My progress
rosierosepdx
Posts: 2 Member
Hi, everyone. I thought I'd share my story and my progress. I'm 40 years old. I've been anywhere from 25-60 pounds overweight most of my adult life. About five years ago, when I hit an all-time high, I finally started actively trying to lose weight. I first tried to change only my diet, and not exercise. Or I'd exercise for a while, but use my crazy work schedule as an excuse to fall out of my routine. I would drop about 10 pounds, and then flatline and lose motivation. And then I'd gain most or all of it back. My weight likes to stay in the same band - I can lose about 10 and then it stalls and I would get discouraged and give up.
From about Jan 2012 to Aug 2012, I decided to be more proactive. I bought a bodybugg and found my true TDEE. I'd recently come through a divorce, found a wonderful partner, and decided it was just time. I first concentrated on making exercise a habit - every morning at 5:30am, I would get up and do 60 minutes on my elliptical. I realized I had to get it over and done with in the morning or I'd somehow find an excuse to get out of it. I saw no real weight loss other than those easy first 5ish pounds during this time, but I did tone and feel better. And exercise became a routine. I actually missed it when I skipped it (a miracle for me).
August 2012 - my partner and good friend turned me on to MyFitnessPal. From Aug 2012 to Jan 2013, I began to really concentrate on calories in and out. I was set to net 1200 calories daily. I always eat back my exercise calories because I like to eat. I ate about 1500 calories per day and exercise knocked down 300 to 400ish cals. During this time, I went with the default MFP recommended carb/protein/fat goals. I didn't actively strive to hit any macros at first. I lost 19 pounds this way. I plateaued often. I bought a heart rate monitor and did HIIT on my elliptical to break the plateaus. This worked okay. I didn't feel tired, my hair was fine, etc. I **was** crabby often, though. Netting 1200 is difficult, and I often failed at it, and got discouraged. Around August, I also discovered an iPhone app called FatWatch that allowed me to log my daily weight and bodyfat %, and allowed me to notice trends over time and stop panicking every darn time the scale went up. I love that app, and the book it derived from, The Hacker's Diet by John Walker.
At some point, I stopped using my bodybugg because it became too cumbersome for me. I should probably pick it back up again.
I went on vacation (honeymoon!) the last two weeks of January 2013 and gained 3 pounds.
Feb 1 - Added strength training in the form of Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. Researched a bunch, joined EM2WL group on MFP. Deciding to take a baby step toward fueling my body appropriately, I upped my calories on MFP to net 1640. Still eating back my exercise calories, so my daily intake is now (happily) around 2000. My daily average intake of food now averages out to be TDEE-20% when I look at the week as a whole. This is an amount I feel I can sustain over the long-term. I have reset my expectations and know this will take time - whatever time my body decides. And that's fine with me. I have about 30 pounds to lose, maybe 40. My current goal is to lose another 20 pounds and then I'll evaluate once more.
With these new goal settings in MFP, from Feb 1 to March 15, my weight fluctated up 1-5 pounds depending on TOM. I didn't follow Shred by the book - I included one rest day per week and did the Level 1 workout for 30 days and then did 20 days on Level 2. I had decided that it felt right to me to move on when I felt comfortable doing most of the moves at advanced (or medium-advanced). Throughout this time, I didn't just do my Shred workout - I always followed it with 25 minutes on the elliptical. I didn't want to lose all that I'd gained in my cardio workouts. I love being able to sail up stairs and go on long walks while traveling, etc. I still try to do HIIT for 10-15 mins of this time, but my legs are often too tired. I hope to build up to that over time. Scale was often discouraging, but I had upgraded to a scale that gave me more info, that showed my muscle weight was up, as was water weight. I also saw a loss of 3 inches overall total, pants and shirts were fitting better. I even went down a jean size. So I was motivated to keep going, but still off an on worried I wasn't doing the right thing.
Two weeks ago, around March 10th or so, I decided to tweak another couple of things - again due to reading the wonderful MFP community and EM2WL posts: I added in an extra rest day and I changed my macros to 40 Carb/30 Fat/30 Protein. I try my best to get 20g of protein in at breakfast. I still have trouble hitting my protein numbers consistently, but I'm getting better at it.
No loss on scale recorded until March 20, where I saw a small .2 pound loss. Then today, I recorded a .8 pound loss. Muscle and water weight both still up. Body fat % trending downward.
I switched things up further this morning by moving to Level 3 of the Shred, and I plan on moving on to ChaLEAN Body Extreme next.
