Recently I hit a milestone and it made me introspective. I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on what has happened, and also share with the community that has helped inspire me.
In April of this year, I was 460lbs. I'm a 6'3" man in my late 30s. I have a large frame and I have always filled it out by being morbidly obese, even as a child. I ate fast food or I'd order out almost every day. I had tried counting calories before but it never stuck, and I never succeeded in any other diet. I'm also chronically lazy, so I told myself I was happier being fat than dealing with that stuff. When COVID came around, I didn't have a big change of heart. I just decided to try again, because I hated how being so fat ruins so many things for me.
One day I started to track my meals in an app (My Macros+, although any tracker would work). I saw the large calorie count I had every day, so I looked at what foods I enjoyed that might not be as bad. Less pizza, more chicken. Less hamburgers, more eggs. That put me around 2000 calories a day. I started to lose weight, averaging out to around 8-12 lbs per month.
I continued to track food and calories. I kept looking for new foods to enjoy that wouldn't have a huge impact on my daily totals, so I never felt like I was forcing myself to eat anything. I'd drink sugar-free powder mixes to take the edge off my craving for soda. I planned my next day's meal in advance, and I started to prep my meals to make it so I only really had to cook 1 meal per day at most. The lbs kept dropping at a consistent rate, and I finally dropped under 400lbs for the first time in a decade. I would mess up from time to time, giving into a craving and peaking back up to 3000+ calories in a day, but I never punished myself for it. As long as those days are rare, they don't seem to slow me down too much. I'm down to around 1,600 calories most days, around 500 per meal.
There is some great stuff that I've experienced so far:
- Putting clothes that are too large for me now into storage. I've lost about 2-4" off my waistline and a lot of my old pants didn't fit. The older stuff I had tucked away seems to though.
- People noticing I've lost weight. I didn't tell anyone, because that opens the door to the chance that I would fail and they would know I failed. Neurotic, but true. But people who I don't see so often now bring it up. I don't see a ton of change in myself, but the fact that they do makes it more real for me
- It is easier to get up off the floor. I can also climb stairs correctly with my "weak" knee, where before I'd need to favor it or push up on a railing. I generally just don't get as exhausted as quickly, although I'm still obviously not in any kind of good shape
There is also some unfortunate stuff:
- I think about food a lot. I do my best to limit it, but it is on my mind more than I like. I find myself missing just gorging myself and moving onto other stuff for the rest of the day. The thought also grosses me out.
- I am not even 1/2 way to my goal of being under 300. I find myself worrying the progress will taper off and I'll still be fat. Every time my weight jumps up without explanation (or down) it makes it feel like my actions aren't related to the outcome. I know that isn't true intellectually, but it is a feeling I have a lot of mornings.
If you're reading this and having trouble getting started, I'll share what has worked for me, and what hasn't. I've tried to reshape how I intend to live my life. So I make meal plans and buy groceries and prep meals. I eat foods I enjoy, and pepper in stuff that is bad for me (like french bread pizza). It lets me lose weight without running out of willpower. But the downside to that plan is I don't exercise, and I don't spend time calculating micro-nutrients. These are good things, but I have trouble imagining doing either for the rest of my life. And if I don't see myself continuing it forever, I do not start it. I've "dieted" before and I always stopped once I hit a roadblock because I was out of willpower to stop myself from dumping it and ignoring the problem some more.
In hindsight, it is easy to see those behaviors in myself, and I know they're still there. My hope is that with relatively minor changes (minor to me, at least) to how I live my life, I can keep losing weight. Ideally until I drop under 300 and average out to a maintenance weight in the 200s somewhere. Good luck to my, and to all of you!
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/jmfpqo/70_down_100_to_go/
No comments:
Post a Comment