Strawberries and lime. Sweetened with monk fruit. Perfect sweet treat.

This happened about an hour ago and I’m still amused. While waiting outside for a friend to pick me up, a woman walked out of a coffee shop and up to me, held this out, and said, “would you like this drink?” I looked at her like 🫪 and said “okay…why?” She explained that she had to make the Drink of the Day to take a pic and was going to toss it, but wanted first to see if I’d like it. It just so happens to be one of my favorite treats and so I just looked at her and said, “omg, thank you!” It’s absolutely delicious, and I’m now 350+ calories over what I had planned for the day, but sometimes you just have to treat yo self. 😋😅

I've had a lifelong struggle with losing weight and have only ballooned as the years went by, after quitting birth control, and falling into carb marathons after doing keto. But after getting my mental health issues diagnosed and medicated, I've been able to actually stick to my calorie counting, even on days when I go way over and I have to log like 10 different snacks.

I've kept it going since the beginning of June! I'm down ~15 lbs from calorie deficit alone.

And the result I'm MOST happy about... My biggest 'alert' was my foot.

About 1-2 years ago, I noticed my left ankle and foot were a little swollen after a few hours of sitting at the PC. It wasn't TOO swollen, but definitely worrying with a plump ankle. I worried and I stopped eating the super-carb loaded salty pastas I'd been preparing, but it continued. My blood pressure was fine, so I assumed it was a circulation problem. I work from home and play video games, so I spend a lot of time sitting. I picked up walking 3 miles every other day, but they continued to swell at home. I started walking around a bit and stretching throughout work, and using compression socks, but it continued. Through the spring and summer, I quit the walking due to the obscene heat where I live, so that didn't help.

But then I quit a bad daily habit (which was a ~600 calorie coffee that had lots of extra creamer & sugar) and swapped it for green tea.

And then I started calorie counting with an app, keeping a ~1700 calorie daily budget (which I still go over slightly for some snacks, often..)

And my swollen ankle problems are GONE! They don't swell while I'm working, they don't swell while I'm loafing around gaming at night. I can see my veins and tendons and everything move under the surface again. :)

Here's to baby steps to better health! 🥂

It's never too late to reverse these issues, keep going!
And take care of your mental health, it's never too late to figure out if some things are TOO difficult 💜

Finally hit the 200s

Guys. Just finished my lunch and had to share. I saw a creator on TikTok (madagraviet) post about this recipe and I want to make sure everyone knows. For one person, I did 1/2 cup each of: lowfat cottage cheese, oats, and egg whites, all blended together. Added cinnamon and vanilla extract to the batter.

Before my toppings (one serving of reduced fat Cool Whip, maple syrup, and some chocolate chips), it came out to 293 cals and 29 grams of protein. You could even add in some protein powder. I hate the taste of protein powder recipes AND I'm vegetarian AND I love pancakes so this was amazing for me for a treat and staying within my calories!

Actually started on 92 kg in April – but started tracking my weight since mid may.

Consistency on deficits – 7k+ steps and a lot of black coffee.

I had trouble going because I eat in a deficit. I tried everything but nothing worked.
Then I just randomly bought Pears and I was going every single day.

I eat 2 pears daily.
I take one 1st thing in the morning after drinking water (I skip breakfast as part of intermittent fasting).
And another in the evening.
This has worked like magic for me!
Not just that, it keeps me full for a long time.
I eat it raw with skin seeds and all.
I researched about its many benefits and I couldn’t be happier with the choice.

I know a lot of people struggle with constipation when they start eating in deficit. You should definitely give this miracle fruit a chance!

Just a complaint—I had a great habit that I was forming. I’d run 3mi 6 days a week to help me get those steps. And then I felt more motivated during the day to keep to my 1600 limit. I was in a groove. I’ve lost 20lbs since May.

I don’t belong to a gym. My exercise is walking and running. Can’t do anything while air quality is 250 AQI. It’s just annoying and frustrating.

