Any fatties want to join me getting slim

[LimeJ]

Oh dear, I'm so tubby. I can't hide it any longer. I need help and support from other fatties who will understand 😭

Starting tomorrow, no more excuses. Please join me.

@morningtoncrescent62

Ha! I had decided the same thing. I will finish this week off, at deficit, so that I have done a straight 20 weeks. Then will run at maintenance for a fortnight.

Like you, this still means

• eating for nutrition (mostly - as now)
• tracking what I eat
• exercise
• accountability

It's not a holiday, it's chance to get some of the benefits of slightly upping my calories for a set period of time.

I am brilliant at losing weight. I think I have lost 300+lbs over multipl diets over my lifetime (give or take a few). I am shit at maintaining it. I have maintained 0lbs of that loss. Like you, I cannot always do what I've always done because I have proved that it doesn't work, long term. This time I must try something different if I want a different outcome. So will give this a go.

Soul sister, @WobbleWhenIRun! I must also have lost at least 300lb over the decades. It's always gone the same way. I lose the weight, down to about 9 stone. Then cravings completely get on top of me and before I know it, I'm 15 stone again. It then takes at least five years before I can summon up the energy to start the whole sorry business once more.

I've been thinking exactly the same as you about if I do what I've always done, I'll get the same result, so I need some changes. This time's already been different in that I'm eating much more healthily than any other time I've dieted. Hopefully the breaks, and the opportunity to practice new habits, will also be something new and different. I'm so happy that we'll be having our maintenance fortnights together so that we can compare notes!

Yes, healthy and yummy eating now will help us to maintain later.
It has come to a point where the only sweet thing that I crave is chocolate. The smell of it.... I love it! I had a little bit on my in between goals week. Target is not to have any more till I loose the next two stones.
This was the heaviest I have ever been, I managed to put weight steadily till 15 stones. I do hope it will not come back. I can see myself weighting weekly for the rest of my life, and watching what I eat each day. I am trying to learn to count calories in my head, so I can keep a mental track forever!

I'm so happy that we'll be having our maintenance fortnights together so that we can compare notes!

Yay! Also, we'll be like a little science experiment - to demonstrate if (or not) this works.

End-of-month weigh-in this morning and I'm dead chuffed with the result. 11 stone 9, BMI 28.8, so I'm officially overweight now, not obese, and by a reasonable margin!! That makes a loss of 8lb this month, and a total loss of 47lb since the start of lockdown.

I don't have words for how much I never want to go over 12 stone again.

Today marks the start of my maintenance fortnight, in pursuit of my actual goal which is to establish lifelong healthy eating habits. Let's see how this goes. Hooray for extra potatoes with my tea this evening.

Fantastic @morningtoncrescent62 that's really brilliant. What an achievement!

You are really inspiring me to keep at it and also focus on building a much healthier long term relationship with food.

I hope you enjoy your maintenance fortnight

Wow well done @morningtoncrescent62 that’s an amazing average loss of 2lbs per week!!! I am really interested to hear how your 2 weeks maintenance goes so please keep us updated. I feel like my body is ready for a break now too. It’s been 10 weeks but I have 6 weeks until I have 2 weeks of annual leave booked in so feel like I may as well keep going until then. @SansaClegane I have also had a “mini” loss this week of 0.7lbs but a loss is a loss! Also have finally accepted that our bodies do weird and wonderful things and a loss of “only” 0.8lbs could easily be followed by a big lose of 2lbs the following week if we don’t get disheartened.

@morningtoncrescent62 - great loss!

I need to finish this week off and then will be on my maintenance break from Monday onwards. Enjoy your potatoes

@morningtoncrescent62 Well done! That is a great monthly loss and an impressive total loss. Enjoy the break!
@notevenamum1 and @SansaClegane a loss is always an achievement, so enjoy it and well done!

I have put in the calculator my new weight and 2 stones loss target at a slower pace, but it came back with the very same calories per day , 1200 calories.
I may try another app just in case. But if works out so I do not really have to change anything in my current diet, which makes it easier
I have done 45 min bike today, alongside my 40 min walk to work. Also, today I have walked quite a bit at work. 30 min rowing yesterday, again with plenty of walking. I think I am starting to breath better and all! I still struggle sometimes with intense exercise, but I am doing better on the moderate range.
I also have some waist back, and the roll of fat around my belly is shrinking! I really want it gone forever! It is the part of my body that took longer to start showing any changes. I think it is super dense fat or something like that.

Oh, and I had to go into an office today that I haven't been to since the start of the year. You know that thing where everyone's reaction to your weight loss is so great it becomes a bit offensive again? Like - how rubbish did I look before? They reacted like I'd stepped onto the finale stage of The Biggest Loser. Someone even gasped.

Gasped!

It was embrassing .

That must have felt really good @WobbleWhenIRun
You got even a gasp

No!

I promise I am not humble bragging. Their reaction was too much for the small difference I've made.

Maybe they've been locked down with just each other for too long - v small office. But they all started to call out asking how much I've lost and what dress size I am now etc.

Honestly, I just kept mumbling about how I hadn't really kept track (ha!) and then tried to run.

They also asked what made me make the (great) change to my hairstyle. Spoiler: it just hasn't been cut since pre Covid. Except by me, towards the beginning.

