10 Pounds to Go

taux140

Hi MFP community!

My name is Taylor and I'm 34 years old with 10 pounds to lose until I hit my goal weight of 140.

I wanted to start this discussion post just as an outlet to share the journey with whoever cares to read it! I know there are people who can relate to my story and I hope to share some hope and motivation with you that healing and progress is possible. I have gleaned so much from reading other MFP community posts and have really needed them more than I thought that I would when motivation got low and my hopes for reaching my goal were bottoming out.

So here's where the journey began...

Pretty much as long as I can remember I have just not felt comfortable in my skin. My family is full of women stuck on perpetual yo-yo diets, silently (well, not always silently) judging the people around them for their lack of self-control. Overweight people were the brunt of many jokes in my family and I always felt pressure to be thin. I can remember being reprimanded for wanting seconds and being told to "suck it in" when posing for a picture.

At some point in my childhood I did become overweight and carried so much shame along with those extra pounds. In middle school I was teased with the nickname "Taylor-Tubbies," with the show Teletubbies recently coming to TV. It was around this time when I discovered the fine art of bulimia. I can't remember anymore how often or specifically what scenarios would prompt me to do it at that young age, but I started making myself throw up after certain meals. It was my little way to feel like I was in control of my weight and of how I felt about myself. Like I was doing something to squelch the shame I felt for the extra weight I was carrying. At some point, I think I was in 9th grade at this point, my mom asked me if I had been making myself throw up saying said she had seen some vomit on the toilet. I lied saying that I hadn't and she didn't bring it up again. I never ever told a soul about this habit. Not a best friend, not a boyfriend, it was my dirty little secret.

Also around 9th grade I started smoking pot, which everyone knows causes the "munchies". Food became so much more delicious and tempting and being high brought my impulsiveness to make poor choices soar and my judgement plummet. I would get high, binge out on whatever I wanted, and then make myself throw up. I'd go through the fast food drive-thru ordering whatever looked pleasurable, stop at the grocery store for whatever dessert I desired, or raid the fridge for whatever delicacy we had. At this point, making myself throw up became almost a daily occurrence. Also peppered in there with bulimia was yo-yo dieting, mostly consisting of highly restricting my calorie intake to as little as I could bear. But as soon as I would smoke that would all go out the window and I would binge again, throw up again, and around and around and around I went. Not to mention, none of this was effective at all at keeping my weight steady and I still felt overweight, ashamed and out of control.

Life goes on, years go by, and I keep riding the roller coater of eating disorders and fad diets (shout out to the good ol' lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper fast that I tried multiple times). Now fast forward ten years to somewhere in my mid-20s. I can't remember what prompted it, honestly, but I remember the moment that it happened. I was sitting on the bathroom floor of a hotel room I had locked myself in to get away from my abusive boyfriend (PS the entirety of my life is a complete mess at this point which is a whole other story but totally related because when you hate yourself you let yourself get into all sorts of horrible situations) and I realized for the first time in my life that I had a problem. Somehow it dawned on me that throwing up my food was not OK and that I needed help. I think probably with a simple internet search of something like "help for people with eating disorders" I found Overeaters Anonymous (OA), a 12-step approach for people with any variety of eating disorder. I dove in, got a sponsor, and did my best to work the steps. For the first time I admitted all that I had done in secret for all these years. Although my participation didn't last long due to a combination of drug use and an abusive boyfriend who didn't support me at all, this time was a huge turning point for me. Like I said, for the first time at least I knew I had a problem.

Fast forward a couple more years (of hell), my whole life literally falls apart (again, another story), and I end up back at home with my mom. At this time I'm 26. Through a series of events that again is a story for another time I meet Jesus and my life starts to change. This is the part of my story that I would love to share more in-depth if anyone is interested, but for the sake of point of this post being about my weight loss journey, I'm going to skip it for now. However, because of this new founded relationship with my loving Father and Savior, my life begins to heal and my path starts to change from one towards death to one towards life. I start to find healing from unhealthy relationships, self-hatred, and self-mutilating habits. I start to love myself for who I have been created to be and the gnawing shame of being overweight lifts.

Ok, fast forward again to September of this year, 2022. Now I've been married for about 9 months (to the most wonderful and kind man of my dreams) and I'm in probably the most stable mental state of my life (still with ups and downs), but my energy is low, I'm starting to feel like my body is getting older, and my clothes are feeling tight. I don't want another fad diet, I don't want another tailspin into some self-hatred pit, I want a real solution. I want to be healthy and maintain health and do what is really good for my body and mind. I want my relationship with food to change and my lifestyle to change that has kept me overweight now for decades..

That's all the time I have for today folks! To be continued...

taux140

Ok people, here we go with part 2 of the journey. My idea here is to catch you up to today and then keep a daily-ish journal of the last 10 pounds to the finish line. And then maybe how maintaining goes from there? We'll see.

So where did I leave off.. yes, September of this year. And actually maybe I should back up a little because I think I skipped some important tidbits that also have played a role in this journey.

