Long story below so here's the TL;DR:
23 year old male tries couch 2 5k, loses 15 pounds, stops, gains those pounds right back, tries counting calories and lifting weights, loses 30 pounds, maintains for a bit, then switches to eating as many whole foods and plants as possible while doing a combination of jogging and lifting and loses about 40 pounds. Still has many pounds to go.
Progress pictures
Story time
Back story
23 year old former graduate student. I've sort of been fat my entire life and didn't understand how large I really was. I'd never not been fat so I didn't have anything to compare myself to but I knew in the back of my head that I was overweight.
I'm sure many on reddit have the same back story but I didn't learn how to eat healthy growing up. My parents just didn't know (still don't, but I'm working on that) how to. With the exception of a brother I have in the Army, every adult in my family is overweight. I grew up eating the standard American diet which consisted of lots of macaroni and cheese, frozen pizzas, and fast food. Processed junk basically. I rarely ate vegetables and almost never at actual fruit. Neither of my parents can cook.
One thing that makes my story a bit different is that I was born with a club foot so one of my feet is 4 sizes smaller than the other (its also quite wide, 6E). I couldn't find tennis shoes to really fit my feet which made it difficult to run. For these reasons I never played sports as a kid (only hiking and backpacking which you can do at any weight if you walk slowly enough) and didn't have any active hobbies.
When I got to college I continued with the bad habits I developed as a kid: I ate out for almost every meal either at the dining hall or a fast food place on campus. My cooking consisted of different varieties of macaroni and cheese or frozen pizza. I would rationalize the food choices I was making because I was "too stressed and busy" to learn to cook something healthy. I then tried to make myself as busy as possible to justify the fact that I was eating poorly, it was a bad cycle.
By the time I finished a masters degree in 2015 I was 5'11", almost 300 pounds, and depressed. I hated the way I looked in pictures. I didn't want to go out in public because I believed that every time someone looked at me they were judging my weight.
First attempt: Summer 2015
After I graduated I had an internship in a different city. I was unhappy and fed up and for the first time had a bit of disposable income and free time so I bought a fitbit. I didn't know anyone in the city I was living in and the "fitness center" in the hotel my employer put me up in for the summer consisted of a few treadmills and an elliptical.
I forced myself to get up early and use the elliptical. To break up the monotony of doing the same movement every day for my morning workout I started with the couch to 5 k (C25K) program by running on one of the treadmills. I still didn't have proper running shoes (and was about 275 pounds) so by the time I got to week 6 or so my knees hurt so much after each workout that I had to take several days off to recover after each run, which wasn't sustainable. By increasing my activity I was able to lose about 15 pounds over the 3 month summer internship. At this point I hadn't changed my eating habits but did change how I rationalized the poor choices: instead of eating the food because I was stressed I rewarded myself for working out and being active. Different justification but same result: I kept eating shit food.
Falling off the wagon
I started at a new school for a PhD program in the fall of 2015 and became busy and stressed again. I went back into my old eating habits and began to rationalize my poor food choices. I argued to myself that I didn't have time to workout again, I had too much work on my plate. I started a job that semester helping researchers with their statistical methods and I simultaneously took and taught courses so I justified ordering pizza every Friday night because I was tired and deserved it.
During this time I knew something bad was happening and couldn't bring myself to step on the scale at all. I gained back the 15 pounds I worked so hard to lose over the summer.
Second attempt: counting calories
I visited some friends in New York during the winter holiday and of course that meant taking a lot of pictures. There was a moment where I was looking through those pictures being sad about how much I weighed that I had somewhat of an epiphany and had the thought that "there are loads of people out there who lose weight, if they can do it, why can't I?" So I started doing some research into weight loss methods. One of the methods that seemed to have some research backing it up was calories in/calories out. The method made a lot of sense to me: "If you burn more calories than you eat you'll lose weight". That science is so simple that even I understood it.
