Starting my weight loss journey (daily journal)

I'm not sure if this is the best sub to log my journey (if it lasts at all) but I felt making a journal of my days could be a good way to look at my successes and failures to help myself in the future and maybe others as well.

Being straight forward I have been overweight since about highschool. I can pinpoint things to blame and excuses I've made. While some of my weight gain has not been my fault keeping it on definitely is solely my fault.

I've made attempts to change my life style to be healthier and I have always failed in the past. If I was being honest with myself I don't see much different this time around, but it only takes once. I welcome any tips and suggestions anyone wishes to give.

A little more about myself, I am a 5'5, 31 year old, male, and currently starting out about 250lbs. According to basic internet searches my body weight for my age should be closer to 150lbs. I work in IT so I have a very sedentary job often working from home. I do have a history of kidney issues since I was young which is treated with very high doses of corticosteroids (Prednisone) and recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure which I take medicine for daily.

My "default" has been hovering in the 240-250 weight range for about 10 years. The lowest I weighed in the past 10 years was during a long water fast (16 days) and it was 218. I managed to stay under 225 after that for about a year until Covid hit. My biggest weakness I feel is with caffeine and sugar rich drinks as well as when and how I eat. I often skip breakfast and eat a small lunch (if any) and large dinner later in the evening. While I feel I have decent control over myself as I proved during the water fast I over analyze and over complicate everything.

So where do I fail? In the past if sodas and caffeine cravings didn't break my diet it was this and the combination of dieting with my wife. My wife and I have vastly different takes on preferred healthy food. Often I will handle the cooking for the household. I am fine to find a couple items I like and rotate between them for weeks to months. My wife on the other hand needs variety, other than a small handful of dishes she prefers something different nearly every day with about a month or two in-between repeats. This often leads to trying new recipes and if they are a flop to us grabbing something out. Over the years we have cultivated a pretty big menu that we can go to safely but not healthily, so healthy meals are trial and error all over. This is highlighted further by our differences in preferences, she prefers more carb items and fruits while I prefer more fats and proteins.

I hope to post daily progress and information, I am actually writing this on day 3 so expect to see 3 follow up replies.

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Best healthy weight loss advice? (23 F)

TL;DR: I have been struggling to lose and maintain weight in a healthy way my entire life. For as long as I can remember, I have used food to cope with depression and PTSD. I need to find healthier ways to cope and focus on improving my health because I am obese and embarrassed of how I look.

The lowest weight I can remember being was 120 lbs. I was really thin at this weight.. I’ve always had more of an athletic build and have been 5’5 since like age 10. The heaviest weight I have ever been (which I am now) is 205 lbs. I can’t stand how I look and I oftentimes feel powerless to losing weight, at least in a healthy way. When I have lost any significant amount of weight in the past it was a result of severely underrating like 500-1000 calories a day. I would really like to lose weight in a healthy way and end up somewhere between 120-150 lbs. I know that is a large range but I feel comfortable at any of those weights 120 being lowest and 150 being the highest. Can anyone give me any realistic advice / suggestions? I feel like I do well with eating healthy and exercising for about a week and then I stop doing it and fall back into my old unhealthy habits. 😟

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What a waste of money

Happens each and every time I get money I go and spend it on crap and take aways. I was doing so well wotht he weight loss and this past week feels like I've messed it all up again for what 5/6 days of junk food when I have perfectly reasonable food in the fridge and I even had some ready meals for if I didn't want to cook that were around 500 calories. Yet again I e wasted my money on crap that I didn't need and now I'm going to suffer with bad cravings for the next couple of weeks while I try like hell to reverse this. On the other hand I did buy an air fryer so tomorrow I'm going to buy som salmon to have wth veggies but I could have done so much better. I'm disappointed in myself.

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Breaking 290 for first time 10 years!

• 34M 6'0" SW:345 CW:289 GW:185, Desk job, working from home father of 3.

TLDR: BACKGROUND: Athletic, but always been big, DIET: quit drinking Keto/IF, WORKOUT: Mostly low impact walking, OTHER: Recently started phentermine, far from my goal and hope to see all of you along the way and be there to cheer you along as well.

This was a pretty big day for me since it is the very first time that I have weighed less than 290 in nearly 10 years. I remember 10 years ago, after having gone from 325 down to 275 that I was never going to be over 300 again. How naive I was... The peak of my weight was at the end of 2019, at 345 when I decided that I needed a change. My knees hurt, and my back ached. I had to stop playing sports because the pain was just too much and risk of injury too high. The only sport I could still manage was golf.

