I made a new year’s resolution this year to lose weight. I started at 265 at the beginning of the year. I have been making a lot of changes to my lifestyle, and I’ve been working really hard and very slowly losing weight. I am at 246 today, and I feel like my progress isn’t good enough. I spent 10 months really trying, and for what? Not even twenty pounds? I don’t really feel or look a lot different. I put in so much work and I feel really discouraged from continuing. How do you keep going? I feel like I’ll never get to a healthy weight.
Do you know how much volume 19 pounds of fat is? That’s a shit ton of fat! Go look at a 19 pounds turkey and then double or triple the volume because turkey muscle and bone is a lot denser than fat. That’s how much you’ve lost! The most you can lose healthily is 2.5 lbs per month and you hit 2/3rds of that, which is pretty good! If you’ve been exercising and not just dieting then you also gained muscle, which weighs more than fat, so you actually lost a lot more than 19 pounds of fat. Keep up the good work! If you want to accelerate your fat loss, then start weightlifting. Weightlifting increases your caloric needs and the fat loss will increase exponentially if you maintain the same caloric intake. Great job!
You’re healthier now than you were before.
I’m above 300. Have been more or less stuck here for more than a decade. But before then I was up to around 450.
I know I could still be eating better, exercise more, drink less.
But I’m still better off than I was before and won’t give up that I can do better.
I feel this so much! I lost 17kg this year, and I look the EXACT same. I’m sucks so much. it was so much effort to lose only for people to be like ?? You did?? You sure??
To be fair I do see some slight differences, my belt needed a new notch and a shirt I couldn’t wear before I now can. And I can walk much further then before. My sleep is also slightly better (apnea most likely).
I’m sure it took longer than 10 months to put on those ~20lbs initially.
You’re on the right track. Keep it up. You’re averaging at losing 1/2 lb a week. That seems like a very sustainable, healthy pace.
That’s actually excellent progress, but it makes sense that it’s hard for you to see - you see yourself every day so little bits don’t seem to add up. I’ve lost 20 pounds in the past year and thought I looked the same until I actually took a look at older progress pics. Soon, you’ll likely start noticing that you need to cinch your belt tighter and things like that (a bunch of my suits now don’t fit right). Can be harder to tell if your wardrobe isn’t or wasn’t form fitting tho.
But the other thing is: remember why you’re doing this. Whatever your reason is, it’s probably not a short term goal. You want to feel/look/move better. All of that takes a lot of time and discipline. You’ll slip up, we all do (fuckin halloween candy), but you have to get back on track and remember this isn’t a short term diet, this is your new way of life. You’re choosing a harder path for a better reward down the line. That means more things that’ll trip you up, and more ways to backslide, but the views from higher up the mountain are worth it. That feeling when you can wear a sexier Halloween costume, or realize your warm up workout used to be your max output, or hell just not getting winded from taking a flight of stairs, nothing beats it.
Fitness is a journey, not a destination.
Even if you don’t feel or look different now, in 10 years, your joints will thank you for not having to lug around those extra 20 pounds.
Don’t subscribe to the idea that your weight loss progress must be on a schedule, that’s total bullshit.
Another way to think about it? Instead of gaining X lbs this last months, I lost X lbs. The numbers are the numbers but we get to choose how we interpret what they mean and how to feel about them. HTHs
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