One of the diets that I tried about 5 years ago was Whole 30. Whole 30 is basically an elimination diet best used for discovering what foods may be causing discomfort and unrest in your body. At the time I was having some issues with Candida overgrowth in my gut and I was seeing a holistic doctor who had recommended that I cut out grains, sugar and dairy. Whole 30 encompasses cutting these out along with some other things so I thought I'd give it a try. I ended up cutting out sugar, grain, and dairy for over a year and along with some natural supplements to fight the Candida overgrowth and reestablish healthy gut flora, my body did heal. This was a huge victory because it had been something I had been fighting for almost a decade (although for most of the time I didn't know what I was actually dealing with because Candida isn't really recognized by popular medicine so doctors kept just treating my symptoms instead of the cause, but anyways, I'll hold off on that rant). Although the healing of my body was amazing, what the restrictive diet left me with was confusion about what was healthy for me to eat and also when I reincorporated these foods back into my diet, particularly dairy, I went way overboard.

So yeah, dairy was back in at this point but I still wasn't sure if grains and sugar were going to be ok for me so I kept those out. Also at this time I'm still overweight probably about 10ish pounds. I've never been hugely overweight, but ranging anywhere from 5-25 pounds overweight (maybe more on this later). So now I discover the keto diet. As I'm sure most people know the keto diet is when you largely restrict your carbohydrate intake so your body enters into ketosis and starts using fat as fuel instead of glucose. There are different ways to go about keto but I followed one particular doctor I found to seem to be well informed with his recommendations backed by science. I know that keto does work for some people and I have friends who have been able to maintain a keto diet for years now, but this did not work for me and I believe played right into my history of eating disorders. See the thing with me and food is that when it comes to food I feel out of control, so when I find a diet or method (bulimia) that makes me feel in control I grab it. So keto with its restrictive diet plan was great for me to feel in control of eliminating carbohydrates but I was just going overboard with everything else. I would eat tons of cheese, "fat bombs" which is basically cream cheese and whatever you want to put in there (my fave was peanut butter), and all the sugar free artificially sweetened treats I wanted. Needless to say I did not really lose any weight, maybe a few pounds, and I just ended up confused again about what was actually healthy for my body.

Over the next 5 years up until September of this year, 2022, I jumped around from restricting one ingredient or food group to another. Grain and sugar, just sugar, gluten and sugar, just gluten, around and around. All the while wanting to lose weight and be healthy and feeling like if I could just get enough control with these things it would somehow happen.

So now we're back to Sept 2022 and yeah my clothes are tight, my energy is low, and I'm just not liking what I'm seeing in the mirror. Mind you, I have no idea what I weight at this point because I wasn't keeping a scale in the house. Historically having a scale in the house would cause me to obsessively weigh myself and, not understanding at the time that your weight naturally fluctuates throughout the day and week, especially as a woman, it would prompt me to make myself throw up if I didn't like what I saw. So yeah, no scales. The only time I got a glimpse of what I weighed was when I went to the doctor for something and over the years I had seen my weight climb up about 20 pounds. I knew I was probably the heaviest I'd ever been and guessed that I was somewhere in the high 150s.

A few months prior I started a new job with a new company and now had a new health insurance provider. One day in late August some time I was perusing my health insurance's website and discovered they offered a number of perks to encourage members to stay healthy, one of them being a 52-week weight-loss program called Real Appeal. I saw it and thought "why not, what do I have to lose" (well, hopefully weight I guess). I signed up not entirely knowing what it entailed and not thinking that I really needed a program, but more just curious what it was all about. I was soon downloading their app and scheduled to have my first group session with my fitness coach. Still skeptical but curious I attended and started working the program. Basically it is a 52-week program that includes a fitness coach that you meet with in a group once a week (at least for the first half of the year, and then the second half it tapers down to once a month), daily "content cards" what include motivational articles and information on nutrition, exercise, how to stay on track, etc, and an app where you can track your calories and exercise. After the first week I was hooked.

To be continued...

taux140

Alright part 3 of the journey up until today and I hope to get through all of it because I'd like to start posting about what the day to day is like and what I'm learning and what challenges I'm facing. I hope that this is all helpful for at least one person out there and that its encouraging. Like I've said before I've gotten a lot of inspiration from reading people's stories on the community boards so I just want to do the same. It may also be sort of like a journal for myself to look back on and remember what I've come through. I know that this is going to be my life now. Tracking will likely always be part of my life because without it I have no objective way to gauge where I'm at which pushes me into an unhealthy subjective control thing with food. Anyways..

So I started Real Appeal back in September which included starting to track my food and exercise on their app. Their app doesn't use the same method of daily calorie determination as MFP. As a woman I was allotted about 1525 calories a day regardless of lifestyle or if I got any exercise that day. You also couldn't create your own food so if something wasn't in their database you couldn't manually add it which was kind of annoying. I had used MFP in the past during of my calorie restricting stints so I was familiar with it, so after a few weeks I decided to check it out to see if the food logging was a little bit easier. I was horrified to learn that MFP was only going to allot me 1220 calories a day (my lifestyle is considered sedentary because I work at computer all day) but I thought I would give it a try. I found MFP had a much larger database of foods and I liked the calorie in calorie out concept. It made more sense to me then just getting one base number of calories a day regardless of what I did physically. It also encouraged me to be active during the day to make room for a treat in my calorie goal.

