This week, I reached the 50 lb. mark in my weight loss journey. I am 5 pounds away from my goal weight. I will finally be able to say that I lost all my pregnancy weight, 16 years after having my last baby. So many people are commenting on my physical transformation and asking me questions that I thought I might as well share my story and tips.
My weight journey:
My weight began to rise during college and graduate school and then more during the first year of marriage. At 5’2″, I hit 140 lbs, around my first anniversary and was feeling pretty ashamed of myself. I began my first ever diet at 24 years old. I lost 15 pounds, using The Weigh Down Workshop diet. That plan didn’t restrict foods, but you were limited to eating only after your stomach growled and then stopping when you were full, which the author, Gwen Shamblin, defined to be the moment you actually sense a feeling in your stomach. It took a bit to get used to, but overall, I liked the plan. Then I got pregnant and lost 22 lbs. over the next 5 weeks due to intense morning sickness. During my second and third trimesters, I made up all the lost weight and more.
As a new mom, I was exhausted and normal life had ceased to exist. I maintained some of the things I had learned from my months of dieting, I no longer ate a quarter pounder and large fries at McDonalds or had 2 hot dogs as a lunch. I had cut back on portion sizes and learned to not force myself to clean my plate. But the pounds never dropped and and was pregnant again 6 months later. Fast forward a few years. I have a teenager, a preschooler, a toddler, and an infant. The pounds had piled on and my energy level and motivation to diet were low. I knew that a “diet” wouldn’t work, I wanted to make lifestyle changes, but I also wanted to eat tasty food. None of my lifestyle changes seemed to make a difference and most of them weren’t very long lasting. I tried things like making two vegetables for dinner every meal rather than one. I tried to increase the amount of salad I ate for the fresh vegetables.
At some point my husband started Atkins, and I joined him. It was in part a way to support him and in part a hope to see similar results to the ones he was achieving. I was committed and barely lost a pound while my husbands pounds just fell away. Eventually I gave that up. Due to health concerns for our family, we tried Gluten free for two years. No weight loss. I tried running. After 2 years of running 2 mile runs three times a week, I had gained weight, but I did feel healthier until an injury ended my exercise routine, I tried not eating after 7 pm with a 12 hour fast each day from 7-7. Again, I gained weight. I tried cutting back on sweets and treats, and you guessed it, I was still gaining weight. I am sure a series of family crisis and high levels of stress coupled with the difficult circumstances led me to making poor food choices including way too much comfort eating, but watching my weight creep further up the scale while actively depriving myself of some of my favorite comfort foods, was disheartening to say the least. Between September 2015 and August 2016, I did a weekly 24 hours fast. While this was for spiritual, not weight loss reasons, the fact that I continued to gain weigh while cutting back 1/7th of my weekly food intake, seemed ridiculous to me.
This was me at my friend’s baby shower, after I won the “guess the belly size” game by using my own belly to guess the expectant mother’s belly size.
In February of 2018, one year after starting the “don’t eat from 7-7” plan, I was at my all time high. I was frustrated and mentioned this on Facebook. Numerous friends reached out with various plans. Most of which required severe food restrictions (Keto, Whole 30, Autoimmune Diet, Low Carb) or plans that required purchasing expensive supplements or diet foods. Additional options involved paying for a support system such as Weight Watchers. Then one friend reached out and suggested calorie counting. My initial reaction was that this plan would be too hard to maintain. Carrying a notebook around, Googling the calories on everything, doing all that math. It seemed like a lot of work. There were two things in its favor. First, I knew it had worked for my friend, and the science behind it was pretty basic so I thought it should work. The second thing in its favor was getting to eat real foods without spending extra money on expensive diet foods. But I was in the midst of a busy school year where I was working a second part time job, and I didn’t know if I could start this plan. When the scale hit 180 in May, and my feet were in excruciating pain from a lifestyle of standing for 8 hours a day, I decided I would commit to this plan the minute summer break started.
To simplify the calorie counting plan, I downloaded the Lose it! app. I had just searched for a free app* that would be easy to use. My husband had already been using an app, and it turned out it was the one he had already been using, but I didn’t know that at the time. I started dieting as soon as the school year ended. I had wanted to combine the Weigh Down Workshop plan that I had been successful with years before, but with the calorie counting which I thought would be more practical during the school year when my more structured schedule made waiting for my stomach to growl somewhat problematic.
The first few weeks were awful. I’m not going to lie. It took very little time for me to drop the Weigh Down plan and focus solely on calories. I had a hard time figuring out what to eat at different meals to satiate my hunger and hold me off until the next meal. I started to see which foods I ate were super high in calories that I had never realized, and how different my body reacted to 100 calories of peanuts than it did to 100 calories of candy. I started changing when I ate treats to reduce cravings, and I learned a whole lot about portion size. This was a lot of trial and error. It was hard to adjust to not eating when my brain wanted to eat but my body didn’t need food.
Here are a few tips that I figured out along the way:
- There is no need to give up any food you enjoy, but you might need to eat smaller portions less frequently in order to fit it into your calorie count.
