Weight loss journey started June 2023 at 225 lbs/102 kgs; I’m now at 174 lbs/78 kgs; a loss of 51 lbs/22 kgs!
Hello everyone! I'm a 27 y.o F standing at about 5’5; I work a desk job 40 hours a week. Before losing weight I was very sedentary. Weekdays I sat at my desk for hours and on the weekend I would just lay in bed.
So here’s how I lost 50 lbs/22 kgs from a once couch potato!
Firstly, for my eating habits the majority of my journey was just eating until I was only 70-80% full, while also cutting sugar/junk food. I love sweets and baked items, so cutting sugar was hard, but I found a quote that really helped me in the process.
“An urge is not a command.” Any time I wanted to eat because I was bored or was tempted by sweets, I would repeat this phrase in my head (sometimes out loud) and that would help me turn away without eating.
Now for exercising, in June 2023-Nov 2023 I would walk for 1 hour a day (during my lunch break at work) and this led to losing about 17 lbs/7 kgs (weighing at 208 lbs/94 kgs)!
In Nov 2023 is when I started going to the gym; I didn’t do much at the gym. I just went on the treadmill or elliptical and messed around with the speed and incline on the machines. For the treadmill, I never went above a speed of 3.0 or an incline of 10. I wouldn’t go below a speed of 2.5 or an incline of 4 (unless I was doing a cool down).
So, at this point I was doing 2 hours of walking M-TH, F-Sun I maybe walked for like 20-30 mins, not much.
With the addition of the gym in my routine, I had set a goal for myself that by the end of 2023 I wanted to weigh 200 lbs/90 kgs. I was able to hit this goal! On Jan 1, 2024 I weighed 198 lbs/89 kgs wooo yippeee
To continue losing weight I started looking into healthier meals, but honestly I only changed my lunch to have some greens LOL so my eating habits for the new year were:
-not eating breakfast (which I never really did anyway LOL)
-lunch: grilled chicken salad which consisted of lettuce, bell peppers, grilled chicken, avocado every now and then, topped off with lemon juice.
-dinner: whatever was made honestly, some examples of meals are some sort of meat, rice, beans, sometimes with bread or tostones/fast food dinner, but portion control
-snacks: great value fiber brownie bar (eat 1-2x a day), protein shakes (1-3x a week), fruits (4-5x a week)
From Jan 2024-Mar 2024 I lost another 10 lbs/5 kgs, weighing in at about 189 lbs/85 kgs now. This is with the above eating habits and exercising with walking and treadmill for 2 hours a day (1 hour during lunch and another hour after work) for 4 days a week. Sometimes I would try to workout on a Saturday, but honestly that didn’t happen much. But, I did switch my hour lunch exercise from walking to climbing 3 flights of stairs. I did this because climbing burns more calories compared to walking.
However, from April 2024-June 2024 is when things went a little south, or when I plateaued. At this point, I was really tired of trying to lose weight, portion control, putting in so much effort, and not being where I wanted to be weight wise. Also different scales were telling me different numbers, it was a difference of 5 lbs/2 kgs sometimes. So I slacked off with exercising, I went from 2 hours of exercising to 1 hour, and I went back to eating til I felt full (not every meal, mostly for dinners).
Near the end of May I was feeling really down because soon it would be a full year since the start of my journey and I was still in the 190s-180s lbs (depending on the scale).However, hitting the one year mark kind of woke me up a bit because I started thinking what other ways would help me lose weight. I started googling and that’s when calorie deficit was brought up. I never really wanted to count calories because I was scared of developing an eating disorder, but I just told myself I will be responsible and begrudgingly started counting on 5/31/24.
I tried keeping my calories in the 1500-1700 range and I did slowly start to lose weight again; during the plateau my last weigh in was on 4/18/24 at 196 lbs/88 kgs and I didn’t weigh myself again until 6/17/24 with 185 lbs/83 kgs! Looking back now that was a great achievement, but in the moment I was only slightly happy because again I wasn't where I wanted to be and I felt like I wasted so much time.
That pretty much brings us to the current day! I have gone back to exercising at least 2 hours a day, sometimes I do 2 ½ hours OR I try to burn 800-1000 calories a day. I exercise 6 days a week now instead of 4 (this increase started in late June). I still try to keep my calorie intake to 1500-1700. I still have maybe about 30 lbs/13 kgs to lose, but losing 50 lbs/22 kgs is something to celebrate no matter how long it took!
Some things I wanted to note during my googling is I found what TDEE is and also found a sheet that helps you track it. Here is the link: ~https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/4mhvpn/adaptive_tdee_tracking_spreadsheet_v3_rescue/~
A big thing I wanted to say is that a lot of the time I still want to stop exercising LOL Losing weight is tough, but I’m just trying to grit my teeth and get to where I want to be. So to anyone struggling you’re definitely not alone.
If anyone wants to see my monthly exercise snapshots here is the link ~https://imgur.com/a/iN7xDGy~
Progress pictures ~https://imgur.com/a/NarH3o2~
TDEE Tracking Chart ~https://imgur.com/a/VDcvwrr~
If you've read this far thank you! i wish you all the best in your journey!!
