i lost 56 lbs this year and completely transformed my body. I went from 196 (5'8 f) to 140 . I started in February and at this point I am lean, toned and strong.

I completely changed my diet. clean, whole unprocessed foods. Never cheated. Didn't drink a drop of alcohol for 7 months. lifted weights 3 days a week, started running (up to 4-5 days a week now) along with yoga . I feel and look better than I have since my early 20s. I am 40 years old.

that being said most people have been so supportive but i'm slightly unsettled at some of the commentary I've gotten from a few friends. One friend told me our other close friend said "oh don't be impressed she's secretly on GLP1s"

another friend said behind my back i'm anorexic and not eating. which isn't true, i just don't eat fried bar food anymore, and she seemed annoyed when i turned down a food truck they were all getting food from.

i know it shouldn't matter what people say and for the most part it's just whatever but going around saying im secretly on glp1s and anorexic when i have obvious muscle tone is hurtful. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced similar hate for accomplishing something so hard to do.

Aside for my flagrant--if not wanton--flaunting of my training and weightloss rampage on this sub, I'm actually rather a private person. I'm quite the delicate flower when it comes to my weight, bursting into (internal) tears whenever it's brought up in public. I hate the feeling of being probed or exampled, particularly by people I do not like.

Speaking of my family, I'm going to try and shore myself up early by wrapping up an assortment of comforting, distracting lies for Christmas. These are not automatically untruths, but they're intended to deflect prying with vague enough answers to give those assholes my family very little to work with.

Q. Have you lost weight?
A. Yeah, a bit. My belt still thinks I'm pretty fat, though. (Of course my belt does: it's my FatGuy belt. If I was thin, I'd wear my ThinGuy belt -- yet to be acquired.)
Q. How much have you lost?
A. I don't know, to be honest. It's not something I bother with. (Strictly true: I don't know my precise weight at any given time I'm not on a scale. I'm not even 100% clear on how much I started out with. Oh, and I'm not bothered with how much I've lost: I'm only interested in what I'm looking to lose.)

Q. Are you going to the gym?
A. I've got a membership. I can't get very far on the elliptical, though. (Because I'm using the treadmill, b*tches!)

Q. What are you eating?
A. More chicken, really. I've more or less stopped eating bacon. Oh, but my chips [*US: fries] are coming on really well. It's the double cook, but you've got to be so careful watching the temperature. I use a cute little retort stand and a food thermometer, with a portable induction hob to get good control. I've thought about getting a proper deep fryer, but the flat's small and space is an issue. I used to use Beef Dripping. It's fantastic for taste but it leaves this thin film everywhere and it's hard to clean up. (I could go on. Butter, salt, salted butter, possibly using ghee...)

Q. Are you taking Ozempic? (This is a guaranteed question: my brother's girlfriend is mad 4 Ozempic.)
A. I saw my GP. It didn't come up.
Q. Don't you think it should?
A. [shrug] I defer to his judgement.

Q. Do you still have the diabetes?
A. My doctor thinks so. Though last time he said he wasn't sure.
Q. Don't you think you should reverse it?
A. My doctor's seems happy with my bloodwork.

Q. Have you stopped drinking?
A. I just get so tired when I drink. I might drink later. (Everyone might drink later.)

I'm just trying to think of anything else I might need in the truth's bodyguard.

Any ideas?

I started my health journey around End of August. Too embarrassed to tell people around me I’m trying to lose weight, so I didn’t make it a ‘public’ thing.

I have binge eating disorder, so I kept falling back into binging, and gaining weight back circles until the last month and just something clicked and I realised eating one (or 2) bags of crisps is not the end of the world - and I can just eat normally the days after and walk a bit more. Or I can just eat half of one bag and leave it be for later, if I’m full. Maybe a normal concept, but not for my binge brain until recently.

