F/36/5'4/255 > 155 = 100 pounds. Can't believe I did it. May of 2020 to today.

https://imgur.com/a/12nEDJc

In May of 2020 I decided to quit drinking alcohol (was a heavy drinker,) stop smoking cigarettes and start counting calories. I decided I wasn't going on a diet, I was going on a lifestyle. That meant I wasn't going to cut out the foods I love, I still eat what I want, but I count the calories for it. This was an option that allowed me to still eat good food and desserts. I learned how to cook (I NEVER cooked before... Only fast food and microwavable stuff.) I decided to meal prep and freeze delicious 1 cup meals (lasagna, taco lasagna, breakfast casseroles, creamy chicken chili and lots more!) I used MyFitnessPal and tracked about 1200-1500 calories a day. I'm still on a slow weight loss now and I exercise 6 times a week only because I find it fun (water aerobics!) I'm not sure what my goal weight is, I have more of a goal look/feel and I don't think I'm there yet, but I am happy. The first half of my weight loss was only counting calories, no exercise. I treat my calories like they are money in the bank and only spend them on things I want. I also do not track exercise calories or eat them back, they are my savings account if I ever want a day where I'm just not paying attention to my calories.

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The day my view on food changed forever.

I've recently been thinking back on a particular point in my weight loss journey that stood out in a way that it changed my view on food forever. At that moment i didn't realize how important that small decision was but now in hindsight it was probably the one that made the most drastic change that will last with me my whole life.

At some random day during the beginning of my weight loss i consciously decided to incorporate calorie counting into my plan to lose the weight. you probably think oh wow not a big deal but let me try to explain.

I knew about calories for a long time and i knew what role they play in weight gain and weight loss but i never allowed myself to really look at nutrition and calories in food simply because i didn't want to know how many calories are in it. For some food items i knew a rough estimate like i knew that bananas are high calorie dense or that bread, pasta and highly processed food have a lot, sugar bad, fat bad and so on but that was pretty much it.

I didn't want to know more about it in fear that it would ruin food for me forever. Once you attach calorie counters to everything you eat, it opens your eyes to the reality. If you don't make that step it's like blissful ignorance that allows you to have a worry free mindset when it comes to eating food.

That day i decided to give that freedom up. I stepped over to the dark side, or i stepped into the light, however way you like to see it. Maybe it was naive of me to wait so long before doing this basic thing but I believe that a large chunk of the population has no idea about the nutritional values of the food they are eating. They purposely ignore it just like i did.

Sometimes I miss the old times, the easiness of it all. Just eating without knowing. But there is no going back now. You know what you know and whenever i see a bottle of wine, a bowl of cereal or a handful of nuts now, i see the numbers in my head and it will never be without those facts in the back of mind.

Anyway i think it was the most important decision to teach myself that skill and even though you have to sacrifice a little bit of innocence it was for me the most important step in how i manage my weight.

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I am frustrated with others’ misconceptions of exercise in the context of slimming down

I run 60+ miles and 10+ hours weekly. Last Friday I underwent corrective laser eye surgery. I must wear a “bandaging contact lens” on my left eye until the optometrist removes it this Thursday. Hourly eye drops, fleeting dry-eye and ocular irritation collectively take a back seat to my displeasure at being told not to sweat or run. Running makes me happy and I look forward to it every day. It also plays a key role in my weight management strategy. I burn at least 600 calories from running daily. This lets me eat more without gaining weight. Now that I can’t run, I’m faced with some choices:

1. Eat the same and gain weight. It’s just a week, after all
2. Eat less and maintain my weight. Ew, self restraint and discipline? I don’t like using those tools, they are last resort options
3. Find some other way to burn calories and time so that I’m not eating (can’t eat when you’re running, and can’t eat when you’re sleeping, and every hour you’re running is one less hour you’re sleeping and one more hour you’re not eating)

So, I started going on more walks. But I thought: “I can’t read, I can’t watch tv, I can’t play games, I can’t work. I also can’t eat all day (or I’ll get fat)”. So walking became a solution to TWO problems: the problem of temporarily replacing my calorie burn, and also the problem of having idle time with nothing to do.

And further into the week I decided, “I should go on a longer walk, like one of my mid-length running routes”. So yesterday I went and walked 9.5 miles while listening to podcasts. I guess it sounds less weird if I say I hiked, which is true since I went up into the hill trails and spent the majority of my walking time in the forest. Later that evening I took a shorter 5 mile walk around town - a slightly shortened version of my “minimum distance run” (my minimum distance run is about 7.3 miles and includes running halfway up a local mountain trail).

