*** Big Fat Weight Loss Thread ***

[AndyCr15]

With Christmas, New Year and now Birthday meals and such out of the way, today is rather my proper start to really eating better (and less). In the 17 days (with a few excessive days due to events) I've still dropped about 4 or 5lbs, so hopefully as I properly get on it now, the weight will come down quickly. Mind you, I'm about to start WFH, so will get even less 'natural' exercise, so must make sure I generate the exercise myself.

 

[Martynt74]

With Christmas, New Year and now Birthday meals and such out of the way, today is rather my proper start to really eating better (and less). In the 17 days (with a few excessive days due to events) I've still dropped about 4 or 5lbs, so hopefully as I properly get on it now, the weight will come down quickly. Mind you, I'm about to start WFH, so will get even less 'natural' exercise, so must make sure I generate the exercise myself.

Doing better than me, mine has still stagnated and just hovering around the 89kg level bouncing around +/-0.5kg

It's a funny one, in a way it's frustrating given i'm putting in a decent bit of effort to not overeat too much junk and be generally quite good, but at the same time, it's helping to motivate me to not overeat as i consider what it'd be like if i did! The only thing is just whether i'm hugely underestimating calories in things. Like Sunday i admitadly had a massive plate of roast dinner and just stuck 1000kcal for it, but maybe it's actually more, although a lot of it was mainly veg (green beans, asparagus, tenderstem broccoli, carrot/parsnip) so not like they can have accumulated to too many!

 

[Alice In Wonderland]

Doing better than me, mine has still stagnated and just hovering around the 89kg level bouncing around +/-0.5kg

It's a funny one, in a way it's frustrating given i'm putting in a decent bit of effort to not overeat too much junk and be generally quite good, but at the same time, it's helping to motivate me to not overeat as i consider what it'd be like if i did! The only thing is just whether i'm hugely underestimating calories in things. Like Sunday i admitadly had a massive plate of roast dinner and just stuck 1000kcal for it, but maybe it's actually more, although a lot of it was mainly veg (green beans, asparagus, tenderstem broccoli, carrot/parsnip) so not like they can have accumulated to too many!

Do you measure out portion sizes for yourself as a way to help as well?

I was in Lakeland yesterday buying some portion control tubs for when I batch cook.

The lady, who found where the one's I was needing were, looked in horror at how small they were!

Immediately commented that she ate much more than needed but wouldn’t survive on something so much small.

 

[Martynt74]

No I don’t and I accept I eat too big portions. I’ve recently stopped having bread and butter with soup for dinner and noticed it doesn’t leave me any hungrier.

Evening meals I probably have too much, but I record them accordingly and probably go higher.
I know what goes into curries/chilli for example in terms of ingredients and generally estimate total meal calories based on portion size.
If I’ve had a curry with only 100g chicken, onion, spices and tomato sauce for example then I know it’s not high calories even if I have more than I should.

 

[AndyCr15]

I like ready meals (and Huel) for this reason, my portion is given to me. Left to my own devices, I almost always eat more than I need or should. A new favourite of mine is Scratch Chicken Pad Thai from Sainsbury's (the Scratch Spanish Chicken(?) is quite nice too). It's 340 calories and is quite a decent size and the sauce that goes in it is SOOOOOOOO nice

Annoyingly, back on low calories and my sleep is now not so good again. Woke at 1am and had a Nakd bar, then woke again at about 4:45am and have been up since...

 

[Alice In Wonderland]

I like ready meals (and Huel) for this reason, my portion is given to me. Left to my own devices, I almost always eat more than I need or should. A new favourite of mine is Scratch Chicken Pad Thai from Sainsbury's (the Scratch Spanish Chicken(?) is quite nice too). It's 340 calories and is quite a decent size and the sauce that goes in it is SOOOOOOOO nice

Annoyingly, back on low calories and my sleep is now not so good again. Woke at 1am and had a Nakd bar, then woke again at about 4:45am and have been up since...

I like ready meals for the portion control size too.

I also find it really helpful when they say on the packaging how many servings of vegetables they have in them.

I don't often batch cook to be honest but I want to start a bit more with the cost of living rising so much!

I love those KIND bars for breakfast.

 

[MikeTheNative]

Annoyingly, back on low calories and my sleep is now not so good again. Woke at 1am and had a Nakd bar, then woke again at about 4:45am and have been up since...

I'm the complete opposite although I've been going pretty hard on the exercise front. Was ready for bed at 9.30 last night lol

 

[Alice In Wonderland]

I'm the complete opposite although I've been going pretty hard on the exercise front. Was ready for bed at 9.30 last night lol

My 5 month old puppy doesn't let me sleep til 1am coz she won't settle til then.

But if I want to wake up at 7am then that's the way it has to be it seems.

 

[Martynt74]

Well, from doing absolutely nothing differently, it seems like some actual progress can be seen. From 2 weeks hanging around the 98.5-99kg mark, yesterday say 97.8kg and today saw 97.3kg.