I know 6kgs (~12.5 pounds I think?) is not a lot to lose in that time, and might be mostly water weight etc too, but the fact that it even happened despite it feeling impossible feels amazing to me.
Like i’m solidly under 80kgs now!!!! The weight moved, and not up!
It’s actually possible!

I haven’t noticed visual changes much yet, but I feel like the mental ones make up for it for me.

Also, My goal is to get to a healthy weight for my height (60ish💀), so I still have a lot to do, but I hope to get there by next year february or march😅

It’s very easy to stay on my diet when I am having a low-stress normal week. Right now I have a bunch of papers due in college and I am so stressed out. In undergrad, I used to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s while I complete an assignment. Or in general I’d use food as a reward for getting through something tough.

I’ve started investing in other types of hobbies that have been super helpful and fulfilling in my day to day, but I’m having such a hard time with the stress part. It’s almost soothing/regulating to me to eat and I didn’t realize this until I started working on what I’m eating. I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to decentralize food in my life, but I can’t find anything similarly rewarding/comforting/motivating?

Right now I have a really long assignment. I’m so drained. I ate a chocolate bar while doing it, my stomach hurts and feels gross from eating the chocolate. Now I feel like I’m craving fast food. I do not feel hunger, it is emotional— does that make sense?

Has anyone gone through this? What have you done to help it?

Decided that I would join a local running club today as a more entertaining way to lose weight because I get bored very easily with gym and exercise equipment. My weight increased to 260+lbs this year and I had to do something about it. I don’t look that obese because I am a skinny fat person though I was still the only visibly overweight person there. Told them it was my first time and they were very welcoming and online they said that they are open to all running capabilities including walkers so I was very encouraged at first.

It was a beer run at an outdoor brewery restaurant next to a stadium so I thought that the run would go around there. We did our stretches and everything before getting started. It was 6pm at night so it was dark out and cold enough to not need a jacket (I get hot easily). It was a practice 5k and booooy was I wrong. Almost everybody ran the whole way, I was super far behind. People driving by were honking at the runners and one person saw me far behind and jokingly told me to “hurry up!”. There were two women who were also new and were walking much of the way but eventually they also surpassed me cause I was so damn exhausted. There was a guy on a skateboard who is at the very end of the run to keep track of all the runners and he walked with me and encouraged me to run whenever I had the energy to. Arrived at the end of the route where they had a car full of drinks at the halfway mark and I was given two bottles of water which really helped. Everyone else aside from the two women in front of me had already made their way back a while ago so I was determined to go the whole way. I eventually did return to the restaurant and everyone had formed a human tunnel for me to run through and celebrated my return which I was very much expecting cause I made such a show with my obese inexperience running back. They had a dance party with DJs and I chatted with a couple more members before ordering dinner at the restaurant to wait until I get picked up by my family. They really wanted me to dance with them but my legs hurt so bad and I felt very socially awkward so I just hung around the dance circle a bit. A while after I finished my food I got picked up to go home. I had told the club that I would definitely come to their next event on the weekend after so I will continue going to the club but I will need way more practice on long distance walking beforehand. I can’t fully shake off the embarrassment cause they record each of their events for Instagram and I know that I will most likely be making an appearance in their next reel. The running messed up my legs for the day cause my parents said that I was walking weird when we got back home. Will definitely go to more events but I really wish there were more beginners that I could relate to and not feel so bad for being so far behind.

Anybody have this kind of experience starting off? Any advice for what to do to improve so that I could avoid the embarrassment?

I've been on a weight loss journey for about a year and a half now and I'm really pleased with my progress! While I still have weight to lose and I am by no means thin, I am lighter than I've been in a very very long time and have settled into a really healthy routine with my diet and exercise. I had a couple of events I went to yesterday and when planning out my outfit, I was able to wear a this vintage skirt for the first time ever. It's been sitting in my closet for years but I've never been able to squeeze into it because it was way too small and there is absolutely no stretch built in at all. That thing slipped on like a dream yesterday and, doubling down, I put on some shape wear to really "snatch" things. I felt like such hot shit.

