A New Arrival

JonathanM

New Member
Hello all :)

A little about me. I've been fat pretty much my entire life. I was being teased about my weight by the age of 7 or so and as such, I've never known what it was like to be thin.

Recently, I've made a few changes to my life (moving in with my GF) and this served to shake me out of certain bad habits I had had since childhood. Namely binge-eating. As a result, I started to lose a bit of weight wirthout doing anything. My GF noticed this and was very supportive and before long I was watching what I ate and exercising more.

Result, since the end of September I've gone from being a 5xl with 44" trousers to an xxl in 38" trousers.

I've done this by cutting out junk food and by limiting myself to what I think of as two decent meals a day usually a large sandwich and a healthy dinner. I mostly work freelance too so this has allowed me to take up walking as a hobby. I usually do somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 steps a day.

However, last week, I lost no weight. So clearly something is up. My way of thinking about it is that my body is betraying me and so I need to punish it by moving it out of its comfort zone. I'm going to cut back on what I eat (try to be below 1500 calories a day and ideally 1000) and move from very long walks to shorter more intense walks. Hopefully this will jump start the weight loss again :)

Anyway, that's me... hello to you all.
 
Welcome, good luck on your journey.

It's good to remember that we all hit the plateaus some times, its just part of losing the weight, and will start shifting again soon.

It is also good to shift the intake a bit so good idea, keep the body guessing, I also found that mixing workouts worked best too, do cardio (your brisk walks) and try to fit resistance in with it too (weights), similar to what circuit training does. It really does help burn the fat and sculpt.

Edit: I'd also up the 1000 calories to 1200 minimum, you are a man and also you are exercising, you may think oh no thats 200 more calories a day, but your body works better with it and you lose more than starving your body, you dont want your metabolism falling right down because youll start storing any food as fat, and this in turn is gonna have the opposite effect to what you want. So try to keep the calories to 1200 minimum, I've lost much more in 3 months by adding the 200 on a day than I did in 6 months on the 1000, this is because I was working my body so hard and not giving it enough base energy.
 
Hi Lisa :) Thanks for the welcome.

Hi Scotty - That's really interesting advice, thanks. By and large I've not been worrying overly about my calorie intake as I've been going on the seemingly received wisdom out there that you drop your intake by 500 kcal and the weight will go if you exercise a bit. I think that I would probably be better off putting it all on a more rational footing, especially as I am not really missing the food and could eat less.

I also need to think more rationally about my exercise. I did a more strenuous shorter walk today and it felt really good so I'm going to keep at that. Initially when I started walking I was sweating quite a bit but more recently, as I've got lighter and fitter, I'm sweating less. So I think the move will work out. We shall see next week. Thanks for the advice though :)
 
Hi Jonathan and welcome!!!

jay ;)
 
Hi Scotty - That's really interesting advice, thanks. By and large I've not been worrying overly about my calorie intake as I've been going on the seemingly received wisdom out there that you drop your intake by 500 kcal and the weight will go if you exercise a bit. I think that I would probably be better off putting it all on a more rational footing, especially as I am not really missing the food and could eat less.

I also need to think more rationally about my exercise. I did a more strenuous shorter walk today and it felt really good so I'm going to keep at that. Initially when I started walking I was sweating quite a bit but more recently, as I've got lighter and fitter, I'm sweating less. So I think the move will work out. We shall see next week. Thanks for the advice though :)

That advice is fine, and you will lose on it, just not as fast, which is not a problem if you are happy going as you are :) it is often easier for people to stick to it if they get to eat a bit more, and the exercise boosts that metabolism, keep the fire roaring so to say lol.

I was like that, but it does get so much easier as you grow fitter over time, I think it used to take me about 20-30 mins to jog 1 mile and I was gasping for air, I can run 2 and finish off with a 2 walking in 35-40 minutes now and hardly gassed after it, so I wouldnt be surprised if after a while, you will feel like you want to start running, good luck and keep it up anyway :)
 
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