When you hit that new benchmark *chef’s kiss* — My lowest weight since college

I was an overweight child, an underweight teen who struggled with disordered eating, and then an overweight adult. I’ve always wanted to maintain a healthier weight, but would lose steam once I shed a few pounds and gain everything back and then some. Spending enough time in this community made me realize I wasn’t making sustainable changes but was just focused on dropping weight as quickly as possible. So I decided to focus on health first, calorie counting second. This was really important for me because quite frankly I have always had the diet of a trash panda.

I never ate fruits and veggies; a couple of years ago, biting into a veggie would literally make me gag. I drank so much soda that fruit tasted like dirt to me—not sweet at all. So I made a goal of one veggie a day, basically a serving of roasted broccoli or asparagus with dinner. Things I liked the flavor of, but needed to learn to deal with the texture without barfing. I spent a lot of nights gagging my way through broccoli and washing it down with huge glasses of water. Today my goal is two fruits and two veggies a day—still far from the recommended, but such a huge improvement for me. I don’t gag at all when biting into veggies, and I’m excited to try a new veggie this week—Brussels sprouts.

Lo and behold, making these healthier swaps (eg broccoli instead of a second slice of garlic bread) actually helped me do better with CICO. I averaged together my TDEE from several calculators and made a goal to eat between 1400 and 1500 calories a day. I started walking my dog a couple of miles a day most days a week. And slowly but surely the weight did come off!

I updated my flair today for two reasons: I found a picture from Jan. 1 2021 where I weighed 170, and I weighed in today at 149.9. I haven’t been in the 140s since I was in college!! This means I’ve lost 20 pounds this year. Some days I still can’t believe it looking in the mirror, but others I see my legs or profile and I’m like damn!! I really am doing the damn thing!!

Just wanted to share this out into the void. Weight loss can be hard to share about; a bit taboo it feels sometimes. So I wanted to share this with the community that’s helped me so much.

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32M, halfway to my goal, here's what I'm noticing works!

Hi all! Like many of you I'm sure, I'm on my second weight loss journey, but my first one in about a decade (since my early 20s). I'm a 32M, 5'9, and trying to go from 268.6 lbs to 220 for my first goal! I began the journey on August 5th, 2021, and my goal was to be 220 lbs by Christmas and 210 or lower by my 33rd birthday in June 2022. The goals are so different because, given my first weight loss journey, I learned the weight falls off much faster at the beginning and then once you start to hit plateaus, it takes a little longer. For several reasons I feel this isn't just another weight loss journey, it's a permanent lifestyle change. I want to first start off that weight loss and lifestyle varies and is subjective to everyone, but here's what I'm noticing has helped now that I'm over the halfway mark of my first goal and currently 237.8 lbs.

1. Weigh myself every day. This is hardest at the beginning, when you feel the shame of how heavy you are. This is also difficult when you first start to see weight fall off, only to see a pound or two creep back up. Your body weight is fluid, don't get discouraged and keep weighing yourself. Progress tracked is progress gained, so I keep a note in my phone that I update every morning after my shower.

2. No fast food. As someone who LOVES fast food, this was difficult. In order to limit my exposure to fast food, I deleted all food delivery apps on my phone. A bonus effect of this is, aside from my weight loss so far, is the savings I've noticed in my bank account! Food delivery adds up.

3. I started intermittent fasting. My eating window every day is 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and outside of this time I allow myself only black coffee or water. However, life happens and to avoid causing anxiety for myself, I've created a soft window for this. I violate my fast for special occasions, such as a birthday or a night out with friends, but I'm also cognizant of what I eat in those situations, if anything. I've found this to be very helpful, and I use the Fastic app to track my water intake, stop and start my fasts, and my daily steps.

4. Started walking way more. I have a dog, and there were days I would cheat myself and my dog where I would rationalize not going on our usual long route. I stopped this. I don't have a soft rule for this, it's a hard rule, my and my doggo stick with our longest possible route every day, with a shorter one in the morning before work, rain or shine. Benefits of this include a good feeling of sticking to a standard I've set for myself, getting quality time with my favourite podcasts, and my dog seems much happier too!

5. No beer. This was harder than fast food. I've completely cut out beer, and I've made a personal promise to myself that my next beer will be on my 33rd birthday IF I hit my goal of 210 or less. Now, I haven't cut out alcohol completely. I drink hard seltzers, wine, and bourbon. I'm now at the point where I don't miss beer and I even bring my own drinks to my beer league hockey games and enjoy a 100 calorie parking lot hard seltzer (or two) after the game instead of a 250 to 280 calorie IPA.

6. Diet. In my first weight loss journey, I learned many things but the biggest was and still is this: you can't out work a bad diet. I am not Olympic champion Michael Phelps. I cannot eat, nor do I require, thousands and thousands of calories a day. At home, I eat a 90% vegetarian diet. Yogurt and cereal, scrambled eggs with peppers and onions wrapped in a homemade pita for a breakfast burrito, potato/pepper/onion hashes, pastas with various sauces, curry on rice, perogies, etc. Additionally, I try to make everything from scratch as much as possible.