- Higher fat and higher protein snacks might seem small in volume, but are far more satisfying than their size reflects. I regularly grab 1/2 ounce of peanuts (a single mouthful), an ounce of summer sausage, or a cheese stick. It only takes 10 or so minutes for the carvings to disappear.
- High sugar foods are not only high in calories, but they often lead to cravings, which is the exact opposite of the high protein foods. To enjoy these treats I need to cut the portion size (yes, half of a cupcake is just as sad as it sounds), but I also benefitted from eating them with a meal or high protein, high fat snack. That meant eating ice cream right after dinner rather than waiting 2 hours.
- I used measuring cups and a small scale a lot during the first 2 months, and then transitioned more estimating. I do however occasionally go back and refresh my memory every once in a while because my portion sizes seemed to slowly get larger when I was guessing.
- Spending a little more on prepackaged individual size servings is helpful for simplicity sake (100 calorie dixie cups are easier than scooping ice cream from a container). When possible, I prepackage snacks and easy meals such as weighing and individually packaging 1 ounce servings of summer sausage, 1 ounce containers of peanuts, precooked and packaged shaved beef for salads or sandwiches, etc.
- I cut out some small things such as adding parmesan cheese to pasta, much less iced tea and virtually no soda (I didn’t want to drink my calories), and replaced other items with better choices like having a pickle with my sandwich instead of chips. Instead of two doughnuts for breakfast, I might eat one doughnut and a half ounce of peanuts.
- I learned that it was typically better to cut out snacks during the day and push through to a meal because the foods I ate at meals were the foods I truly wanted to eat. This allowed for additional calories for chicken scampi or ribs.
- Eating less when you go out to eat simply means you have more leftovers to eat later. You might be eating that delicious meal 3 times instead of once. I ask for a box before I start eating.
- Splurging one day seemed to be far better than a little over many days in a row.
Fluctuations:
Menstrual cycles have a big impact on weight, as does clothing and time of day. Also, at times my bathroom trips were all off due to the change in eating, and I needed a little more fiber to drop those extra pounds. You have to expect the fluctuations and not get too frustrated when you have a great week calorie wise and get on the scale to find yourself up a pound. In a couple weeks you might be down 3 or 4 rapidly. Stick with the plan through the ups and downs.
Alcohol and Desserts:
Alcohol is high in calories. I’m not much of a drinker, and most days if I have 250 calories at the end of the day, I would much rather spurge on a brownie than a drink. However, for those of you who do drink, don’t skip counting those calories. Some cocktails can be pushing 400-500 calories, especially at a restaurant or bar. If you think that is bad, don’t even look at the calories on the dessert menu. Some of those desserts are more than my entire day’s allotment. A slice of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory is a more calories than I am allowed in an entire day, and I am not exaggerating.
Exercise:
I didn’t exercise this year. Now that I’ve lost so much weight and have had some improvement in the pain in my feet, I am hoping to add some exercise into my lifestyle, but I didn’t lose any of this weight by exercising. Exercise if good and healthy, but not necessary for weight loss. If you are exercising, you can add that into the Lose it! app and you will earn back calories. Its a good option for people trying to make their calorie count stretch a little further.
Dealing with people:
Everyone has their opinion. Certainly they may have helpful advice but sometimes they unknowingly are making it harder for you. I dropped a pound a week on average for the entire length of my dieting. Yet people regularly told me to not bother recording my food on holidays or encouraged me to cheat because it’s okay to cheat once in a while. For me, the act of writing down what I was eating was an important habit. In the 46 weeks since I started dieting, I have not missed a single day, and I have recorded as accurately as possible every single thing I have eaten on each of those days. I would rather have my calorie count high than to try to hide what I was really eating. So, yes, on Christmas day, my calorie count was pretty high, but I still recorded it. I splurged, but I also didn’t waste calories on things that I either wasn’t interested in eating or in consuming massive quantities just because it was there. I just needed to accept these people had good intentions and then ignore their advice. I wasn’t going to mess with what was working for me, and I wasn’t going to “cheat” based on when someone else thought I should splurge.
I found that as my body adjusted to eating less, I also didn’t want such large portions. for Easter, I decided to go crazy and have a funnel cake for breakfast. I felt awful for the entire day, and ended up barely eating dinner. I think my body wasn’t used to eating so much grease anymore. Splurging now is smaller treats because who wants to be sick as a reward for dieting well.
Final Note:
I tried a number of plans that didn’t work for me that had worked for others. While I suspect this plan would work for just about anyone, dieting is different for everyone because we are all different physically, mentally, and in our life circumstances. If you are looking to lose weight, I highly recommend this, but if it isn’t working, trust me, there is a plan that will work for you. Don’t give up. It’s never too late to get your body healthier.
Aiming for a side by side with the same shirt for comparison.
*I used the free version of this app. It provided me with everything I needed. There is a paid version that offers additional functions that could be helpful, such as future meal planning and more detailed nutritional breakdowns of what you have eaten.