Now i know i absolutely haven't suddenly dropped 1.5kg in 2 days which shows it's all a bit of a mystery and i guess backs up how it's probably not ideal weighing yourself daily because the ups/downs often don't match the long term trends.

It is quite nice to see the drop though from a mentality point of view and hopefully it can continue over the next 6 weeks until race day.

 

[Somnambulist]

It's totally normal - plateaus can often last a week or two (although not longer than that if you're male) then you dump the weight you'd expect to have lost in some pleasingly linear way - fat lost masked by water retention. That's why I like daily-weighing and the subsequent weekly average since you learn to detach from the dopamine/cortisol spike you get from seeing a lower/higher number once a week.

 

[Martynt74]

Yeah, i've enjoyed the daily graph plotting, and it was only really once i stepped back and looked at a 30 days chart that makes it easier to see

The spike up being Christmas and then flat until a from between the 5th and 7th, then a plateau until a big drop between 18th and 20th, but the flatline between the 8th and 18th felt weird given i was regularly hitting ~1500 calories a day (as a base, i'd generally be eating closer to 2500 for offsetting exercise). Bar exercise i have a hugely sedentary lifestyle.




What i have noticed and something i need to consider is that my Garmin tracking is suggesting fitness is declining and i've noticed a drop in my VO2 Max despite the increased volume of running. Some easy runs are also pushing my HR out of Zone 2 and into Zone 3 and feeling harder for a given pace than they should. I'm not sure if this is due to the decrease in calorie intake and so i need to consider what is more important for my race performance. Lighter weight to ensure the huge amount of elevation aren't as difficult or up my intake by ~500kcal per day, accept weight loss will be slower (but should still occur), but possibly have better running performance.

 

[tom_e]

Daily weighing is the way forward as long as you're logical about it and don't fall into the spiral of "MUST LOSE WEIGHT EVERY DAY!!!1!!!!!!"

 

[Alice In Wonderland]

I find the plateaus really difficult to deal with.

Are they perhaps just part of the natural cycle of losing weight and everyone has them?

 

[tom_e]

I find the plateaus really difficult to deal with.

Are they perhaps just part of the natural cycle of losing weight and everyone has them?

Yes, totally normal as Somnambulist says.

 

[Martynt74]

Yeah, i think it's just your body learns to adapt to the new diet and does what it can to hold/maintain. I know it happens further in, just always thought the beginning was fairly steady. I imagine in my case it's due to the fact my diet pre-Christmas was always pretty decent anyway so i've not made any drastic changes.

 

[AndyCr15]

i guess backs up how it's probably not ideal weighing yourself daily because the ups/downs often don't match the long term trends.

I think as has been said, I would say it supports daily weighing as I find your weight can vary a lb or so on other factors, which means you really want a daily figure and can follow a trend. If you only weight once a week and know this could be 1lb off what you really are... you'll never really know. If one week it's 1lb below and the next week its 1lb above... you have some really un-useful info!

I'm very pleased how mine is going -



The grey line shows the actual weight, the blue line shows the trend, the boxes are a month, so you can clearly see my weight rising in December when I was ill and couldn't cycle much, then as I've got back to cycling and limiting calories from Jan 1st (even with some 'events' meaning I've eaten loads) there's a clear trend of my weight coming back down. WFH is really helping as I have complete control of my calories and no temptations (working a late night in a supermarket and we give away the donuts that are left over....? Come on... how am I to resist that! )

What it also makes easier for me, is picking a calorie count I should aim for when I want to hold my weight. 3,200 led to gradual increase, 2,200 shows it dropping pretty quick so I can probably aim around 2,800 or 2,900 as long as I keep cycling lots. The downside from my new shift pattern is perhaps it's going to limit my chances to exercise.

 

[Martynt74]

Haha free donuts is definitely never going to help!

I'm actually having the opposite problem most days where i get late and night and realise my net calories is around 500 for the day and need to eat stuff. It's just finding something to provide ~1000 calories that's not full of sugar can be tricky!

 

[AndyCr15]

Not that I'm an expert, but I think you might be worrying too much about replacing the calories burnt in exercise. I quite often have days I'm 1-1,500 cals under. If I've cycled for 3+ hours and burnt 2,500 cals, I don't come close to replacing all of those. I maybe eat 600-1,000 above my target, but any more and I think I'm eating for the sake of it. Surely only a portion of those 2,500 need replacing in the muscles, a lot of the rest is the fat I've hopefully burnt, no? If I replace them, they go back in as fat too?

 

[Martynt74]

Yeah i'm never sure either. I think i'm conscious of it because my regular daily intake is low whereas yours is higher and so less need to replace them. I think in reality i'm better to set my daily goal at 2000kcal and then worry less about replacing anything extra because there's a better base to regularly fuel my runs.

 

[ik9000]

Back in the exercise groove again and starting to wind back the December lockdown pounds. First challenge is to get back under 80kg. It'll probably take until April/May if I can keep a decent rate of exercise going and do the 5-2 properly