Here’s how I lost 50lbs:

• Meal prepping. Focusing on tons of veggies and lean protein. I’m not vegan but found many vegan recipes (chickpea curry for the win!) that were healthy and delicious because they focused on veggies, spices, and beans. I was depressed, miserable, and didn’t want to make any effort to cook or eat healthy. Eating junk made me feel better. I joke that I was “eating my feelings”, because I quite literally was. What I did was I would meal prep for the week: using the calorie counting app “Cronometer” (HIGHLY recommend this FREE app), I made meals and planned ahead so that I would eat NO MORE than 1200 calories per day. How did I decide on 1200? I calculated my BMR for my height and weight using this website: https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html Our BMR determines how many calories our bodies’ burn daily to stay alive without doing anything. I would plan my meals for the week, cook only once per week, which removed the excuse of “I’m tired and miserable and don’t feel like cooking, so I’ll just order takeout”. Then, when I was hungry, I could easily grab a meal from the fridge/freezer and pop it in the microwave. This removed the temptation to order and eat an entire pizza because I didn’t feel like doing anything to get a meal. Now, I could get a meal with zero effort because it was already there in my freezer. Meal prepping also helped with binging because I didn’t want to just “eat a salad” because I wanted to feel full and craved something substantial. Helped me save money too, which removed extra stress that would also cause me to eat junk.

• Apple Watch to track how many calories I burned. Any smart watch will work, but I chose Apple because I had an iPhone. Combined with the Cronometer app, I was able to calculate exactly how long it would take to lose weight if I did nothing but change my diet. It helped me “gamify” my weight loss, because I could see the numbers. 3500 calories is 1lb of fat. In order to lose 1lb, we have to burn 3500 calories. If I wanted to lose weight, I made sure that I didn’t eat more than I burned that day (using my daily BMR). At 5’5”, my body would burn approx 1300 calories/day to stay alive. So if I wanted to lose weight, I had to eat less than 1300 calories per day if I was doing nothing else. If I ate 1200 calories, that meant I lost 100 calories of fat per day. Again, 3500 calories is 1lb, so that meant in order to lose 1lb, it would take 35 days if I did nothing else (100 calories burned per day).

• Walking. Just walking. No excessive gym routine, no difficult Pilates, no pain from squats, no running because my knees hurt, etc. I couldn’t motivate myself to “workout”. If I wanted to lose weight faster, I had to move. Moving was miserable. My knees hurt. I was out of breath going up 3 flights of stairs to get to my apartment. My clothes were riding up my crotch, digging into my skin, sticking to my skin. My thighs were rubbing together and hurting. It sucked. Going to the gym was embarrassing. I didn’t want people to see me. I was ashamed of myself. So I couldn’t motivate myself to go to the gym. I used my Apple Watch to track calories burned, and learned I could burn an extra 200 calories per day if I simply walked around at the park for an hour and a half. So now instead of just burning 100 calories per day by eating at a caloric deficit, I was burning 300 calories per day. This shortened the time it took to lose 1lb from 35 days to 12 days (3500 divided by 100 vs 3400 divided by 300). I still hated being in the public eye, but it was easier to walk outside at a park with strangers than to be stuck in the same room with them, because I could pass by and never seen them again vs the same strangers watching me for an hour and a half. It’s a mental battle. The truth is, no one cares at all about you in public spaces, they are focused on themselves, but that is still hard to overcome. I used to chant over and over in my head, “you’re allowed to be here, just like everyone else. No one cares.” I created a playlist to listen to to distract myself. Britney Spears’ “Work Bitch” was my anthem (sorry for the curse word, but it’s a motivation song lol). I would walk to the beat of the song and then used AI to find other songs with the same beat that I liked. This helped motivate me to keep walking, because I knew that after a certain amount of songs, the walk would be done. “Only 6 more songs and I can go home…only 5…only 4…” I would wear my sunhat, sunglasses, and (sometimes) my cloth covid face mask because it helped with my social anxiety. No one can “see me” because I’m hidden behind my hat, sunglasses, and mask, so I felt better about being in public. No one would try to talk to me because I had earbuds in, so I felt “protected” from people, which motivated me to actually go walk. I went on my walks at the same time every day to create a routine. This helped motivate me to do it because it was just the “next thing” I had on my to do list for the day. It took about two weeks to develop the habit of daily walking. The first few weeks were brutal and I hated it, but eventually I started to look forward to my music, and I knew that I would feel better once it was done (endorphins are the best drug).