So anyways lately (the last 3+ months) I’ve been having trouble getting a nice calorie deficit. When I was heavier, it was easy to reach 500+ calorie deficits daily, for weeks straight. That was back when I was obese and overweight. Today I am 142lbs and 5’7” tall. Basically, I made it. I lost nearly all the weight I wanted to lose. So I lost motivation to drop the last 10-15lbs that I would need to lose to go from 15-18% body fat to 10-13% body fat. Don’t get me wrong - I would like to get to 10% body fat - but at around 15%, which is probably where I’m at currently, I look great with clothes on, and that’s probably why I don’t care so much anymore about hitting nightly deficits.

So imagine my surprise when I was about to go to sleep last night with an over 1400 calorie deficit. I had walked over 14 miles, lifted weights, and eaten over 2000 calories of food (two giant 2+ lb avocado kale salads, several bowls of pudding with fruit - that’s my daily diet lately). I ended up eating another dessert bowl just because “I could” and still ended the night at over a 1000 calorie deficit.

Walking. Wow, seriously, I am impressed. Fucking walking. I know almost nobody who can run for hours like me. There’s only two people among all my friends, acquaintances and coworkers who can do that (I’m not counting my running team, most of them could wipe the floor with my sorry ass). And I think this is the big misconception everyone seems to have about “exercise” and “weight loss”. I think almost everyone, amongst whom all are misinformed, thinks “if I want to precipitate weight loss from exercise, I have to run and grunt and squeeze and strain and sweat until I’m hurting and sore and wheezing and my body hurts!”

Granted most people would feel that way if they tried to run like me every day. But I’m recovering from having one of my eyes’ front literally SHAVED OFF WITH A LASER, and the other eye being SLICED OPEN WITH A LASER AND PRECISELY GOUGED. It’s fucking laser eye surgery, and I am fucking recovering from surgery. BUT I CAN WALK. I can walk and I can shitpost on Reddit. And I burned 1,350 calories yesterday just from WALKING. And you know what? The entire time, until my phone battery nearly died, I was listening to comedy podcasts and playing Raid Shadow Legends.

Ok so why am I posting this? Well, one of my family members is fat and sad about it. Everyone in my family has seen my transformation, and they respect my thoughts on the subject. I’ve given them advice at various times and some of them have heeded it and lost weight. But not this one fat and sad family member of mine.

So I told her, “you don’t need to lose weights, you don’t need to run, you don’t need to do this and that. Just walk”. And I was talking to my family later - “oh we got her a gym membership”… SHE DOESN’T NEED A GYM MEMBERSHIP, SHE JUST NEEDS TO MOVE MORE.

Meh, I’m almost out of the mountains now. I’m gonna check my Raid Shadow Legends game and see if I have enough stamina to run some dungeons, or arena tokens to compete in the player versus player stuff. And gonna get a black coffee with 5 packets (minimum) of stevia and other zero-calorie sweeteners. And you know what? My overuse injuries in my knees aren’t acting up, so after I sip my coffee I think I’ll go up the mountain again. Cuz why not? I ain’t got anything better to do

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Getting back on the horse!

(Apologies if the flair is incorrect) So around March of last year, I posted on here as a 15 year old girl who weighed 85 kilos with the goal to lose 20. It was a complete pipe dream for me, I'd tried and failed at various weight loss efforts and had little hope that it would work this time. But I installed Cronometer and I weighed myself every day and months later I finally weighed in at 65 kilos. This community encouraged me and spurred me on to reach my end goal, and I did! But then Christmas rolled around, and my family convinced me to do away with the calorie counting. I figured I knew how much to eat now, that maintaining would be easy... I was very wrong.

So flash forward to now, I'm 16 FtM, 5'7" and about 71 kilograms. My GW this time around is 60kg, but also a healthy maintenance plan to keep me sticking to that weight. I'm going to be posting daily on the threads on here to stay accountable. If anyone gas any advice on maintaining once I get to my goal weight, feel free to chip in! It's good to be back, even if I have another difficult road ahead of me lol.

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Has anyone found intuitive eating resources that also support weight loss?

After many, many years of yoyo dieting, I have landed myself an eating disorder diagnosis. Hurray! In an effort to rid myself if this burden, I have been investigating intuitive eating. For me (and anyone else who experiences emotional turmoil when dieting) I think it might be a game-changing approach. My weight has been stable for a few weeks and I don't feel completely miserable... Plus I have not been binging!!! This is huge for me, folks! I would love to toss every diet book and delete all my calories tracking apps, but there's just one problem. So far, all my intuitive eating resources support health at any size. Unfortunately, I have full blown metabolic syndrome--type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol issues, basically all the stuff they warn you about when telling you to lose weight. Unfortunately I was born with it, so no amount of dieting will fix it. And yet, I must control both my macros and body fat percentage in order to feel reasonably ok. The long term health impacts are horrifying if I don't keep it under control (necrotic feet, anyone?). Health at any size might be true for some, but for my body the ranges are much tighter and I am currently overweight. I'm still hunting for the right supports, but I'm wondering if anyone has resources about intuitive eating that still guide you towards (emotionally healthy) weight loss.

