I believed it. Since last Christmas I've lost 38 lbs. The numbers on the scale are encouraging but they're not what I notice most. What I notice is that the first thing I feel in the morning these days isn't guilt. I look in the mirror and I'm happy with what I see -- not just where I'm headed, but my body at this very moment. I live in it.

I don't know how exactly I got here. It takes effort, yes, but I was trying my hardest to lose weight for years. Having people around me who support me and who model (somewhat) healthy habits has been hugely empowering. I'm starting to have conversations about my body with them. Of course, the pandemic gave me a chance to disrupt some of my worst habits and made room for new ones. But even before covid, I think that the emotional work I was beginning to do laid the foundation for the sustainable weight loss I'm now achieving. I've learned patience and the importance of being on my own side, including my body's side.

If you've read this far, maybe you can relate to some of these experiences. I'm writing this because for so long I tried to lose weight in a way that separated me from my body. I want to acknowledge the hopelessness and harm that accompanied my weight loss efforts for so long. I feel a little silly writing all this out, but like I said, I'm starting to have conversations about my body. So I thought I'd start one here, about hope and losing weight in an emotionally healthy way.

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This is a psychological issue

And I understand that the only one that can fix it is myself but every time I’m on a mission to lose weight and reach my goal half way there’s something in myself that starts to protest? Rebel?

I’ve lost almost 40lbs and my goal is to lose another 40. I have hit a milestone where I’ve started to wear clothes I have that didn’t fit for at least 8 years. Every time I hit this point in a weight loss journey I somehow end up failing and giving up.

This time it’s a bit different. With Omad I can really sustain that but I’m still battling with myself and not really losing weight very much because I’m giving in to this monster within that clearly doesn’t want me to succeed. I’m struggling not to eat too much when out with friends and that one extra piece of bread or a huge fill of rice that’s put in front of me. My self control is slipping. But why? Why does this always happen at this point?

I have a sort of plan to push past this point in my weight but I want to know do any of you guys have this problem and care to share any tricks or methods to calm that nasty glutton-dragon within?

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