Help! Desperate to lose weight for my wedding in 5 months

Luci_Green_Eyes

Hello all! I'm looking for an accountability forum to help keep me on track as I desperately want to lose weight.

I'm getting married end of June, so I have 5 months and I am currently just shy of 5 stone heavier than when I met my Fiancé 14 years ago. Granted, I was very unwell and underweight when we met (I have a history of ED). However, over the years I have slowly weight restored and have since oddly moved from severe restricting to actually comfort eating and am now considered "overweight" according to my BMI (and headed for "obese"). I know he loves me for me, not my weight, but I'm so unhappy in my own skin and just want to feel a bit more normal. I'm aiming for 2 stone loss in this time - achievable?

I walk between 10-15K steps per day (dog walking mostly), I do Body Pump (resistance / weight training) twice a week, Spin class twice a week, plus additional ad hoc Yoga / cardio. I'm struggling so much with losing the weight - I try to stick to 1,500 calories but with the amount of exercise I do I need to fuel myself so do go over (but not hugely so).

My worry is that I've completely ruined my metabolism from years of under-feeding myself...

I basically just really want to lose this weight and get happier in my skin and have some healthy balance, and hoped that I could find some support and accountability here.

Any top tips? Thank you all in advance for any support, accountability or advice from anyone in a similar position 🖤

briscogun

Congrats on the pending nuptials! Best wishes to you both going forward!

As far as advice, given your history with previous ED, I'm not sure many of us here on the interwebs would be qualified to give you meaningful advice. My first reaction, and its what most people on here recommend to anyone who's trying to lose weight quickly, is the Slow But Steady rule. Choose a weight loss goal that is appropriate, track all your calories by weighing/measuring everything (no guesstimates), and stay at or under your goal. If you are exercising, you will see a lot of people that recommend eating only half your exercise calories back since the trackers and calorie burn estimators are widely known for over-estimating calorie burns.

It may not be the fastest way, but its definitely the healthiest and safest way, which will also help you build healthy and long-lasting habits to keep the weight off long term.

Not sure if that was helpful, but wishing you the best of luck! Remember: its a marathon not a sprint!

heybales

Advice from someone that has seen plenty through the years in similar situations. Throwing a lot in here.

"Desperate" and "healthy balance" rarely end up going together. Some can manage it - most allow the former to make bad decisions that badly effect the latter.

You seem to give some good indication that undereating too much for that level of activity will end up not helping in the long run, besides having a past indication of really going the wrong direction.
So good job there.

In case not realized just going to state it - side effect of exercise is usually water weight gain for many reasons - so the fact scale weight may not change at first shouldn't be worrisome or make you more desperate.
You'll likely hear "maybe you're gaining muscle" as encouragement - no. Muscle can never be added as fast as fat can be lost. And while in a diet.... no.

Make the rate of loss reasonable for the amount left to lose as you progress - perhaps avoid the issue of 6-8 weeks near the end of no loss, because body has rebelled and adapted.
Usually when you math out 6-8 weeks of Zero loss, it would have been better and faster and mentally saner to just go slower the whole time.

Reasonable?
28 lbs to healthy weight.
1 lb weekly (500 cal deficit) until down to 10 lbs.
1/2 lb weekly (250 cal deficit) until done.

If weight loss could be linear, which it isn't, that would be:
18 lbs in 18 weeks.
Time based weight loss is always fraught with stress due to non-linear nature.

Don't stress about not making a goal weight, because you'll appear so much stronger with good workouts.
Just plan on not wearing a sign on that day that says current weight and goal weight on it - no one will know you aren't at goal weight but you - and does what only you see on the bathroom scale matter when no one else sees it?

Now - when people do a good job of stressing the body out by making the diet extreme, here's what will likely happen.
Body will slow down spontaneous daily movements - so not actually burning as much as possible or what was - less deficit.
Will have trouble doing as strong of workouts because unrecovered - so not burning as much, or benefiting as much - less deficit.
If body still stressed will expend less energy on keeping warm, growing hair/nails/replacing skin.
Final step if still extreme will be lowering that metabolism.
During this time the increased stress increases cortisol, which increases retained water, so now little to no weight loss seen on the scale - guess where the stress level goes then!

As to the past - studies haven't shown that metabolism effect to last that long once you start gaining weight - Biggest Loser study had them at 1 year with still a suppressed metabolism - but some likely reasons for that being pushed so far out.
So you are probably fine, it doesn't get "ruined", at worst people lost muscle mass that slightly effects metabolism going forward.

You have a nice routine for overall body improvements - your posture and the way you carry yourself merely from that will likely have people stating you appear to have lost a lot of weight already.
Good job keeping active outside the exercise.

Measure several spots too since the scale doesn't tell the whole story since it includes water weight.

Try to confirm best you can keeping the overall deficit at 500 cal or 1 lb or 1/2 kg weekly.
You seem to know this concept of reasonable, don't let past ED start up again.

And as a woman your metabolism literally changes through the month.
So the ability to discern much can only be done with a monthly weigh-in, but get into happen of either tracking daily on app that shows the expected variance but general direction, or learn to weigh only on valid days to minimize known water weight changes.
Day after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout.

Hopefully some helpful points in there - sorry if rereading was required.

girlwithcurls2

^^^ absolutely nothing to add. This says it all.
Do your best and enjoy your day. It will be a wonderful day no matter what, but it won't be the "end" of your weight loss journey because then you'll need to learn how to keep the weight off. Slow and steady (as frustrating as that can be...)