Progress - In a fashion....

Before I had my son I was eating 1300 cals a day, and doing loads of cardio exercise.
I believed that I needed to do this because a deficit was the way to go, and the less I ate (providing it wasn't less than 1200), the better it would be. My diet was pretty poor, and I was hungry. But it was ok, because I was dropping 4-6lb a week, and I was getting thin! Yay me!!

No. Not yay me. It was awful. I was probably netting around 200 cals all told. I still told myself that it was for my own good.

I was about 30lbs off goal when I got pregnant, and upped my cals to 1600 on doctor's advice. I felt a lot fuller, sure, but due to illness had to cut down on the exercise. Which meant the weight crept back on. After a bad pregnancy, I went back up to 294 (right where I was before).

I came across this site, and I dropped down to 1400, and started increasing the exercise slowly, but still netting about 700. After a couple of months I started stalling. Before dropping down again though, I felt I needed to see if the issue was me and what I was doing first.
So I started researching, and looking at different ways I could achieve my goal without sacrificing my sanity. And stumbled on Nerdfitness, as well as here. I looked at BMR and TDEE methods, and saw that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way I was doing it before. My "diet" wasn't sustainable, nor was it healthy.
So I tried to go into it full force. My body wouldn't let me. I felt bloated and sick. But I carried on. I gained 10lb.

Then, after a month... something changed. I no longer felt like I was forcing food down my neck just to hit numbers. I found that I could eat better, and look forward to a meal. Some days I even found that I was hungry - on 1900 calories.. hungry?! I'd not felt hunger for ages!

Now I'm down to 217.5, and feel SO MUCH HEALTHIER!
It's not a rush, it's a lifestyle for me, so I don't care how long it takes, or really even what my weight is. What matters is what size I am, and how I feel. I'm nowhere near goal, but I'm still working on that.

Anyway - I did have a point.. somewhere



Tl;dr: On the left - 184. I was so close to goal that I thought I looked good. On the right - my thinner self.. at 218 I clearly had a higher body fat percentage at a lower weight than I do now. It makes me happy.
Lesson - don't eat so little. It's never good.