90% there...!

Hi folks -

I've been super impressed and motivated all the transformations on here, so I thought it was time to add my own modest story. Hope it's of some small use to someone else!

I was always chubby, ever since I was about 6 or 7 - I'm now approaching 30, and until this year I never really knew what it was like to be "normal". I suspect like a lot of people who were large as a kid, I internalised the idea that my weight was just the way I was, and this became a psychological barrier when trying to lose weight - deep down I had an irrational fear that no matter how hard I tried, it was actually going to be physically impossible for me ever to be thin. At some level I still "feel" fat, but I know that will ease as I get used to my new form.

Anyway, at the start of this year I set out to get into shape - I was somewhere around 180lb... now I'm down to around 138lb. I certainly don't need to get any lighter, but I do still want to swap a bit of fat for muscle.

I didn't take any photos at the beginning - I wish I had, now, but the earliest I have is from May, when I must have been about 155lb. The three photos are from then, a couple of weeks ago, and then today (using slightly more flattering lighting!)

There seems to be a lot of weird misinformation online about weight loss and tons of unrealistically fast transformations. So here's what I found worked, and a few observations, good and bad:

1. CICO. Everyone says it, but it's true. I seem to have quite a low "maintenance" threshold for a guy... somewhere around 2000 calories, I think. I set my daily limit to around 1500. I kept a very close eye on everything I was consuming, so I doubt I was ever more than about 100 calories off that either way (with a few exception days). Otherwise, I more or less had whatever I wanted. Most days I don't eat until quite late - sometimes not until 3 or 4 in the afternoon (although I'll normally have a coffee late morning), when I tend to have a 500 cal lunch. Then I try, if I can, to build up some "exercise calories" so that I can have a fairly large dinner, somewhere between 1000 and 1500 calories. But on the days when that isn't possible I have a few very filling but low cal recipes I can fall back on.
2. Walking is good. For most of the year that was more or less the only exercise I did. I'd sometimes go for a swim, but most days I'd walk 7-10 miles. That works out as enough to work off lunch and the morning coffee. More recently I've started getting back into other sports - I now play squash once a week and go climbing with some friends most weekends as well as regular resistance training (3-4 times a week) at the gym. Which leads me to...
3. Gaining muscle is possible even with a calorie deficit! Probably not very much, true, but you can still do it. Initially I just intended to do weights so that I wouldn't lose much muscle... I wanted to maintain some kind of structure to my body while shedding the fat. Well, I've actually made some small (but not insignificant) gains. And not by doing anything crazy. I'm naturally quite lazy in the gym - I doubt I do as much as I should, but as long as I feel like I'm building up strength, I'm happy. I'm sure the beefcakes at the gym think I'm weedy but I'm happy with the progress I've made considering the calorie deficit.
4. It's very, very difficult to be objective when you're looking at yourself. Different mirrors, different lighting can completely throw you off. In some lighting I can just about begin to make out the start of a six-pack. In others I think I look awful. To be honest I still haven't worked out how to address that, other than to aim to be happy with my figure in whatever lighting I'm in.
5. It's very, very difficult for other people to be objective about your shape. Even around May (first pic), people were beginning to say "you really shouldn't go any further... you're getting really skinny". I think it's fairly clear that I still had a few pounds to go. I've continued to lose fat and gain muscle and I still think I look a touch "soft" (but to be sure, I don't feel like I'm very far off).
6. Best advice I can give is: find a routine that works and stick to it. Simple (though not necessarily always easy) as that. It's hard work but it's thrilling too. Slowly getting to a point where every day I'd wake up thinking "today I'm in the best shape I've ever been", every so often catching a reflection of myself and thinking "woah... I'm looking... ok..."...

Anyway, enough rambling. My current plan is to stick to my regime for about another month, just to lose a little more body fat while keeping the muscle up. I'm hoping at that point I can ease back to maintenance. Feel free to ask any questions if I can be of any use!

And thanks for all the inspiration!