Good evening everyone! I’m starting on my weight loss journey tomorrow and am pretty excited! I’m at 375 right now and my first goal is 275. Does anyone have any advice that can help with cravings and cutting out sugars and unhealthy snacks? I do work a pretty physical warehouse job, so working out shouldn’t be an issue, but I know diet is the biggest thing for me. Thank you everyone and looking forward to 2022!
It was first only 2-3lb. Then a solid 5lb. Then 8lb. Then 10lb. Now I'm standing at almost 15lb gained.
I just can't believe how it crept on me.
Thinking back on it, I think this is how I let go:
I stopped weighing myself. It used to keep me accountable and help me make healthier choices. Since I stopped, I was effectively burying my head in the sand.
I stopped thinking about my meals. It wasn't about a healthy lifestyle anymore. I just wanted to numb myself, and I wish I just had ate at maintenance instead of thinking "a few extra meals/pounds won't hurt".
I stopped following healthy food and fitness Instagram/YouTube accounts. I even stopped coming here on r/LoseIt and various other threads. This meant, I had no positive influences that would help me prioritise healthy, balanced eating and lifestyle.
I stopped believing in myself. I'm not sure why, but I think I honestly felt a strong feeling of "Fuck it. Why bother. What's the point?" This is still a feeling I'm trying to move through. I'm at a point where it feels like this weight is never going to come off, but it's exactly this type of thinking that got me here so I need to reverse it.
So my plan going forward is this:
I am going to weigh myself daily. I won't expect the scale to move down every single day, but purely for accountability so I can see the trajectory of my actions and my weight.
I am going to plan every single meal. No more mindless eating, or mindless grocery shopping. No food is going into my mouth until it's tracked first. I need to be at a healthy calorie deficit weekly. No more guesstimating.
I am going to start following healthy food blogs and weightloss/fitness content creators again. I will actively seek out weight loss story and fitness journey videos to keep me inspired.
I am going to tell myself everyday that I deserve to look great, feel great and be at a healthy BMI again. I need to truly love myself, even as I am right now. I need to begin to believe in myself again, and I don't know where or how to start on this, but I just need to keep going.
I will also be joining the January Challenge on r/LoseItChallenges. It's been a few years since I've done the last one. I really want and need to stay accountable!
Thank you for reading, and if you have a similar story and have tips to share on how you got back on track after post-pandemic weight gain, I'd love to hear it.
Hope you are all doing well and sending lots of well wishes to your weight loss and fitness journeys! 💪
Back in May I started weight loss involuntarily after a very stressful life event meant I couldn’t eat for a few weeks. But when I started to feel better I realized I had a jump start on a weight loss journey and decided to keep it going in a healthier way.
I don’t know my starting weight because I hasn’t weighed myself in ages, but my highest recorded weight at the doctor’s office was 278. I’m pretty sure I was close to that weight when I started out, and maybe about 260 when I decided to keep it going.
My goal weight is 200. This morning I’m at 201.8.
I downloaded the Lose it app and started tracking all my calories as best I could. I deliberately decided I’m not going to be “obsessive” about it so I don’t weigh my food or create my own recipes - I just find the closest thing in the database and do the best I can. I know that weighing food will results in much more accurate calorie count, and kudos to everybody who has the headspace for that! But for me, I need to maintain a more relaxed attitude or I get into a bad mental health space.
I already had a pretty good diet because I am a good home cook, so I just focused on portion control (my bugaboo) and trying to get enough protein. Also trying to have my go-to high calorie snacks in the house at all. I don’t usually eat junk food, but I do go for high calorie snacks like a couple ounces of cheese, a handful of nuts, and some dried fruit. It’s not that nuts or fancy cheese are bad for me - it’s that that snack plate has about 600 calories! So now I eat a cup of unsweetened yogurt with frozen berries (150 cals) or some baby carrots with hummus (80-100), or even a few slices of salami if I’m craving something salty and fatty (60-100).
That’s about it for my diet rules. I can eat whatever I want and I’m not even very strict about daily calorie goals - as long as I’m staying under maintenance by even a little. But I’ve really upped my exercise a lot.
When I say I exercise a lot, I mean for ME. I was almost 300 pounds, with severely fucked up knees and other joints. A one mile walk was a major big deal. So I started walking in 10 minute increments, between appointments. I made sure I got in a mile of dedicated walking every day but I didn’t have to do it all at once. I aim for 11,000 steps overall daily, exercise and regular activity together. I hit it about half the time, but I find that setting a high goal keeps me active. The days I don’t make 11k, I usually make 10.
Since it was summer when I started, and I live in a place with a nice lake, I did a lot of swimming. Swimming is great for really fat people with joint issues, like me. No pain and no sweat!! Now that it’s winter I really miss swimming. After I lost thirty or forty pounds, I upped the exercise again. I started doing yoga for twenty or thirty minutes almost every day (shout out to Yoga with Adriene on YouTube). Or some short body weight workouts. And I started doing HIIT on my treadmill. Only ten minutes at first, but it helped a lot. Now I’m up to 15 minutes at a time.