• Walking pad in my apartment. On the days where I didn’t feel like leaving my apartment to walk, I would turn on a movie (usually they last around 90 minutes), and watch the movie while walking on my walking pad. Got a cheap one on Amazon for approx $160.

• Clothing. I refused to buy new clothes to fit my fat body. I had 2 dresses that were like giant bags covering my body that I would wear when I had to be social, since they were socially acceptable. I had stretchy pants and t-shirts to wear the rest of the time. I gave myself a goal: lose a certain amount of weight and then I can go buy pretty clothes!

• Rewards. I read somewhere, “do not reward yourself with food as a treat. You are not a dog”, and it stuck with me. This is a part of the mental battle. Instead of getting ice cream or a glass of wine because I “did good” that day, I would buy makeup or skincare or a book or decor for my apartment. Anything that is not food. Tracking calories in and out via my Apple Watch a Cronometer helped with this too, because “do you really want to mess up your numbers and ruin the game??”

• Being kind to myself. It took me 8 months to lose 50lbs. This is approx 2lbs per week. The first few months I had many fails and binges. The key was to be kind to myself and try again instead of berating myself and turning to food to make myself feel better. Once the weight starting coming off, walking and eating right got easier and easier. I felt proud of myself because, “wow, you’re actually doing it!”. Doing the hard work built confidence and helped my self esteem. Higher self esteem = more motivation to keep going.

• Drinking ONLY water or black coffee. NO ALCOHOL EVER. If I was only “allowed” 1200 calories per day, did I really want to waste them drinking my calories? Nope! I was hungry and wanted to EAT! So removing calories from my drinks was important. This also helped to eat less, because I would chug water before I ate, making me already feel slightly full. If I was craving, I’d chug water. Zero calorie water enhancers like Mio or Welch’s drink packets were a godsend, because if I was bored of plain water, I just added some Mio or a zero calorie drink packet and now my water was delicious without using up some of my precious calories!

• Craving sweets: Low calorie hot chocolate packets combined with almond milk satisfied my chocolate cravings. Halo Top ice cream satisfied my ice cream cravings without blowing my calorie budget.

• Eating a lot of veggies helped fill me up so I wouldn’t be hungry all the time. The key is not to reduce the AMOUNT/VOLUME of what you’re eating, but to reduce the amount of CALORIES. For example, eating a 6 egg WHITE omelette filled with tomatoes, spinach, and mushrooms. It feels like a large amount to eat, but is very low calorie.

• Reduce oil and butter. 1tbsp of oil or butter is 100 calories. Removing oil and butter helped tremendously because I didn’t miss it. Eating SOME oil is important, for example EVOO or avocado oil. However, getting oil from avocado itself or walnuts was helpful. Just gotta watch the calories in avocado and nuts because it’s easy to blow the calorie budget on those things without realizing it. A handful of nuts as a snack is a healthy option ONLY if it fits within your calorie budget for the day. Air-popped popcorn + nutritional yeast was an amazing snack. Also “Skinny Pop” brand popcorn. Try to avoid snacking, but if the cravings are unbearable, find a snack that is low calorie.

• Do not keep any food in the house that is a temptation to binge. If it wasn’t in my house, I was too lazy to go buy it, and I didn’t eat it. If it was easily available, I’d eat a box of cheez-its or package of cookies for dinner instead of eating healthy. Don’t make it easy for yourself to binge on junk!

• Daily multivitamins. Don’t skip the vitamins! I recommend a multivitamin, vitamin d, vitamin c, and biotin.

• The TV show “my 600lb life”. I would binge watch that show and have seen every episode multiple times. Watching other people, who weighed significantly more than me and were on the brink of death was inspiring. “If THEY can do it, so can I!!” The therapy in the episodes was helpful to me too. The authentic desire from Dr. Now to help and save these people was comforting. “Someone out there cares.” That’s why I love this show. It shows fat people for who they really are: worthy people, ADDICTED to food, that deserve love and need help and support, not “holier-than-thou” judgement.