My original introduction and 45 progress thread is here. It didn’t get a lot of attention, but time for an end-of-goal update. It’s a happy ending (new beginning?) for me and I hope it helps, inspires a few others. I have 119 days logged with MFP. My goal weight was achieved and maintained for a month now. I’m really happy but not sure what to do next.
What I lost: I started at 103kg / 227 lb and looked like this. I had an obese BMI (about 31) when I started. Beginning in early November 2015, my goal was to reach a healthy BMI by my 40th birthday in June 2016. However, I found I lost at a steady rate – see my Libra chart. I kept waiting for the honeymoon period to finish and a slower rate of loss to set in but, apart from a little bump around Christmas, I just kept steadily losing quite quickly. This encouraged me a lot and I kept at it. By January I looked like this. I reached my goal of a BMI <25 by Valentine’s Day and now sit around 77-78kg / ~178 lb and look like this.
NSFW! – No shirt: Me in my “fat” jeans
How I lost it: I counted calories and logged them with MyFitnessPal. My target was 1500 calories per day (which I think is as low as MFP lets you go) with 1 cheat day a week plus “special occasions”. As you can see from my 90 day log I wasn’t fantastic at sticking to those calories. But I supplemented exercise by running for 30 minutes + walking for 60 minutes every day. I started doing a weekly ~20km ride with a buddy and a weekly long run (10 – 20 km) by myself. As a result, my net calories were pretty much on point.
The changes I made to my meals was relatively small. I cut out fries and didn’t visit most of the places that sold them (e.g. Maccas). Though I still had some glorious take out / fast food from places like Grill’d – so long as I could fit it into my net calories.
Breakfast is cereal with a nice no-sugar low-fat Tasmanian yoghurt that I am now in love with, plus a few blueberries . A food scale helped me a lot here. Cereal is pretty calorie dense stuff and a serving size is only 40g, which is a fair bit less than I used to pour in.
Lunch might be a sandwich or a salad and a piece of fruit. I did find some bread with only 60 kcal a slice – pretty happy with it.
Dinner was pretty much the same home cooking as always – just reduced my serving size. I would only have a dessert / treat 1 day a week for most of the lose-it phase, but now I have them more often. I just again pay attention to the serving size. A 50c cone from Maccas is only 170 kcal, and it’s a 3 km round trip walk for me. I pretty much break even calorie wise if I take my daughter to get a cone.
I reduced my alcohol, especially beer, and especially at home.
Challenges:
Finding time: I work as an academic in the medical field – which is a pretty full on job, and I have a 3 hour round trip commute. Finding time to exercise was hard. But I work near one of the largest and most lovely urban parks in the world and I have access to a shower at work so I started to run 30 minutes during my lunch break, and walk the dog (sometimes with family) for 60 minutes each week night. That was enough, I just had to make it a priority.
Painful plantar fasciitis makes starting a run quite unpleasant, particularly in the morning. Good (expensive) shoes help but don’t solve the problem. It certainly feels better after the first 500m though, and painkillers help. I just push through it. I should probably see a podiatrist, but I’m worried they will tell me not to run – and I freaking love running. Moving forward though, I should probably switch to cycling.
Snacking and drinking with friends: This wasn’t so bad. I budgeted a cheat day each week and so could usually manage a night out with friends once a fortnight or so. This usually coincided with my long run, so I didn’t feel bad at all about the calories. I logged everything though and dialed back a bit in the chips. I freaking love those chilli noodle things but boy are they calorie dense!
WAT DO?: This is where I am a bit stuck. I have reached my goal much earlier than I expected to. I’m not sure what to do now. I’m much happier with my body, fitness and health but I’m still at the upper end of a healthy BMI range and could probably afford to lose a bit more. However, I have also lost a bit of muscle and would like to build that back. I don’t want to cut calories while also building muscle. I don’t think that would work and it seems like a great way to injure yourself.
I have committed to running a half-marathon before I’m 40 so I need to keep training with long runs. I’m not sure what to do after that and I really need a goal or I will get bored and drop the ball. I have increased my calorie target to close to maintenance (1860 kcal / day). I have started mixing in a little body-weight training (chin ups, push ups, planks) to try and replace the muscle I would have lost during my lose-it phase. I don’t have any weights beyond 2.5 kg hand weights, and ’m not sure if I could manage to introduce a gym membership to properly build muscle because of the time, cost, inconvenience but mostly because I would have no idea where to get started with that. Perhaps I need to talk to a personal trainer. Any tips, advice or resources for a gym-curious newbie would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading! Happy to answer any questions / comments.
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