What product or service would help you lose weight?

Hi there! 25F here. I’m currently working on losing weight (CW 250, GW 170).

My dream is to help others lose weight one day as well. As someone who has been morbidly obese for years, I know how hard it is to lose weight and how much of an impact it can have on your life.

I’m curious to hear from everyone working on losing weight, or struggling to get started…what’s a product, service, business, etc. that you wish was out there to help in your weight loss journey?

For me personally, I wish there were more gyms out there that cater directly to plus size individuals just starting out. I also wish there was more of an in-person/local community out there that makes it easy to connect with fellow plus-size folks in a similar age range.(I’ve found this especially hard where I live, as I’m in one of the healthiest states in the country.)

Curious to hear what you all wish was out there to help in your weight loss journey. Thanks!!

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On April 18 I started a focused effort on reducing my weight and improving my health. As of today (147 days later) I have lost 78.5 lbs and about 11" around my waist. This is my (kinda brief) story, what I've learned, and where I'm going from here.

TL;DR: For me, education and observation were the keys to weight loss.

I have often, but not always, been obese. Back in my 20s and early 30s I was heavily involved in MMA, training at least 5-10 hours per week. My diet wasn't anywhere close to perfect but I was able to maintain a reasonable (to me) weight and generally stayed in shape. If I'd known and practiced then what I know and practice now, I think I would have been a ripped monster during those days. Over time I got soft and overweight, then obese. I'd make halfhearted attempts to lose weight and found that NutriSystem worked very well for me. Sure, the quality of the food wasn't that great but it kept the weight off. It was also expensive in the grand scheme of things so I stopped using it and, slowly, the weight returned. In retrospect, although NutriSystem helped me recognize how much I should be eating, it failed to help me recognize what I should be eating. It wasn't until very recently that I learned that lesson well enough to make it part of my life.

I started with a simple goal: I wanted to reduce my processed sugar intake as much as possible for at least two weeks. Obviously this meant things like candy and soda and such, but it also made me focus more attention on the ingredients of packaged foods I was eating. I used an app called "Lose It" to keep track of what I'd eaten and how it affected my calorie intake. Very quickly I discovered that although my portion size was relatively good, the foods I was accustomed to eating — especially those which I had previously considered healthy, or at least not unhealthy — were very high, often tremendously high, in calories. I was determined to stay on track but I also didn't want to throw away food that I had already purchased, so I substantially pared down the portion sizes of what I was eating. This way I got rid of the "bad" food in the house in such a way that didn't put a huge caloric burden on me.

After those two weeks I just...kept going. I expanded my efforts by making strategic substitutions, things that I could swap out with reasonable ease. The first thing on my list was sugar. I substituted Stevia whenever I could and, happily, discovered that I don't suffer from gas after eating it. The things that I added Stevia to, I reduced the sweetener amount by half; a half gallon of lemonade would normally take a cup of sugar/Stevia, so I used half a cup instead. This way I got used to reduced sweetness in things, a way to sort of "reprogram" my taste buds.

About a month into this I finished work on my home gym and started adding some mild exercise to my routine. I alternate between "cardio days" where I mainly focus on my elliptical machine, and "bag days" where I mainly focus on my heavy bag. Stretching and light strength training is added to both days. I hit the home gym as soon as I come home from work, Monday-Friday; I get changed, do my exercise, clean up, then have dinner with my daughter. My only days off are the weekends and whenever my daughter needs to be taken somewhere (Girl Scouts or a doctor appointment, for example)

Other food substitutions were made when I felt I could deal with it. Rice turned into riced cauliflower, for example. Peanut butter (my 100% favorite food of all time) turned into unsweetened peanut powder reconstituted with water and a bit of Stevia for sweetness (and reduced the calories-per-serving from 190 to 50). Breakfast turned from a pretty big bowl of sweetened cereal with 2% milk to more healthy options; banana-strawberry-yogurt smoothies, egg white omelettes, properly portioned cereals with almond milk, granola bars, and things of that nature. When I started craving cake and pastry, I made soft oatmeal bars with a variety of ingredients to mix up the flavors a bit, including things like chocolate chip made with sugar-free chips from my local supermarket, banana, apple cinnamon, and cocoa powder. I started making and collecting low-calorie snacks; strawberries, hard boiled egg whites, and homemade sugar-free beef jerky quickly gained prominence on my list. For the most part I stopped eating out and when the rare occasion happened when I did I chose the lowest-calorie item on the menu and, depending on the count, would sometimes cut my meal in half and bring the rest home for lunch the next day. My pantry is now full of under-100 calorie and often-sugar-free snacks; small granola bars, portioned-out nuts, cereal bars, flavored rice crisps, and more. On the advice of my doctor I added protein shakes. No stranger to protein powders from my MMA days, I found a really awesome sugar-free protein powder and added a post-workout shake to my daily routine, and sometimes I have one for breakfast too.

