After I 'discovered' CICO, and started losing weight, three of my friends have hopped on the bandwagon too. It's been slow and steady but we're all at the midpoints of our BMIs now and maintaining. I'm so proud to have helped them and to have shared science-based weightless instead of all the crap misinformation we've been fed for years.
I was a teen in the late 90s and early 2000s and we were all brought up (like many generations I guess) with a lot of diet misinformation. Weight loss was all about exercise and calorie counting=eating disorder. At most, a low-fat diet (that left one feeling deprived and generally crummy) was lightly tolerated as 'healthy'.
Fast forward to our 40s and everyone has been picking up a few kilos (for me it was around 20kg/40lbs lol). We're all healthy eaters and active people so it was seen as just being one of those things that is inevitable as you age. My doctor even said so! This weight gain was concurrent with a second wave of misinformation came from Instagram influencers who said things like all weight loss was disordered eating and things about accepting your setpoint no matter your weight, etc. so I had pretty much resigned myself to my weight.
My turning point came when I read a blog by a guy who said that despite his wife and daughter telling him he had an eating disorder just because he was calorie counting (which he very obviously didn't), had lost weight using an app. I downloaded Cronometer, found this incredible subreddit (thank you all, couldn't have done it without you, especially during the plateaus) and went from 2 points away from an obese BMI to the middle range of normal today (took one year).
As my friends noticed my weightloss, they asked about it and I shared the info with them (how to use and app and a list of advice advice I've copied below). And it worked (of course) with everyone! Great thing is that you don't need to believe in CICO for it to be true. It kinda makes me sad that we had so much misinformation that understanding CICO and seeing it work was a revelation.
As people who eat healthily and live active lifestyles it hasn't been a huge overhaul but rather a couple of tweaks. I suggested that they track calories (extremely accurately- no 'handfulls' of nuts) for a week to see what the high calorie parts of their diet were. For me, I was adding on over 500 cal a day with my daily peanut butter spoons and two glasses of wine habit. Another friend found it was her healthy trail mix snacking (450 cal) that was doing it. For one it was the cream in her multiple coffees (400 cals over) and for the third it was also wine and snacks. Everyone was delighted that it didn't mean cutting out anything but just being within that calorie budget.
I just feel so proud of all of us and so happy that we could do it in a healthy, scientific way after all those years of misinformation.
There are still some people (especially family) who are convinced that what I am doing is disordered eating just because of the calorie counting but it's been so wonderful to have some friends who see that it's not and have come on the journey with me!
(To confirm that my eating is not disordered: I've always had a great body image, even at my highest weight. But seeing my BMI so close to obese was a major wakeup call for my health. I started this journey to get to a normal BMI before fertility treatment, and I have a very healthy relationship with my body and food.)
I know so many people have had difficult, unsupportive experiences with their loved ones during weightloss so I just wanted to share this win!
P.S.as well a suggesting they use an app, this was the list I sent them, of some of my favorite things all gleaned from this subreddit):
•Start poorly, start slowly but start •Walking is a cheat code •Nothing tastes as good as the first and last bite •Volume eating •Can't outrun a bad diet •All calories are the same for weight-loss. Healthy food can be high calorie and you can lose weight by eating only fast food (though not that much -calories from a burger will not make you feel full) •Honest and consistent tracking is crucial •Weigh-in everyday to ride out fluctuations •Hunger= tells you how soon not how much you need to eat °Hunger isn't an emergency •Mediocre is better than nothing (for exercise as well) •Find out major culprits • Waist or waste (if you need to throw out food you can waste it on your waist or put in in the waste) •Eat veggies first at each meal • Trying to lose weight while drinking booze is like swimming with weights on • loosing weight it hard. Being overweight is hard. Pick your hard. •Don't eliminate things - find substitutes or different ways of enjoying your treats •Compare calorie deficit to financial budget •Eating the same foods can make things easier and help with decision fatigue •Log on 'bad' days. But don't make up for them. Just log and move on. It's good data! •Don't drink your calories •Log it and get over it •No such thing mysterious plateau that lasts more than 3 weeks, it's because you're not at a deficit! •You are probably thirsty not hungry •Have an emergency meal you like ready. Must have good snacks in car as well. •Try eating a little slower •Be 80% full •Fibre is cheat code • The store is your store. You can always go out and buy it. You don't need to keep it at home. •You already know what it tastes like •Mindset thing for shorties: If you're short with a low a TDEE, it's not unfair, it's just eating your share. •7700cal = 1kg of weight (to burn or to gain) -Adjust TDEE as you lose weight
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