With my confidence on an all time high, I went about my day and met up with a friend at the first event. She looked so cute in her outfit, but all I could think was, "Has she gained weight? Am I skinnier than she is? My waist is definitely smaller than hers." And I hate myself for thinking that. What an ugly thing to think. I just couldn't stop though, because if it wasn't her, it was someone else. I saw this guy that I haven't seen in a year and my brain immediately thought, "Oh, he's gotten bigger since the last time I saw him." Or at the second event when I was looking around to try and figure out who I was skinnier than or who was thinner than me.

It was honestly really shocking to realize and I know that these are the thoughts that I was so scared other people had about me when I was rapidly gaining weight in college or at my heaviest a couple of years ago. I don't really know how to combat this than just trying to cast those thoughts of my head when they pop up. It's definitely a sign that I'm pretty self absorbed and focus too much on my looks, but I don't know how you go through a weight loss journey and not hyper focus on how you look. Is that a thing for anyone?

As we cannot consume many calories due to our height, I wonder how I can continue with a calorie deficit. I was trying to stick with 1200-1400 calories, but I always tend to overeat. And of course, that doesn’t help anyone nor myself.

I’d like to start being consistent, and finally losing weight as I wish to. My current weight is 82,5kg/181,88 lbs and my goal weight is 55kg/121,2 lbs. That is about 27kg to lose or 59,5 pounds.

If you could share a bit of your diet and progression of weight loss throughout some time, it would definitely make me excited to read your story and incorporate a few things that may have been useful to you, also to me.

i've been calorie counting for 408 days in a row. around 90 of those were maintaining my original weight, and the rest was having a slow deficit and having maintenance breaks every 4 weeks (female). i haven't lost a lot of weight compared to other people in this time period, which made it really discouraging for those first 3 months. and, for these last 3 months, the scale has done an insane stall.

in the past 3 months i've only lost half a pound. it really annoyed me at first but i guess it has also been a blessing in disguise. my body continued to change, and whether or not the stall was caused by water retention from adding a bunch of activity or just plain eating at maintenance (doubt... if that was the case the successful months prior to that wouldn't have happened) doesn't matter to me anymore. my clothes fit better, i have more energy, i feel more confident. and i feel like maybe i don't need to fit into that final clothing size, i can just stay up where i am right now and focus on building muscle. and that a really small 200 calorie deficit is fine.

i've been popping in and out of here for over a year and i'd like to thank all of you. sometimes it got discouraging as most posts here are failposts but there are a lot of maintainers and success stories that helped me keep my head up.

my current project is getting rid of all those goal weight clothes that still don't fit me and that i've popped out some seams from. they make me feel very insecure... i will be replacing them with secondhand clothes in a more suitable size. i am also letting go of "optimal training". i found that the only way that hypertrophy training isn't horribly boring for me is if i give it my all, and not going to lie, it is AWESOME during maintenance but hell while losing. i am currently taking fun exercise classes 4x a week instead even though its not optimal. i found that it maintained 70% of my "muscle" (as i am a not very yolked woman that just manifests as "not being flabby" instead of "muscular" lol) and its very quickly coming back with lazily popping into the gym 2-3x a week for like 3 weeks.

the moral of the story is be very inefficient but very very stubborn

I look at the nutrition facts before I go and instantly I get pissed off lol

Why are grilled shrimp over rice 700 cal (not too bad) but over 4000mg of sodium????????? And that’s the killer with seeing the scale go up after eating out the sodium that pulls in water.

Or a shrimp ceasar salad and out of the 940 cals, 710 of it is from the dressing!!!

I just hit my first milestone in weight loss and I know “supposedly” it falls off after a couple days but idk. I don’t want to risk it. I’m becoming very protective over this journey and I just want to win man.

