u/disasteryay

Obviously "healthy" and "low calorie" are not the same thing, but what I mean is that when you try to make food choices to support weight loss without actually tracking calories, it is AMAZING how wrong your first instincts can be.

There's this bag of apple chips I used to get from Trader Joes, it's a small lightweight bag of dehydrated apple chips with a bit of cinnamon sugar. Before calorie counting, this is the type of "healthy substitution" I would go for instead of, say, tortilla chips. But this tiny bag is 370 calories! I remember one time last year I was hungry but trying to be healthy so I had the apple chips and a granola bar, this snack was 570 calories total and it did next to nothing for my hunger. I could have gone to ShakeShack and gotten a double burger for 560 calories. Or for that matter gotten a vanilla shake which is 680 calories but way more satisfying.

It's honestly baffling once you realize how many calories are in some foods, how few are in others. Obviously living in *a society* has shaped my assumptions about the caloric value and moral value of foods in lots of backwards ways. I've put in so much work into learning how to make accurate food choices to help me lose weight, but the better at this I get, the more it lands how unintuitive and deeply tricky all of this is.

I started my weight loss and body recomp in January. I'm 5'5" and went from 190lbs to 167lbs by August. I've been on a mild/moderate deficit (I have BED and have been super mindful not to overdo the restriction) and have been walking more and doing strength training 2-3 times a week. I'm really proud of my progress, I've made some really positive mindset shifts, and I never thought I could be this disciplined. This is my first time losing this much weight!

At the same time, it's killing me that I'm not seeing more visible progress. I still have another 30ish pounds to go. When I take progress photos I've just recently reacted the point where there are visible but subtle changes, barely discernible but there when I closely compare photos. I have less back and belly fat; my double chin is less prominent/heavy, my arms and thighs are getting slightly smaller. But I'm pretty sure I still "read" exactly the same, and I certainly still look fat. I've also been hitting the weights really hard, I'm proud of that, and just in the last week or two I noticed that my biceps are actually getting firmer (been training since February). But I still look more or less exactly as "soft," I definitely don't look like I work out.

Anyway. This was a chance for me to rant. Is it true that the visible changes actually accelerate as you lose more weight? That makes sense logically, but I'm curious what actually changed for you? What was happening when you were, let's say, 10lbs BMI that you didn't see at 30lbs from it? Or like what happened in the last 10-20lbs of weight loss for you? And how do you deal with the impatience of waiting??

I saw some posts about people who hold their weight well and how that made their weight less noticeable. In the interest of thinking more positively, at least that is one problem I don't have! I was looking at some before photos of myself (female 5'5", SW 190 CW 168), and feel like I got so unlucky with fat distribution. I naturally hold so much fat in my face and neck. I have a good friend who weighs significantly more than me, but she has a visible jawline and much less of a double chin than I do. I also have a lot of back and belly fat, but I'm barely a B cup, and my thighs rub together even while my butt is basically flat. But I'm not that upset, I hopeful that this means I'm heading for an amazing transformation one day lol.

I learned the dance for Cotton Eyed Joe 20 years ago in summer camp, so I have this thing down to a science and do pretty much the exact same movements every time. I’m at the beginning weight loss and also losing pretty very slowly (SW 190, down 15lbs over 5 months with body recomp via resistance training), so my progress is hard to spot. I tried taking those standard before/after comparisons (standing facing the camera, standing facing the side with my arms out in front, etc.) but honestly it was hard to tell what was going ok and how much was the lighting or a very subtle difference in angles. Idk how or why exactly this came to me, but videoing myself dancing Cotton Eyed Joe every month made the results much clearer! Many of the changes I’ve seen were stuff like back fat and arm fat that are hard to see straight on or with my arms stiff to my sides, but more more apparent in the repetitive movements in these videos. 10/10 would recommend lol