Made it (this far!) - and thanks!

Hello,

After nine months, I met my goal to lose 40 pounds which moved me from technically overweight to just under the middle of the BMI scale.

After being a lurker on these forums, I feel like I should share my success with myfitnesspal, as it's basically what helped me get here! I wanted to post a few points on my thoughts. Everyone is different, and it's really just a personal reflection.

As background, I had been feeling a bit chubbier that I would like for a while, my weight had gradually increased by a few kg over about 4-5 years, but hadn't done anything serious about it - I was fairly active (jogging, climbing, hiking, walked a fair amount, often 8km to work and back) but I was obviously eating to balance (or over-balance) it.

I had a couple of "life events" later this year I really wanted to look optimal for, and I was unhappy with a recent few photos of myself. So at the start of the year I thought I'd go for it, found the app, and away I went.

A few thoughts:

1. For me, it was great fun to treat it as one big science project. I set the numbers in the app, (mostly) did what it suggested and met its goals, and lost weight steadily [NOTE - over time!!! I had huge daily and weekly fluctuations). I weighed daily, which was massively helpful in being able to see longer-term trends that would have been lost if I weighed myself less often (because my day-to-day fluctuations often cancelled out weight loss in the short term). After any trip away (or a flight), my weight would temporarily whoosh up.

2. What did I eat? I ate chocolate, pizza, wine, ate out - just all very much in moderation. A couple of things that really helped me were massively stepping up proportions of veg, and buying things that I found healthy and saitiating, especially for treats (e.g. berries, low calories ice lollies and "healthier" ice cream). Often these felt a bit pricier, but for me it was worth prioritising.

3. Weighing, measuring and logging were, for me, crucial. I weighed, logged absolutely everything at home, and gave as good as I could estimates for eating out (looking at various items on the database and making a best guess). I generally had my calories around the 1200 - 1350 mark before adding any extra movement or exercise (I'm 5'5", and set it to "sedentary"), and ate back a proportion of movement and exercise calories, depending on how wildly optimistic I thought the calorie burn estimates were. If I ate nutritious food, this number of calories was filling and I wasn't hungry (sometimes a bit peckish, but not actually hungry), and gave me 200 - 300 for treats . The challenge for me was in being organised, and avoiding eating on the go, or going to places with low-calorie options, as much as possible.

4. I have found the forums to be incredibly helpful - with supportive, wise and funny comments from thousands of people (there is a bit of wooo but hey, it all balances out). A few names who I've noticed and found particularly helpful were middlehaitch, kimny72, and tiny_dancer_in_pink - thank you!.And whoever made the super flow chart which explains pretty much everything.

5. Overall I've had periods of doing more and less exercise throughout the last nine months, and in my case, it's made very little difference to my rate of loss (it makes me feel better in loads of other ways though!). It's now a bugbear of mine that so many people think stepping up exercise, without thinking about their food, will help them lose weight - which I don't think is easy to do. I would have just ended up chunky and more muscley at the same weight...

6. I'm not entirely sure what to do now at goal - have been reading "maintenance" threads. I have upped my calories to "maintenance" on the app (it's worryingly easy to eat those extra ones...) but am aiming to stay under for a bit so as to have a smooth transition. I plan to continue logging for now and then attempt to gradually wean myself off. But I plan to have a "weight range" I'm happy with, and start logging again if I hit the top limit.

Thanks to everyone, and good luck to those of you starting out or on your way.
Laura