Young and over weight

emilyarcaya

I am currently 200+ lbs and very unhappy, I have just started the process of losing weight but I feel I am holding myself back with insecurities I don't like to exercise in front of other people because of the fear of showing the effects of being very overweight. I don't know if this is just me but I would love to hear from someone experiencing the same thing or if someone is willing to give tips I would appreciate it a lot.

goal06082021

The good news is, you don't *have* to exercise in order to lose weight, if that's not something you feel comfortable with doing right now. Weight loss happens in the kitchen - your diet plays a much bigger role than exercise, and it's much easier to really dial in your "calories in" (the energy you take in from the food you eat in a day) than your "calories out" (the energy you burn in the course of going about your business in a day). Exercise is more for increasing and maintaining overall fitness, so I do encourage you to incorporate exercise into your daily routine as you are able. Strength/resistance training is especially important for women - it helps keep our bones strong and reduces our risk of osteoporosis as we age.

If and when you do start incorporating exercise into your routine, you have options there, as well. Just walking outside is perfectly valid exercise (provided your local COVID guidelines allow it), if you don't have a space at home to follow a Youtube workout, or play an active game like Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch. Or if you share your living space with people that you're worried will be judgmental about your decision to suit up and work out in the living room (and if so, to hell with 'em). If you decide to go to a gym, I promise no one there is looking at or thinking about you nearly as much as you're thinking about you. You don't need to hire a trainer or go to a class unless you want to - I'm pretty much entirely self-taught when it comes to what to do in the gym and how to use various equipment, because asking (to say nothing of *paying*) someone else to pay that much attention to my body and what I'm doing with it is my personal idea of hell (and probably yours, too). All the machines have little diagrams on them showing you what to do, and there's thousands of gifs, articles, Youtube videos, etc showing you how to use free weights.

booboo1000

I agree with goal0608. You can get the job done even if you aren’t comfortable in a group exercise setting.

I’m not as able as others to be highly active. I lost all my weight in the kitchen. I walk for activity, including with moderately heavy loads in a backpack. I do not “eat back” any calories as I’m not active enough. My fitness levels have improved a great deal and I can now talk while walking up hills.

Small changes, over time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all if you change too many things at once or go too low in calories.

Low hanging fruit first. For a lot of people it’s soft drinks. For me it was cutting way back on my beloved milk chocolate candy bars and chips, salsa, and dip dinners. Then I replaced the milk chocolate with increasingly dark chocolate, then cut back from 1 oz to .5 oz, and then to no candy at all. I now add cocoa powder to my morning oatmeal and to dinner chia pudding. I’m very happy with this substitution. I found no adequate substitute for chips so I stopped trying. Over time I made all sorts of changes to my diet, both in ingredients and amounts. I make sure my dinners have some crunchy foods, some smooth, a little spicy, very little salt and always something sweet.