Weighed myself last night at 184.9! Weighed myself this morning again and it was like 183.8 or something so I'm just going with the 184.9. Halfway there, then I'll decide whether to recomp or do a slow, clean bulk.
Dropped 4% in bodyfat so far - I can't really see it but measuring my waistline and such I can see I've dropped 2-3 inches there. I'm ready for 170lbs lol
After three months of mild calorie deficit and improvement, I wobbled today and have eaten around 2,700KCal. Posting to say for the sake of other people who wobble, that tomorrow I will be back to my normal intermittent fasting and amounts and carrying on as before.
Don't let a wobble make you think you've failed and stop what you're doing. Just accept it, see if there are any triggers you might be able to eliminate to stop it happening again, and then carry on with what's been working for you.
This is my attempt to document what's finally working for me, in case it can help someone else.
Main points: Mid 20s Female, I’m down 17lbs using Intermittent Fasting, and finally feel like I have a chance of getting to my goal weight.
So, my journey started this June. A potential life-changing event prompted me to get an e-bike, and soon after, my roommate and I embarked on a new life of being ‘people who regularly went on bike rides’. We have these old railroads converted into trails, so we can bike in a straight line for hours. It's pretty therapeutic. I could do a whole 1k words on the biking aspect alone. If you’re considering it, don’t jump for an ebike though. The increased weight can really be a drag if you’re pedaling without motor help, and doubly so if you’re riding while fasted.
I also changed my diet to be much more protein-focused. Once you start trying to reach certain macro goals, you start intuitively cutting out useless calories. I couldn’t justify chips and ice cream when I had to try and fit another 30g of protein into my day. I cut out my daily sodas and juices too.
So I started moving more, loosely tracking what I ate, and cut out a lot of junk...
**BUT, even after beginning that new lifestyle, I still wasn’t really losing weight.**
This was just the latest chapter in a long story. I’ve always been pretty overweight, ever since childhood. My highest weight was 250lbs, and my weight before this current arc was around 237. I’d had a few half-hearted weight loss attempts thus far:
* In my teen years, my doctor told me I was on track for cholesterol meds. I lost a little weight, but I don’t recall doing much differently.
* In high school, I tried keto. I can definitely say that it was executed quite poorly. I basically snacked on pork rinds to the point of nausea… no real results there.
* A few years back, I even tried Intermittent Fasting. That attempt was a mess. I pushed myself without listening to my body, without being conscious of what I was eating, and I didn’t change any other part of my lifestyle. I threw in the towel after feeling like shit.
So, back to this summer, where I'm stuck. I'm doing all this "good stuff" with biking and protein, but the scale isn't moving.
Then, I discovered Intermittent Fasting again, completely by accident. I’m a binger of YouTube essays. My (re)introduction to IF started with a video about the relationship between spending and dopamine.
As someone who suffers from doom scrolling, reading addiction, that seemed worth a try. I wasn’t even thinking about the weight loss benefits. I just opened up the fasting tracker app that had been sitting unopened for years and started doing some easy 14:10 fasts.
Then I needed something else to listen to at work, and on a whim, I asked Google for a book recommendation on fasting. It recommended Jason Fung’s ‘Obesity Code’. That book started a journey that kinda turned me into an Intermittent Fasting Evangelist. I listened to his lectures, his interviews, everything.
Here’s my low-level understanding after all that listening, and what made it all click:
It's all about insulin. When you eat, insulin is released to store energy. But if your body is resistant to insulin, it overproduces it, which promotes the production of fat. So even if you eat a meal, instead of that food being made available for you to burn immediately, more of it will be stored away.
How do you prevent that? By becoming more insulin *sensitive*. And how do you do that? By going prolonged periods of time without raising your insulin.
Enter, fasting!
During fasting, your insulin levels return to baseline. Your body uses up the free glucose, then starts breaking down stored energy—first from the liver, and finally, from your fat.
So here's the key concept I landed on: **Eat WHOLE, SATISFYING meals, and then fast.**
If you cut down your eating to the point that you’re hungry even after eating, your body will start to go into ‘starvation mode’, where it starts scaling down a lot of processes in order to save energy. In more sciency terms, your Basal Metabolic Rate will go down if you suddenly cut your calorie intake. So the key to preventing that, is eating meals that get your body to release hormones signaling satisfaction and fullness. Meals rich in fat, protein, and carbs from low-processed whole grains and VEGGIES(and fruit) are the key here. Personally, I usually eat until I am ‘full’, but my meals are tons of veggies and meat. A theme you’ll hear often from Jason Fung is that ‘Calorie Quality matters’, not just ‘Calorie Quantity’.