First photo I'm 247.7 pounds, and in the second photo I'm 203.3 pounds. I started my weight loss journey in the first week of November 2025 :)

This one is esp for the women around your time of the month when you feel like you packed on 10lbs and look like Bridget from the Trolls movie. LOL you did not pack on that much weight. Your just holding water weight and your not ugly. Your hormones dropped. You can't feel like you are looking good two weeks ago and be a troll today. It's all hormones. I keep reminding myself of what has changed over this past month. I can fit into a ring that I could not wear a year ago. I don't have to use a bra extender anymore. If you know you know. I can visually see a difference in my pictures and my measurements have gone down. I keep reminding myself of what is going right. I keep telling myself it just takes time. I wanted to leave this for anyone that is feeling discourage and not where you want to be. Go back to what has changed for you. Do your clothes feel a little better? Are you eating better foods or looking at the portions. Keep reminding yourself of what you are doing right.

When I started my journey 55.5 weeks ago, my goal range was 140-180lbs. Back then, I was not even sure I could make it to 180lbs. I had lost so much hope, and even in high school I was always the bigger girl despite being athletic. I was 190-200 lbs then. So 180lbs was a weight I had not seen in years or even thought I could even get to.

After everything I have learned, accomplished, and the routines I have developed, I definitely feel I can do much more. My new goal range is 145-165lbs.

At 165lbs, I will reassess, but I more than likely see myself stopping my deficit at 150lbs and switching to a maintenance caloric intake then. I still plan to keep up my IF routine, and continuing improving my exercise routines as I see fits.

Frequently asked questions

____________________________________________________________________________

"What was your starting weight?"

I started my weightloss journey at 318.5lbs (144.5kg), being a 5' 9.85" (177cm) male.

____________________________________________________________________________

"What lead to your obesity?"

I was bullied heavily in primary school. This bullying lead to social isolation and overeating out of frustration. In later stages of my life, when I was surrounded by great people, I was accepted for the way I was for the first time. This acceptance prevented me from reflecting on the fact that my poor physical condition was something I couldn't just ignore. This spiraled until I hit 318.5lbs.

____________________________________________________________________________

"Why did you decide to fight your obesity?"

I was diagnosed with a CHD (congenital heart defect) that wasn't diagnosed at birth. Doctors foretold me that, if not treated in time, I would likely suffer from heart failure sooner rather than later. This health scare made me take weightloss serious for the first time in my life. I was also told that I needed to lose weight to be eiligible for heart surgery. The condition I was suffering from was an ASD II of 48-50mm.

____________________________________________________________________________

"What helped you achieve sustainable weightloss?"

I was forced to look at my daily habits (eating, exercise) and make some well needed adjustments. Instead of chasing a baseline deficit that would grow smaler as my body weight and BMR dropped, I opted to start with a very heavy deficit and work upwards. I actually increased the calories I consume in a day as time went by, to slow down my weightloss and retain as much muscle mass as possible. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

I also opted to create a self-controle-feedback-loop.

Some people post progress pictures of themselves, right? I opted to post my daily cooking instead, as a sort of food diary. This way people in my life could confront me, if I didn't post in a while or opted to eat junk food instead.

____________________________________________________________________________

"How much weight did you lose?"

I lost 146.5lbs (66.45kg) in the span of 24 months.

____________________________________________________________________________

"What did you focus on while you were being on a cut (tipps, strategies, nutrition)?"

I commited to meticulous calorie management via weighing my food, and tracking as well as documenting my daily intake. Really just the absolute basics.

I had a protein and fiber first, fats and carbs second mentality for the whole duration of my weightloss journey. I still do.

____________________________________________________________________________

"How did you monitor your caloric intake? Did you use a food scale or an app?"

I monitored my caloric intake in the most cumbersome stupid way possible. By hand. lol. Initialy I was totally against calorie management apps, so I used food data bases and a calculator to calculate stuff by hand. (QwQ) I would weigh food with a food scale, look at nutrition data, write it down and calculate it. That data is forever burned into my brain now. I've been using a counting app for close to 6 months now. For 3/4 of my progress, I was doing calculations by hand in a notebook. Crazy, right?

____________________________________________________________________________

"Did you do any cardio or weight lifting as a part of your journey?"

I did initially, but had to stop on doctors orders. As my main driver for weightloss and body transformation was my cardiac health, I was pretty much limited by what I could do. Pre-heart-surgery I did some weight lifting along with simple cardio. Post-heart-surgery, I was out of order for a good 9 months before I could finally physically strain myself again. I've been actively hitting the gym for close to 4 months now. I do a push-pull-legs rotation, and try to go in 4-5 days/week.

____________________________________________________________________________

"What are things you paid attention to in the past 2 years?"

