31/f/204

I'm fat. I wasn't always so, but some life stress the last few years caused me to balloon up and I've been maintaining here for a couple of years. I weighed 220 at the beginning of August. I read "The Obesity Code" by Dr. Fung and started intermittent fasting midway through that month. I'm at 204 now. I eased myself into it over a couple of weeks starting with 12/12, then 14/10, and finally 16/8. That's where I am now, with the addition of an occasional 24-hour fast. Overall this transition was surprisingly easy and it's something I'm confident I can do for an extended period of time (or forever, perhaps).

I improved my diet since August, but I was still eating a decent amount of garbage and have been on a month-long plateau. The last few days I've been trying low carb (30-40g net) and flirting with the idea of doing keto. Months ago the idea of not regularly eating stuff like bread and pasta seemed impossible, but now it actually sounds kind of nice. I've definitely noticed that when I eat fewer refined carbs my appetite becomes much more manageable/normal. About a year ago I started to think that I just had a naturally larger appetite and since I had gotten fat I was doomed to stay there. Now I know stuff like my insulin, ghrelin, etc were just out of whack and could be fixed with diet and IF.

I don't count calories or otherwise log my food. I've tried several times in the past but I hate it. It's a chore and it just made me obsess about food all day. Any calorie restriction I've done has been a consequence of IF and reducing carbs.

As for working out, I haven't been doing any of that. I've had a couple of stints in the last year where I go lift for a few weeks, but then I let the stress of school (I'm doing an undergrad) get to me and I stop going. I'm going to start lifting again tomorrow or Monday and I hope to not let that happen this time.

For goals, weight-wise I want to get down to a muscular ~140. I'm going for the "that girl definitely lifts, but doesn't do roids" look. No specific deadline, but getting there in at most ~1.5 years would be nice. I'm going to continue with IF and I'm going to continue with a low carb diet. I'm not going full keto, I'm just going to see where drastically cutting down on refined carbs takes me first.

Fitness-wise, I'm going to start lifting (again). I have a snowboard trip planned for February that I want to be in better shape for. I'm going to be doing SS, and after a couple of weeks of that I'll be adding in some conditioning after those workouts. After my trip, I'm going to sign up at a BJJ gym. BJJ was an obsession of mine that I very sadly have not been doing the last several years. It's going to be really hard to walk into a new gym as a giant uncoordinated blob. I know I will feel embarrassed. But I'm not going to continue to wait until I get back in shape to go back, because clearly that plan has not worked out so far. Long term, I want to get into competing again. Not that I was super active before, but I competed a handful of times. Longer term, I want to earn my black belt. I'm currently purple.

I don't expect this log to be anything more than me posting my progress, but if people want to pop in with questions or suggestions or whatever that's cool. I really just want somewhere to write stuff down. Cheers.

Nice progress!

Good luck! If you're not planning on tracking calories or logging food, how are you going to determine how much to eat each day? If you don't get the progress you're after, that's probably the first thing you should consider changing.

Good luck!

If you're not counting macros, cooking the majority of your own food is going to be the biggest help wrt creating a consistent caloric deficit. If keto works for you wrt compliance, by all means keep doing it, but it's not magic, and carbs aren't evil. Lean protein + lots of vegetables + a fist sized portion of baked potato/rice/quinoa/farro/oatmeal/whatever your carb of choice might happen to be + the occasional piece of fruit would be perfectly fine if you need a break.

Thanks!

I'm only eating within an 8 hour window each day, and I'm not stuffing my face, so that naturally limits my calories. My experience with calorie counting was so miserable that it's a true last resort. I'll switch to to an 18/6 or 20/4 window and/or increase the frequency of 24 hour fasts if I need to change things up. But for now, my appetite has dwindled and I'm eating far better foods in general, so hopefully I will continue to see progress with the status quo. Yesterday for lunch I ate a bowl of this bean and tuna salad I make, and for dinner I had a steak with a side of green beans and mushrooms.