Now for the grand finale: Since July, I’ve gone from 237 to 220lbs. So, 17lbs in 3ish months, but that isn’t really accurate since I have gotten more serious and locked in as time went on. The majority of my weight loss has been in the last couple of months. I'm currently doing daily fasts ranging from 16 to 20 hours, slowly ramping up to 24 hour fasts (done two so far).
I know this is a mess of a word wall rn, but I hope anyone interested might be willing to have a convo about this. I’m happy to talk for hours and answer any questions. I know there are a lot of topics I didn't touch on, and there are lots of interesting things I could mention, from a reframing of protein needs, to common misconceptions, etc.
*disclaimer, I did run this through ai, because the first version was a word vomit disaster
I watched all that too and started fasting - it's done wonders for me. One meal a day helps massively, with the occasional longer fast. I'll be going away for this weekend and doing a 90 hour fast, I'm expecting that to get rid of up to half a stone based on previous experience. I'm so relieved with not having to calorie count any more.
In the past 3-4 weeks I have lost around 4 or 5 kilos, down from 107 to hovering around 102. I know that it's only been a very short amount of time since I've been consistently losing weight, but I'm already down around 8 kilograms from my heaviest (around 110 kilos around a month or 2 ago). My short term goal in the next few weeks is to get back down to a 2-digit weight.
The thing is, around 2 and half years ago, my weight was in the mid 70s, and I've been consistently gaining. A very small part of it I suspect was because I really went hard at the gym but that doesn't excuse the fact that I slipped in terms of my habits. Often I would overeat and drink heavily, and besides lifting I neglected cardio.
My (very) long term goal weight is to get back down to close to my original weight (approximately 73 kilograms) in order to no longer be obese or even overweight. I think a quick but still reasonable time period for this is around a year.
Recently I've really reflected on my weight gain and what really put it into perspective was how I put on around HALF my original body weight, and now I'm aiming to lose a whole third of my body weight.
As for how I've been losing weight, I have only really been moderately reducing what I eat for each meal, and quitting drinking. I don't drink soda and eat very little sweets and almost never fast food. I understand that for real tangible weight loss, it's generally easier to increase your caloric deficit via eating less calories instead of doing more exercise.
I wanted to ask the frens on the farms about general tips and experiences with weight loss; more specifically if I should consider getting a prescription for some kind of weight loss medication, and if it is likely for me to have excess skin after losing weight.
I lost 10,7 kg (23.5 lbs) in 67 days. I ate five meals a day, totaling 1,600 calories. Calorie-counting apps are a great invention. I would like to lose another 20 kilos. I'm afraid my progress will slow down, so I plan to start exercising after things at work settle up a little.
From 11k steps a day to an office job. Oof. Even if I haven't physically gained much, mentally I feel obese suddenly. I need to start going on walks again.
@You Triggered My Autism Congratulations. You seem to have done really well, and interesting links. You want to talk about Intermittent Fasting, you're right about the insulin resistance and rebalancing. My own view is that fasting is more of a health thing than a weight loss thing. It would be incredibly easy to intermittent fast and still put on weight, just by eating the wrong foods and quantities in the periods you do eat. And yet it does help. I think it helps because it gets people out of the sugar-swing cycle. It's not the only way to break that cycle - but the prolonged periods of letting your blood sugar settle down are a good way to kick start it. I think it also helps because it gets you used to hunger and no longer thinking of it as something you must obey. Instead you notice it and get on with things. Eating a satisfying meal to let your body know that there's still food available, it's just getting it at different times, is a good thing.
I do caution people though that the real proof is in the long term. Can you lose weight over a day? Easy. Can you lose it over a week? Anybody can. Keep losing it over a month? Doable. Half a year? Yes. Keep losing weight for a whole year without starting to put it all back on? That's the real test. I think Intermittent Fasting is a very good way to kick start things and develop new habits. And it's good for the health (usually). Only one component of weight loss though, and not the only way to do it. Good though. I prefer the daily Intermittent Fast, of only eating between 12pm and 8pm. If you do a lot of sports or working out, I think that can be more helpful because it gives you more opportunities to replenish your muscles after exercise. I don't really like the day off style ones. I also think they're more likely to cause someone to fail them.
I wanted to ask the frens on the farms about general tips and experiences with weight loss; more specifically if I should consider getting a prescription for some kind of weight loss medication, and if it is likely for me to have excess skin after losing weight.
I'm against it. They seem effective for a lot of people in breaking a cycle they're stuck in but you can break that by doing traditional methods such as calorie counting, keeping a journal, etc. You're going to have to change your lifestyle to keep the weight off. And so my view is just start doing that and you get to know your body better as you do. I also have no idea how well they synergise with exercise or sports where you're body actually needs the nutrients and energy.
My recommendations are to immediately start tracking everything you eat. EVERYTHING. It gets pretty easy and quick to do the longer you do it and the more you build up a library of meals you typically eat. And at the same time, weigh yourself every morning. Get an app that will show you averages over a week. You can easily go up or down by half a kilo from one day to the next just through normal processes. The minimum period you should be comparing over is one week's average to another week's average.