I shop for groceries differently now. I buy far less processed foods than I used to, and pretty much everything I pick up has its nutrition information examined before I make a decision on whether or not to buy it. Sometimes I pick something up and I'm completely shocked at how many calories are in it, even if I do want to buy it and eat the whole package in one shot. :-)

Right now my weight loss is pretty much stalled at this point. I left "obese" behind several weeks ago but I'm still defined as "overweight" which I'd like to work through. I need to either further reduce my calorie intake (which my doctor doesn't like) or increase my activity level (which my doctor does like). Problem is finding the time for increasing my activity level. I'm writing this after a full day of errands, chores, and "life things" like that. I figure I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. If I don't continue to lose weight that's okay; I'm still in a healthier lifestyle than I was before. And if I do continue to lose weight (in a healthy way), so much the better.

Ultimately what helped me was the knowledge of various calorie counts. Things I'd previously considered to be "healthy choices" were, in retrospect, really not. Rice, for example, was a staple food for me but now I know the calorie count is crazy. Once upon a time I would happily eat half a jar of dry roasted peanuts without a second thought. I had no idea that apples were so (comparatively) high in calories. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. On the plus side, I'm able to make reasonable substitutions for many of the foods I'm accustomed to and that's helped quite a bit. The use of various flavorings, extracts, and spices has also helped quite a bit; I rarely feel "deprived" when I'm satisfying a craving.

Thanks for reading this far. I just wanted to share. :-)

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I am officially out of the obese category and I'm now considered overweight.

Obviously overweight is not "good", but I have been obese for most of my life and it's nice to see my BMI under 30. I never really paid much attention to the BMI, but I guess it just feels good to know that I am not obese anymore (knock on wood)

The unfortunate thing, is that the more I lose, the fatter I feel. Evidence like my size L t shirt fitting like an XL, and my bath towel actually wrapping around my body instead of being left open a few inches says otherwise. I have changed my goal weight twice now and I know that once I hit the 145 benchmark, I'll want to go to 130. Currently I am 158lbs. I was 180. 195 was my absolute highest but that was two or so years ago.

I'm hoping that these body image issues I'm currently having pass, and don't cause me to end up with an eating disorder or just a bad relationship with food in general.

I do feel confident sometimes. Like when I wear my work uniform. I got new pants and I feel like I look a lot less sloppy.

Anyway, I'm now overweight instead of obese, and that's nice. But to me, it's not enough even though I know weight loss is not linear and it takes longer than 2 weeks (hyperbole). I'm 20 and I hope these feelings pass because I know the road I could be heading down.

Thanks, all.

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I’ve lost a noticeable amount of weight but don’t know what’s causing it. No active Crohn’s disease. How can I figure out what it is to intentionally lose more and maintain the loss?

I have Crohn’s disease so my weight does fluctuate a lot but never this much and I’m currently NOT in an active flare. In a flare I’ll lose a lot of weight very quickly and unhealthily but always gain it back after. So to NOT be in a flare and lose weight is baffling to me.

Recently I put on a pair of pants that I used to not be able to button at all (bought the wrong size at the time). They now have a lot of room in them and are really saggy around my butt and legs. My stomach is noticeably a lot smaller too but I have no idea how much I’ve lost in pounds.

The thing is I have no idea what’s causing this. There’s a couple things that have changed in the past six months (none of them were really intentional) and none that I think would have such a significant effect. I’ll list them below. I’m just wondering if anyone more experienced and knowledgeable in weight loss has any insight on what you think is causing it so I can really focus on keeping the momentum up. I want to be more mindful and intentional with trying to lose more. If it helps… I’m 29 / F / 5’8 and not sure my current weight. It was 195 before I noticed the weight loss.

The things that I noticed that have changed in the last six months are… I started a birth control and another new medication. I no longer eat cereal every night, I just stopped craving it but I still eat sweets. Lately I’ve been skipping breakfast and then will have a snack or two around 1 pm (only because my job got really busy in the a.m.) If I have time I’ll eat something late morning. Sometimes I’ll eat lunch and other times it’s just snacks till dinner (whatever is in the snack cabinet at work) like jerky, trail mix, popcorn, nut bars. I used to skip dinner a lot and just do cereal or takeout. Now I always eat dinner but sometimes it’s still takeout or not always healthy meals, just normal dinner recipes. I used to occasionally do soda but now I just drink water now since there’s a dispenser at work.

Do any of those stand out as being the biggest cause? Is there anything I should focus more on like intentionally fasting? Can I do anything to accelerate the loss and sustain it? I’ve dieted in the past with no success. I feel like I might have a chance this time because I’m not actually “dieting” this time (if that makes sense). It would truly mean a lot to receive any advice and insight you have to give!