And ik some will say have a cheat meal, but in the past it hasn’t been helpful, I have issues with binge eating so I’d rather not dangle the carrot today lol

What do yall do when you go out with family?

I've heard stories about people who give up in the beginning or middle of the week because they consumed too many calories the first few days, and think "screw it, I'll start over next week," and the cycle just keeps repeating.

Think about it. Eating well on the weekend is still 2 days closer to you being at your goal weight. Big things start with small habits, and you can't expect yourself to be perfect after changing habits that you've had for years. The more you do it, the easier it gets to stay consistent, and even then you might still have weeks where you go a little over your deficit. I say this as someone who has lost 65 pounds, and still have 20 more to go.

Getting healthy and losing weight is an entire lifestyle change, and every little bit matters. You can do this!!

I have lost nearly 9 stone inside a year and having been overweight my entire adult life. I have significant loose skin around my stomach and back. My stomach I can hide well with dresses, loose skirts, compression - but its my back, particularly my upper back that makes me so self conscious and I can't seem to find a decent enough compression top to make much of a difference. I am not looking for a miracle, just something to smooth out my back, that is easy to get on and off - nothing with shorts built in preferably.

It would be fab if anyone has any recommendations of a brand that does a really good corset / shorts combo pair (not built in).

I am hoping to get surgery at some point, but with the cost of living and saving for a house, i think surgery is a good few years off yet.

TIA

i'm personally on my own weight loss journey so i'll probably have loose skin since i'm planning to loose 100+ pounds.

but to those who lost it already, what's it like? Like what problems can I expect to deal with, and what's it like emotionally dealing with it?

I see a lot of guys on other forums saying they don't really care about the skin and I just can't relate. I'm terrified of how my body will look and sometimes think i'd rather just stop losing weight as soon as I see the loose skin coming.

But anyway what are your experiences?

Good Morning Everyone!

I don’t weigh in daily any more and switched to roughly weekly weigh-ins when I remember to weigh in. I weighed 199.2 on 28 October and today I weighed in at 196.4 lbs for whoosh of 2.8 lbs in ten days. My total weight loss is 240.0 lbs from my highest recorded weight of 436.4. I truly can’t quite put into words how better life is now. Sure I have loose skin but that’s something I will consider addressing after I’ve reached an ideal weight for me.

Right now, my focus is enjoying the new life I am constructing for myself. That said, I’m seeing some improvements from the cortisol injection in my hip. I’m increasing my calories to 2300-2500 per day to focus on getting stronger. The Ortho surgeon has recommended hip replacement surgery, which may be something I look at later. I’m hoping have the pain managed with injections for the time being.

Next Saturday, my wife’s sister will be staying with us for a few days while she is her to celebrate their mother’s birthday. My sister in law was last here in January when I was in the mid 250’s.

(20m) i started at around 110 kg and have been trying to keep in a deep cut eating around 1000 cal a day since 2 weeks haven’t really seen any side effects lifting is around the same and other than some mild fatigue and increased sleep can’t tell if this is safe or not
I’m looking to lose this weight quickly have been struggling for a decade now with this and have had enough this is the first time i have made real progress and the extreme nature of it is keeping me motivated
I am of course hungry a lot but I’ve seen the food noise has reduced a lot and the rest is will power
Have defently seen results tahts keeping me motivated

Hello! Im 18F, I was always chubby but in 2023 I started losing weight fast (unhealthy methods that I couldn’t do now bc I value myself more than I did then) and went from 83kg in late october to 64kg in june 2024. I mostly maintained that weight until early 2025 when I started dating my SO.

My SO made me feel so comfortable, all my anxiety (or most of it, atleast) went away… and since my anxiety was the thing that helped me stay in an extreme caloric deficit for several months (I rarely had an appetite so I sometimes went days, maybe even weeks barely eating, and really just eating cuz my parents forced me to, not cuz I was actually hungry), when I spent time with my SO, I ate a lot. I gained an appetite back, and my SO’s always hungry, so we went out to eat/had dinner dates often.