No pressure for when I have to go back again in a few months. Maybe I'll dye my hair bright purple for it - give them something worth gasping at!

I would love purple and blue hair!
You think it is small changes because you see yourself every day. But they have not seen you for a while so they can appreciate the difference!

I would also love purple and blue hair but I think I'm past the age of acceptability now.

I had purple and blue hair (and pink at one point) 20 years ago. Now-a-days I sport some 'fetching" post lockdown white stripes

@WobbleWhenIRun I think you should take it as compliment and go with the mindset of - if you think this is good, wait till you see me in a few months time!

I've made some poor choices food wise this week so far, including consuming a whole box of fudge and over eating at dinner last night but I've also been more active generally this week and managed a couple of "runs" so I'm hoping the damage is limited.

Maybe they've been locked down with just each other for too long - v small office. But they all started to call out asking how much I've lost and what dress size I am now etc.

Well, it's great that your weight loss is noticeable, @WobbleWhenIRun, and it might be more noticeable than you've realised to people who haven't seen gradual changes the way you have. And that's very funny about your new lockdown hairstyle. But I also get what you mean about the embarrassment. It's one thing when people quietly say you look great, but having speculations on your dress size called out across the office sounds a bit mortifying. Anyway, take the win!

@Grimmauldface congratulations on your positive attitude to poor food choices. I actually think that's such an important part of developing a healthy relationship with food and eating. Poor food choices are going to happen from time to time, and there's a real art to noticing them, taking steps to limit the damage, and getting back onto plan.

I'm not finding this maintenance malarky as easy as I'd anticipated. I intended to increase portion size during the week, maintain a deficit of around 200-300 calories for each weekday, and allow controlled snacking at the weekend. I'm finding it hard, though, to increase portion size without feelings of guilt on the one hand, and worrying that I'll be accustoming myself to larger meals when I've got used to smaller ones, and worrying that I won't be able to cut them back down when the fortnight's over. I'm trying to tell myself it's OK, but I'm so used to either starving my body into submission or eating compulsively that 'normal' eating seems impossible. I know it's the thing I have to learn to do but boy is it difficult.

As I just read your post @morningtoncrescent62 the thought occurred to me, how crazy it is that something as natural as eating has become so hard for me to do "normally". It's always extremes with me and so much emotion attached to it. How do you relearn this and remove the emotion and just enjoy food again?

And now I think about it I realise how important the maintenance fortnight could be to the process (not that that is on my radar yet) and I'll be really interested to hear how those of you trying it get on and how you deal with it. I can see why you are finding it hard to adjust!

Thanks all. I shall endeavour to think differently about office call outs. And maybe consider purple hair...

Your last parapgraph is so interesting @morningtoncrescent62 because it matches my own feelings as Monday approaches. I am feeling increasingly nervous about it for all the reasons you say.

• will it be hard to cut back down again afterwards?
• am I just "cheating" and deluding myself it's a useful tool?
• how do I eat more without feeling guilty?
• how will those around me react; will they think I've just "fallen off the wagon" again?
• am I rocking the boat and shouldn't I just sail on?

Maybe this difficulty is why it is so important. I shall still do my fortnight but I can really see how it might not be as easy as it might seem.

p.s. @Grimmauldface fudge is my absolute weakness but one or two 'bad' choices alone do not make a difference. Allowing them to ruin the way you think about yourself, will.

The emotional change is, by far, the hardest bit. I watched Friddie Flintoff doc about his bulimia and, whilst that's not my illness, I recognised some of the thins some people were saying about the emotions of binge eating. I keep reminding myself that, at 40, I have had at least 25 years of my emotions being tied up with food in one way or another. It will take time to untie them.

I hope we all find the strength and peace to do so.

I find the emotional associations very hard to overcome, too. I've always used food as a reward and as a consolation - and often bound to situations too, like picking up a nice book and settling down on the sofa, always accompanied by a nice bit of chocolate.
So it's hard to break that kind of conditioning and re-learn that enjoyable things don't have to be food (especially sweet foods, in my case).
Anyway. I should have a decent loss on Sunday, I think - had two exams this week and been stressing about them so much; surely all this nervous energy must have burnt off the calories!

@WobbleWhenIRun I blame growing up in Cornwall - all that fresh air and freedom came at a price: life long addiction to fudge and pasties

@SansaClegane I hope the exams went well

I maintained this week - which was a relief actually.

It’s been a rough week for eating. My LO is waking a lot during the night to feed and I’m just exhausted, feeling like crap and worrying about going back to work. So it’s just been a week of comfort eating really :(

Hopefully I can get back on track for next week and the bad week will not catch up with me. Disappointing that I’m falling back into old habits even though I know how destructive they are.

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@fibeee don't beat yourself up about it. When you're tired your need for higher calories is overwhelming. Everyone struggles under those circumstances, whatever their weight.

I'm not convinced about these maintaining weeks people are talking about. It feels confusing, like undoing do new habits and good work you've done. That said, when I lost weight in my 20s and kept it off, I always had a day off after losing 2lbs. 1 day of eating whatever I wanted and then straight back on plan. As time progressed what I ate those days gradually changed naturally to better choices.

Nowadays I think those days off happen by accident. This week we had a birthday BBQ and cake. Lots of cake. So in my head I'm seeing it as that day off and not expecting a loss until next week. But I've still lost 0.8 kg. So I'm well chuffed.