Yep, I'm already cooking most of my meals. And I'm not swearing off carbs altogether, I'm still planning on eating the occasional potato and side of rice or whatever. The keto thing is more in the back of my mind for if I get stuck. I'm just very motivated to get out of this plateau and reducing that stuff has definitely helped my satiety, so I'm going with it for now. Stuff like cereal and bread is what I'm trying to basically eliminate atm.

If you're maintaining 204 for a month then there are some major leaks in your food game that need plugging, and a period of monitoring what you take in would help uncover them. There are non neurotic ways to count calories. The way I do it is to log what I ate in an excel spreadsheet at the end of each day and spend a few minutes at the end of each week estimating the calories of everything I ate and adding it all up. Since it is all done in retrospect, the result is an accounting of what I naturally decided to eat, not of meticulous meal plans.

Whether you decide to log food or not, I recommend that you use this thread to log your activity and document the process, rather than just popping in every month with the good news. Your history indicates a tendency not to stick with things you start, and the accountability of a log will help with compliance.

My last bit of advice as someone who has lost weight and kept it off for 3 years is to own your decisions and the results of them. You gained weight because you ate too much food and didn't exercise enough, not because of insulin and ghrelin. You'll lose weight more quickly if you eat even less and move even more. And once you've lost 40 pounds, your body isn't going to return to a set point even if you do everything right. Fung is a bro scientist. Keto and IF are good strategies to reduce calories but virtually every successful bodybuilder eats low fat high carb. Until you get to very athletic levels of lean, it simply does not matter as long as protein is adequate and calories in < out.

Good luck!

Just popping in to wish you well. Plenty of people here will give good advice so don't just give up if things aren't going as well as you hoped for

-I had the same thoughts about how bad it would suck to cut out bread/pasta(even gluten) but it's not been that bad. I LOVED bread etc and now I don't miss it. As far as keto/low carb that's cool if it will help you reduce calories and increase diet compliance. But overall it's just a matter of reducing calories (or increasing activity). I do think counting calories will help long term. It's not something you'd have to put much effort into long term as eventually you get good at just looking at a meal and estimating. Even trying it for a week, you might find that you have some leaks somewhere or are underestimating something.

-Once the gym starts being fun it's really easy to go consistently. For me that was strength training (starting strength or similar) and it became a fun game to improve techniques and increase weight instead of just mindlessly doing a bunch of high rep machines/dumbells etc. BJJ would be cool you should def get back into that! Briefly tried it but had to drop it due to too many other activities, it's taxing. Hopefully will try it again down the road.



I have a good feeling about this one you guys, she could be here to stay.

If someone wanted to start going to the gym and getting
stronger I would sure suggest starting with a 5x5 program like starting
strength or stronglifts(the one I used).

The ability to make gains virtually every time you workout and for
a long period of time, especially as a newbie, is highly motivating.

Renton et al,

I'm not sure recommending logging to someone that has already said it doesn't work for them is going to produce the result you expect. She sounds like she's well on her way towards a positive outcome, and if/when a bit tighter control is necessary, she may (or may not) circle back to the MFP train.

Since ya'll are so adamant about counting calories, I decided to log my last day: 0

I just completed a 26 hour fast. It wasn't planned, but I wasn't particularly hungry at the end of my window yesterday and I was feeling motivated (probably thanks to my new log) so I just went for it. Longest and easiest fast so far. Hunger was minimal. I broke fast with the leftover steak from my dinner two nights ago and some eggs.

Yup, I admitted I was eating too much garbage recently. It's not a mystery to me why I didn't lose weight the last month. I guess calling it a plateau isn't accurate, since that implies the stagnation was unexpected.

That's the plan. I'm going to log my workouts and anything I find notable from my diet or anywhere else.

Thanks!

That's what I'm doing. My latest stint at the gym I started with 5x5 and moved to 3x5 when things started getting too taxing. I liked how that worked so I'm planning on the same now. Back when I was in shape I was addicted to BJJ. I was in the gym 4-6 days a week for 2-3 hours at a time. I'm looking forward to getting back into that lifestyle.