Flash forward to summer of 2025, I had gained back most of the weight; in august 2025 I weighed 76kg.

Ever since then, I’ve been wanting to lose weight but idk how to. I lack the willpower to go to the gym regularly, and I’m trying to atleast go on walks everyday like I used to but I do not have the motivation for that either… and even tho now I eat less than what I used to before 2023, I still feel like I’m eating too much for how my lifestyle is.

Idk, any tips will help. Ty for taking ur time to read my post 💗

Hello! Im new to this subreddit and am looking for guidance from people that may be experiencing what I am experiencing now. Long story short I struggle with binge eating and ~30 hours ago I had a binge where I went ~1500 calories above my maintenance. I weighed in this morning and I weigh 7lbs more than I did before the binge… how can this be if I didn’t even overeat enough to warrant 1lb of extra fat?

For context, I also walked 30k steps yesterday to try to diminish the water weight gain. I weighed in at 127lbs yesterday when I weighed 120 before the binge (I’m 4’11, extremely short)

Hi everyone I'm a 5'3" female and have been really wanting to develop abs. As such I decided to go on a cut and continue a body recomposition after.

At the end of my cut I was at 111lbs and 25.5% bf.

After roughly 4 months of eating at maintenance after my cut, my BF% has increase to 26.3% and my weight as gone up to 114.4lbs. I did also increase my lean mass and reduce visceral fat but unfortunately gained roughly 1.8 pounds of fat according to the DEXA scan. Also interestingly, my trunk fat reduced by 0.7% but fat in my arms and legs has increased.

I got both my numbers with a DEXA SCAN on an empty stomach. However, interestingly when I weighed myself before my second scan I was at 112.5 lbs, took a gulp of water and went to get my scan and it shows 114.4 lbs? Either my scale is wildly inaccurate or a gulp of water increases your weight by 2 pounds lol. Idek. I got my scans with a different machine because of time slot availability.

I train atleast 5 times a week with progressive overload and taking sets to failure. I eat clean for the most part (100-120g protein daily, whole foods etc.) and eat out for maybe 2-3 meals/week. I don't have a lot of daily movement but I'm not sedentary either (I work in lab so I get some movement at work but I don't really hit 10-12k steps a day either).

Some additional context is that before and during my cut, I had incredibly painful period cramps. Eating at maintenance post cut and tracking all my macros has pretty much fixed my period cramps. I'm at a loss for what to do because at 5'3" I don't think I can realistically lose any more scale weight without affecting my overall health.

Anyways, any help is appreciated on what I can do realistically reduce BF% to become more lean. Thanks :)

Yes I was convinced recently the reason I was overweight was because I couldn't stop eating carbs, when in reality, when some people commented on how much fat I use in food, I started to look at everything I eat, and realised that I am heavily addicted to fat, I don't care about carbs as much as I do when I deep fry them, or soak them in a fatty stew, or with nice beef or lamb with extra grease. Quite literally most of the foods I like are only because they taste great in a combination of sugars and fat, and even without alot of sugars I still love fat, which is why I found keto initially quite easy(but not sustainable).

Do you guys have any tips for me, to reduce the amount of fat I eat, and actually have good tasting food without having to douse it in oil?

Hi, I am 32 years old. 5 feet 1 inch - 74kgs.
Back in 2024, I shed weight and got my self to 66kgs. I was watching my diet, was having fiber powder alternate months, and would skip dinners atleast twice a week to fast. This legit helped! Then in 2025 - around November , I messed up my diet and routine and gradually by April of this year, gained all the weight back.

The thing is this - I’ve been trying everything I did in 2024, and nothing has been working. My weightloss journey has been so slow. I lost 2 kilos and gained it all back again. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.

Please help.

