Making changes, eating and progressing

venchentso

Hey Everyone,
I am Vince and I just want to share my opinion and stuff I learned the hard way.
Back in 2016 I decided that I will lose weight by counting calories.
Of course as many people do I only focused on calories itself and nothing else and put it on the extreme spectrum.
What this means from 110 kilograms I became 72kg in 3 Months. Which means 40kg ( 90 lbs ) weight loss for like 90 days.
What I did is few hours heavy running on the treadmill consuming less than 1000 calories per day ( most of the days around 800 ).
I cut all sugars , and focused only on loosing weight Fast - well extremely fast .
You can guess what happened - i gained all back. Well it took some time , but when I decided that my weight loss is over I started eating like before my weight loss . Because of the hard restrictions I made about food during this phase i started craving sweet and carbs sooo so much.
So long story short , all weight was back and I was once again 220kg.

So few months now I started having negative health effects and decided its time to get in shape.
What I can do ? I want of course extreme weight loss and this time I thought I will eat whatever I want , no limits but with one catch - OMAD ( one meal a day ).
Truth to be told I started losing weight fast again but with a price.
I became alot moody , didnt enjoy social events , constantly though about food and of course binge eating during my one meal.
I realized that my Omad is making me lose weight but impacting significantly my mental health and not helping for actually eating better.
I was eating extreme volumes of food ( not calorie dense but still - felt so bloated and couldn't do anything after the meal ).

Well it was time for a change and realizing my mistakes and that good and permanent changes need actually time and most importantly I need to give myself time and finally I need to realize how TF to make better choices.

Back to square one - counting calories but no restrictions. Realizing that one chocolate will not ruin everything, realizing that I can actually eat ice cream, and whatever I want. I just need to focus more on my protein intake ( started resistance training) , and as soon as I keep hitting my protein macro I can spoil myself sometimes with what I want.
Even If I go to vacation with my family and I am unable to count calories and macros I still can make good decisions about food and portion sizes.
Well realizing all this not only made me happier, mood was drastically improved and finally I realized I can do something permanent and actually by not starving myself or make restrictions about Good food and bad food.

Pls everyone, do what works for you - calorie counting, intermittent fasting , various diets but don't do extremes. At the end they are all tools towards our goal Which for me is not loosing the weight anymore but actually fix the relationship with food and be healthy .

Posting my progress photo so far, thank you for reading.

Fjm2

You are so spot on! The relationship we have with food is key. If I want a cookie, I fit that into my plan. I don’t need 6 cookies but have learned to appreciate that one for that moment. I am so much more mindful of what I am putting into my body.

lisakatz2

Vince, you look great! Excellent progress there.

AnnPT77

Great insights: That's the success mindset. You've accomplished so much! Thank you for sharing the insights!