Once you're doing both of these things you will start to get a good feel for what your maintenance calorie intake is. And then you can start dropping below that by 10% and just keep it up. Intermittent fasting can help. Cutting out snacks and eating only whole meals is a big help as well for most people.
Your goal isn't to lose 3kg in a month. Your goal is to lose 20kg over a year. Or whatever is appropriate for your current health and weight. But the point is the only thing that works is sustained weight loss through changes in how much you eat and what you eat. 500kcal of salad is going to do you a lot more good than 500kcal of chocolate, even though the energy is the same. The salad will take more energy to digest, it will release the calories more slowly avoiding a sugar spike that causes you to overeat to compensate, it will take up a lot more volume for the same amount of energy creating more of a sense of fullness over time and slowing down the passage of food through your gut. Which is actually how some of the weight loss wonder drugs work. So why not just have the salad?
Look at it this way - we know diet and change of habit work. So why not start with that and keep it going for a month. You should see some results. You should feel better. If somehow it doesn't work, you can consider drugs later. But why make them your first resort? What have you done so far? How can we help you do it better?
I lost 10,7 kg (23.5 lbs) in 67 days. I ate five meals a day, totaling 1,600 calories. Calorie-counting apps are a great invention. I would like to lose another 20 kilos. I'm afraid my progress will slow down, so I plan to start exercising after things at work settle up a little.
That's a lot of weight loss. You can't expect to sustain that pace and frankly, it wouldn't be good to try and hold yourself to it. You've done well but 2kg a month is a good pace even for people very overweight. If you can do 2kg a month, you're going to lose 24kg over a year and that is a LOT. Statistically trying to sustain the sort of pace you're currently doing long-term is likely to result in a big rebound. I'm not trying to discourage you, quite the opposite - you've shown a lot of discipline and achieved a huge amount of weight loss. But might be time to start thinking about what's a sustainable long-term loss now.
That's a lot of weight loss. You can't expect to sustain that pace and frankly, it wouldn't be good to try and hold yourself to it. You've done well but 2kg a month is a good pace even for people very overweight. If you can do 2kg a month, you're going to lose 24kg over a year and that is a LOT. Statistically trying to sustain the sort of pace you're currently doing long-term is likely to result in a big rebound. I'm not trying to discourage you, quite the opposite - you've shown a lot of discipline and achieved a huge amount of weight loss. But might be time to start thinking about what's a sustainable long-term loss now.
I know that, and I don't plan on losing that much weight in a year. I expect my weight loss to slow down soon. I've already changed my habits significantly, and I'd like to keep it up. For example, I sleep more than I used to. I went from an average of four hours to at least six hours or more. I started cooking for myself and I eat regularly. I avoid sweet and fatty food. I also avoid energy drinks. Before, I would drink an energy drink for breakfast and eat one large meal for lunch or more often dinner, which would be enough for two people (because I ordered two meals lol). Since regular restaurants were usually closed at night, I would order junk food. Some days, I didn't eat at all; then, I would make up for it by pigging out Chantal style. Everyone I know who tried a keto or similar diet gained the weight back because they didn't learn to eat normally. My main goals are to feel better and to be able to hike and ride my mountain bike again without feeling like I'm going to die any minute.
I'm okay with it taking years. I'll be happy with any progress as long as I feel better and can enjoy my hobbies again.
Hey fatties trying to be skinnies. What drinks can you get while traveling that are low calories and still have taste? I tried Diet Coke and it's just fizz, there is no flavour there at all. I want things you can find at any news agents or fuel stop.
Hey fatties trying to be skinnies. What drinks can you get while traveling that are low calories and still have taste? I tried Diet Coke and it's just fizz, there is no flavour there at all. I want things you can find at any news agents or fuel stop.
I just go with the zero sugar sodas if I'm on the go at a gas station.
If I'm at a grocery store, I'll pick up sparkling water. The only problem (and slightly pl'ing here) is that being a southerner, it's hard to give up sweet tea.
As for my most recent weigh in. I've fluctuated a lot, but am currently at 305lbs.
Hey fatties trying to be skinnies. What drinks can you get while traveling that are low calories and still have taste? I tried Diet Coke and it's just fizz, there is no flavour there at all. I want things you can find at any news agents or fuel stop.
There's a brand that is essentially flavoured fizzy water yet unlike every other brand of flavoured fizzy water it actually tastes good and will probably give you that hit of drinking a nice soda even though it's not. I couldn't remember the name of the brand though they sell it in the Co-Op. For you, I have literally just spent three minutes searching their site to find it!
