RANT! When it seems your body is only getting worse instead of better with weight loss

Hello all you lovely people!

Like most of you, I’m currently on a weight loss journey I began on January 1st this year. And to my own surprise, it has been going great! I’m 5”8 and my starting weight was 224lbs, I’m now at 189lbs, I want to lose at least another 53lbs to give you a perspective of how much I have ahead of me still. I’ve lost 35lbs so far and overall I can see as well as feel the difference. I’ve completely changed my diet, I’m eating relatively healthy most days, I cut out sugars. Most days I’m proud of myself. Because this time it seems I might actually do this.

What however I have been dreading since the beginning of this journey and is now gradually sneaking into my everyday life as I gaze at my naked body in the mirror, are the consequences of being obese and the physical marks it leaves. And by physical marks I’m talking about saggy breasts, saggy stomach, saggy everything. I am 24 and as you can imagine, most women my age have great bodies, toned stomachs, perky breasts and butts, you name it. It probably could be worse but I still feel disgusting. Right now it feels like I’ve ruined my body and the more I’m losing, the worse it gets. Yes, I look much better in clothing and hell yeah, bras can defy gravity and all that but to know how I look underneath feels almost like a deceit. It sounds stupid, I suppose. It feels good taking care of one’s health and body but it is miserable to see yourself becoming thinner but not better looking. My biggest motivation for losing weight is vanity and my eager hope to become more attractive and prettier, as sad as that sounds. I’ve felt awful being obese and now I’m feeling awful being a deflated air mattress, lmao. I will undoubtedly get a tummy tuck and a breast lift once I’m at my goal weight and even though it relieves me to know, someday I might still be able to get a nice body with surgery, the way left to go to get there seems bumpier than I’d anticipated.

I wonder if any of you can relate and how you dealt with it. I’m scared to reach my goal weight and see the price I’m paying for my obesity. Nevertheless, I would always prefer this body to my obese self.

Thank you for reading.

Xx

submitted by /u/whatsoever--
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3t1Lme4

New here, just introducing myself

Hi all, just recently started my weight loss journey (again... for not the first time). Last week I saw I was over 230 lbs on the scale and decided enough of that. I've lost significant weight a few times in the past. I went from almost 200 to 155 lbs in my late 20's (44 now). I then settled out around 175 lbs for years until I quit smoking and ballooned to ~220. I joined a dietbet transformer in 2018 to motivate me to rectify that and got back down to 198 lbs. Over the past two years I've slowly put all that back on and more, so it's back to trying to make fitness and a decent diet part of my lifestyle (and hopefully keep it there this time). I weighed in at 232.2 lbs the beginning of last week, and am now at 227.4.

I'm logging all my food and drink in myfitnesspal and trying to get to the gym at least 5 days a week. Missed yesterday because I was taking my dad to an appointment that took up the whole day, but I'm heading back in to the gym this afternoon to make up for it. Hoping to be able to post some good before and after pics later this year.

submitted by /u/jlcnuke1
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2Q30Z6i

Thank you calorie counting for all you've done for me, but I don't need you anymore! Plus, I just want to say a big f you to all the food manufacturers out there for making my life so hard.