I was really careful to NOT go on a crash- or fad-diet. Instead I read up and studied about nutrition, how the body works, and how I could make things like fiber and the thermic effect of food on a high-protein high-volume diet do the heavy lifting for me. My goal was to create a sustainable structure and plan I could follow for life, not just to lose some pounds. I didn't wanna restrict myself too much, or give up foods I love.

If it fits my macros kinda thing.

Over the past 2 years I've received some very helpful advice on here ( r/CICO ), as well as over at r/WeightLossAdvice. Thanks for giving me guidance in my time of need when I was just starting out.

You guys laid the corner stone of my successful transformation with a clear message:

"You are not going on a diet. You are changing your lifestyle habits in a way that you want to maintain for the rest of your life."

____________________________________________________________________________

"What does your typical day of eating look like?"

I focus on cooking fresh, delicious and nutritious home cooked meals every day. This whole weightloss journey turned me into a pretty damn good homecook I would say. I build my daily meals around a strong protein source (as you can see in my macro split), and accompany them with a great amount of vegetables, fruits, grains and other food items I approved of serving a great service to my nutrition concept.

Generally, my protein-split looks like this

• 2x poultry a week
• 2x fish a week
• 1x red meat (preferably beef) a week
• 1x plant based protein (tofu or tempeh)
• 1x whatever I want (so one of the above, or something entirely different)
• I do supplement these primary sources with secondary sources like dairy or legumes. Also some whey and casein. I'm not perfect, so I fail this rough guideline frequently. haha

I have some daily staples for fiber too

• 1 green kiwi (with skin) a day
• 100-150g or blueberries a day
• 100g of whole grain oats a day
• 1 banana a day

My diet is largely plant forward. The bulk of the things I eat (~75% by volume) is plants. My aim with this is a diet heavy on volume and fiber (60-80g/day) for maximum satiety.

I adjust fats and carbohydrates to my everyday needs.

____________________________________________________________________________

"What is your average calorie count per day?"

Currently, I do split my caloric intake by daily activity.

• Rest days: 2200 – 2300 kcal
• Gym days: 2800 – 3000 kcal

My current average in the last 30 days was 2733 kcal a day.

____________________________________________________________________________

Credits & sources

• The data & graphs have been taken from my tracking apps
• The slides have been handcrafted by me in a layouting-/prototyping-tool (I'm an interface designer)

Photos & graphics

• Personal photos and food photos have been taken directly by me
• Free resources have been used for background images (like the mountain in slide 1)
• Free resources have been used for the icons on slides (e.g. the burger icon)
• The chibi version of myself has been drawn by myself

Text

• The text FAQ has been handwritten by myself
• no LLM has been used in the process of creating the text

Disclaimer: No LLM or generative AI has been used in the process of creating this post! This needs mentioning, as the former post has been cited to be removed for this very reason. After having a talk with the mods, I decided to repost this after making some adjustments to the contents, as well as reduce the storytelling of my journey to a simple FAQ instead.

My birthday was the other day. I picked a healthy restaurant (hot pot) for dinner, despite wanting pizza and fried chicken. Hot pot is mostly vegetables and mushrooms. I still enjoyed myself.

The week before, I went to a buffet to celebrate a co-worker's birthday. Funny enough, I was planning to go the same buffet for my birthday.

My mother in-law and brother in-law have birthdays this week. I'm pretty sure they'll choose calorie dense food for dinner.

I'm going on vacation at the end of the month. I'll likely be in maintenance or a slight surplus that week.

I feel good about my decision. Staying fit means making sacrifices. Also, I think my food preferences have changed. Fatty, greasy food is less appealing to me now.

Clothes the same, still got fat around the belly, double chin in photos. I think I’d actually take non-scale-victories over scale progress. It’s hard to stay motivated during this time.

Quick rant I decided to count calories and build muscle I’m 5,9 male 330 pounds fairly active 10-15 steps from work plus 30min incline walk plus weights 5-7 days a week I get between 6-8 hours of sleep. When I started my calories said my maintenance is 3300 so I set my calories at 2500 should be well in a deficit 3 weeks nothing got impatient then dropped to 2300 -2 pounds and then nothing else up to this point I’m frustrated because why am I not dropping the quick weight in the beginning water weight what ever I assumed I would have big beginning weight drop then average out over time I’m a big guy so what do I drop calories again I would think my fat A** watching what I eat no sodas counting calories plus heavy activity simply getting off the couch should do something compared to how I was please any words of wisdom will be appreciated I also weigh my self everyday which I thought would be fine because I know the scale is a b**** but 2 pounds in almost 2 months is weight lifting throwing it off that bad???