There's a purple one as well which is also nice though I prefer this. I don't drink it normally though my friend loves it. For something that is so low in calories, it tastes really good. And will give you the hit of drinking a soda, well - without the uncomfortable sugar rush anyway. It also doesn't have lots of weird sweetners, just sucralose which is alright, imo.
There's also Huel. That is not a diet drink in anyway. It's an actual meal replacement. BUT I mention it because it too manages to taste really good without any nasty stuff and it also has a very good nutritional balance in terms of proteins, fat and carb. It's good on the go to prevent binge compensating when you're not able to do a normal routine or prepare meals. Just be aware it isn't a diet product, it's actual food. Even has fibre. The chocolate one is the best imo. They do a caramel one but it's too sweet for me and I have never liked anything banana flavoured that isn't a banana. Anyway, Rubicon is a good recommend if you want something fizzy but healthy.
There's a brand that is essentially flavoured fizzy water yet unlike every other brand of flavoured fizzy water it actually tastes good and will probably give you that hit of drinking a nice soda even though it's not. I couldn't remember the name of the brand though they sell it in the Co-Op. For you, I have literally just spent three minutes searching their site to find it!
There's a purple one as well which is also nice though I prefer this. I don't drink it normally though my friend loves it. For something that is so low in calories, it tastes really good. And will give you the hit of drinking a soda, well - without the uncomfortable sugar rush anyway. It also doesn't have lots of weird sweetners, just sucralose which is alright, imo.
There's also Huel. That is not a diet drink in anyway. It's an actual meal replacement. BUT I mention it because it too manages to taste really good without any nasty stuff and it also has a very good nutritional balance in terms of proteins, fat and carb. It's good on the go to prevent binge compensating when you're not able to do a normal routine or prepare meals. Just be aware it isn't a diet product, it's actual food. Even has fibre. The chocolate one is the best imo. They do a caramel one but it's too sweet for me and I have never liked anything banana flavoured that isn't a banana. Anyway, Rubicon is a good recommend if you want something fizzy but healthy.
Their cherry and pineapple ones look really good. They even use the fruit they say on the label and don't pad it with apple juice. I'll try and get some this week and go it a try.
I'm okay with eating on the go. It's just finding low sugar drinks that taste of something. No point trying to keep a healthy weight if you down 3 bottles of Pepsi while running errands.
Their cherry and pineapple ones look really good. They even use the fruit they say on the label and don't pad it with apple juice. I'll try and get some this week and go it a try.
I'm okay with eating on the go. It's just finding low sugar drinks that taste of something. No point trying to keep a healthy weight if you down 3 bottles of Pepsi while running errands.
It's genuinely really nice. Just don't look up any ads or reviews unless you want a bunch of soyfaced horror-marketing that will make you want to not buy it on principle.
Hey fatties trying to be skinnies. What drinks can you get while traveling that are low calories and still have taste? I tried Diet Coke and it's just fizz, there is no flavour there at all. I want things you can find at any news agents or fuel stop.
Hey fatties trying to be skinnies. What drinks can you get while traveling that are low calories and still have taste? I tried Diet Coke and it's just fizz, there is no flavour there at all. I want things you can find at any news agents or fuel stop.
Being fat just destroys your taste buds unfortunately. Especially if you're insulin resistant. They do bounce back if you lose the weight, but, well, you have to lose it.
I'm a big believer in training yourself to adapt to drinking water, but in answer to your question, diet Dr. Pepper is a treat, especially that strawberries and cream flavor.
As for how I've been losing weight, I have only really been moderately reducing what I eat for each meal, and quitting drinking. I don't drink soda and eat very little sweets and almost never fast food. I understand that for real tangible weight loss, it's generally easier to increase your caloric deficit via eating less calories instead of doing more exercise.
Cutting out the alcohol is huge. If you've been slowly gaining with consistent habits, it doesn't take much restriction to go below maintenance calories.
Go walking around the block every morning when you wake up or after work. Every day. Never miss it. This might be easy for you. It might not. The point is to do it every day.
Once you're not winded by doing that, pick the next largest path -- two blocks, or an extra half block. Your goal is to be able to do 1 mile without getting winded. Then your goal is to do 1 mile without sweating. Then your goal is to survive 5 miles without stopping.
Right at the start of September I got entangled in a pretty stressful emotional situation which I've been handling... better than expected honestly. I'm normally no good at this stuff
I've zero food noise in the evening. I'd started a bit of a cut to weeks previous and was white knuckling the sugar/carb withdrawals and they got much easier in the evenings where it's normally troublesome once I started nac
Particularly noticeable because once I got contacted over the situation in my mind I was thinking "this is going to fuck me" because I stress eat like a mother fucker
When I copped that I was having an easier time despite the stress levels, particularly emotional stress levels, going through the roof it got me thinking why I was having an easier time of it
Did a little googling, sure enough, there's some interesting suggestions that it can help with compulsive behaviours