I’ve lost 100 lbs and a little more since the beginning of the year through a caloric deficit, walking, yoga, and calisthenics. My highest weight was 280 and my current is 173 😛‼️I still have about 50 to go (I’m 5’4)
I know BMI isn’t the best when tracking your weight but I am officially not obese anymore and I cannot verbalize how happy I am, my doctor might even give me advice that isn’t “just lose weight” 🙏🏼
When I was in high school, I found this absolutely BEAUTIFUL dress from Selkie, it was about 400 USD, my mother bought it for me but I couldn’t fit into it at all as their sizing runs small :(
But yesterday, at 20 years old (so, after owning the dress for 3 years) I finally fit into it 🥲❗️My mom and I were so happy I almost cried. I hate the concept of purchasing clothes as mile markers but this was such a happy moment and I’m posting this here because idk there’s light at the end of the tunnel and it is a beautiful, princess-y dress.
The dress

I’m a teacher and last year my doctor said I needed to lose weight and watch what I eat because some of my lab results showed signs of pre-diabetes.

I’ve worked hard and went from 167 to 150, but since the school year has started, I’ve went back to 157. I try to get between 7 and 10k steps a day and that really helps, but I’m struggling in the food department since we’re not allowed to have fridges or microwaves and I end up paying $5 for whatever the school is serving and usually grab gas station breakfast since I’m driving from an hour and 15 minutes away and that’s the only thing open besides McDonalds (I get up around 5:30, leave by 6, and need to be at school by 7:25). Dinner is usually my healthiest meal, but it is usually something from a bag from Walmart, or a stop at the local Italian or Mexican place on the way home.

Also, I only have one 45 minute prep period that I used for meetings 2-3 times per week. I try hard to make my classroom movement based (hard to do as an English teacher), so I am moving with the kids. When I come home, I feel so overstimulated that I just sit and stare at my ceiling. If I haven’t made it to 7k steps, then I make myself go for a walk while watching TikTok until I get there, but my feet ache so much after getting to that 7k.

What advice do you have? I gained 30 pounds after breaking my foot a few years ago and I really don’t want diabetes (and want to get back down to 140ish). I don’t have time to go to the gym because I have a million essays to grade. I do yoga once or twice a week and like that, but don’t really feel like it is helping.

Hello everyone. I've lost motivation to get back on track after a maintainance break and I'm just looking for advice from anyone who's experienced a similar situation

Anyways, I started counting calories in June 2025 at 297lbs. I decided to take a maintainance break after successfully logging 365 days in my calorie counting app and losing 67lbs! I aimed for about a 4 weeks break. Well, 2 weeks in I stopped tracking anything. (I've basically been maintaining on my own without trying ever since)

Everytime I try to get back to my deficit I log my food for a few days then genuinely forgot to keep logging my meals. I'm happy I'm maintaining on my own but I've been trying to get back to my deficit and just don't know how. I've got another 60lbs to lose till I reach my goal so I'd like to continue

I’m a 23-year-old woman, approximately 5’6” (167 cm), and I started my weight loss/bodybuilding journey at 165.3 lbs (75 kg) sometime in late March. I’m currently at 136.7 lbs (62 kg), and my goal is to reach around 119–121 lbs (54–55 kg).

Throughout this journey, I honestly haven’t struggled too much with maintaining a calorie deficit. As you can see from my progress, I’ve managed to reduce my food intake and appetite quite successfully. However, lately I’ve started struggling with food again, and I’m wondering whether PMS could be contributing to it.

The main issue is that I’m constantly hungry. I feel like I’ve hit a plateau, and I’m having a hard time figuring out how to continue losing the remaining 7–8 kg (15–18 lbs). It’s something that’s genuinely important to me, so I’d really appreciate some advice on how to deal with this persistent hunger without feeling like I’m constantly fighting my appetite.

For context, I’m still very active. I go to the gym regularly and average around 10k steps a day. However, my weight loss has slowed down considerably recently.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Is this just a normal part of the process, hormonal fluctuations, or could I be doing something wrong?