This is kind of a stream of consciousness type rant, so here's a warning that this might be long. Just to give some background first... I'm a 5'5" 23F that used to weigh 150lbs 3 years ago. I know it's not that large of number, but for me this was a lot. With that weight, I was just on the line of being in the overweight bmi category for my height. I had been feeling bad about my body for years though, and I think a lot of it was originally caused by me feeling uncomfortable in my body when I was younger due to suddenly having hips and boobs and being seen as a woman all of sudden. Yeah that's not a great feeling in middle school. I gained a lot of weight from having body confidence issues and emotional eating. At 150lbs, I saw a picture of myself at my sisters wedding, and I was scared. I didn't even look like myself, or what I had imagined myself to look like. I didn't want to continue on this trajectory. I made a new years resolution to lose 20lbs that year. I lost 30 instead. I've stayed at 120ish lbs for the last few years successfully. I was literally only able to do this through calorie counting. I bought a food scale, and I counted my calories for about 80% of the days in a year. I decided to go with a 1200-1400 calorie diet. The biggest shocker for me was how small the portions I should be eating are. In my mind, having a pb&j sandwich was a small meal that meant I could have a big meal for dinner. Uhhh...no. A pb&j is about 500 calories. That's almost half of my calories for the day in just a small sandwich. Hummus and crackers is healthy, right? I mean it's healthy, but extremely calorie dense. The same goes for those breakfast smoothies, trail mixes, etc. I just feel like I was tricked all my life. Why is everything SO calorie dense? I get that volume eating is a thing, and you can have like 50lbs of lettuce and still need a ton more calories, but sometimes I just want greasy pizza and cheesecake. I love calorie counting because it makes the weight loss process easy. You can just count, follow the rules, and you lose weight. But, I hate how much effort you have to put into it! Weighing everything little ingredient for a meal, figuring out calories in restaurants discreetly, forgetting to weight the pot I cooked all my food in...ugh. It was just a lot of effort. Anytime I found myself getting relaxed with counting, I noticed my weight moving back up, and it was frustrating. This past year, I've been quarantining for covid and I just decided to forget counting. I was tired of it. I weighed myself in late February/early March this year, and I was up to 132lbs. I'd gained 10lbs. Honestly, it was better than I expected, but still dissapointing knowing that I needed to start calorie counting again. This time though, I just said no. I've been counting for at least 2 years now. I know what my portions sizes should look like at this point. I know what it feels like to be done eating food and not feel stuffed. I know how to do this. So, I finally let go of my calorie counting crutches, and I started the whole intuitive eating thing. It's been a month and I'm back to 125! It's actually easy now! I'm not restricting myself on any foods. I'm just eating smaller portions (or rather the correct portion sizes). If I have a salad, I let myself have a big salad, but maybe don't use a ton of dressing. If I'm having pizza, I can have one or two slices at a sitting, but save the rest for leftovers. If I'm eating out, my general rule is to just eat half of what's on the plate and save the other half for leftovers. I've almost entirely cut out snacking on things besides fruit. Desserts still happen, but maybe only once or twice a week and in small servings. It's just common sense stuff, but actually being able to apply it while knowing it will work is amazing motivation. I don't think I would have even been able to do this without calorie counting first and for so long. It taught me to re-learn my portion sizes and to understand my hunger cues. I'm still gonna have those days where I just want to go have a blizzard at dairy queen and eat a bunch of junk food afterwards. That's OK. Tomorrow's another day and I can splurge every now and then. I know it hasn't even been that long since I've started this intuitive eating thing, but it doesn't even feel like a thing right now. I don't want to jinx myself, but It just feels like my new normal. I'm eternally grateful to calorie counting for helping me to get here. But also, can I just complain about food manufacturers for purposefully making food addicting to get us to buy more? Adding tons of salt, sugar, and fat into things that don't need tons of salt, sugar, and fat. That makes foods more calorie dense. Any commercials where snacks are advertised as healthy also annoy me. In my personal experience snacking has almost never been fulfilling. I find that even three meals a day is honestly too much sometimes, and I usually skip breakfast in preference of larger lunches and dinners. Also, what's up with crap like Nutella being advertised as a healthy breakfast option for kids? Like, since when was chocolate smeared on bread healthy? Because it contains calcium? Ughh. I'm happy for getting to where I am currently and "beating the system", but I'm also just angry that the system is so hard to beat. There's so many kids out there that are growing up and probably don't know what a reasonable serving size looks like. Snack foods and desserts are everywhere and completely normalized as an everyday thing. I saw a stat the other day that 70% of Americans are at least overweight. That's crazy! My thought process is that it's not our fault either. We didn't always used to be this way. People don't change. Corporations, on the other hand, can be greedy though. And, if making us addicted to food is a way to get rich, they'll exploit it for sure. Granted, we shouldn't just give in to the food because it's not inevitable, but they really do make it hard for us not to. This rant took a weird turn lol. Anyway, I'm just feeling really conflicted right now in both my happiness for making it this far and my frustration of how hard it was for me to get to this point and be happy with myself.

submitted by /u/hyeonmibeans
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3mzRMOX

My boyfriend told me he thought I was hot because I was "heavy". This is my motivation to lose weight.