THE BACKGROUND

All my life I was considered, 'One of the big kids'. Frequently referred to as, 'big guy', or 'big man' as an adult which I detest. What kept me from really becoming huge as a child was the fact that I was always active. I was a 3 sport athlete in high school and played many intramural sports as well. I loved food, and would often eat until I was stuffed. At night, I used to sneak out of my room to go into the kitchen and drink glasses of milk that I mixed with sugar. I would also microwave hotdogs and eat those while everyone slept.

It wasn't until after high school though, when I discovered alcohol that my weight quickly got out of control. In my freshman year of college, I went from 250 to 285. Looking back it was always clear that I had an issue with alcohol. I was never one that could have just a glass of wine or two and be done. I would have the entire 12 pack, and later on the entire 24 pack and when I drank I would probably black out 1 out of every 5 times. I never had a 'rock bottom' moment so I never felt I had a reason to quit. Since the pandemic began, and I started working from home and my drinking started to take on a new life. I was consuming at least 6 days a week, and normally it was around 10-15 drinks per session. I wasnt blacking out often but I was often drunk and frequently hungover.

Now, 17 years later I have finally decided that I no longer want to continue my relationship with alcohol. As of today, I have been completely dry for 3 months and I honestly feel that I am a much better father, husband, employee, friend, and person. It took a bit of will power at first but now feels like its part of me. The only person that actually knows I am no longer drinking is my wife. Not because I am embarrassed about it, but because I don't want to have to explain my reasoning and I don't like how people feel bad about drinking around people that are sober. I honestly have no problem being at parties and not drinking. I stopped drinking for brief periods of my life for weight loss reasons and I always found it annoying having to talk about it.

THE DIET

I have always enjoyed meats and cheeses so when I found out 11 years ago that on a ketogenic diet you could lose weight and pretty much just eat those things I was sold (oversimplified I know). It was at that time that I decided I wanted to try and focus on eating right, and my diet consisted mainly of grilled chicken, broccoli, sautéed spinach, bunless cheese burgers, eggs, and of course bacon. Fast forward to today; My diet is strict keto, and I also follow a 16:8 intermittent fast. Dieting is hard, but I find that keto, and IF help me to control my hunger

THE WORKOUT

Weightlifting and fitness has been a part of my life since I started football back in the 4th grade so this has actually been the easier part for me. The hardest part is starting the routine again, because breaking a cycle of lazing around the house is difficult. My routine consists mostly of low impact cardio like walking/cycling/elliptical. I average around 22K steps per day and shoot for at least 20K. I often walk circles in my basement watching movies if I need to get to my goal. I will be incorporating weightlifting back into my routine soon but will ease into it since I am not a young 20-something anymore.

THE OTHER:

Supplements: I take a number of daily supplements but most important for me are my magnesium glycinate, I also take a curcumin/piperine blend for inflammation control. Creatine is also a staple here.

Drugs: In the past I had tried Victoza which is a drug given to diabetics. It is injected directly into the abdomen. It kinda just makes you feel full for many hours but I did not love the feeling so I stopped this years ago and only did about 2 months of it. I currently am trying phentermine and will see how that goes for a few months.

​

I created this account solely for the purpose of documenting my weight loss journey but I have been lurking on this sub for a very long time. I hope that I am able to provide some insights to others and to get advice from the community as well. I could honestly write multiple long posts about my experience and thoughts on each of these subjects. I will try to respond to as many questions as are posited and happy to provide additional context.

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[Study] What you eat matters: High-glycemic load foods (highly processed carbs) stimulate hunger and fat storing hormones

I've been having difficulty with my weight management and have been reading some current studies around weight loss. I came across this study that suggests that highly processed carbs can actually increase your appetite and simulate hormones that store fat. So even though you're eating enough, your body isn't treating it like it's enough.

When we eat highly processed carbohydrates, the body increases insulin secretion and suppresses glucagon secretion. This, in turn, signals fat cells to store more calories, leaving fewer calories available to fuel muscles and other metabolically active tissues. The brain perceives that the body isn't getting enough energy, which, in turn, leads to feelings of hunger. In addition, metabolism may slow down in the body's attempt to conserve fuel. Thus, we tend to remain hungry, even as we continue to gain excess fat.

Often on reddit, with the CICO approach, I tend to see (simplified) advice that it doesn't really matter what you eat as long as you're under calories. But long term, this advice ended up being more harmful than helpful for me.

