Want to lose 30 pounds before turning 30

lpw612

Hi! I am a 29/F/5’1/155 I’m looking to loose 30 pounds or close to 30 by June. I have a huge problem of overeating and feeling hungry after I ate a big meal. I am looking for advice on what to eat or tips to get to my goal!

happysquidmuffin

6 lb per month sounds pretty drastic. I am 5’2, 32 years old, currently weighing 154-155. I have lost all my baby weight and then some. My goal is to lose 10 more lb by the end of the year. I want to hit 148 by end of April. You seem to be new here. Welcome! My Fitness Pal isn’t about crash diets to lose a bunch of weight in a short amount of time. Sometimes that happens and the momentum/motivation that gives is great, but more likely it’s going to take a month or two before you really find your rhythm.
Instead of focusing on the numbers, use MFP as a tool to learn how you currently eat, and learn how to eat and move better for long term, SUSTAINABLE weight loss. It’s about changing your lifestyle. There are lots of great people on the forums who I’m sure will jump in and post some really helpful graphics and links and stuff to help get you started.

happysquidmuffin

It takes time to learn to portion control and feel satisfied on less, but binging on food and still feeling hungry is a bad habit that you can change. But it does take time and practice, and you WILL fail sometimes but you have to keep moving forward. Don’t keep eating just because you already ate too much and feel like it doesn’t matter. You can’t make a bad day better by making it worse. Which sounds stupid obvious, but I know it’s what happens sometimes! But don’t worry, you can break the cycle. You just have to try.

TeaBea

lpw612 wrote: »

Hi! I am a 29/F/5’1/155 I’m looking to loose 30 pounds or close to 30 by June. I have a huge problem of overeating and feeling hungry after I ate a big meal. I am looking for advice on what to eat or tips to get to my goal!

Put your statistics into My Fitness Pal (MFP) and choose a weekly weight loss goal of ONE pound a week. I know that seems slow, but it's realistic. Even at that pace your weekly weight loss will slow down the closer you get to goal (to more like 1/2 pound a week).

The reason weight loss slows is because you become a smaller person, with smaller calorie needs. You can't keep eating less and less, all while doing that in a healthy way.

The way MFP is designed is you get a calorie goal before exercise. You can earn more calories thru exercise. Start by eating a portion of exercise calories back (because calorie burns are hard to estimate, many are inflated). After awhile you will get to know what realistic calorie burns are for you.

What to eat? Foods you enjoy. Learn about your own eating habits instead of substituting a list of diet foods temporarily. If you want to keep the weight off forever, you have to make some permanent changes.

Foods components that are filling - protein, fiber, and fat. The combination that makes me full (longer) is likely a different combination for you. Like HappySquid pointed out, this all takes practice. You won't be perfect, but that's okay. You don't have to be perfect, just continue to make progress.

Here's a link to some really helpful threads: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300331/most-helpful-posts-getting-started-must-reads#latest

melodyvegan

Hi! I'm 5'1 too. 35 years old. Started at 150 pounds, currently at 117. It took me a year and change at a defecit of 0.5 pounds/week. Sometimes I lost 1 pound a week (in the very beginning), sometimes less than 0.5 pound a week. A year isn't a long time in the span of your whole life, but when it comes to weight loss we tend to think it is too long. It's not.

What you're proposing sounds like you want to do something very difficult and suffer for 6 whole months for what would very likely amount to only a few months at your goal weight before you potentially gain it all back. Weight loss isn't psychologically easy so why make it harder on yourself by restricting your timeline? Weight loss isn't linear either so, try as you might, you won't lose 6 pounds a month every month, sometimes it'll be less, especially the closer you get to your goal. It took me 5 months to lose the last five pounds.

Imagine yourself having acheived your goal, but by the time you turn 31, you're back at your current weight because you didn't learn how to make the loss sustainable and didn't create the necessary new habits to keep you at your desired weight. You'd be back here again in a year and having to go through the whole cycle again. That's a risk you're taking with rapid weight loss and it's not one that's guaranteed to be fun or empowering.

A more sustainable goal might be losing 30 pounds by the the time you turn 31. Or if you want to make it sound cute, "lose 31 pounds by age 31." You can start that by breaking your weight loss up into small chunks so you can feel successful regularly and more than once. Set your first goal to lose just 10 pounds. Take your time. It's okay to be 140 pounds by the time you're 30 because if your goal is instead to be 125 pounds by the time you're 31, you're already well on your way. If you can keep it up, hopefully, by the time you're 32+, you've learned how to stay at 125 or whatever weight you want to be. Getting to your goal eventually is better than risking not getting to it at all or getting to it but only for a little while.

Don't make things harder for yourself. Putting tons of pressure on yourself isn't going to help you stay accountable because life will get in the way which will test your resilience and commitment. If you're going to be successful long term, you'll need to learn how to build habits that allow you to get closer to or stay at your desired weight despite whatever hardships and temptations come up. Habit building takes time and it requires things to be easy and convenient to do so that you keep doing them. Make weight loss psychologically easy and logistically convenient and set a realistic timeline and you'll create the habits to keep you successful for a long time to come. Good luck!