I get discouraged. I’ve been through some REALLY long plateaus where I was doing everything the same but not losing any weight. One lasted 8 weeks. During those times I try to focus on NSV - non-scale victories! And there’s always something. Maybe it’s a skirt I couldn’t wear before that now I can. Maybe it’s a compliment from a friend. I tell you what it was a great day when I could make love in the missionary position with my husband again!! Maybe it’s just “I’m not as tired as I used to be.”
I only have two pounds left to get to my goal. That might be next week or it might take a month to get a weight where I can reliably have a weight that starts with a “1.” But I’m gonna make it.
Good luck everybody! If this fat old broad could do it, you can too.
I relocated to a new place and haven't got the chance to weigh myself for two weeks. Today my new scale is finally here and I weighed myself. Guess what? I'm officially classified as Obese Class 1, down from Obese Class 2 and 3 for the past 11 months of weight loss journey! :')
Can't wait to see myself being classified as Overweight - another 10-11kg (22-24lbs) to go! I'd be so over the moon if/when this happens because my last Overweight was 15 years ago!
You, you and you: You can do it, don't give up!
So I’ve posted before that as part of my weight loss journey I’ve come to realize I have an ED, Binge Eating disorder. And I am getting much better at managing it.
But as I get better at managing it I’m noticing a bigger issue. During times I would normally have binged (breakfast as cereal was a trigger food, gaming as snacks were an issue, and after 8pm) I find myself fighting horrible nausea. I can’t seem to shake it even with medicine.
Any tips?
Extra info: No I’m not working with a nutritionist due to limitations as so far I can’t get my doc to recommend one. I’m stuck with the notoriously crappy medical care of the VA at this time. My ED is set diagnosed because again, VA. (Veteran’s Affairs). So I’m on my own there. But so far in spite of this I have successfully kept from fully binging for a couple months now. (Yes I’m sure it’s BED, I can list out what my binges look like but I’d prefer not to due to embarrassment).
I wish I’d known this when I started - it took a few months for me to notice a pattern while I was losing 50lb last year.
Everyone’s pattern is different, but your menstrual cycle is likely to affect your scale weight due to water retention. It can be disheartening to see the scale readings go up when you know you’re in a calorie deficit, but once you know your own pattern, you can make peace with it.
Lots of weight loss research studied men and for years people thought women were the same but smaller. We’re not, as our hormones change throughout the month and these can make you retain water.
Your cycle has phases: your period, the follicular phase, ovulation, and the luteal phase. It’s worth looking up what James Smith and Lyle McDonald have to say on female fat loss in relation to hormones.
My pattern is unusual: I stall when my period starts, then gradually gain 2-3lb, peaking at ovulation. For the last two weeks I experience a “whoosh” where my month’s weight loss is revealed. Then it all begins again. Many women experience the opposite, stalling/gaining in the luteal phase.
Here’s my graph from the last year where you can see every cycle as a hump! https://imgur.com/a/kIDXevR
I weigh daily and also track on the Happy Scale app (Libra on Android) so I can see a moving average. Weekly weighing doesn’t work for me due to the fluctuations - I could just be spot-checking a “high” day and I like to gather all the data I can.
Note when your period starts and also retrospectively note the middle of your cycle as this is likely to be ovulation. It may not work if you take birth control.
I hope this helps someone and stops you giving up in frustration!
Losing weight is extremely hard, but many people do it. What's even harder is keeping the weight off. Most studies suggest that, within a few years, almost everyone who lost weight has gained it back.
I am one of the very few who hasn't. This year is the 18th year since I began my weight loss journey. I'm still down 90 lbs from my heaviest weight. There's been periods where I've put some of the weight back on, and periods where I got even thinner, but I've always maintained most of my weight loss.
Here are some thoughts I have that I hope are useful to others.
Diet is far more important than exercise, but exercise is really important and you need to learn to love it -- not just tolerate it, or do it as a chore. The easiest way I've learned to do this is to pair exercise with something else that you find enjoyable/valuable. Certain kinds of yoga, for example, pair exercise with spirituality. Weight lifting where you are getting stronger and putting up more and more weight on a regular basis pairs exercise with self improvement and achieving goals (sadly, this ends after a few years). Team sports can make exercise into a fun social event (if that's your thing -- it's not mine, but for some people it is). There are so many examples and ways to do this. For years, I had a solid group of gym friends and so it was like a big hangout. Whatever way you go, just know that forcing yourself to do something you hate (take a boring jog for 30-minutes three times a week, whatever) is not sustainable.
Weight loss is possible through changing your daily habits, but long-term weight loss is only possible through systemic life changes. What do I mean by that? Well, if you have a job that's stressing you out and taking all your time so it's almost impossible to cook healthy meals, you may be able to deal with that for a few months or a year or whatever. But you aren't going to be able to deal with it for years and years and years. There will come a day when you will have to choose between something like your job and your weight. Or it could be a relationship or a group of friends. Or maybe even some internal demons you are afraid to address. This will be unique to every person and require a lot of introspection, but I'm convinced that everyone who has serious weight problems, also has serious challenges in their life that are bigger than just making smart choices about what they eat. Try to figure out what these are, and address them. You may find that this much harder than sticking to a diet.
Has anyone else here maintained significant weight loss for a few years (or more)? If so, what worked for you?