So I thought this was an interesting article that provides some insight about how/why processed carbs aren't very good for you, and how can make it feel like you're fighting a losing battle when you're trying to follow your CICO. I know I tended to pick up pre-packaged food for the convenience of counting.

It also showed me how not every calorie is the same. I knew that proteins and fat made you feel fuller for longer., but I hadn't really considered how negative processed carbs could be. And personally, I feel like it points out one of the biggest issues I've been having recently. I had a life change, and that led to a diet change, and I couldn't figure out what went so wrong (I was hungry a lot more, putting on weight) but I think it might actually be related to eating a lot more processed carbs.

As a result, I think I'm going to thoughtfully clean out my pantry a bit. Whatever is in there at the moment isn't really helping me get/maintain a good nutritious diet. I still love and eat plenty of lean proteins, vegetables, etc, but I think my snacking has changed from something like a yoghurt to a biscuit and it's just not working.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210913135729.htm

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Multiple SVs: lost 20 pounds in 3 months, BMI below 40 for the first time in 5.5 years, and lost weight on purpose for the first time in almost 15 years

I have had weight gain, always related to stress over work, in a bad way over the last 8 years or so. +50 pounds in 6 months in 2014. Gained 20 pounds in 2016. Another 20-30 in 2018, all around toxic workplaces getting totally untenable. I’ve also been moderately to deeply depressed for about 10 years. And most of my attempts to lose weight have spiraled into total obsession, freakouts over re-gaining, starving myself, all kinds of terrible stuff. Compounded to the point where I had to not ever weigh myself, ask the doctor not to tell me when they did, and never ever talk about diets or I would just completely collapse.

Last year I FINALLY got onto medication for depression, and a brand-new ADHD diagnosis. The Wellbutrin that I’m on, along with making me less anxious, curbs some of the non-hunger food cravings I usually get when I’m stressed, which has been an amazing psychological load off. But, as of the spring/summer, I was still much (MUCH) higher than my pretty-healthy weight, and technically morbidly obese going by BMI, as flawed as it is for an individual measure. And I realized I had the emotional wherewithal to actually try to do something about it. (Started with Noom and, in 3 days, I was already spiraling into preoccupation)

I had a doctor visit that established my blood pressure, a1c, lipid panel, etc were all definitely healthy (whew). And that I weighed around 243 pounds, which was, at least, 10 pounds less than my high weight in early 2019. I told my doctor: no apps, no calorie counting, no daily or weekly weigh-ins. She said “try making sure half your plate is vegetables”.

I went with the strategy of: eat 12 oz of vegetables at the beginning of dinner (roughly a day’s 5 servings) and then eat the rest of dinner if I’m still hungry. I’ve been able to keep that up 5 days a week since late June. I already didn’t really eat breakfast and mostly eat protein supplement stuff for lunch (a diet I’ve had for years, DEFINITELY did not result in weight loss).

Yesterday (3 months in) I felt OK enough to weigh myself and I’m down to 221. BMI of 39. I don’t think my weight has been this low since early 2016. And the last time I lost weight on purpose, I was 21 and literally starving myself. I can barely believe it. It happened so gradually I didn’t even really notice. And I don’t obsess over food. I am really fucking happy eating, like, a mixing bowl full of blanched green beans with extremely good olive oil, sea salt, and lemon. And I haven’t even added proper workouts back in, because I was kind of overwhelmed (and also, Covid).

I think my biggest takeaway:

Perfectionism + ADHD means I can get VERY obsessive/hyperfocusy, or very scattered, so I need simple, clear tactics that don’t require a bunch of attention. Counting calories really doesn’t work for me. And I had to address the root causes of overeating before I could actually get myself to stop.

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Feeling discouraged( 5’1 and 140lbs )

I have been struggling with my weight. I typically stay active daily. I am consistent in going to the gym most weeks mostly 4-5 times doing mostly weight training. But I decided to try and refocus more diet and I’m having a hard time maintaining motivation.

I dedicated to workout 5-6 days a week for 2 months with a good diet on weekdays and more lenient on weekends. I had only lost 4 lbs.

I felt like I was making small dents in my body, but after those 2 months of focusing and stepping on the scale to only see 4 lbs really made me feel discouraged on my weight loss journey. Then I kept looking at myself and only saw such small differences

It’s hard for me to keep going after seeing that. I just feel like I’m never going to lose the weight. How do you guys keep motivated and overcome disappointment?

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