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Helpful Supplement Recommendations?

Has anyone found any specific supplement to be helpful in their weight loss journey? Currently I have been loving putting a serving of collagen in my morning tea!

I am especially interested in trying a fiber supplement to help with the feeling of fullness when in a calorie deficit, and creatine supplements paired with increased exercise to help with the body recomposition aspect of fat loss.

I would love to hear what has been helpful to you!

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F/30/5’8” (195lbs > 116lbs = 79lbs in 4 years) Inspired by everyone else’s incredible progress, big or small Hoping to inspire others to keep pushing as well!

before and after

TW: abuse

Hi r/loseit! I’ve been lurking on your sub for the past 4 years and am finally ready to publish a progress post of my own.

Back in 2018, I had reached my heaviest weight. I was in an incredibly abusive relationship, completely isolated from my friends and family, and battling severe depression. I turned to food as a comfort and completely lost control of my consumption. When I took my “before” pictures, I calculated that I was consuming about 4000-5000 calories a day. My job has me on my feet and moving around most of the day, but it was not enough to offset the amount of food I was eating everyday. To make matters worse, I was consuming 75% of my calories between 8:00pm-11:30pm. I’d then fall asleep around midnight and wake at 6:00. Not only was I not taking care of my physical health, I also wasn’t taking care of my mental or emotional health. After experiencing a complete breakdown, I decided to take my life back into my hands.

After pretending my scale didn’t exist over the past couple of years, I decided I needed to face my fear and insecurity and see what I really weighed. 195lbs. I had gained 60 pounds in under 2 years. I felt so ashamed of myself. I got on several weight loss subreddits to seek inspiration as I was too embarrassed to consult my doctor after gaining such a significant amount. I discovered the ketogenic diet and felt I would have the most success by cutting out my go-to comfort foods: carbs. I won’t lie, I didn’t stick to it 100% of the time, nor did I set myself up for failure by demanding 100% from myself. I would say I limited my carbs to 20g/day approximately 85% of time. Because of the nature of the keto diet, I found myself feeling not only satiated at the end of the day, but also sick and tired of the limited options after 3 weeks of dieting. Seriously. I could only eat so many pork rinds and steaks before I didn’t even want to look at food anymore. It worked though! I lost 15 pounds in my first two months. I didn’t change anything else. I didn’t exercise, I didn’t count calories, and worst of all (for me), I didn’t address the other problem areas in my life.

As the weight began to come off, I started to get attention from men that I hadn’t gotten in a very long time. Because of this, my partner at the time began to beat me down even more than he already had. I fell into a deeper depression and started to lose sight of my weight loss goals. When he decided to ramp up his cheating, I saw an opportunity to go get help with my mental health. Together with my incredible therapist, I was able to come up with a plan to get out. Once I was able to take back control of my life, I started to put all the pieces together. I began counting calories and macros, I took my dog on longer walks to enjoy the fresh air, I engaged in activities with my friends and family I had lost touch with over the years, and I kept reading all of the wonderful posts in this community that helped keep me inspired.

After losing 30 pounds, I felt disciplined enough to stop the keto diet. I had begun dating and honestly, I didn’t want to have to explain my odd meal choices to any prospective partners (“May I please have two cheeseburgers with no buns and a coffee with heavy cream?” doesn’t exactly set the mood). I now realize I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but I was struggling with severe self esteem issues. I was able to lose another 15 pounds by making conscious choices and being mindful about realistic calorie counts. I actually overestimated by about 15-20% when eating meals I couldn’t accurately calculate (i.e. restaurant meals and meals prepared by others) to help me stay on track.

Fast forward to 2022, and I was feeling like a forgotten balloon you find behind the couch a few weeks after the party. I was feeling thin, but incredibly out of shape. I started weight lifting and practicing light yoga and barre to attempt to tone up. My “after” picture was taken 10 weeks into training. I finally feel not only beautiful again, but I feel healthy!!! For years I just wanted to look as beautiful as the women I see online and in person, but through my transformation I learned that feeling healthy felt SO much better than feeling attractive. In fact, feeling healthy has made me more attractive! My complexion has never looked better, I smile constantly (goodbye RBF), and I look good in my skin! Do I think I look perfect? Far from it. But I’m incredibly proud of the progress I’ve made and I hope to inspire anyone who may be feeling like there’s no way out of their rock bottom. If you or anyone you know is struggling, please don’t hesitate to seek help or reach out! I’m happy to respond to any questions you might have. Thank you for letting me share my story, but most of all, thank you for being my source of inspiration for the past several years.

TLDR: Gained a ton of weight. Lost 79 personal pounds and 250 pounds of abusive jerk.

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