I’m 5’2” and due to a medical condition, have been overweight most of my life due to weight being very difficult to lose. In 2014 I was at my heaviest at 230 and I was so miserable. Doctors never gave me any good advice on how to lose weight other than “diet and exercise”, but the problem was what works for the majority of people with losing weight didn’t apply to me. Nutritionists and dietitians couldn’t help either, because I didn’t fit in a bucket of what they knew how to treat. I realized then I could either accept me as the way I am, or figure things out on my own and see what happens. I finally decided to do something about it.
Everything I tried, I did after doing research on the Internet, and seeing what other people who have the same medical situation as me did that worked for them. It was trial and error. The changes were small at first, such as going for a 20 minute walk each day, cutting out junk food. It felt so pathetic at the time, that walking was a struggle for me, when I was seeing people do amazing things with their bodies in the gym and I couldn’t even walk half a mile without needing to stop and sit down a few times.
I kept it up though, and I realized that for me my body responded very well to strength training and a high protein diet. Cardio had never done much for me, I needed to use my muscles, as weak as they were at the time. I couldn’t do chest flies with 5lb weights when I started. It was discouraging, even more so when the numbers on the scale increased due to putting on muscle and retaining water because I’m actually getting stronger. I stopped paying as much attention to the scale after a certain point and focused on my body measurements. That helped me mentally and grounded me when I saw the numbers go up, but my waistline shrink.
It took me 4 years and I got down to my all time low of 140! However the diet I was on wasn’t sustainable and switching it up got me to 150, but I was healthier and stronger with that change. From 2018-early 2020 I’ve maintained that weight, although my goal was to be 135, but life threw some curveballs my way and I wasn’t able to get there. Then the pandemic hits and I gained 15 lbs, 5 of which I lost. I’m struggling to lose the weight again, and the initial weight gain of starting a new workout can be demotivating, but I just have to keep at it.
I realize that to some I may have lost little weight over a very long period of time, but to me it was monumental, and the fact that I could even lose that much weight, with no surgery, no professional coach, just figuring things out with my diet and exercise regardless of how long it took made me proud.
It took me years but I did it.
Edit: typos
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/o387it/7_years_ive_managed_to_keep_the_weight_off_went/
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