Please help me remember the paper towel effect is real.

Hello my favorite subreddit, decent amount of time no see. You all helped me lose nearly 70lbs after my first kid and I had been happily living at maintenance for 2.5 years.

Currently I’m 2 months post baby #2 and despite furious calorie counting and an abysmal appetite my entire pregnancy I weighed 180 lbs at the end of that pregnancy (up from 125). It appears I have a hormonal hex that causes such weight gain regardless of my efforts during pregnancy.

I’ve been strictly counting and working out as much as I can for three weeks now. Those efforts combined with what I lost before “trying” immediately after baby have me at 157lbs. The frustrating thing is that I don’t feel like I look any different.

I’m trying to remember that I felt this way last time until the last 10-15lbs. Trying to remember that the paper towel effect is very real and that fat comes off my most insecure places dead last but it will come off. Trying to ignore all the hateful women in my life that love to tell you that you’ll never lose the weight because they didn’t so obviously no one else ever can.

Anybody else in round two (or more) of weight loss and similarly frustrated? Would love someone to complain with ha.

Tldr: losing baby weight after baby two and can’t see progress. Trying to stay motivated anyway.

Stats for reference: F | 29 | 5’9” | SW: 180lbs | CW: 157lbs. | GW: 125lbs.

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Feeling Hopeless

5’7 F 212lbs and feeling super hopeless.

Iv been counting calories, eating healthy salads with fruits and nuts, drinking water with tea here and there. And just... nothing. It’s been 3 months. I started at 220lbs but lost 10lbs in the first month of January doing literally the exact same thing as I’m doing now. Now my weight fluctuates so heavily even though I haven’t changed anything.

I know I’m starting my period soon so I might be like 2 or 3 pounds heavier but that literally just puts me back to the weight I started at beginning of last month. This is my probable 3rd-4th time on a weight loss journey and I told myself this was it. But I’m so miserable. If I had any kind of progress I’d feel better. I do mess up here and there with overeating but never by like 1k calories - usually it’s 100-300cal over or even less and I’m currently eating 1450cal. So it’s not even that bad to watch.

I’m so sad and feel like giving up so badly. I won’t but I feel so awful. Like calorie counting makes me so sad. It makes me feel like I’m not normal and sometimes looking at the food I’ve eaten in a day makes me want to cry.

I just don’t have the motivation other than wanting to feel beautiful. I’m truly so depressed about this.

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Wecipe Wednesday - March 24, 2021 - Salads!

Welcome back to Wecipe Wednesday. I volunteered to lead a return of this longstanding regular thread at r/loseit at least until the end of March 2021.

I have selected 13 meals or dishes that I keep making over and over that should be compatible with most diets. I'll include the ingredients list, nutritional information along with other hints. Some recipes are vegetarian/vegan, others not so much.

Post your favourite healthy recipes here to share with the rest of the loseit community! Recipes don't have to fit this week's theme at all, they should just be something that you can eat reasonably frequently while actively losing weight.

Due to the spirit of the sub, please try to include the calorie and nutritional information if at all possible. MyFitnessPal has awesome recipe calculators you can use!

For the most part, I target my meals to have a component in the 350-550 kcal range. My lunch and dinner tend to be right around 400 kcal each and dinner can be a bit heavier, or include a side dish to bring the calories up a bit. When I was eating 1650 kcal/day the breakdown was roughly 400/400/600/250 for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks.

Anyhow: enough background on to the recipes!

---

Salads

We're coming to the end of the series of recipes I had planned to post. While I'm always messing with new recipes, many of the new ones I'm experimenting with may be a bit less focused on weight loss and as such less compatible with other people's journeys.If anyone would like to take over this series, at least for a while, that would be great.

Anyhow... for most of my journey I've relied on having 2-3 bags of prepared salad mix on hand every week. It was always an easy source of side vegetables, particularly during grilling season when our main course might be a grilled chunk of meat.

I almost always have an open bag of baby spinach on hand and enjoy that as greens in a sandwich, sauteed/wilted with garlic and lemon or as the base for a home made salad. Today's entry is one of those homemade salads.

