Post Weight Loss - Lessons Learned and Staying on Course

Oh I have loads! Will contribute here if people are interested. My favorite breakfast --

Overnight oats with fruits

• 0.50 cup, Knudsen 2% Cottage Cheese
• 0.50 Cup, Almond Milk - Original
• 12g, Organic Chia Seed
• 7g, 100% Organic Sprouted Watermelon Seeds
• 1.00 scoops, Optimum Nutrition Protein Energy blend (chocolate)
• 50.00 g, Raw Strawberries
• 50.00 g, Raw blueberries/peaches
• 0.25 cup uncooked, Rolled Oats

Nutrition Info
calories ~382
Total Fat 12 g
Total Carbohydrate 39 g
Dietary Fiber 10 g
Protein 31 g

In a large cereal bowl add the oats to very bottom, layer with cottage cheese and seeds. Sprinkle the protein blend on top. Add the fruit and pour the almond milk last. Refrigerate overnight and eat straight out of the fridge in the morning. Not sure if this will be fun in the winter but so far I'm loving it. Makes a huge portion that's hard to finish. Gives me a third of my daily protein. Calories might vary slightly depending on the brands you choose. I get everything from Costco.

Please excuse the crappy formatting. I copied this straight from my MFP account.
[TABLE="class: nutrition"]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

 

I'm posting this here since one of the purposes of this thread is to discuss lessons learned. It is long. Read at your own peril!

I've received a few messages asking me for details of my weight loss -- how I did it? how long it took and so on. I've lost ~45 lbs from my highest weight and it has taken me 22 months to do so. I count my highest weight as that immediately after I'd had my daughter. I lost the first ~5 lbs without much conscious effort, through nursing and the water retention easing up postpartum. Another ~5 lbs came off through my mom's schemes of depriving me of rice and potatoes. I started earnestly with MyFitnessPal at 6 months postpartum. From then on, I lost the weight the old-fashioned way, by watching what I ate and adding a bit of activity to my lifestyle. I wish I had some brilliant insight to share but it was just sticking to my calorie goal, and keeping at it until something changed. I've put together some lessons I learned on my journey. Hope it helps those of you still working through yours or waiting to find the motivation to take that first step.

1. Don't overthink it -- The biggest contributor to my success this time versus all earlier attempts was a change in mindset. I always thought that weight loss is hard. I'd lived with this impression that losing weight meant mustering all your willpower, eating cabbage soup, and sweating your backsides off in a gym. I was wrong. Losing weight is actually incredibly simple! Energy in < energy out is all there is to it. There is no need to choke boiled foods down your throat, forsake everything delicious, or go on juice detoxes! Eat what you like, when you like, as long as it fits your calorie goal. I ate rice nearly everyday. My diet included bread, pasta, cakes, desserts, pizza, and I still lost the weight. No soup dinners and salad lunches for me! How do you eat what you want? By measuring and weighing everything! Control the portions. If I wanted a brownie, I'd measure out a 50 gm portion and eat that. This way you get to enjoy what you love without destroying your calorie budget.

2. Log like your life depends on it - MyFitnessPal is your friend! Embrace it. Make an account, choose a realistic rate of weight loss and keep logging everything that passes your gullet. I personally don't recommend a loss of more than 0.5-1 lbs per week. Anything more and you're eating too little and are more likely to give up. Stay within a +-100 calories of your goal and you WILL lose weight. The laws of thermodynamics guarantee it!

3. Buy a food scale -- This is one of the best investments you will make for your weight loss. I have this one. Measure and weigh everything you eat. No eyeballing your food and making assumptions about portion sizes. Know exactly how much you eat, ideally in grams, if not, then at least in cups.

4. Identify your weaknesses -- Are you a stress eater? Are you a volume eater? Do you eat most of your food in the morning or at night? Do you graze all day long? It is important to understand the reasons why you overeat. Without that insight you cannot address the underlying causes of your weight gain.

I am a volume eater. I don't eat junk. I don't snack all day long. I eat three meals a day but they are substantial. I like to feel full. So I compensate by filling my plate with lots of fibrous vegetables and a portion of protein at every meal. This keeps me full without eating into my calorie budget. Another thing I discovered from my food log was that eating breakfast keeps me on track. On days that I skipped breakfast I would be starving by 11am and end up eating a large lunch. So I made sure that I ate something, preferably protein, first thing in the morning to help me stay full longer. If you are a stress-eater, then start taking a daily walk or meditate for 10 minutes everyday. Get a good night's rest. Bring that stress down. If you graze all day, then make little 100 calorie snack baggies and keep them with you. The idea is to find your pitfalls and handle them before they derail you.

5. How to stay full longer -- The problem with curbing your calorific intake is that the volume of food goes down. This leaves with you with a gnawing emptiness in your belly that keeps egging you to eat something. There are some tricks to get that full feeling until your body adjusts to your new eating patterns.

Raw fibrous vegetables - Make a salad of broccoli, carrots, radishes, beets, and any other veggie you prefer. Throw in some beans, grilled tofu or chicken. Add hummus or chilli flakes in oil, and you have a very filling and tasty salad. When I was learning to curb my appetite, I used to eat 200 gms of this salad before my meals, then eat my regular food in a smaller quantity, be it a bowl of rajma-chawal with yogurt, or an aloo paratha with pickle. This way I could eat the food I loved, and still not feel like my insides were eating themselves. I'd be so full from the salad alone that I often found it tough to finish my meal.

