Just beginning, HELP?

cdarling201 · June 2018

Hi I am 20 years old and close to 400 pounds. I am very disappointed in how I’ve let myself go. I am completely lost for how to begin diet and exercise wise. I work four days a week eight hours a day at a desk and I get 2 15 minuet breaks and one 30 min lunch. I want to be able to exercise more and have food with me that would be easy to prepare and good for me. If anyone has tip/tricks or advise please feel free to let me know.

emmamcgarity · June 2018

First and foremost, you can do this. Know that. There will be days that you struggle, but you can do this.

The first place to start is your food. Log your food in your diary every day. All of it. Even if you go over your calorie goal. Be as accurate as possible. If you are successful at staying close to your calorie goal every day, you will lose weight. What you eat isn't really as important unless you have medical conditions that prohibit certain foods. That said, adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet will help you feel more satisfied with a lower number of calories. So, if you don't currently eat a lot of fruits and veggies, I'd encourage you to consider adding more.

As for exercise, it's great for overall health. It's not required for weight loss, but it will definitely help give you a boost. Plus, in my experience, you'll feel better about yourself. Walking is a great place to start. If you have mobility issues, start small. You can increase time and distance as you build more strength.

alteredsteve175 · June 2018

Start with 5 minutes of walking at each of your breaks. You can increase the time and distance after a couple of weeks. Agree with @emmamcgarity - getting up and moving will pay dividends in attitude.

I found it helpful to keep some snacks with me all the time. Something that fit into my calorie plan. Better to eat something and stick to your plan - I tried to stay away from the convenience stores and fast food joints.

Keep checking in here. Ask questions and get ideas from others. This community is great for help and support.

VUA21 · June 2018

Well by asking for help, you are way ahead of most people that start a "diet".

1. Set your goal to maintenance and just work on logging EVERYTHING!!!! That is actually a big hurdle, it does get easier over time. If you keep gaining wait, then just stopping the gain, IS A SUCCESS.
2. Do not "diet". They don't work, not in the long run. I did the yo-yo dieting crap for about 15 years - start a diet, lose weight, stop....and gain it all back. Being hyper restrictive with foods, tends to lead to cravings. Also, diets aren't meant to be permanent, once you're off of them, that's when diets fail.
3. Go slow and have patience. The first few weeks just learn how to log food and eat at maintenance. Once you're comfortable, eat below maintenance. A 250 daily deficit is 1/2lb per week. Just don't drop too much, going slower teaches you how to eat just a little bit less.
4. Don't fear food. Unless you have a legitimate allergy, intolerance, or other medical issue; there are no "bad" foods. Just eat the high calorie/low nutrition foods in moderation. Yes, this means that you can have fast food, but have a kids meal with water or a diet soda instead of the larger meals. You can have cookies, just limit the amount you have
5. Turn small changes into habits. Changing your entire life style at once is incredibly difficult and nearly impossible to keep. Changing one thing is easy. Incorporate a few small changes into you normal habits, over time (usually 2-4 weeks) those changes become habits. Simple things such as one slice of cheese instead of two, having a side salad (with a reasonable dressing) and a slice of pizza instead of 2 slices of pizza, swapping whole fat milk to a lower fat or unsweetened non-dairy milk. (Unsweetened almond milk has 30 calories per cup).
6. Read labels!!! OMG, this one. So much food is advertisemed as "healthy" that is worse for you than the non "healthy" options. Case in point: Raisen Bran has 210 calories per 1 cup serving, Fruit Loops has 110 calories per 1 cup serving. The little bag of almonds vs a packaged cookie at Starbucks.... Yeah, the almonds have fewer calories per serving - but that bag is 2.5 servings, the whole cookie is one serving: the single prepackaged cookie is the better option if you're going to eat the whole package of whichever one you pick.
7. A food scale. Yep, because restaurant portions and pre-packaged items tend to be a lot more than a serving, a food scale will help teach you what a serving is. Also, in order to know how many calories you're actually eating - you need to know how much you're actually eating. Now, while weighting EVERYTHING is best; if your getting overwhelmed - there are foods that you can eyeball. Leafy greens, adding 4 spinach leaves to a sandwich is not going to be a substantial difference if you just enter 3 calories or weigh them out. Same with cucumbers and other very low calorie foods. Hmmm....that looks like a cup of lettuce - 7 calories, if I'm off a bit, it's not enough to make a difference.
8. Don't quit. Bad days happen. We all have them. I've had more than I can count, but I never quit. I've had days where I blew my calories by more than 2000!!!! Yet, I'm down 175lbs overall. Weight loss is not linear, so fluctuations and plateaus happen. Water retention can swing weight by 5lbs from one day to the next, generally women understand this concept better than men - we kinda deal with bloating once a month on average. If you're feeling overwhelmed... Take a break and eat at maintenance for a while, when you refocus, then go back to eating at a deficit.
9. Don't judge yourself by other people's eating and workout logs. I can eat substantially less now than I could at my heaviest and feel the same; the less mass a body has the less energy (calories) required to simply exist.
10. Read success stories. Really read them, and take not of how long it took people to lose weight. Yeah, I lost 170lbs - it took 2 Years!!! I then did a recomp for a year and am now back losing more. 5lbs down so far.
11. Celebrate your successes. Everything from logging every day for a week, losing 5lbs, clothes fitting better...all successes. Reward yourself. Some of my rewards include everything from a pair of cute socks to an hour of me time.
12. Remember that you are not alone. There are 100's of us that have been right where you're at, or are where you're at. Ask questions if you're unsure.

