Hello wonderful friends of r/loseit!
I started losing weight in August of 2018, and these are my stats: 33F, 167cm/5'6", SW: 127kg/279.4lbs, CW: 105.7kgs/232.5lbs, GW: 75kg. I've been using MyFitnessPal and a digital food scale.
My story: I've already posted extensively about what sparked my motivation to lose weight, as a member of the "been-fat-forever" club, so I'll be brief now. I moved from America to the Netherlands, felt increasingly out-of-place as a fat American among skinny Europeans, and took baby steps towards making a change last summer. I've been trucking along since then, survived 2 vacations, and am finally starting to realize literally none of my clothes fit. I feel pretty successful, and since I'm approaching the halfway point in my journey, I thought I would give back a little to the community that has helped me so much.
So, without further ado, here's what I've learned so far: in order to lose weight, you must eat less and exercise more, and you mustn't let charlatans or mountebanks convince you otherwise. Exactly how you create that calorie deficit is up to you, what you like to eat, what makes you feel good/energetic, etc. Exactly when you should add in exercise is also completely up to you. I lost plenty of weight exercising only sporadically at first, and needed to work up to integrating it into my life. But, what I can say is that the "eating less" thing is about 90% of the battle. So, here are my tips/advice for people, no matter what stage of their journey you're in, to help you rock that calorie deficit as painlessly as possible!
- Become a "super-user." I'm going to talk about MyFitnessPal, because that's what I use, but the same advice applies no matter what app you're using to log your calories. What I mean by being a "super-user," is to learn HOW to use the software the most effectively you possibly can. If you're going to be counting calories all day, it's in your best interest to learn how to use the app quickly and powerfully. What does that look like?
- Learn how to use the recipe function. Scan all the ingredients (or import them from a website; yes- that's an option on the web-client!). Making something crockpot-ey, or stew-ey? Add up the total weight of all of your ingredients, and make that the number of servings (ignore MFP's judgement of "are you SURE this recipe makes 1,067 servings!?). Then, when it's time to eat, weigh the portion you served yourself down the the gram. Voilà! Alternatively, are you making something that comes in a pan (lasagna, casserole?) make the serving size 6 or 8 (or whatever you want), and cut the casserole into 6 or 8 (or however many) pieces. Both methods work, and they're both close enough for horseshoes.
- Set MFP to "decimal" instead of "fraction," and save yourself 20 minutes a day of scrolling to find the quantity that you want of something you're weighing. In decimal mode, you can just type in the weight.
- The "Quick-Add" feature (three small dots on the diary screen, on the bottom right) is super helpful. Going out to dinner at a place that has calorie counts listed? Cool, don't need to waste time searching through 17,000 entries for "Olive Garden's Random Chicken Dish." Just quick-add the amount of calories. Going out to eat on a special vacation or big event, but don't want to lose your login streak? No problem, wake up in the morning, log how many calories you think you're going to eat, and move on with your life. Additionally, if you want to be a little more accurate, but don't want to be logging calories at the table during Great-Uncle Wally's holiday spectacular, use quick add to make a guess, take a quick photo of what you're eating (for the 'gram ;) and then, when you're home, try and estimate the calories of each individual part of whatever glorious meal you've just eaten.
- "My foods" are your friend, especially when it comes to alcohol! Tried to scan something, but nothing came up (I'm looking at you, basically every beer bottle ever). Websites like getdrunknotfat.com have huge calorie counters for all sorts of drinks, and if you have a drink you like/order often, add it to MFP as a "My Food." That way, it's a two-second log. No weirdsies searches/guesses required. Personally, since Dutch and Belgian beer is 110% delicious, I used this website (warning: it's in Dutch!) to make a little pre-logged army of all the amazing varieties of beer in My Foods. When I'm out with friends, and really want to try that a-may-zing looking Tripel Trappist Ale that was brewed with the holy water of some random medieval monastery, it's like zero effort. I look at how many mls are in the glass it comes in (thanks, Europe, for being classy and having those little lines on the glass!), then I just pick the entry I made in MFP, and then I basically feel like a winner. It works in America/UK/Antartica too! Just log what a standard drink is (16oz of beer for Americans, a pint for UK folks, etc), and make your own little personalized cache of stuff you like to drink, so it's ready to go when you need it!
- Become a master of the measuring scale. This seems obvious, but the food scale is everything. For liquid ingredients, use those measuring cups/spoons, but for dry ingredients? Weigh, weigh, weigh!
- Weigh jars of peanut butter, jam, jelly, cream cheese, etc. Put the whole jar on the scale, read the weight, and then spread your peanut butter. See whats left in the jar. The difference is what you just spread on your toast. Ain't nobody got time for trying to pig-wrestle "a tablespoon" of peanut butter into a measuring spoon, and then getting it out again to spread on your toast.
- Weigh the ingredients of your recipes separately, to aid in my above tip, making weight based-recipes, so you know exactly how many calories are in the 104 grams of cake you just sliced for yourself! Mixing a bunch of dry ingredients? Put the measuring bowl on the scale. Add the flour. Log the flour. Hit "tare." Add the sugar, weigh the sugar, log the sugar. Adding eggs? Tare again. Add the eggs. Adding literally anything else? Tare. Add, weigh, log, repeat until infinity.
- Use the time and the skills you're developing when you're cooking to your advantage. Always weigh/measure your oil, meat, whatever, but remember: you get good at what you practice. The more you cook, while accurately measuring out pats of butter or breasts of chicken, the better you will be at recognizing the same amounts when you eat food that you didn't prepare yourself. Everyone's "eyeball" measurements are a little wonky (otherwise we wouldn't be here), but you can improve your eyeballs by measuring everything, all the time. It will never make you 100% accurate when trying to log something you didn't prepare yourself, but it will help you get closer.
- Go through a checklist when you are presented with tempting food. It's going to happen, and you can have a plan to deal with it! You're going to have to decide, a million times, if eating some specific food being offered is "worth it" to you. Ask yourself, if you already know you want it:
- Is it my favorite kind?
- Is it from my favorite place?
- Is it my birthday/a special day?
- Is it something new I haven't tried before?
Knowing the answers to these questions can be really helpful in making the ultimate determination of whether or not you actually think it's worth it. Notice, I didn't include "is it free?" That usually tells me nothing at all about how "worth it" it is to eat something.
- Set weekly goals. This was really helpful to me. Setting a goal like "go to the gym!" doesn't tell me anything about how I need to achieve it, and I'm all about small, workable steps. For me, saying "I want to go swimming 3 times this week" was way more helpful. I learned about how that affects my schedule, how much time it takes me to go swimming, and if that's sustainable for my current set of responsibilities. Plus, when next week comes around, you've already got one good week in the bank, and can ride that streak!
- Read the Getting Started Guide/FAQ in the sidebar, and don't be afraid to use that search function! There are plenty of super-helpful posts, everything from the practical: how not to freak out about exercise water weight to the downright nerd-sciency what's up with water weight? where does it come from? where does it go? is it any relation to Cotton-Eyed-Joe?. This community is amazing, and is filled with people who bring all sorts of amazing life experiences to the table. Searching "gilded" in r/loseit will pull up some of the best stuff people have posted, and it's worth the read!
Well, those are my tips! They're what I have been doing, and will continue to do as I keep on keepin' on. Here's to the second half of my journey, and I'm wishing all of you the very best on yours!
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