So I started tracking all my food in the Fitbit app (I was still wearing one daily). I slowly brought my eating down to 500 calories below the TDEE that Fitbit estimated for each day. I started doing a variant of Stronglifts on M/W/F with a friend and doing cardio on the elliptical on T/R. Some weeks I was even motivated enough to do cardio on the weekends. I went on a few Saturday morning hikes (the only time we could squeeze it in, I'd be back at work on Saturday afternoons). I even started teaching myself to cook from YouTube videos and cookbooks. Through this I lost about 30 pounds in 3 months.
Over summer 2016 I worked another internship. I didn't have easy access to a weightlifting gym or my motivating lifting partner like I did at school. Being in a hotel again I didn't really have a kitchen to cook with. So I sort of just maintained for the summer. I jogged a bit but didn't lift at all and I stopped recording everything I ate. Strictly speaking I stopped recording during finals but I didn't pick it up at all over the summer. I also didn't bring my scale so that's the second break in my weight log (see pictures).
Third attempt: eating healthy
I didn't want to obsess about recording everything I ate for the rest of my life. For me that wasn't a sustainable lifestyle. I worried that I would eventually stop recording and gain again. So instead I did research and tried to teach myself what healthy eating looked like so that I could learn what a healthy diet looked like without needing to rely on recording myself every day. I read books and research papers, watched documentaries and talks, and cooked a lot. Some I will recommend and think everyone should read are The China Study by Campbell and How Not To Die by Gregor.
I've spent the last few months eliminating processed foods, cooking/preparing for myself, and eating fruits and vegetables as much as possible. I started dating my girlfriend about 8 months ago and she's been such a huge motivation on this journey. She grew up eating home cooked food almost exclusively and has been teaching me to cook. If you had to put a label on our diet we aim for "Whole food plant based". We aren't vegetarian at all (she occasionally eats red meat/chicken and I occasionally eat fish) but we try to eat mostly plants as much as possible.
I aim for lifting 2-3x/week and jogging 1-2x in addition but I don't always hit those goals. Sometimes we substitute rock climbing instead. My current numbers are (starting in February -> yesterday): squat: 95 -> 225 5x5; deadlift: 135 -> 225 5x1; bench 95 -> 155 5x5 (I know I know...).
To summarize this period I've lost 40 pounds and my rate of loss (see graph) shows no signs of slowing down.
I'm not sure if this is the optimal diet for me and I certainly plan to be more active this year as I start a full time job (I dropped out of grad school, it wasn't working out for my mental/physical health at all). I just wanted to share my story and let out that there is an alternative to obsessively counting calories: eating as much whole food and plants as you want. I know that reducing the consumption of meat and processed foods (pretty much everything not in the produce section of the grocery store) isn't for everyone, but it's working out great for me and I wanted to throw it out as another option perhaps not seen frequently on this sub.
I'm certainly not where I want to be with my weight. My goal weight when I started was 250, then 200, and right now is 188 (to make it 100 pounds lost) which is about another 30 pounds. I don't think that will be my final goal weight, but I can't remember a time when I was that low so I'm not sure how I'll look. I'll adjust when I get down there so expect another post from me in about a year. I want to continue to increase my lifts as well.
Example meal plan
Breakfast: oatmeal with fruit OR homemade granola with yogurt and fruit OR eggs and toast and fruit
Lunch: vegetable and rice bowl OR vegetable curry with rice
Dinner: out for sushi with the girlfriend (the raw fish kind, not the deep fried kind) OR noodle soup like pho or ramen OR stir fry with rice
Snacks: fruit and occasionally nuts/trail mix.
Workout schedule
Stronglifts 5x5 on 2 day spit, aiming for 2-3x/week:
A day:
| Workout | Sets | Reps |
|---|---|---|
| Squat | 3 | 5x5 |
| Overhead press | 3 | 5x5 |
| Deadlift | 3 | 5x1 |
B day:
| Workout | Sets | Reps |
|---|---|---|
| Squat | 3 | 5x5 |
| Bench | 3 | 5x5 |
| Rows | 3 | 5x5 |
Jogging for about half an hour, aim for 1-2x/week (seriously though go to a running store and get legitimate shoes for your feet).
Submitted January 01, 2017 at 02:45PM by bkberry352 http://ift.tt/2hHqINW
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