Like I said, calorie counting is a true last resort. I get that it's highly recommended, but I've tried it multiple times and I hate it. I much, much prefer the idea of expanding my fasting to that of logging.


Hitting the gym tomorrow.

Oh, there is one thing I do log: my fasts. I downloaded an app mid-September. Since then I've fasted an average of 17 hours and 23 minutes per day.

So ngl, it was really ****ing hard to make myself go to the gym today. I was dreading it all day and fighting the temptation to give myself some lame excuse to not go. It's frustrating because I genuinely enjoy lifting and have a good time whenever I go, but I still have this mental barrier. It will get better the more I go. Anyways, I went and now I feel great.


LBBS: 2x5x75, 1x4x75
OHP: 3x5x55
DL: 1x5x89


Meant to do 5 sets on the squats, but I vastly underestimated how difficult 75lbs would be. Should have stayed at 65. OHP was easy, I just have some fresh-ish stitches in my arm from a medical thing that I thought were good to go, but I felt some uncomfortable tugging so I thought it best to stop at 3 sets. Deadlift was easy. Next session on Wednesday.

Sounds like you are off to a good start. How tall are you, OP?

Good job getting your butt to the gym even though you didn’t feel like it.

Thanks, I'm pretty happy about it. I'm 5'5".

I think you should take 20 pounds off the squat and add only 5 pounds per session if you have plates that allow it, or 10 pounds every two sessions otherwise. SS is a linear progression, so the whole point of it is to be able to steadily add weight for 8-12 weeks and that prospect kind of goes out the window when you start out with a weight that is too heavy. At this stage of the game (and for a while) you'll increase your squat by lifting way less than your max.

Ya I'm going to back off on it. When I last lifted in August I was squatting 130. I intended to lift light, I was just surprised by how much strength I lost and I didn't wanna take any weight off the bar yesterday

So I've decided to log what I eat each day (for now at least), but not with calories and amounts aren't going to be super specific. The fat is intentional. Yesterday I completed a 16 hour fast and I ate:

- Entire NY strip steak, ~1 inch cut, reverse seared in butter
- Side of green beans and mushrooms sauteed in butter and fat
- Handful of grapes

Today I completed a 24 hour fast and ate:

- 18 buffalo wings, baked, no breading
- Handful of cherry tomatoes
- 1 cheese string, full fat

I felt like **** today and blew off the gym. Bleh. I did do some stretching and bw squats. Going tomorrow.

Oh, and +3 cups black coffee each day.

How long did you do bjj before? I've been doing it for about a year and love it. I train bjj 6-7 days a week. Are you mainly gi or no gi?

Nice, another BJJ bro . I have about 6 years experience. Vast majority gi. I did no gi like once every week or two, not super into it. Gi is just way more fun, and you only have so many training hours per week. How's your stuff going, get your blue yet?

22 hour fast.

- 4 large Italian sausages, served with
- lots of zucchini, bell pepper, mushroom, cherry tomato, onion, and garlic, roasted and topped with olive oil
- 2 cheese strings, full fat
- handful mixed nuts
- 2 cups black coffee

--------------------------------------------

Squat: 5x5x60
Bench: 5x5x60
Row: 5x5x55

Everything felt good. No gym until the 28th because of holiday travel starting tomorrow. I'll be doing some bw stuff to keep the momentum going.

My parents always buy some pastry or another that I liked when I was a kid. They always have something like that around. I told them not to buy something specifically for me this time because I'm not eating sugar. We'll see if that's respected. I won't be eating it if they do buy something. I'll have a piece of cake or something on xmas, though.

Good job hitting the gym!

No blue belt yet. I have 4 stripes but my coach said he was going to pass me over for blue at the promotion this month. I just signed up for a no gi sub only tournament at the end of January

Thanks. I do really appreciate all the encouragement from people. I definitely wasn't expecting to have so many different people come in here with a nice word and advice.

Heh that sucks. You'll get it soon though it sounds like. Is that your first tourney? Good luck. I always got so nervous at mine that I felt like puking and dying up until each match started lol.