Water - Thirst often manifests as hunger. When you feel the urge to eat something outside your meals, first drink a cup of water and wait 15 minutes. If the hunger subsides then you weren't really hungry. Even otherwise keeping yourself hydrated is a good idea. I drink about 100 fl oz or 3 liters of water a day. I use this app to keep track of my water intake -- Water your body. I get bored of plain water so I use Mio or Crystal light to flavor my water.

Caffeine/ ECGC -- This is a bit of a cheat and you don't have to do this unless you want to. Coffee and green tea both contain chemicals that are known appetite suppressants. I have used this very successfully to my advantage. I often get hungry and crave something sweet around 3-3:30pm. In the past, I would eat a candy bar or a some other crap. Instead I substituted my snack with a cup of black coffee, and to pander to my craving for something sweet, I use a coffee creamer with ~35 cals per serving. It works like magic. It kills my hunger and gives me the caffeine boost to keep going until dinner. I now do the same thing at 11am but with green tea which has a similar effect. These days I workout with kettlebells on alternate evenings so I include a protein bar with my coffee. I recommend Quest bars. They are 170 cals for 20gms of protein and come in a wide variety of flavors.

Get used to the hunger pangs -- They go away. They really do. When I first started sticking to a calorie goal, I was ravenous all day long. I couldn't stop thinking of food. I kept thinking I would die, that calorie counting was not for me, but I stuck it out. Three weeks of consistency is all it takes.Three weeks later the hunger disappeared! My body adjusted itself to my new food intake. So if nothing else works, tough it out; it will get better. Your stomach shrinks and expands to accommodate your food intake. I now eat literally half the quantity of food I used to without feeling hungry later.

 

Contd...

6. Set yourself up for success -- Prelog your meals. Once a week add a tentative menu for each day of the week to MFP. It doesn't have to be perfect or accurate. Just a placeholder to prevent last minute decision-paralysis, when you don't know what to eat and reach for that doughnut. I generally log my meals the night before, including all snacks. It allows me to stop worrying about what I will eat and when.

7. Weight loss is not linear -- If you weigh yourself daily, don't get discouraged by weight fluctuations. Weight does not come off in uniform chunks. It happens in fits and starts. You might go a few weeks seeing no change and then one fine day you are down 2 lbs. Your weight might go up and down on a regular basis. Remember your hormones play a big role in how and when you lose weight. As long as you see a downward trend over a window of 2-3 weeks you are on the right track.

8. Failure is a roadblock not a dead end -- You will fall off the wagon. You will pig out on occasion. It is a given. No one can sustain perfect self control every single day indefinitely. We all fail. The trick is to get right back at it. If you had a day or even a week with +1000 calories over your goal, no matter. Don't despair and throw away all your hard work. Just go back to counting like before. As long as you keep logging more good days than bad ones, the weight will slowly but surely come off.

9. Exercise -- Weight loss is achieved primarily through dietary changes. Exercise can help speed up weight loss by burning extra calories but it isn't an absolute necessity. I lost my first 20 lbs without any exercise. Exercise has indirect benefits though. It improves health, fitness, mood and energy. All of these make sticking to your calorie limit that much easier. But if you can't exercise, don't sweat it. Exercise for health, not to lose weight. Walking 30 minutes everyday at a brisk pace will give you all the benefits of exercise. No heavy duty workouts needed. For me the biggest plus of exercise were the extra calories I could eat! As a rule of thumb, only eat back half your exercise calories.

10. Staying on course -- I used to think weight loss was a time bound process that would end someday and you could go back to living a 'normal' life. I've since learned that losing weight and keeping it off is a lifestyle change. Don't fall for fads or modify your diet drastically. As far as possible stay true to your fundamental diet. I eat a standard North Indian diet and I continued to eat all my regular foods. What I changed were the quantities and the pairings. Eat what you want, just eat as close to your calorie goal as you can. I like eating desserts, so instead of giving them up I found ways to fit them in my calorie limit. Trader Joes makes excellent bite sized desserts that range anywhere between 80-150 cals. I always have some on hand. Remember you have to sustain your weight loss for life. If you are eating fruits for dinner, then ask yourself, "can I do this for the rest of my life?" If the answer is no, then please enjoy your huli-anna, just pair it with a kosambari and some buttermilk and you are golden. Fill your meals with things you like to eat. Don't restrict your diet for anything except medical reasons. If you are not enjoying your food, your weight loss won't last.

The magic weight loss dictum in the words of Bruce Lee -- "Long term consistency trumps short term intensity." A reasonable calorie deficit over a period of time is all you need to lose weight. Start now, stay consistent and things will change. A year from now you will thank yourself for taking this first step. If you don't, you will look back and wish you had started today.

 

Eating most of your calories at dinner is really not a problem, as long as you are meeting your daily calorie goal. It's a personal preference; shouldn't have an impact of weight gain/loss.

Do you think you eat more if you workout during the day time? Are you weighing yourself everyday? If so, you will see odd fluctuations that don't have a real correlation to what you eat. It could be as simple as extra water retention due to a particularly sodium rich meal. I would give it at least 3 weeks of logging before drawing any conclusions. I weigh myself daily too, but I don't bother about day to day weight changes. A fluctuation of +-2lbs is very normal in my experience.

I find post dinner workouts tricky. I am still too full a hour after dinner to do anything more athletic than walking. Can you workout before dinner or early in the morning?