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1 year, 1 month and 1 week since I started. How it started, my struggles and questions on what to do next. My rant.

Hello everyone!

I'm on a point of my journey where I feel like I should share. This and other subreddits have really help me so I give back and I hope this can help someone.

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My stats: 26F 161cm (5'28) SW:87.5kg (193lbs) CW:60kg (132lbs) GW:57kg??? (125.5lbs) Desk job

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Like many of you, I've never been skinny. I've always been on the higher part of the healthy BMI or the lower over weight part (I only know this because every year when I went to the doctor, she would weight me, otherwise I would never have known or cared). For most of my life, I have been fine with this. I was curvy, accepted my body and kept hearing the we are a "big bones family".

I did a lot of sport growing up (probably more than 15h a week), never worried about what I was eating and thought people who thought about it were crazy. My family had an average mediterranean diet.

Then came university and the first years at a desk job... I stopped doing sports almost immediatly after entering university and I also started drinking a lot more. Every now and then I would join a gym for a few months but it would never last.

As you can imagine, I put on a lot of weight and the worse part is never even noticed it. I remember saying to say to my bf multiple times "yeah I'm not skinny but I'm healthy" and "these stores and their crazy sizes that keep changing makes it so hard to find clothes" (funny how I was blamming the stores for shrinking the clothes and not me gaining weight).

Little by little I started to realised I had gainned weight but in my head I was not super fat, it was just university weight and it would go away once I got settled into a routine at my new job. Oh how ignorant I was. I kept saying to myself that I would lose the weight but never did anything for it.

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Then one day, I found this subreddit. I read about CICO and how it worked for other people. I thought this it! This makes sense and this is doable.

I would always hate the diets everyone talks about where you can't eat this or that and would never even imagine how I would be able to keep that up so I didn't even try it.

The next day I talked to my bf. I told him the truth, that eventhough I was healthy I no longer felt ok with my body, that I was ashamed and I felt like I needed a change. This was crazy to admit because I had always had that idea that I didn't need to be skinny and that I should not care about what I eat. Then I explained him my plan, showed him what I found and asked for his help.

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On the next day, I weight myself. I had not weight myself in years. I was so suprised. Never would I guess I weight 87.5 kg. I was not overweight, I was obese. I did not felt good but it was ok because I was going to do something about it.

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I set a limit of 1400 kcal a day. I started weighting everything I ate. It was mindblowing to discover the amount calories of things that are healthy but not low on calories (I thought healthy meant you could eat a lot of it and it would be ok, I was so clueless).

My bf and I started doing daily walks, small runs and youtube workouts.

I increased the amount of water I drink a day (I'm now a proud hydro homie).

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I decided I would only weight myself once a week. I don't like the idea of weighting myself everyday as I never cared about how much I weight and I did not want to obsess over the up and downs. Everyweek I was loosing around 0.75kg (1.65lbs) to a 1kg(2.2lbs) (at first) and then aroung 0.5kg(1.1lbs) a week. It felt amazing, I could wait for saturday morning to get on the scale and see how I did!

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I ate whatever I felt like as long as at the end of the day I was under the calories I've set (I'm on 1200kcal now). I love cooking so I was never bored and never had any issue with comming up with new low caloric dishes. I ate cheese, bread, pizza, ice cream whenever I needed and never when crazy obesseing over not being able to eat what I needed that day. I also love baking so instead of eating a big slice, I counted the calories of all the desserts I baked (without crazy substitutions) and ate a small slice that fitted in my day.

Speaking of substitutions, I never went down that path. I wanted this to be sustainable and buying something that cost 30x more that the regular thing would not be financial sustainable.

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I carried on counting calories everyday for the first 4 months.

Then I moved to a different country (in the middle of the pandemic) and in the first 3 or 4 weeks I did not count. I did not have my scale and I was staying at someone's house and there was no way I would bother them with my "crazy" new habit. I was nervous but I thought it would be ok, if I increased my weight I would just go carried on with counting calories once I got my own place.

But I didn't!!! I even lost weight without counting calories. It never was suppose to be a diet, it was always about building good habits and making life changes and this pause just proved I had done it. Eventually I got my own place and continued counting calories.

I had a lot more moments like this where I did not count calories like Christmas, vacations and even just going out with friends. It's ok to take breaks and not obsess with the numbers.

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With the pandemic and moving countries most of the people in my life spent a few months without seeing me and no one knew I was trying to lose weight (expect my bf, of course). In June, I went back home. The last time most people saw me I was around 77kg (169lbs) and in June I was 63kg(139). And it was awful. The first thing people would comment was my weight loss. I feel like it was the only thing I talked about while being home. Everyone had an opinion on it: what I should be doing, what I was doing wrong, when I should stop. I was too fat before and I'm too skinny now and need to eat more. I can't tell you the amount of jokes about how there isn't food in the new country and if I wanted some money to buy food in the new country as it's probably too expensive and I can't afford and it that's why I lost weight... I felt truly awful, no one had ever comment so much on my body in front of me and it just made me think about what they were probably commenting before (I'll never know).

