Alright. Here it goes.

I am 5' 10" (closer to 5'11" but who cares), average build and average dimensions. Everything about me is pretty average sized. I have decent shoulders and a nice ass. Strong arms, strong legs, horrific torso. I'm skinny fat, although less so lately. my mid-region is a disaster and has been for several years; I have had a persistent layer of belly fat for like ~5 years. I understand why, I just haven't been willing to curtail my drinking or exercise more often.

Since I have basically always weighed between 150-160 my whole adult life, fluctuating depending on how bad my bowel problems have been, etc., I just got used to never checking my weight. last time i checked was probably august of 2016 and I was 150-155ish. I went to the doc yesterday, and I'm 170. Holy ****.

I've never gained weight like that and since heart disease has killed like half my family, I'm ready to do something. My school has an extremely state of the art gym for me to use for free, and I have a crapload of freetime because I'm basically just a student these days. Time to get it done.

Short term goals for this log:

- Get down to my target weight, 155. Depending on how I look at that point, may go slimmer.

- Log my food as consistently as I can.

Longer term goals:
Get trim, like actually trim and not just skinny fat. I don't need to be bulky, I've always had decent looking arms so I don't feel like I'm lacking looks wise in any muscle areas.


so here's day 1:

weight: 170.9

Breakfast - Large Half of a pork sandwich (leftovers) ~600 calories

Lunch - A hot pocket, 390 calories

Dinner - Brocoli and cheese soup, 190 calories
6" veggie sub with mayo, cheese (holy **** mayo has a lot of calories) - 410 calories

Total for today: ~1590. Not bad. If I cut out my liquid calories I think I'll lose weight without having to change my diet much.

Good luck!

Have you figured out your BMR and TDEE? Any specific plans and/or preferences for working out?

I estimate my tdee to be 2400 cal/day. It's hard to figure out because my job is physical, where i am standing and walking pretty much for 8 hours straight. I do that 4 days a week and am going down to 3, so that's a concern.

I don't have any plans other than to cut back beer and do some low impact cardio until the weight drops off, then reassess.

GL!

You're not going to lift?

I'm extremely self conscious, i have to see how the set up is at my gym first.

I like to be by myself when I do it, just a weird thing. I'm going to start simple then ramp it up if necessary, I feel I may burn out if I go too hard too quickly

I can directly confirm that lifting weights on restricted calories for ~1 year doesn't result in looking bulky.

Day 2:
165 this morning.

Haven't weighed myself tonight yet. Off at 12.

Breakfast: 2nd half of 6 inch veggie sub, 410 calories

Lunch: BBQ chicken breast with a few bites of macaroni, no idea how to score this. Say 600 calories to be safe

Dinner: Microwave pasta and 7 saltine crackers, 490 calories

After work I plan on having 3 bud light platinums. Been a really rough day. I believe that's about 400 calories.

Total: 1900 cals, probably less. And i worked all day so definitely well under my TDEE. Just need to avoid late night munchies. If i get those i'll just eat a few saltines.

BBQ chicken breast + macaroni is one of the easier things to eyeball estimate. Develop an eye for quantities so you can guess weights with +/- 25g accuracy. Then it's just a matter of looking up calories for Xg of chicken breast, Xg of macaroni, 1-2tbsp bbq sauce, ~1/2tbsp of oil if sauteed, none if grilled. My ballpark guess assuming one chicken breast is ~450 cal (for the total including the macaroni).

It's useful to have a reasonably hearty meal within a certain amount of time before bedtime (varies person to person). There's pretty much an optimal time for everyone that results in not being hungry before bed while maximizing waking fed time. For me, it's around 3 hours before bed. One of the things I realized pretty early on in my dieting journey is that snacking is a complete waste of calories in most cases and should basically be avoided. Eat a proper meal or don't eat at all, IMO.

So 600 seems pretty safe? It wasn't a very big chicken breast. It was grilled

I'm not going to get too nitty about exact numbers so I'm trying to err on the side of over estimating, unless the weight doesnt start dropping off at the expected rate then i'll reassess what i'm doing

I don't see the value in regularly overestimating things by over 50% margin. When I err on the side of overestimating, it's usually in the form of adding 50-100 cal of "uncertainty" to the end of my food logs. So yeah, 600 is pretty safe in that there's a 99% chance what you ate was less than 600, but it's def worth getting more accurate at this stuff. This will become pretty important down the line when you aren't losing weight (or not making gym gains). Then you'll wish you had more a more accurate account of your intake so you can manipulate it more precisely to get the results you want.

5'11 165 weightloss only log?

Not subscribed.