You can do this. All it takes is patience, persistence, and commitment.

John772016 · June 2018

Totally agree with @VUA21 And read the success stories posted here....great motivation to keep going when you want to give up.

MelmothWanders · June 2018

Joining the list of well wishers and supporters.

Everyone's advice so far has been on point, and @VUA21 just laid some great knowledge down for you. You're on the right track because you're here. I'm in a similar place myself, only in my case I used to be a gym rat and I know a lot about nutrition and exercise, I just wasn't doing it. At your age, you're in a great place to make a change and you CAN do this. If it helps, don't look at it as a giant amount of weight that you want to lose, just focus on losing one pound at a time . . . that's super simple.

To reemphasize a few points: do use the tools here to estimate your calorie needs, do log your food here, do get a kitchen scale, and do look at food labels. Don't try to cut massive amounts of calories out of your diet or radically change your diet all at once, that will make it so much harder to stick with it.

Honestly, that is all you need to do for now. That alone will likely get you started and you should see progress if you stick to just this. If you can incorporate walking or swimming into your day on a regular basis, that's great too.

Once you are comfortable with all of this, I have some recommendations for next steps:

If you are new to nutrition, start reading and watching videos to learn about what nutrients are and what roles they play in your body. You don't need to become a registered dietician, but you should know what those terms mean on food labels.

If you don't know how to cook, learn how to cook basic meals. Replacing take out or frozen, pre-packaged food with cooked meals can make a huge difference in your nutrition. (I lost about 40lbs this year by just making giant batches of low-sodium soups and other easy meals once a week and portioning them out in food containers ahead of time. Even if you don't cook now, you can handle the sorts of recipes I'm talking about).

Once you have all of this under your now loosening belt, see your doctor and get the all clear to exercise more. Walking or swimming will likely be all that you need at first, but adding in weight training is a huge boost to your metabolism (and here I mean: the calories you burn all day long, even when you're not exercising), and will help you avoid injury and joint pain in other activities as well. Some people are afraid that weight training will make them look like a body builder, but don't worry, it takes months and years of really hard, intentional effort to look like that.

Lastly, do check out YouTube for inspiration and advice. The dietary advice is not always great there, but there are some really positive and knowledgeable people out there who want to help. Folks like ObeseToBeast share their stories of large amounts of weight loss and what worked for them and are honest and open about the experience.

Just beginning, HELP?

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