Greetings!
Like many of you, I decided to start 2024 with a goal to get in shape and lose some weight. I'm in my mid-thirties, 5'3, and have usually averaged my adult life around 140-145ish, and that's always been with a "gee, it would be great to get down to 135 mindset". These past two years, I've done 8 IVF Egg retrieval cycles and boy howdy did that make me gain weight - I went up to 156 in December and that was an all time high for me.
I've some experience with losing 10 lbs really fast for my wedding through Keto, and basically gaining it slowly all back once I went off, so I decided I was going to do slow and steady, like recommended. Here's an overview of what's worked over the past month:
I will never be "skinny" in the culturally accepted way - that train has left the station and I will forever be wide in the hips with a sizable butt. But I would like to be less "jiggly". I'm definitely seeing the tone in my calves and hips after a month of running, and I'm excited with what will come next.
I'm going to keep going slow on the cutting, as suggested by MF and I'll report back in May.
Like many of you, I decided to start 2024 with a goal to get in shape and lose some weight. I'm in my mid-thirties, 5'3, and have usually averaged my adult life around 140-145ish, and that's always been with a "gee, it would be great to get down to 135 mindset". These past two years, I've done 8 IVF Egg retrieval cycles and boy howdy did that make me gain weight - I went up to 156 in December and that was an all time high for me.
I've some experience with losing 10 lbs really fast for my wedding through Keto, and basically gaining it slowly all back once I went off, so I decided I was going to do slow and steady, like recommended. Here's an overview of what's worked over the past month:
- Using Macrofactor (MF) to get a better idea of my expenditure. This only works if you're a good logger and a good weigh-inner, both of which I don't mind doing on a daily basis. But as a short woman, it's been hard to figure out what my actual expenditure was and this has been helpful.
- Staying close-ish to MF recommendations: MF puts me at an expenditure of around 1700 calories. It suggests around 1430 calories during the week with more on the weekend (1550) to have me losing .5 lbs a week. I try and stay close to this, but I regularly go over both week/weekend by around 50-100 calories.
- Foodwise, what's worked for me has been:
- Simple Intermittent Fasting: I just don't eat before noon - I've never been super hungry in the morning, so this is easy. The only thing that took adjusting was drinking black coffee, but once I leaned into being a coffee snob that got much more palatable. I try to stop eating at 8PM. I don't lose my mind if this doesn't happen - for example, today I'm getting brunch at 11AM and sometimes we get a late night weekend pizza slice when coming back from stuff.
- Eliminating snacking. I just don't keep snacks in the house, so i don't eat them. I'm a boredom grazer.
- M-F: Not going keto per se (i think staying in ketosis in unsustainable for me), but definitely going refined carb restrictive - no rice, pasta, bread. I'll eat fruit, but pretty minimally. Beans are kind of unavoidable at dinnertime, so I don't stress that (see below). Here's what that looks like
- Meal planning lunches to be a 600-calorie-ish bento experience - I bought these 5-compartment boxes (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097CLF1YC?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1) and the big compartment gets filled with Cauliflower slim sandwiches, and the little ones with a mix of greek yogurt/cottage cheese with berries, nuts, cheese, peanut butter and items for scooping peanut butter.
- My husband and I make a big pot of "glorp" - what we call a rotating array of Instant Pot meals that tend to be high veggie, high protein, high fat (example: Chicken, garbanzo bean, and paneer tikka masala or meat and bean chili or stews). We eat that for dinners M-F.
- Protein bars - I like Bare Bells brand from Trader Joes - I eat them as an afternoon snack after the gym and around 1.5 hours before dinner, usually on train commute home.
- Weekends: Husband and I are both kind of bored of glorp/healthy lunches by the time the weekend comes around and this is where we relax diet a little. It's probably what's contributed to my slow weight loss, but that's part of the "slow and sustainable" aspect for me. My workarounds here have been:
- Doing more of a One-Big-wild-meal-out and a small healthy snack. Like today I'm going to a brunch buffet at 11AM. I'll focus on proteins over carbs, but I won't stop myself from getting french toast or whatever. I'll be pretty full, so I'll likely have a very light dinner.
- Activity: Even through my weight gain, I was someone who exercised frequently because I like being strong and it helps mentally. That made the weight gain super frustrating - I was gaining personal records in squats, but still widening my waist band. Almost certainly, this was the IVF hormones at work, but still, it sucked! Also, my ability to lift weights was tied to my job's gym. I don't work for 5 weeks during the winter, and live far from work, so I lost my gym for a long time. Knowing I needed something for exercise, I took up running.
- I've never been able to run long distances. I started out with being able to do a mile without stopping. I slowly worked up to three miles without stopping by January 15. I ran every other day. I'm now up to 5 miles and I'm training for a half marathon end of April and plan for a marathon in Nov 2025. Running is cool and free, but it's easy to injure yourself (I had shin splints and still get knee pain when I go too hard) - there's lots of subreddits and advice on this, but the general gist is: you're cardio system will always advance faster than your bones/tendons/muscles - so you'll feel like you CAN go further one day but sometimes you really SHOULD NOT. Form matters a lot too.
- There's a lot of hate for cardio, but too be honest? Running has worked for me. I feel great after my runs, mentally. And burning 500 extra calories three times a day (now that I'm up to 5 miles) has given me some extra eating freedom. I don't "eat back" my calories - MF actually doesn't care about exercise so I can't even input my runs - but somewhere, the math is working out that I've lost MORE than the 0.5 lbs a week MF said I would. Also, at this level of running, I'm not getting the weird post-run munchies. Running, if anything, has been an appetite suppressant for me, even in a "fasted" state (I go as my lunch break during work).
- I'm still trying to fit in weightlifting workouts (it helps with running and preventing injuries), but not the 3-4X a week I used to do. Definitely 1X a week, but even getting to 2X has been a struggle with work. Hoping this smooths out.
- I live in a city. I'm driving to work on weekdays, but on those weekends when I'm eating more calories, I'm walking A LOT. If you live in suburbia, try to add 30 minutes of walking in addition to your planned workouts and you'll get an idea of what that's like for me.
I will never be "skinny" in the culturally accepted way - that train has left the station and I will forever be wide in the hips with a sizable butt. But I would like to be less "jiggly". I'm definitely seeing the tone in my calves and hips after a month of running, and I'm excited with what will come next.
I'm going to keep going slow on the cutting, as suggested by MF and I'll report back in May.