This past January I decided that I needed to focus on my health after 2 years of pretty much neglecting it, which includes increasing my fitness and losing weight, as well as focusing on my mental health. I'm down 22 lbs. as of today and feel motivated to keep going until I'm a healthy weight. I've done this through counting calories (1800 calories/day) and exercising daily. This is not my first time attempting to lose weight but I have a different mindset this time. I want to thank this community for giving me support and insights during this process.
What's been working:
- Consistency and staying under my calorie allowance about 80% of the time. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. My approach is that I will inevitably go above1800 calories, but as long as it's not not more than 20% over and not more than 20% of the time, I can still lose weight.
- Exercising at least 30 minutes every day, which some days is walking or riding my bike, others strength training or yoga. I'm still trying to build a routine that works for me.
- Self compassion is key. I used to beat myself up when I "slipped" off my diet but am working on being kinder to myself, reflect on what caused the slip up and just move on.
- No crazy diet trends or fads. I'm not doing keto, or intermittent fasting, or detoxing, etc. In the past, I've gotten on trends like doing green juice twice a day or thinking I needed to kickstart my weight loss with a "cleanse". It might work for a bit but I found it too restrictive. Now I just try to eat a sensible amount of each food group and eat mostly whole foods.
- Eating vegetables at every meal and filling up half my plate with vegetables.
- Getting enough protein (which as a vegetarian can be challenging, but I've realized I need to supplement with protein powder and protein bars).
- Cutting back on alcohol significantly, from before having a glass or two of wine every night, to now only drinking once a week if I'm out with friends.
- Cutting back on ordering food. Delete Door Dash, it will save your wallet and waistline.
- At the same time, not limiting myself if there is an occasion to indulge. Celebrating a friend's millstone birthday, I'm going to have sparking wine and cake and not fret about it.
- Aiming for slower weight loss- 1lb/week instead of 2. That means allowing myself a higher calorie intake instead of going as low as possible. I've averaged 1.5.
- I've realized weight loss isn't linear. Some days I am up a pound, then will be down two. Some times I don't see progress for a week or two. My weight loss graph is a zig zag. I see a lot of posts on this sub about people worried because they haven't lost weight after being stuck for a week or only been dieting for 2 weeks. I weight myself every day and look at the average (my scale does this for me). It took at least a month to notice the weight loss on myself, which was in some cloths fitting looser. My advice is to stick with it and look at long term trends. Trust the process.
- There is no one size fits all approach to weight loss. Yes, CICO. But some people work better if they restrict all trigger foods, whereas others eat those in moderation. Diets like keto work for a lot of people, others find it too restrictive. Take all weight loss advice, even mine, with a grain of salt.
What's been hard:
- The first month at least, I was constantly thinking about food and what I was going to eat. I watched an endless amount of health and fitness youtube and tiktok accounts. I read every post on this sub. It was getting obsessive. Using MFP to track everything was stressing me out a bit. I almost quit but decided to keep going. Things have gotten better but I do sometimes still think about weight loss a lot, which I need to work on.
- I've hit a plateau, most recently, one that lasted about 3 weeks. I admit I did have some big nights out during that time when I overindulged which didn't help. I came out of it but it was frustrating to see a lack of progress. It just sucked that there is so little room for error.
- Controlling emotional eating has been difficult. One of my favourite things after a hard day of work used to be ordering takeout and grabbing a bottle of wine and watching a favourite movie on my couch. Now, I'm trying to find better ways to cope but it's hard. I've been doing CBT to help with other mental health issues and find it does help to walk through some of those steps and do calming exercises. I find that going to a really good yoga class after work or going for walk and listening to my favourite album can give the same comfort as the pizza and wine. It's still hard and I have given in to the emotional eating a few times.
- I've learned that you need to make sacrifices in order to lose weight. That's the hard truth. I can't eat everything I want in as much quantity as I want. I need to turn down food I want in the moment. I have to drag myself off the couch some days to exercise. It sucks.
I hope that this post might give others motivation, that weight loss is a slow, long-term process, and you need to settle in for the long run, which means making choices that are going to be sustainable for you. You may have a different approach than I have but you need to realize what works for you. And please be kind to yourself.
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