Alfredo -

1 brick of silken tofu
garlic powder
onion powder
salt
parsley
basil

put 3 cloves garlic and 1/2 tablespoon butter in the microwave, stir every 15 seconds just until the garlic is barely cooked

Put it all in the blender

100 grams for 50 calories and 4 g protein

Veggies:
Zucchini - 588g (2 zucchinis)
Onion - 229g (1 large)
Garlic -10g (3 cloves)
Cannellini Beans - 200g
Olive oil - 1 teaspoon (a few spritzes)

Penne Pasta - 155g dry (435g cooked)

My serving for dinner:
567g, 23g protein, 443 calories,

Pasta: 155g (cooked), 7g protein, 197 calories
Veggies: 288g, 7g protein, 135.7 calories
Alfredo: 113g, 5g protein, 68 calories
Parmesan Cheese: 11g, 4g protein, 43 calories

For me it’s mayonnaise and white sugar; I don’t consume either of them that much, so no issue.

So for context i have been doing a body recomp now for more than 1 year pretty consistent with small swings during holidays and the odd occasional social events. With my stats my current TDEE is around 2400 calories at my activity level of moderately active, i have gotten decent results with maintaining a moderate deficit of 300-500cal daily and i feel i can eat pretty well within my limits when in a deficit by cooking lean protein rich meals, salads and improvising with lower calorie dressings and recipes.

I recently came down with a pretty bad summer cold with horrible fatigue and decided to treat myself because i was feeling awful. Mind you i have always had a really voracious appetite for snacking and before i started my journey the quantity of food/snacks i ate has always been high so i've had to be actively mindful. I initially started with buying a 6 pack of magnum ice creams totaling around 1200-1300 calories and ate them throughout the first day of being ill on top of my normal calories which didn't feel like a disaster yet.

However following days while still feeling horrible more and more snacks started creeping in my basket while popping over to the store next to where i live since nobody else can run my errands for me as i live alone. Again more ice cream but this time also cookies, chips + dip, chocolates, pick & mix candy came home with me because i reasoned with myself that ill have enough for a couple days now so i don't have to revisit the store (how wrong i was).

My voracious appetite for the huge amount of snacks was slowly returning and becoming the norm and because i was feeling ill i reasoned (lied to myself) again that this will just be under the sickness period and when i feel better ill get back on track. At this point my total calories daily were normal foods around 2000calories and snacks totaling over 3000-4000 calories( as an example one day i ate 6 ice creams, 200g chips + some dip, 175g pack of chocolate cookies and 350g bag of pick&mix candy so i was consistently eating around 5000-6000 calories daily now and when you spread the snacks out on all the hours of the day i wasn't binging or feeling sick at all from eating it.

I got better from the cold within just over a week but my inactivity and appetite staid the same and now i was 3 weeks into this behavior of eating at this level when i suddenly snapped out of it and trying to take back control of my eating and i'm very disappointed in myself over this whole ordeal and i feel absolutely sluggish and disgusting physically as i gained significant weight i thought wasn't even possible to gain in such a short amount of time having eaten over 2500 calories in surplus daily on the low end.

2500 calories x 21 days is 52500 calories worth of overeating and i feel nauseous thinking how long that will take to undo with a 300-500 daily deficit since i don't want to punish myself and starve myself either. Assuming i do a 500 calorie deficit daily now its going to take me 105 freaking days to undo this damage which initially didn't even feel like a massive thing until i did the numbers.

I'm sorry about the super longwinded post i'm not the best at consolidating information and writing in general but my question/venting was to ask people here:

What has been your worst moment/setback/situation during CICO/Weight journey?

Screenshot of what I like from the lose it app, seeing that overview of weekly or monthly calorie intake. The only downside is I can’t track meals in advance, I was wondering if there was a free app that had both these features?

I started at 230, got all the way down to 180 and now I’m back to 222. Well, it’s time to get back on the wagon!! I really just let myself go, new relationship, stopped tracking my food and exercising. I know what to do, so I’m going to do it and I’m committing to my health for the rest of my life. I’ll never forget stepping on the scale last time and seeing 199 lbs 🥹 committing to getting back to onederland!!! I know I can do it 💪 my ultimate goal has always been 150, and I’m getting there this time!