ROASTED BEET, SPINACH AND GOAT CHEESE SALAD

Beets are super tasty and you can find them raw or already prepared in the refrigerated section of your supermarket. If it's grilling season, I like to get them raw, roast them on the grill and also use the beet greens.

I generally make a batch of the dressing and leave it in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette

1 T extra virgin olive oil [120 kcal] 1 T honey [65 kcal] 3 T balsamic vinegar [30 kcal] 2 T water 2 tsp whole grain dijon mustard [5 kcal] Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Makes about half a cup of vinaigrette, 4 servings, and a serving is about 55 kcal/2 T serving.

The salad

100-200 g roasted beets [red, golden, whatever you have on hand] [45 kcal/100g] 85-100 g baby spinach [30 kcal/100g] 30 g goat cheese, crumbled [70 kcal] 10 g pecans, toasted and chopped [60 kcal]

Per serving.

At the larger end for a meal the base salad can be up to 250 kcal + 55 kcal for the dressing = 305 kcal. If I'm having this for lunch I'll usually pair it with a Greek yogurt for some extra protein.

You don't really need to weigh the spinach, mainly the goat cheese, pecans and the dressing are the calorie dense things. You can adjust them to your needs. The base recipe recommended half the goat cheese, but for a meal I like a full ounce. I usually buy a 4 ounce pack of goat cheese so it adds up to 4 servings like the half cup of dressing.

This is far from the only salad I make, but it is one of the more weight loss friendly and one that I enjoy weekly during salad season.

What about you? What are you eating?

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Hiding food from myself: is this a good idea, or am I just using a band aid?

Hi, everyone. My name is Emma, and I'm a chocoholic.

Specifically, my vice is those gosh darn Cadbury Eggs.

Something that I've never told anyone is that when I would go grocery shopping alone, I would buy bags of Cadbury eggs during the Easter season and hide them to eat them. Sometimes, it would be a whole bag in one day.

I started my weight loss journey last April, and I've lost nearly 40 pounds. I'm 22, 5'5 and right around 135.

The Cadbury eggs started showing up in stores months ago, and I hadn't bought any until last weekend. They had a bag of the dark chocolate ones which I hadn't seen at the store, and I bought them, as I told myself I could have 1 bag this season.

They sat in my pantry untouched for several days, which was certainly a win. I opened them up a few days ago, portioned 1 serving into a bowl, and ate them slowly. They were delicious.

Although I could let them sit in my pantry untouched if the bag was closed, as soon as it was opened, I felt the urge to eat more. So I asked my husband to hide them. For the lastbfew days when they are in my plan, I've asked him to get me some. Since they aren't accessible to me, I'm not preoccupied with them. I don't feel the urge to search for them, either.

This arrangement has been working, but I feel pathetic. What kind of person needs their spouse to hide candy from them because they have no self control?

Is this training wheels--learning that its okay to eat a bit at a time because they aren't going anywhere if I don't eat the whole bag at once--or is this just some pathetic band aid?

Anybody else do this? Anyone have any thoughts?

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Some thoughts on "eating whatever I want"

I'm trying to really teach myself that I'm never going to be able to "eat whatever I want" (which, to me, means daily bingeing on junk food). I understand that in weight loss, no food has to be off-limits, so I guess a better term is eating however I want. I'll never be able to eat however I want, unless I never want to binge again.

Last time that I lost a ton of weight, I subconsciously thought I'd turned into someone whose eating habits would sustain weight loss. I immediately started gaining the weight steadily back. I forgot that I'm trying to lose weight to be healthier and fitter, not to earn the right to binge eat (I was a chubby kid and saw that girls who ate a lot and were skinny were praised, while I was judged...so I formed the idea that skinniness was the key to judgment-free eating).

I've been trying to get pregnant, and lately have been feeling resentful that I won't get to eat however I want during pregnancy due to a medical condition. But then I realized I'd been viewing pregnancy as the one time in a woman's life that she can free-for-all eat junk food, and that's not how I would approach the growing of my baby, though I doubt I'll be able to stomach only healthy foods. I don't mean any judgement to how anyone eats during pregnancy, just that I realized I was viewing it as a vacation from being healthy and that's not right.

