I want to diet!

Recently I gained a lot of weight really suddenly, for the first time in my life! 

Truthfully, I feel kind of embarrassed talking about my weight or wanting to lose weight, because I'm still relatively skinny, or at least "average weight" by many metrics, so I'm afraid that wanting to lose weight would come off as shaming others who are bigger than me. Actually, when I look in the mirror right now, I don't see a problem with my appearance. Whether because of my body shape changing or just getting a bit more mature emotionally, I'd say my own self image has actually only improved as time goes on (which is really nice!).

But, I'm used to being a certain weight all my life, so when the number started creeping up, I did feel like I wanted to try dieting to try and get back to what's normal for me. And then those diet attempts didn't pan out, I turned 30, and my weight jumped up more than I'd ever seen before. Now I'm getting serious about it for 2 main reasons:

1. My height and weight finally pushed me into the "overweight" BMI category. Even though I know BMI is a flawed way to measure health broadly, I might be one of the lucky people that BMI is modeled after, so I should probably listen to it 

2. A lot of my clothes are starting not to fit comfortably, and I'm at a serious risk of having to buy a whole new wardrobe. Again, I really wish that my brands catered to a broader size range, but the reality is that they don't and I've got no power to make it happen. So, if I'm lucky to be someone who can continue wearing them just by making some (honestly much needed) lifestyle changes then I'm definitely going to try!

Slow and steady

In starting to seriously try to lose weight, there were some hard boundaries I wanted to set for myself.

1. I don't want to feel hungry

2. I want to continue to enjoy eating

3. I don't want to plan my life around it

Over the years I've picked up a lot of bad eating habits, not only eating junk but also periodically forgetting to eat, or getting pulled into unhealthy fad diets out of boredom or peer pressure, and ultimately my few past dieting attempts largely left me heavier than when I started. I didn't want to do any of that anymore, so this time I'm only trying to lose 1-2 pounds each month.

Of course, weight naturally fluctuates much more than 1 or 2 pounds, so even though I'm weighing myself regularly during this process, I've made a deal with myself not to take each individual day too seriously. As long as the general trend is still pointing down, I'll trust the process and not take it personally.

Diet & exercise

Along with realistic weight loss goals, I'm also making sure my diet and exercise goals are also achievable over the long term.

In terms of diet, I have been calorie counting, but I'm not being super super strict about it. Ideally I'm trying to stay around 500 calories for lunch and dinner, 300 calories for breakfast, and 200 calories for snacks, desserts, or little treats.

I try to stick to this most closely throughout the week when I'm eating at home and I'm not craving anything in particular. Finding the lowest calorie meals that are still satisfying to me and don't leave me feeling hungry during the day has become kind of a fun game for me!

When I'm eating out or ordering takeout, if there's nothing reasonable in that range then I just don't follow it for that meal. If we go to my favorite burger place, I'm not forcing myself to order a salad. That being said, if they have calories listed on the menu I'll still at least see if a 500 calorie meal is possible, and then decide if that 500 calorie meal sounds good or not. Or I might order the calorie dense thing that looks good, but with a huge side of vegetables so I'm not eating quite so much of it.

Exercise is a bit less fun for me, but I'm working up to it! A good friend of mine has actually been bringing me to the gym lately, and I've started lifting weights with him, which has been really rewarding. But since dragging myself to the gym to do a whole workout has never been realistic for me long term, I'm also trying to find easy exercise that I can do at home while watching anime 

Plunge & plateau

Over the past year I've had a couple of false starts on this diet. Typically my diet goes really well for the first month or so. I lose a good amount of weight faster than I expected, and feel pretty good about myself. After that, I tend to hit a wall where I'm not losing weight or even starting to gain weight back even though I'm still eating well, and then I lose steam and give up. It has been a bout a month since I started dieting seriously again and I'm just hitting that first wall again. My plan this time is to stick to my diet for at least 1 more month, add some cardio to my week, and see what happens.

Hopefully I'll have some good updates soon! I also have a backlog of 500 calorie meals that I'm planning to share on here soon as well, for anyone following along at home <3