... then naturally got back on track and didn't gain weight during the whole ordeal!
This year has been a roller coaster. I lost 102 lbs since February (332=>230), moved across the country, started a new job... but about 3 months ago I suffered an open fracture in my right leg and had to get two bones fixated after a bike accident.
Despite the accident, I kept up my weight loss (still making sure I got the nutrients I needed), I was back to working full time almost immediately, and I kept up with the gym (I think literally hobbling in on a walker to make it to appointments with my trainer is now a core memory for me)
Unfortunately doing all of that, combined with the stress of the recovery started to take a toll on me. And so when I hit a plateau (which had happened before without issue), I think it was the "straw that broke the camels back", and I got pretty depressed.
The old me would have went off the deep end and started ordering Uber Eats for every meal, but this time my eating habits didn't undo anything!
I started the month at 233 and fluctuated up and down but the trend stayed just barely negative. A few days ago I naturally decided to go back into my usual deficit, today the first day I counted calories since then and I'm at 230.
Things that I'd say helped limit the damage:
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I stopped counting calories, but I still paid attention to what I ate. When I ordered out instead of ordering 2 large boxes of fried rice like the old days, I'd order a small box of fried rice and and something mostly protein to go with it because now I know how insanely caloric rice is even if I didn't know the exact nutrition facts of this specific rice, and I know that without protein I won't get full.
At one point I ate McDonalds (something I've avoided as it was one of my biggest issues before): I ordered a triple hamburger with no cheese because I'd be damned if I was going to waste almost 200 calories on extra Mac Sauce and cheese for a Big Mac like I used to (I would in the old days then multiply the whole order by 3 or 4...)
I feel like it's a basic thing that most people do, but I really never thought about what I ate deeply at all before this journey. I'd think about what I was going to eat in terms of literally thinking "what food am I going to acquire and eat" and stop at that. Now I think further: "I wanted a sandwich but I didn't eat all day, maybe today is not the day for a sandwich that's more bread than protein"
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I kept weighing myself. At this point in the game I know I didn't gain 5 lbs in a night, it's water weight, booze, and food. But the one day I overdid it at a bar and ended up downing an coffee then chowing down and gelato and tiramisu with a glass of port on the way, then weighed myself and saw that number spike and take days to return back down, was more than enough to remind me that: yes, my actions have consequences that last more than an evening!
Things that would have made this easier:
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Exercise. I paused my visits to my trainer thinking it'd be temporary since I was starting to feel overwhelmed by that and physical therapy. And by itself that wouldn't be the end of the world. But that caused me to start spending days at a time indoors without any activity. And that started a cycle where the longer that went by, the more guilty I'd feel about not going, and the more guilty I felt the more I'd try and block exercise as a whole out of my mind and be unmotivated to start...
Exercise hasn't helped me in terms of weight loss directly compared to caloric deficits, but indirectly it's clearly helping me cope with things, and I think it would have been easier to stay motivated through a plateau if I had kept up with my training sessions
Overall, I don't think it's a coincidence this happened right as I hit 100 lbs. I think I was extremely tired, and seeing myself hit that milestone got me wanting to get to enjoy the progress without the never ending "weigh every single calorie down to a squirt of ketchup" stuff weighing on me. And so I managed to do that, enjoy myself for a bit, and then when I got tired of the horizontal line on my weigh-ins I naturally went back on the path at my own pace.
The situation around this sucks, but this is a victory for me because I think it proved that when I reach my goal weight the are options other than "weigh ketchup for the rest of my life" and "go back to eating how I did when I was morbidly obese" and that's something I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. It gives me a lot of hope for the future.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/yadox8/nsv_hit_a_plateau_got_kind_of_depressed_stopped/
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