120 Day progress. :-/ Not really success...but it is what it is.

Congrats on losing wt. Any wt loss is appreciable. For the time being, let's not give too much of importance on the quantity of loss.

One baby step at a time. We can do it, eventually. Frustration is a big hurdle in our wt loss battles. Don't you think so? Let's try driving it out of our equation, if possible.

I've lost over 40 lbs in 6 months. Happy? Yeah. Could've lost more? May be! Cheer up. You will be there. Good luck on your wt loss journey, mate.

I gotta ask Darin, how accurate is your tracking? We are similar in size, I am down to 210 from 242. I am losing at 1-2lbs a week eating around 2000cals a day with 2000-4500 steps a day. I do cardio for roughly 45 minutes 4-5 times a week on my stationary bike. I spend over half the day sitting at a desk or in a vehicle.

When i was eating at 1470 calories and eating back all of my exercise calories I was losing at 2lbs a week. So all of this makes me think there's gotta be an error in your measuring somewhere. Your diary is closed so I can't see anything on it.

Oh yeah, and why no carbs?

This isn't the page I was looking for but its a start. There's a great video from a trainer somewhere but I cant find it.

https://www.muscleforlife.com/refeed/

See I guess I have been lucky because for me it is 100% eat less and lose more. It has been all year long, when I track calories and stick to the budget it allows me I literally lose exactly what I should. When I stop tracking and measuring my food I gain. My problem is I go 1 month of being perfect on diet, then the next month is completely out the window. I work rotational so when I am here in Russia my diet is on point, then I go home.....

Have you thought of mixing in any real HIIT into your workouts? I seen that you are lifting weights and there's a ton of research that saying HIIT doesn't make you lose muscle and burns fat like a mother. You get a ton of results in a very short period of time.

I've never heard that cardio doesn't burn. The harder you work the more calories you burn and in turn lose weight. HIIT is hard but the shifts that I was doing it on my bike I was able to eat much more and lose weight the same. I have an assault bike waiting for my at home so I can get more of a total body cardio session. You should see how the knee holds up on a bike, I know my knees are buggered from doing Insanity a couple months ago so running is out but the bike feels just fine on it.

I am in Siberia, although not as far north as I used to be, work for an oilfield service company.

You can burn an extra 600 calories in an hour on the bike speeding up the amount of time that it takes to lose the weight.

I used to work in Noya, well actually in Vingapour which is an hour drive from there but our office is in Noya. Now I am in Khanty-Mansiysk.

So that would be 400 calories an hour you are burning over and above what you are burning without it. I have lost the majority of my weight with the bike. It's the only cardio I get over here other than the Insanity one shift and a bit of T25.

I am a woman, and I will honestly say that I see a change in your before and after pics. It may not seem like much to you because you're fustrated and you're used to seeing your body, but this is the first time I've seen this post and I spotted the difference in the pics immediately because I saw my own body do it after I worked three months. It is in your torso under your rib cage. You now have a ridge along your side whee we can see your abs, and your belly button has lifted and lost some puffyness. Also your chest has lifted in two places. Your shoulder caps are a little different too. It is working from my point of view, and your body is more attractive in the after pics. You are definitely carrying the torso weight that is remaining in a more distributed manner than where it was all concentrated over your under rib area before.

You are doing fine and being way too hard on yourself. It's only been 3 months.

You might want to consider having your body fat percentage calculated and determining your basal metabolic rate (BMR). It's possible you are not eating enough.

I see a change from start to now. The key is to get past the three month mark which is where a lot of people give up.

Good luck to you!

I agree with these ladies. Keep it up, keep it up, keep it up! Some people are lucky and see big changes quickly, others see slower, more gradual change. You've already lost 40 pounds in 4 months and that's nothing to sneeze at. You've also increased your strength and your clothes sizes are changing. These are all signs that you're doing well, albeit not as fast as if you were on the miracle pill (there is no miracle pill).

It's okay to not be satisfied with your body shape right now-as long as it doesn't prevent you from continuing to work on it. (You're not alone. Many, many people are not satisfied with their body shape, even people who have a body shape others might envy. That's how many of us are wired. We compare ourselves to others and to what we imagine we could/should be. In a perfect world we get over this at some point, but keep expecting the best from ourselves.) Hopefully you're happy with your behavioural inputs though. You feel like you've been working smart and hard regularly (illness aside) and sticking to your nutrition plan.

It's my belief that the biggest factors in long-term success are consistency and sustainability. Stick with what's working for you and keep putting in your time. You probably don't need to try anything new or different if you're already making progress with what you do. There are so many different ways to workout and eat to lose fat. They can all work, and rarely is one inherently better than the others. The best workout and the best nutrition method is the one that you can stick to and do forever. Focus on continuing to put in good quality workouts and on continuing to eat well and your behaviours will continue to serve you. If you hit a point where you can't stick to your plan anymore, or if your progress has halted for an extended period of time-then think about how you might change your approach.