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But there's a silver linning in going back home... When I moved, I brought very little clothes so I wanted to bring most of the things I had left. I started trying my old clothes and nothing fit. The pants that I had left because they were too small and I have been dreamming about rewearing for so long were now too big. Items I had in the back of my closet since before highschool that did not fit but I kept because I liked them so much were also too big. A dress I took to a wedding when I was around 14, it's too big now.

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Until this point I had only seen my weight lost on the scale but everytime I looked in the mirror I saw the same body I had always seen. I realised there is probably something wrong with my mind. I did not see the weight creeping up on me and I did not see the weight going away. It was only when I was trying old clothes that I saw how much weight I had put on and how much I had lost. It's insane. I'm still going through this process as I brought clothes that I assume would fit me but just look crazy big on me.

I basically need to buy a whole new closet but haven't yet because I'm still working from home in leggings and I don't want to buy clothes until I've stopped loosing weight. When I do put on something other than leggings, I have to do stupid things like pass the jeans button through the loop that holds the belt to make the waist thighter.

I have been shooping a few times because even my leggings are too big and keep falling. I went from a L/XL to XS/S and probably from a EU44/42 to a EU36/34. I had never in a million years thought I would ever be wearing a XS.

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I do miss many things about my previous body... I have no booty now which is very sad. I have saggy boobs and went down on bra size as well (from a 75E(34E) to a 70E(32E)). I guess I have some extra skin and my arms and thighs have a lot of loose skin.

I love that I don't have a double chin, it's my favourite thing. This also took me a long time to notice that it was gone.

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So what's next? When do I stop? Will I ever stop counting calories?

I know I'll never look like I want to look, I'll never be a super model... So I'm thinking of 57kg as it's the around the middle of my BMI just because I need to stop somewhere and that's as good place as any other.

I've been reading now about recomping but I'm still very confused. I've recently started doing kickboxing, will this help with tonning?

I've also been on a plateau for about 1 and half months now, I'm stuck at 60kg. Is this too long for plateau? I've tried a week of not counting and then go back to 1200 and I'm still stuck here.

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Finnaly, I would just like to say that having someone to support you and someone you can share the achievements with is really important.

My boyfriend is the most amazing person in the world and has been with me since day one. When he cooks dinner, he writes down all the weights in the a white board we have in the kitchen so I can "do the math" later. He asks me about how many calories I have left in the day before offering me ice cream. Sometimes he tells me he feels like eating fastfood but says we won't because we already had takeout this week. He listens to me complain and puts me on the right path when I feel like giving up. And it's not because he wants me to be skinnier, it's because I asked for help, because he is in this with me.

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Thank your for "listenning" to my rant and good luck with your journey!!

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I'm terrified of loose skin and do not want to get surgery.

I'm 26f with a goal of losing 80 lbs. Starting weight 250 lbs, goal weight 170 lbs. I'm starting tomorrow with Phentermine. I hate exercising and always have, I hate the "metal" feeling after my heart is pounding after hard exercise. That being said, my exercise is minimal. I can walk just fine but running is not for me. Anyways, I'm a mom and have a mom pouch (loose skin on my stomach after giving birth) and I hate it. I'm terrified that losing weight is gonna make my loose skin even worse. I'd like some reassurance from someone that it won't be as bad as I think, maybe my skin will naturally adjust after my weight loss, but my mom pouch tells me it won't. Please tell me I'm overreacting, I really don't want to go under the knife to remove any excess skin I'll have.

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My dance teacher asked me why I was gaining weight and asked me if I have a thyroid problem

I went to dance class on Saturday and I've always struggled with my self image when it comes to dance. I do a classical art form and I'm overweight. The importance with this dance is that expressions and body movement are key. I feel that my pudginess restricts both. At the end of class, she asked me why I was gaining weight and to go to the doctor and see if I have a thyroid problem. I just said ok I will and left. I know I don't have a thyroid problem, I'm a very healthy individual who just overeats. The sad thing is I've been on a diet and lost a few pounds. So when she asked me that, it made me feel so down. I want to do my solo dance recital next year and she said that having too much weight will make that tough. I'm glad she's concerned but I'm having such a tough time losing weight. I'm a 17 year old female in high school and weigh 190 pounds. I started at 195. Any advice on the weight loss, and how I should take my teacher's comments? Losing weight will make me a better dancer and I can probably be prettier and more confident. Will losing weight make my dance better with expression and everything? What she said kind of made me feel like I would never me a good dancer if I didn't at least lose some weight.

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