7. This is the last thing, and from past experience I know it's most important. In my first successful weight loss journey, when I hit my goal I treated it like a final destination, like if I hit this arbitrary number the weight will never come back. I was wrong. I am implementing a PERMANENT lifestyle change, not going on a journey. That's what I am doing, and that's what I have made peace with. Will I be more liberal about putting things in my body that I'm currently not right now when I hit my goal, like beer? Absolutely, that will be a nice reward! However, will I let beer replace what I am doing to lose the weight? No. Will I continue to monitor my weight daily and if I see an uptick, will I take a break from beer? Yes. Will I continue to respect my soft fasting window, even after I hit my goal? Yes.

What I am doing works for me. I've discussed it with my doctor, and once I got over the mental hurdles and accepted this is what I'm going to do it became just... a part of me. I've referred to this as a weight loss journey, but I'm starting to hate that term. Weight loss isn't a journey with a set destination to me any more. The journey is life, the destination is death, and I'm choosing to take a better (for me) path where weight loss and then maintaining the loss is a responsibility I have. If I were to offer anything other than good luck and well wishes as someone doing this again, and determined to do it for the last time, it would be this: don't give up. You can do it.

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How to Respond to an unplanned "Off" day

Having a week, day, meal, etc. that doesn't fit into your healthy plan happens to ALL of us eventually. Even those of us who are higher on the conscientiousness scale (not me, lol) have times when they go off-plan and indulge in some eating behaviors they wish they hadn't. The first and most important thing to remember is that an off day is part of normal eating. Wait--what?? How can something be simultaneously off-plan AND "normal?" The answer is that it is normal human behavior not to follow a regimented plan the way a programmed robot would. We are not robots and we live in an obesegenic environment with both everyday and major stressors. If you haven't "messed up," you will. The key is to situate your off day in the context of an overall healthy eating pattern and respond to it in a way that will return you to your healthy habits and make it less likely to happen in the future. In fact, yesterday, I had a very "off" day, probably the worst one in my recent weight loss efforts. It really sucked. I had all kinds of feelings. Here is how I am handling it today!

1. LOG YOUR CALORIES. This one is #1 for a reason, and it's not about the calories; it's about bringing you from a place of shame to engage your frontal lobe with some data. You will either find that it's not as bad as you feared, or that it is "bad" but that it's not going to mean you gain ten pounds overnight. In my case, I found that I ate about 700 kcals over maintenance. Since you need 3500 kcals over maintenance to gain one single pound, you will find that this one day, no matter how bad, is not going to kill your efforts. And if you've done this for a week and do gain an actual pound, you'll have the information you need to tackle it. Also, it's one freaking pound. Or five. You lost it before and you will lose it again because you caught it now instead of hiding from the data. In addition, if tracking your food is part of your normal, healthy habits, the act of doing it is the act of staying on track.
2. STEP ON THE SCALE with the full knowledge that you will have a ton of extra water weight and food sitting in your gut. Why step on the scale? It's about maintaining your normal, healthy habits. Take a breath, remember that the number is artificially inflated, and move on. In a few days that number will go back down.
3. PERFORM A POST-MORTEM. What was happening before your off day? What circumstances or actions led to you departing from your plan? Reflection is power. In my case, it was two things: one, I forgot to take my ADHD med, and was therefore both more impulsive and prone to boredom. This meant that when I was bored at work my brain craved the cheap stimulation of fast carbs at 10:30 a.m. I then fell asleep in a carb stupor, didn't eat anything else until dinner, and caved when my kids suggested Texas Roadhouse and when I saw a Cactus Blossom on the menu. In addition, I know that the light is fading in the Northern Hemisphere, and that I'm actively grieving a very sad family situation. Since food has been my go-to self-medication, it makes sense. If you can't figure it out? Ask your partner, a close friend, or better yet, your therapist, to help you tease apart why you went off the rails.
4. PLAN INTERVENTIONS. Now that you have a hunch as to why you departed from your plan, take steps to preventing it from happening again. In my case, I realized that I hadn't fully unpacked from a weekend trip, and when it came time to take my ADHD med I couldn't find it in that exact moment. Just now (as I'm writing this!) I found my toiletry bag, fished out my meds, and put them in their normal place, front and center on my work-from-home desk. In the future, I know I will need to unpack immediately upon returning home from any trip. Second, I know that I need to do some more intentional processing of my grief. I am going to take a break today to get out my journal, write about my feelings, and deal with them instead of burying them under tortilla chips. I will also mention this episode to my therapist. Fortunately, I have identified binge eating as a self-harming behavior and I have a protocol for evaluating these episodes. If you don't have a protocol, ask your therapist for one or search online. Third, I am going to set up my full-spectrum light to help with the waning light.
5. IDENTIFY WHAT YOU DID WELL. Even if you ate two pizzas in one sitting, it is unlikely that every single decision you made was a bad one. In my case, I went for a run and lifted weights in the morning. I had a healthy breakfast. I put my chocolate chips in a small bowl instead of eating out of the bag. At TR, I ordered a salad, and ate only half of my second roll. I ordered water instead of a sugary drink. It's really important to recognize that you haven't suddenly lost your ability to moderate altogether. Affirm yourself for the good decisions you did make. This exercise is an antidote to shame, and we are working against shame here. Shame will sabatoge your efforts. And then put this in the NSV thread on this sub! It's part of my routine to post in the NSV thread almost every day.
6. RETURN TO YOUR HEALTHY ROUTINE. DO NOT OVER-RESTRICT. I can't emphasize this enough. Restricting in response to a binge is the beginning of disordered eating. Also, you are not a naughty child who needs to be punished (and dear God, I hope you would never do this to a child anyway!). You are a human being who lives in the real world. Even never-fat people have days like this. Whenever your next day or meal is, resume your healthy routine where you left off. It's like what we learn in meditation: meditation is not the state of being perfectly balanced and in tune, but in the repeated act of returning our attention to the breath and to the center. A healthy life is not a perfect life; it's one where we pay attention to our eating and movement, and return to our routine over and over. And just like meditation, returning becomes easier over time. It becomes harder when the dog licks our face in meditation, or when something shitty happens in our life when we're trying to lose, gain, or maintain a healthy weight. The practice is what matters. What is your daily eating and movement practice? Return to that, again and again.

