Hi r/loseit! I'm back one-ish year later.
Here's my data: https://imgur.com/a/0fW4qfq
It's nearly the one year anniversary of reaching my goal weight. This year's goal was simple: maintain. Which honestly was sometimes harder than losing in the first place. I thought it might be encouraging to some people to see what I've been working on, and know it's possible to keep it off once you actually get it off.
I've tracked my CICO nearly every day, and I'm (mostly) vigilant about tracking for maybe two years now. I can usually eat about 1800 calories on a regularly active day, and typically I'm pretty active. Lazy days are more like 1400, and very busy days I can get away with 2200.
I think my biggest takeaway is that there will be fluctuations. I can wake up one morning at 137 and be at 134 that same afternoon. Or the other way around. Period week? Forget it. It can be really, really frustrating, especially seeing just a couple extra dumb pounds on the scale. It should be easy now! I lost so much and I can't handle another 1 and a half pounds??? Like... am I really on track? Is this really an extra 3 pounds or did I just retain a lot of water?? It's gotta be water weight, right? ...... right???
I'll hit 135, or just get really close, feel happy and proud, spend a week "celebrating" by eating whatever I want and rarely tracking, then I bump up to 137 and spend the next week feeling down on myself and cutting calories again. I'm trying to not do that so much anymore. I'm still working to find a happy medium where I'm not in either "who cares I can eat whatever I want, I hit my goal weight" or "whoops that was silly gotta cut big time this week" mode. You can see there's many times this year where my weight fluctuated because of this mindset.
What's been most helpful to me: honestly the fitbit, which is pretty good about tracking my activity and calories out and I just input my food. I'm not here to advertise so I imagine any activity or food tracker will do just as good of a job.
BUT! It's up to you to be truthful! You're not cheating anyone but yourself by logging less than you're actually eating, and the numbers that matter aren't the ones you log into the app. I know how difficult and sometimes shameful it can feel to eat more than you "should." And little stuff can really add up! Olive oil is a shocking number of calories if you're being honest with how much you're using to roast those veggies. Also peanut butter: what gives you the right to have so many calories??
Same story with drinking. Covid hasn't exactly encouraged my healthy drinking habits, but alcohol is purely empty calories. Log it anyway and maybe limit drinking to once or twice a week (she says, as someone who often does NOT limit her drinking to one or two days a week lol).
The next most helpful thing is WALKING! Walking is crazy good for you, and in my opinion, much more pleasant than running. Last summer my goal was to walk 5 miles per day, which I often did, solely so I could eat an extra 300 calories lol.
Bottom line: the work doesn't end when you hit your goal weight, which sucks tbh lol. Keep fighting the good fight!
TLDR: keeping it off is possible but also challenging, be honest with yourself, and keep coming back, even if you fall off the wagon.
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/mjmmgw/what_one_year_of_maintenance_has_looked_like_for/
No comments:
Post a Comment