Since this was first written as a comment on r/progresspics, LoseIt gets mentioned in the third person! Progress pics included in link at the end. Very minor edits made from original comment.
——————————————————————-
Basically halfway to my goal weight after starting to count calories at the beginning of April (so around 7-8 months progress)!
Backstory
I’ve always been curvy/thick as an adult (around 140-155), but in 2018-2019 my love of food got out of control and into binge eating territory. I went from around 150 to 200 in about a year or so I would guess (let the batteries in my scale stay dead for way too long haha) and then stayed at 200 for a while, ignoring my decreasing self esteem and tightening clothes until I took the opportunity at an antique store to step on an old doctors-style scale. When it said 200 I actually shed some tears, not because being overweight is the worst that can happen, but because I knew I had done this through extremely unhealthy coping mechanisms. My husband tried to insist the scale was inaccurate (I mean, it was an antique), but I knew in my heart that it was likely true, and it was confirmed when I stepped on the bathroom scale at a friends house.
I still kind of ignored it for a few months (though I did finally buy some bigger pants-another upsetting moment to realize I’d gained 2 pants sizes while only wearing leggings due to being heavy), until April when after a month of lockdown depression I decided to make the most of my new unemployed free time to really work on getting back to wear I feel healthy and happy.
Method
I calculated my TDEE (something around 1800-1850), and decided to aim for 1200-1300 calories 6 days a week with a cheat day on the weekends. This made my daily average calorie intake around 1300 to 1400, with some weeks as high as 1500 or 1600, but as long as my weekly average was a deficit I considered it a success!
I eat pretty much whatever I want as long as it fits into my calories, but a natural side effect of limiting to 1200-1300 was incorporating a lot more vegetables, more lean protein, and a lot fewer carbs to maintain a feeling of fullness. I usually skip breakfast, eat a smaller lunch (~300 calories), a decent sized dinner (~600 calories), and then a snack around 10 pm (~300 calories) because I find planning my calories this way helps me avoid the previously-common late night binging! I also found that thinking of something a little junky/indulgent earlier in the day to save for my late night snack helps keep me on track the rest of the day, because I can think “is this donut at work going to be as satisfying as if I wait and eat the fancy cheese and crackers/pizza rolls/yasso bar that I have planned for later?” and typically the answer is no.
No exercise yet, because frankly I hate it, I get catcalled outside and the gyms were closed, and I knew that adding it in when my food wasn’t under control could be overwhelming for me. I plan to start incorporating a more fitness based approach once I hit 160, because ultimately my goal is to be healthy and I know exercise is important.
I subscribed to a lot of weight loss subreddits which also helped me keep a healthy mindset and gave me inspiration for new foods and techniques to incorporate into a low calorie lifestyle. I love r/loseit, r/1200isplenty, r/1500isplenty, r/volumeeating, and to keep myself lighthearted about the whole thing r/1200isfineiguessugh and r/1200isjerky. I also subscribed to r/diettea when I realized that a lot of the posts on diet subreddits can be from people with disordered habits and ideas, so seeing these pointed out helped me maintain a healthy attitude and realize when my own thoughts started to be too controlling. I’ve never had an ED (ok, possibly BED to be honest but although my therapist and I discussed it there were at the time bigger fish to fry and I’ve never been diagnosed as such), but I have a history of mental illness and as a result wanted to take caution.
What I Learned
It’s all about the long game. On r/loseit, people talk all the time about how it’s a marathon, and that is the best mindset to have. Every good decision is a bad decision you didn’t make, and every day is a new day. You never need to punish yourself for your diet decisions, just pick yourself up and keep to your goals the next day (or meal even!). Eating too much for 1 day, or even 1 week, will not erase the progress you’ve made, so enjoy the holidays and vacations!
I’ve also learned to listen to my body much better. Before, I would have days or weeks where I ate until I felt sick, waited until I just didn’t feel like I was on the verge of vomiting anymore, and then would eat again. I’m not sure I even ever felt genuine hunger for about a year, because if my mind even thought of food, I had food. At times I felt addicted to food, incapable of talking down my urges to eat, caving to them, and then feeling guilty. Now, if I’m hungry, I’ll hydrate and wait to see if it’s genuine, a craving, or just dehydration. If I’m hungry and lunch is only an hour away, I’ll just wait. Hunger is not some unbearable sensation to me anymore! At the same time, if I am genuinely hungry and won’t be eating soon, I will have a snack, even if it puts me over my calories.
Anyway, I am so excited about my progress and even more excited that watching what I eat and losing this weight has become second nature to me. My cravings are manageable 98% of the time (and the 2% of the time I cave are not going to make me 200lbs again overnight), and I finally feel like I have a healthy relationship with food and my relationship with my body is healing as well. And not carrying 35 extra pounds around with me has made my joints and muscles much more resilient (I used to have to limp to my car after a 9 hour shift as a barista because my back and hips would lock up- not anymore!).
I did not intend to write an essay, but here I am. If you just read all of that, I hope you found it inspiring. I tried to label it in a way that would make it easy for people to find the key information they needed.
Happy progress!
picture, NSFW (underwear) from 193 in the first to 166 in the second (today!)