I have a belief that bingeing on junk food is a reward, a kindness to myself. I believe it's something I want. That belief is part of what leads me to stop by the gas station and buy three different bags of candy and eat all of them in half an hour just because, which leads me to a headache in the morning and a desire for more sugar, which leads to less nutrition and more weight gain.

Maybe I'll start trying harder to rewire my brain. I've thought this way since childhood, and it's not going to change overnight. I could do a daily writing on "why I don't want to binge" or "why bingeing doesn't make me happy." Any other thoughts or ideas?

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Today is my Day 1

Hi everyone. Been on and off with weight loss, but yesterday ended up being my wake up moment to begin. It looks like I got gout in my left pinky toe. I've gotten gout on and off throughout the years and it's been mostly under control with a minor flare up once every year or 2. I know I haven't been eating as well as I should be - specifically night time eating is my biggest problem. Well this may be slightly psychosomatic, but once I was pretty confident that I had gout in my little toe, I started feeling like shit throughout my whole body. So here is my starting point:

About me:

Male, 5'10" mid to late 40's, 277.1 lbs.

My biggest issue by far is evening snacking. I'm normally pretty good from breakfast thru dinner, though sometimes I snack in between meals during the day.

Activity level is pretty good. I can easily walk 3 miles in 50 min to an hour. I could go further if I wish. I have been on and off weight training enough that I don't get sore from normal physical activity.

This is my day 1. I'm starting off at 277.1 lbs. My goal is to get to 185 lbs, though that may change as I get further into the program (could go higher or even lower). Plan to weigh in every Sunday starting this weekend, and will check in weekly with updates. I may use My Fitness Pal but will start off without using it. I'm going to shoot for around 1800 cal per day plus regular exercise daily.

Thanks for reading my thread and look forward to many interactions in the future!

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NSV - 5XL to M? (in 116 weeks) + Motivational thought

Between pandemic and weight loss, I've hit the point where I quite literally have almost no clothes...I have athletic gear (all size L) and that's about it...I literally have one pair of sweat pants that are my only functional pair of pants...

So I decided that with hopeful eye to dating and real life and such (post covid) I should like at least have enough stuff to manage until I could drag a fashionable friend to the mall and do a full rebuild of my wardrobe.

I ordered a casual button down shirt from uniqlo and it arrived yesterday. Size L. It's like three or four inches too big. So I sat there and was like "surely this is a mistake, I will bloat overnight and this size L will magically fit tomorrow"...so I just tried it on and, yep, it's still too big. So I am packing it up and sending it back and ordering a medium.

MEDIUM! LOL

Don't get me wrong, I still think and am fine with, large will be the norm...it's clear that this particular shirt or brand (I've never bought anything from uniqlo before so no idea) just happens to fit big...I am still a 180lb 5'8 dude who lifts and large is def the right size for me in Under Armour...but I am still chuffed, and a bit freaked out, that medium ANYTHING could be the legit right fit. At the start of this I thought you'd be insane to even suggest large was going to be the norm. I'd have taken 200lb XL in a flat second. And, as of this morning, I am a smidge away from being in the 170's.

So...motivational thought.

I ran into an acquaintance in the elevator the other day and she asked all the usual questions and when I told her about my pandemic training (really just more of the same from 2019) she was like "wow, that must be so hard"...and, later, I thought about it...we tend to think of two roads...weight loss (hard)...obesity (easy)....and the truth is that they are both hard...you just have to decide which "hard" is the path you are going to go down...like at 327.6 my life wasn't a cakewalk...I didn't wake up every day and go "wow, this is just so darn easy, I'd never want this to change"...my knees, back, Achilles hurt ALL THE TIME...dating was a nightmare...shopping was a nightmare...etc..etc...

So don't think that giving up is the easy route, you're just choosing a different kind of hard. It's all hard. You just gotta pick which hard is for you.

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