The best thing you can do is just eat at maintenance but Lift weights and move around. That will eventually solve the softness round the belly.

Noted

Yeah I know people have made some pretty amazing transformations on this forum, so this is probably pretty boring but it helps me to have somewhere to write it down

Day 3

Weight: 167

I only had 2 beers last night instead of the 3 I had planned, so adjust yesterday's calories to ~1770 calories

Breakfast - leftover BBQ chicken breast, ~4 oz of rice, a few oz of macaroni - say 700

Lunch - half of an 8 inch turkey sub, 300 calories

Late afternoon snack - Other half of sub, 15 saltines 510 calories

Dinner - microwave pasta, 400 calories

clocking in around 2k today conservatively. I don't know how much I'll drink, but I broke up with my GF yesterday and am feeling quite down so I probably will have 2-3, bringing me to about 2400 for the day. Not great.

Tomorrow is an actual day off, class ends at 9 am so I will go check out the gym after that.

Day 4

Weight: 167

Breakfast: 6 inch veggie sub 410 calories

Lunch: 6 inch veggie sub, bag of sun chips 620

Dinner: Chicken caesar salad, and a handful of tortilla chips ~700

Exercised in the morning, 1 hour on the elliptical

Had a beer and a cocktail with diet pepsi that was really light on alcohol, like maybe half a shot worth. ~200 calories?

Then I ****ed up and had a late night snack with one of those small mac n cheese cups by kraft. 210 calories. I get really hungry before bed and don't know what to do. Maybe I'll buy some light calorie snacks like celery or fruit. I have to eat like every 2 hours or I get shaky.

So I totalled yesterday at ~2200ish rounding up. Not great.

I'd rather smoke than drink to wind down after a long day but that just makes me hungry, which is a problem. Hunger's been a really bad problem. I honestly don't know how I went so long without gaining weight, because I just used to eat whatever whenever. My TDEE must be higher than I think. We'll see soon if the weight falls off.

Do you eat out a lot? Get yourself a scale because it seems like you are eyeballing a lot. Yeah, over estimating is better than under estimating but you are making life changes, you want it to be sustainable.

For snacking, have some boiled eggs ready in your fridge. Eat 1 egg and 1 white. Also, make sure you count protein. Even when not lifting, research has shown that eating protein makes you retain muscle whereas low protein will just make a fat smaller version of yourself. You want lean mass, your health issues will be exactly the same if you have the same bf%.

Take your last meal later. Find a time that allows you to go to bed and have a good night's sleep without needing to eat again. Late night munchies will greatly slow your progress. Getting the shakes if you don't eat every two hours is not normal.

Today I ate an extremely large breakfast and was full all day. Ate a large dinner that was mostly broccoli (which TIL is extremely filling) and chicken. I think i'm around 1650 calories today and it's 5pm. I may not get hungry later.

Yea i eat out a lot. I'm a student. I'm going by the calories on the menu.

Eggs are a really really good idea

Broccoli is really filling. I often eat 100-200 grams of broccoli with some other random veg plus a protein and it keeps you full forever.
Fwiw my dad was diabetic and his dietitian told him to have a little protein at every meal and he would eat 6 smallish meals per day to ensure he didn't get shaky. I think I remember you saying your dad was diabetic too. Have you been tested lately to ensure you don't have pre diabetes?

No but i've been thinking lately I should because I have many symptoms.

At 28 that would be highly unusual though.

28 year old 170 pound 5'11" people aren't prediabetic.

I actually had a work mate who was in her late 20s normal weight who ended up being pre diabetic so it can be known to happen. I doubt he is, but if he is showing symptoms I can't see any real downside to getting himself checked over.

Hi jmakin, good luck with the weight loss.

How's the gym? Highly recommend rowing for low impact cardio, if they have it, even if you use it just as a change of pace.

And, yeah, get that shaking every 2 hours checked out.

+1 on rowing, because it's both low-ish impact on your joints and high bang for your buck wrt metabolic conditioning, especially if you track progress and push yourself.

I think they do have rowing. I'll check it out. Been busier than I expected this week

Day 5 log

Today ended badly.

Breakfast was a small breakfast burrito and a bagel with cream cheese. Totaled around 1000 calories.

Was full all day, dinner was veggies and orange chicken with some beef, ~650 calories.

Then I went out drinking, had a slice of pizza. I think I could tack on like easily 800 calories from that, I wasn't keeping track :/ Going to exercise today and I work so should burn some calories today for sure.

I should add I walk about 1-2 miles at school every day because my classes are all really far from parking and I am there all day.

Weight: 167

When I make it to the store I'm going to stock up on veggies, I think starchier foods are gonna help me right now