At first I was trying to eat as few calories as possible (old habits die hard), but then I came across a discussion post on MFP by a personal trainer and I started learning about metabolism. I don't know his handle anymore or how to find him again or I'd give him some credit, but what he had to say really helped me. I'm not an expert in this so I'm not sure I'll say it quite right but basically if you're restricting your calories too much you're actually sabotaging your weight loss because your body thinks its starving and starts holding on to all the calories it gets. If you do this over a period of time it can cause lasting damage to your metabolism making it really hard to lose weight. There was a lot more to what he was saying but that was the general gist of what I got out of it. That was a major ah-ha moment for me and thank God it came when it did before I got too far in to that habit. I do have to say I do try to leave about ~100 calories (if I'm not hungry for them) as a buffer for underestimating calories in food or overestimating calories from movement. This was recommended in some other MFP posts I've read and it makes sense to me. However, I do not restrict food if I'm hungry (which I'm usually not unless I haven't eaten quality nutrients that day).

In the Real Appeal program I learned a lot about the importance of eating quality calories in order to feel satisfied. This is HUGE. Protein and fiber in particular for me. For breakfast I could have two slices of toast with butter and be hungry again in 5 minutes or have nonfat Greek yogurt with some blueberries for about the same calories and be satisfied for hours. What I have for breakfast really seems to make the rest of my day. I really think whoever said "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was right. If I don't have enough protein and fiber at breakfast I'm not satisfied the entire rest of the day no matter how many calories I consume. My yogurt/blueberries + homemade almost milk latte breakfast is only about 200 calories but it is so satisfying. I've tried other breakfast combos for >300 calories but this seems to work best for me. I then have a 300-400 calorie lunch and a ~500 calorie dinner plus a snack and a treat and I'm so set and rarely hungry for more. The trick is getting quality calories that are satisfying. Maybe I'll write more another time about some other things I eat regularly that have been really satisfying and yummy.

One challenge that I'm learning to overcome is eating out. The Real Appeal teaches to plan ahead what you're going to eat by looking up the menu and deciding ahead of time so you can make sure to stay within your calorie goal. It also taught me to have a snack before I go so I'm not starving when I'm there which is a recipe to overeat and make choices I otherwise would not. I've found that sugar snap peas are one of my FAVORITE snacks. You can have a good sized portion for <50 calories and they are packed with fiber which still makes them filling. Something that continues to be challenging for me though is when I'm going out with a group and they want to order appetizers that I didn't plan for. Its really hard for me to pass them up, but I try to only have a few bites. Dessert is usually easier to pass up because I keep a chocolate stash at home that I know I can have a portion controlled amount of when I get home and feel much better than if I gave in to a 500+ calorie at the restaurant.

Ok that's all for today folks!

taux140

I'm feeling really discouraged today people.

I feel like I'm busting my butt and not seeing the results I'm expecting. Looking back over the month of December:

Starting weight - 151
Ending weight - 149

Logged exercise everyday except 8 days (some of these days I had more than one work out). Stayed within my calorie goal everyday except about 8 days (and only a couple of these did I have a positive energy equation). The last two weeks I have been especially diligent and have not lost a pound.

I did get a treadmill for Christmas so I'm going to try to up my step count in addition to my strength and cardio workouts, but if I'm already staying within my calorie goal most days I'm not sure why I'm not losing more weight.

Helpppppppppp

How do I get past this plateau?

I_AM_ISRAEL

Hi @taux140 i can help you

taux140

Update! After my little (probably hormone induced) pity party, turns out I lost almost 2 pounds last week! It looks like adding 10,000 steps to most of my days (plus strength training every other day which I was already doing) last week made quite a difference.

Also last week I discovered a post by another MFP member who had linked an article to a website called Physiqonomics and I took a deep dive into his content and found some really great resources! He has a little bit of a different approach on how to calculate daily calorie intake and has an argument for not eating back exercise calories. Using his approach I'll get about 1470 calories a day for eating at a deficit (about 250 more than MFP would give me as a baseline) but no additional for eating back exercise. I'm going to give it a try and see how it goes.

Here is a link to one of his articles about setting calories that I found to be really interesting -
https://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/#setting-calories

taux140

Lost another pound this past week! Man it feels good to be moving towards my goal again. I'm down to 146, so 6 more pounds to go until I hit my initial goal. I chose 140 as my goal because it was at the high end of the healthy weight for my height based on BMI (I'm 5'4") I thought that losing 22 pounds going from 162 to 140 I would look like a skeleton (lol), but turns out that's not the case (at least by what I can tell at 146 so far). I plan to reassess and possibly set a new goal once I get down to 140. The low end of a healthy weight for my height is 110 but that seems extreme...

I know myself and I know I can kind of unconsciously get obsessive about things and I want to stay objective about what a healthy weight is for me.

Anyone have any thoughts on how they knew they were at their best weight for themselves?