So I guess additional context is also that I’m a university student and this week and in two weeks I have my final exams for my third quarter of classes, so it’s difficult to find the time to exercise. However, I’m still committed to wanting to start losing weight now, but it feels like it might have to be through a diet.
So, for most of my life I was very thin. My parents made very healthy meals and we didn’t really have any unhealthy snacks. I was fairly active, but honesty not that active. I’ve always been a bit of a couch potato. But I was still thin. I gained around 10lbs at age 16. I went from 115lbs to 125lbs (I’m 5’6” for reference). However a lot of that was my boobs getting bigger, and I’d still consider myself very healthy. Flash forward to the pandemic. It started right after I turned 18 and I basically did no exercise (previously was walking to school every day which was 20mins there, 20 mins back, lugging a heavy backpack). I went from 128lbs to 138lbs!! I went on a diet over summer 2020 and went down to 132lbs, but kind of gave up. I was around 135lbs until I moved in with my boyfriend in December.
Then I went up to 147lbs at my heaviest. Why? Because he does a lot of the manual labor chores and he would also be happy to go buy snacks for us (I’ve always been pretty lazy physically, but to a point where I wouldn’t eat lunch because I couldn’t bring myself to make it- also am a very picky eater to be fair- and I definitely wouldn’t go out and buy snacks. I’m not lazy overall, I’ve always worked really hard in school and I also struggled with my mental health for a while and have put a lot of effort into improving that and improving my relationship. But for some reason physical stuff can give me that feeling like a rock crushing my chest that depression sometimes gives people. It's hard). We've decided he won't do that anymore, and if I want snacks I'll have to go and get them or we go together. I also gained the weight by eating more takeout and it being unhealthy. I was shocked to see how many calories a chipotle burrito has (I thought they were healthy! I'm not sure I'll ever eat one again! it's like 1,200-1,300 jesus christ).
I've also started on a calorie deficit diet. I was actually inspired by noticing that by passively trying to cut down on unhealthy takeout and snacks, I was down to 143. I've been committed to it for a week now, which I know is not long in the slightest, but I'm feeling more motivated now and I think it's more likely to stick because my previous diet was accompanied by INTENSE cardio daily and I think when I gave up on the cardio the diet slipped.
My calorie budget is 1300. I'm actually doing well staying under that. I've still been getting a sushi lunch combo takeout for lunch a fair amount of days of the week (it's 10$ so it's a good deal and it only adds up to around 450 calories max). I've been having tea in the morning which has totally cut any food cravings! And my boyfriend works at a meal prep place (part-time - we are both in university) and they given us 2 free meals a week, plus he works the Tuesday shift which gives us first pick of the extra dinners so that's usually around another 3 days of free dinner until it feels less fresh. Which is amazing because they're always really healthy meals, good quality food (so my picky self will eat it), and they list the calories per serving and a way to have a low-calorie version as well. They range from 350-650 calories on average. highest I've seen was 960 calories due to cheesy sweet potatoes as a side, but it had a low-calorie version where you had 2/3rds of the sweet potatoes that was only 626 calories. So, they're super useful. The other two days we usually have chicken breast and veggies (sometimes w/rice as well) and occasionally takeout. I haven't really been having any snacks and it's been keeping my calories low. I actually had to eat some ice cream last night because even though I wasn't hungry - I could feel that I was pretty weak and I'd only had around 760 calories for the entire day and I don't want to eat too few calories and have it be unsustainable or put me in starvation mode to prevent weight loss (I know intermittent fasting is a thing, but I think It'll be easier for me just to diet).
The thing is, the exercise I want to do is go on at least 1 walk daily for 1-2 hours. I've done that twice, but it's hard on the days that I have classes, and hard when I'm so busy with school. Once it's the summer I can do it daily, and we are going to have in-person classes for university in the fall and because I'll still be living off campus, and am a 20 minute bike-ride from campus, I think a great way to keep that cardio going is to just bike to and from campus for school. I hate driving when not necessary because street parking is a nightmare to find and I get anxious, and buses make me motion sick. I might have to switch to buses/driving in the winter because it gets below 0F where I live, and snows a lot, but it should be useful in the Fall. Biking and Walking are the two forms of exercise I don't absolutely hate (I don't like feeling in pain, exercise always hurts. It's hard). I'm also going to try to add at-home things like situps and curl-ups once I have a bit more time. And my boyfriend wants a work-out buddy once he can go back to the gym, so I might try and accompany him to that.
But while I'm great at dieting, It's a lot harder for me to exercise. So I guess I'm just asking - if I can't exercise daily, it's still better to try and sometimes exercise right? And if I'm dieting, and a relatively healthy diet at that, that should still help me lose weight? I'm a bit sad today since I'm 145lbs, but I know weight fluctuates and iirc you go through water retention at the start of a diet - that's what happened on my last diet as well, went up 3lbs in the first few days, then I started losing weight.
Also, if anyone has any healthier snack recommendations than ice cream that work for them, I'd love to know? (I will also look it up online of course). It sucked having to eat ice cream when I wasn't even really hungry. But I felt faint and weak and measured it out so it was only around 240 calories extra - wanted to have at least 1,000 calories so the diet could be more long-term sustainable.
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