I know I will be OK because I've been here before. The difference between regain and staying on course is the steps above. I know this because when I don't do the steps, I lose the thread of my healthy life and regain. Every single time I am tempted to "start over" and not track and not weigh and not evaluate. When I give into those temptation I end up regaining. When I face my life with facts and not with shame, I stay the course.

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Dieting and Sweet Tea

I dont know about how most of y'all grew up, but in my house sweet tea was common and I drank a lot of it growing up. That's probably part of what caused me to get to where I was at before starting this journey. Now with weight loss, it's possible to put a glass of sweet tea in moderation in, but it's not ideal since it's liquid calories. But since like I said I grew up on it, it's been hard trying to break that trend.

I had been thinking theres no way they could make a sugar free sweet tea and it tastes good right? Well I was wrong. After trying various sugar free sweet teas from Walmart I've found that it is possible. Both the Walmart brand and gold peak have been able to satiate my craving for sweet tea. (Milo's was ok, the people who prefer Milo's would definitely think it was great)

So where am I getting at this besides making my love for sweet tea known? Well it's not just about sweet tea. A lot of people when they begin dieting think they are just going to have to stuck to boring ole foods and water. Which is not true. Find that low calorie version of the foods you love, find a zero calorie version of your favorite soda. While water is still important it doesn't hurt to have zero calorie drinks also. This is a big step to making lifelong changes. I dont even think I'll change back to real sweet tea once I'm done with my journey as I've found this which is a way better deal than 100 or so calories for a cup. Sticking to healthy foods and water all the time can wear you out so try and find what yall like just lower calorie!

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Need help - mother needs to lose a ton of weight

My mother (late 60s) is at a BMI of almost 50. She can barely walk 10-20 steps before running out of breadth. She has struggled with weight for 10+ years but combined with some depression and arthritis its gotten significantly worse in the last few years.

She has tried controlling diet (although not in a very disciplined way) but with limited success. As a consequence she has gotten extremely demotivated and given up. Also many of the family telling her what she already knows (that she need to lose weight) is getting her more frustrated.

I am looking for ideas on what can she realistically do and how we (family) can help. I have seen so many of you achieve amazing results in this group so looking for ideas to get unstuck

A few things are are exploring - weight loss surgery (but unlikely she will be a candidate given other health complications) - some kind of away health facility for more dedicated care and guidance

Open to any other suggestion to get her motivation back and start getting back on recovery. Any suggestion or similar experience would be very appreciated.

Thanks you so much!

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Started at 147 in Feb. Now 135. F 5'4"

I wasnt consistent with 16:8 F or exercising or CICO. I did stick to meals a day. I probably was at 14:10 most days. I am proud of this weight loss as it shows me that I could still take changes with what felt like minimal effort.This motivates me to get back on track. I've been doing 16:8 since Nov 1 and have walked three days in a row. That's big for me as the last time I was super consistent with exercise was 2016. I weighed 130 then. Some days I feel a lot of shame for having a belly, for getting winded on the stairs, etc. I'm working hard to break that cycle. Reading Atomic Habits has given me a great mindset to approach the habits I want to sustain. Rather than telling myself I am working out to lose weight, I tell myself I am working out because I want to be an athlete. If anyone is struggling with starting new habits I recommend this book full heartedly. I'm going to change my life because of it. Here's to starting again with experience. Solidarity to all!

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Am I eating enough for a sustainable weight loss?

Hello, 18F here. I am 170 cm and 70 kg (5'7 and 154 pounds). I eat around 1350 calories a day. I do cardio 4 days a week for about an hour. I am usually always at home so that's the only exercise I get.

Calculators online say my TDEE is 2000 calories and my BMR is around 1400-1500. So does this mean I am not eating enough calories to fuel my body?

I unfortunately can't just "listen to my body" like I should. Because I have always had disorders eating patterns and I don't know what a healthy diet should feel like.

Any comment is much appreciated :) I want to escape this lose-gain weight cycle, so I want to do this thing right this time.

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