I am encouraged. I can sustain this over the long term. I will continue to measure, log, and tweak things to adjust to my body's changes. I can do this!
(my apologies if I've posted this in the wrong area - this is my first topic post ever!)
From about Jan 2012 to Aug 2012, I decided to be more proactive. I bought a bodybugg and found my true TDEE. I'd recently come through a divorce, found a wonderful partner, and decided it was just time. I first concentrated on making exercise a habit - every morning at 5:30am, I would get up and do 60 minutes on my elliptical. I realized I had to get it over and done with in the morning or I'd somehow find an excuse to get out of it. I saw no real weight loss other than those easy first 5ish pounds during this time, but I did tone and feel better. And exercise became a routine. I actually missed it when I skipped it (a miracle for me).
August 2012 - my partner and good friend turned me on to MyFitnessPal. From Aug 2012 to Jan 2013, I began to really concentrate on calories in and out. I was set to net 1200 calories daily. I always eat back my exercise calories because I like to eat. I ate about 1500 calories per day and exercise knocked down 300 to 400ish cals. During this time, I went with the default MFP recommended carb/protein/fat goals. I didn't actively strive to hit any macros at first. I lost 19 pounds this way. I plateaued often. I bought a heart rate monitor and did HIIT on my elliptical to break the plateaus. This worked okay. I didn't feel tired, my hair was fine, etc. I **was** crabby often, though. Netting 1200 is difficult, and I often failed at it, and got discouraged. Around August, I also discovered an iPhone app called FatWatch that allowed me to log my daily weight and bodyfat %, and allowed me to notice trends over time and stop panicking every darn time the scale went up. I love that app, and the book it derived from, The Hacker's Diet by John Walker.
At some point, I stopped using my bodybugg because it became too cumbersome for me. I should probably pick it back up again.
I went on vacation (honeymoon!) the last two weeks of January 2013 and gained 3 pounds.
Feb 1 - Added strength training in the form of Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. Researched a bunch, joined EM2WL group on MFP. Deciding to take a baby step toward fueling my body appropriately, I upped my calories on MFP to net 1640. Still eating back my exercise calories, so my daily intake is now (happily) around 2000. My daily average intake of food now averages out to be TDEE-20% when I look at the week as a whole. This is an amount I feel I can sustain over the long-term. I have reset my expectations and know this will take time - whatever time my body decides. And that's fine with me. I have about 30 pounds to lose, maybe 40. My current goal is to lose another 20 pounds and then I'll evaluate once more.
With these new goal settings in MFP, from Feb 1 to March 15, my weight fluctated up 1-5 pounds depending on TOM. I didn't follow Shred by the book - I included one rest day per week and did the Level 1 workout for 30 days and then did 20 days on Level 2. I had decided that it felt right to me to move on when I felt comfortable doing most of the moves at advanced (or medium-advanced). Throughout this time, I didn't just do my Shred workout - I always followed it with 25 minutes on the elliptical. I didn't want to lose all that I'd gained in my cardio workouts. I love being able to sail up stairs and go on long walks while traveling, etc. I still try to do HIIT for 10-15 mins of this time, but my legs are often too tired. I hope to build up to that over time. Scale was often discouraging, but I had upgraded to a scale that gave me more info, that showed my muscle weight was up, as was water weight. I also saw a loss of 3 inches overall total, pants and shirts were fitting better. I even went down a jean size. So I was motivated to keep going, but still off an on worried I wasn't doing the right thing.
Two weeks ago, around March 10th or so, I decided to tweak another couple of things - again due to reading the wonderful MFP community and EM2WL posts: I added in an extra rest day and I changed my macros to 40 Carb/30 Fat/30 Protein. I try my best to get 20g of protein in at breakfast. I still have trouble hitting my protein numbers consistently, but I'm getting better at it.
No loss on scale recorded until March 20, where I saw a small .2 pound loss. Then today, I recorded a .8 pound loss. Muscle and water weight both still up. Body fat % trending downward.
I switched things up further this morning by moving to Level 3 of the Shred, and I plan on moving on to ChaLEAN Body Extreme next.
I am encouraged. I can sustain this over the long term. I will continue to measure, log, and tweak things to adjust to my body's changes. I can do this!
(my apologies if I've posted this in the wrong area - this is my first topic post ever!)
0
Replies
-
This was awesome to read. Thank you for sharing!!! I'm hope to keep updated on the rest of your journey!0
-
Great job on you loss! But whats even better is losing those 3 inches and dropping a pants size!! You will inspire others to keep going and not give up! Thanks for sharing!!0