F 20, 5'1, 160 lbs ~40 lbs overweight

Before puberty, I was a stick. I was chronically underweight and short like many preemie kids are so I never expected that afterwards I would become overweight. There were many moments in my life where I really wanted to lose weight, such as when a little kid I babysat called me heavy (kids are awfully honest, he didn't intend to be mean) or when I couldn't button my nice pair of pants for graduation when I just bought them. The final straw was today when my boyfriend of 2 years admitted he liked me because I was bigger than the other girls. He supports me if I want to lose weight and says he likes my personality too but the idea that his first impression of me was that I was heavy broke my heart.

I am even more frustrated because I eat 2 meals a day and snack on salads and fruit and nuts. I've been trying to eat healthy my whole life, I don't eat fast food or greasy and fried food. My weight gain came out of nowhere (I gained 25 pounds in a year after puberty) and doesn't seem to go away.

I exercise but the idea of group classes mortifies me since I can't keep up with anyone, even people who never worked out before. Whenever I exercise it feels like my lungs are on fire and I can't breathe, even though my muscles are totally fine and want to exercise more. I think this might be because I'm anemic or because as a kid I had asthma.

Does anyone know exercises that help with weight loss but won't make me gasp for breath every other minute? I've been trying weight training because there is a focus on steady breathing and it doesn't make me gasp for air like cardio.

Anything would help. I'm super vulnerable right now and I'm trying to learn to do things better for myself. I want to lose weight to feel happy in my skin, not because it would please people around me. I want to look in the mirror and find myself beautiful.

submitted by /u/release_the_ketchup
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/39PNrlJ

It took a really bad binge for me to finally start losing weight again

long story short, I lost 100lbs in a year, then gained 15 back over about 5 months, and have been maintaining that weight (against my efforts) for about 2 months.

I have been getting frustrated at why I haven't been losing weight. I was happy I wasn't gaining anymore, but still! I was eating healthy but my willpower just wasn't there. I would exercise consistantly then ruin it with midnight snacks. I would count calories and then turn my phone off before eating ice cream. I was so upset with myself.

I remember walking into my old workplace and someone commented on my weight loss, and another person looked me up and down and said "careful, you gain back twice of what you lose!" and I laughed it off at the time but it's been haunting me ever since. It honestly sent me into a bit of a spiral.

I kept falling off the horse and it was getting harder and harder to pull myself back up.

Then Saturday happened. 3 weeks ago. I went a little too far into [1.5 bottles of wine and a whole pizza] and completely threw my "healthy mindset" to the wind. I wasn't around anyone except for my partner, so I didn't make a complete fool of myself, but I woke up the next morning completely hung over and embarassed. I felt like I let myself down. I couldn't eat anything until 3pm, I could barely walk until noon, I messed myself up. But I did feel better. I ate some grapes. I made some soup.

And the next day, I woke up feeling good. I went on a walk, I meal prepped for the next week, hell, this weekend I went on a hike! I've been borrowing my friends dogs and walking them and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I haven't binged or snacked. I've lost some weight too.

Now, I'm not saying that if you're plateauing/stuck in a rut you should binge drink and then you're magically going to be better. (maybe this story belongs in r/ShittyLifeProTips ) What I am saying is that even if you feel like your up against a wall and there's no way around it, keep trying. Keep getting back up on the horse. I'm not good with analogies. But I got to a low, low place. And finally (after lying to myself about how I'm so motivated and excited to continue this journey) I am out of it. And back on track. And back to losing weight.

I have 40lbs to lose. And I'm doing it. And I'm not going to stop picking myself back up, even if I feel like I don't have it in me anymore.

