So backstory/stats–
-I’m 5’3”, F, “small boned” and young adult weight around 120-125.
-Was 125 when I got pregnant with my first kid, summer of 2008 (I was 24).
-Was 190 when I gave birth (not a typo. A lot of it was water bc I was pre-eclamptic and had massive swelling, but at lot of it was just eating all. the. time.) in spring of 2009.
-By winter of 2009, I was 145 lbs. (not through any effort, just shedding water weight and breastfeeding). Got pregnant again.
-Fall of 2010 when I gave birth, back up to 190.
-By the following year, back to 145. Hung out at 145 until around when I turned 30, in 2013.
-My 30’s was just a slow and steady weight creep up from overeating and drinking. Occasionally would attempt to calorie count for like, a few weeks, never stuck with it.
-By spring of 2022, I was 172 lbs.
-Spent that summer losing weight by tracking my food and being active. Dropped to 158 from June to Sept. 2022.
-Went back to work (I’m a teacher) and stopped tracking my food, fell into old habits. Scale broke and I didn’t get a new one.
-Fall of 2023, I turned 40 years old. Bought a scale again. I was at 166 lbs.
Recent weight loss “journey””
Hitting 40 last fall is when I started to actively just “do it” and lose weight. Basically no exercise, just tracking calories. Joined this subreddit at that time, read a lot, joined the monthly accountability thread a few times. Used a tracking app religiously. Did frickin awesome. It was “slow” going but that’s how it is when you’re short and on the “1200 is enough” train. Dropped 20 lbs over the course of about 4 months.
Now I’m stalled. I’ve been “maintaining” around 146 (with a margin of 2 lbs or so either way) for the past few months, basically without trying. I only track my calories sporadically (although I have kept up the habit of weighing every morning after pee).
In a way this is good. I’m not overeating anymore. I don’t even *want* to overeat. Like, my portion sizes now vs a few years ago, the ability to feel “okay that’s enough” without overstuffing myself to the point of heartburn (used to have heartburn constantly, now I haven’t had *any* for half a year). It’s like I’ve retrained my hunger habits. I know “set point” isn’t actually real but it’s like, I feel like I’ve reset my “set point” lol.
I feel good. The lack of heartburn, the extra mobility, small things that just make me feel better.
I’m way down from the BMI-obese that I was in 2022. My waist has gone from 39 inches to 31.5 inches. Hips from 43.5 to 39. I went from an XXL underwear to a M underwear (I still can’t wrap my head around this).
I don’t hate how I look. Do I look as “hot” as I did at 24, lol no, but I’m 40 and have birthed/nursed two kids, it’s not like my body will ever be 24 years old again. I’m at peace with that.
So my dilemma:
How do I wrap my head around getting on track to lose the last 15-20 pounds? And should I?
I think I’m having a hard time shifting from “maintain” to “lose” again, because so many of my reasons for losing in the first place, I’m kind of already there. And I’m also like– I *know* I have loose skin from my crazy pregnancies, but right now it’s just kind of “eh” because there’s also fat there still padding it out a bit, even though I did lose a lot of belly fat. But if I keep going will it actually be aesthetically worse?
*But* I am still overweight. Medically it would be good for me to get a bit lower and actually hit “healthy” weight. And as much as I’m liking the way I look now vs. how I did a year ago, I might *love* how I look if I lost that last 15-20.
Part of this is also, I’m poor as hell so buying new clothes is a major expense, and I don’t want to buy clothes until I’m sure that I’m going to be fitting them for a while. So right now all of my clothes are falling off me (except for the new underwear I bought bc I literally had to). At my size, 20 lbs makes a *big* difference in how clothes fit. Should I just accept my current size and by the clothes, or buckle down and get back to losing weight, give a few more months, and THEN buy the clothes?
Advice? Encouragement? Anyone been in this situation?
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