​

(also, i'm 21F and 5'5, would love an accountability partner to check in with a few times a week!)

submitted by /u/chunktw0
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3mtJCrv

Today I realized that I don't REALLY care about the number on the scale, I only care about how I feel and how I look

I'm posting this because I genuinely feel like this may help someone.

​

So I've been away from posting on this subreddit for a month now, because calorie counting alone was just not working for me, and I needed to take a step back and re-assess my plan a bit. If you have been following my journey, you will know that I have been through weight loss before, and most of the weight I've gained is during the pandemic. I keep referring back to my previous weight loss, not because I want to live in the past.

It's because although it took me almost two years to drop 30 ish pounds, it was not nearly as difficult to keep going, I never felt deprived or discouraged, and was quite easy to maintain after, until the pandemic hit. Most importantly, during that journey, I felt great the entire time. Even when the scale had not moved as much in my first few months, my overall confidence had gone up so much, people in my life noticed a big change in me.

​

This is not how I feel now.

​

To crack the code, I called my trainer from that time, who taught me everything I know about exercise based fitness, to see if she had any insights on what was different. There's one thing she said to me that made the light bulb go off.

​

"You didn't come to me wanting to lose weight. You came to me because you wanted to be strong. Your weight loss was just a happy accident."

​

She also reminded me that early on, when we did discuss weight loss casually, I said that if I was trying to lose weight, my goal weight would be 110 lbs. She asked me why 110 lbs, and my answer was because that was my lowest weight as an adult. When I finally felt like I had achieved by health, strength and looks goal at the end of the two years, I was maintaining within a range of 120-125 lbs. Truly goes to show how ridiculous my initial goal weight and my reasoning for it was.

​

I had eventually stopped weighing myself, and only checked my weight at the doctor's office or when I was needing weigh something while holding it, standing on the scale, like a suitcase. I remember weighing in at around 135 lbs at one point, and not being bothered by it because I still fit in my clothes beautifully, and was working extra hard at the gym. I was insanely strong at that point, already deadlifting my weight, and getting close to squatting my weight too. Aside from coming to terms with my very real sugar addiction, I was eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, not a care in the world.

​

After a very detailed heart to heart conversation with her and my therapist, I now realize that I genuinely don't care about my weight. What's bugging me is my lack of physical activity, the amount of strength and stamina I've lost this year, and the fact that I don't fit in any of my clothes any more. Even the fitting in the clothes is not as big of a deal to me, because clothes can be replaced. I just don't look like I want to look like, to feel strong and sexy, you know? If I stay the same weight I am today, but I'm able to get stronger, have a ton of energy and stamina, get a clean bill of health from the doctor, and if I look good to me and me alone, I will be happy. Strong and sexy for the win!

​

This realization makes me feel like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly feel very free, and I have this new found determination to pursue new health goals.

​

If you're here, reading this, ask yourself why you want to lose weight. Then ask yourself if you were able to achieve the why without the number in the scale changing too much, would you care? Some food for thought.

​

DISCLAIMER: My idea of what looks good is specific to me. It's not an unrealistic image, just an image close to what I looked like when I was at the peak of my health.

submitted by /u/redditloseit
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2RaiUIG

Does anybody feel like they'll be counting calories forever?

Over the past ten years I've waffled between gaining and losing 20 - 60 lbs. This time I've lost 20 lbs (15 more to go), but I'm really trying to find a way to make permanent lifestyle changes to maintain the weight loss so I don't have to keep doing this.

Over those ten years I lose weight fairly easily when I track calories. Stop tracking? Gain weight. I've been trying to do a week or two here and there with no tracking to practice eating without an app, but every. single. time. I gain 2 - 3 lbs in those couple of weeks. I'm not splurging, I'm not getting any food out of the ordinary. I think I'm just eating slightly larger servings than I should, and it's so frustrating that I can't visualize how much a serving is after ten years without measuring or tracking. Does anyone else have this problem? Will I need to use a calorie counting app forever?

submitted by /u/Asti_WhiteWhiskers
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3fTTfyw