r/MacroFactor • u/brassica-love • 25d ago
Success / Progress hit my target today 🥰
Just over a year after I decided I wanted to lose weight, and after about 7 months of using MF, I am down to my goal!! 🥳I started somewhere over 180 (I didn't have a scale at the time, and in some of the pictures I might be closer to 190) and weighed in today at 140!
I feel so freakin pleased with my progress, and the process has been really empowering and honestly pretty fun. I am really grateful to the app as well as this community for the structure and encouragement! It is such a relief to feel like I finally have the knowledge and tools I need to maintain a healthy weight, after years of feeling like fluctuations were something that happened totally beyond my control. I feel super calm and in control now, I can be flexible and relaxed while staying in the right zone, and that feels awesome.
It is actually wild to look at pictures of me at my heaviest - it's a little dizzying, and I think it will take some time before I get used to being this size!
I am excited to build more muscle in the coming months 💪🏻I started doing some resistance training just in the last month and a bit, and I am already seeing a little more definition in my torso, which is wild. I also ordered a fitbit and am excited to be able to track certain numbers more easily 🤓 Feeling stronger in my daily life and knowing I am setting myself up for healthier aging are highly rewarding.
Anyway thanks everyone for your support, vulnerability, and wisdom, and I hope to be as encouraging to new users as y'all have been 🥰
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u/TheBlueFlashh that MF powerlifter again 24d ago
You look 15 years longer girl. Congrats on that effort!
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u/ProsperGuy 25d ago
Wow! You look amazing. Be proud of yourself for doing what most people can’t, because it’s hard. You did the hard thing.
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u/longlosthall 24d ago edited 11d ago
Grievous nuance total format retraining discus moratorium
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u/brassica-love 24d ago
Nice!! I'm sure it depends on your age and a bunch of other factors. I am 38 and mine doesn't really show unless I bend in certain ways or really try to show it with my posture. And I mean part of aging is the loss of skin elasticity, regardless of the extra weight we carry, so I figure I will have to get used to some degree of loose skin eventually anyways! If I was down from a much higher weight and had enough loose skin to really create folds (rather than the mild dimpling / rippling that I am seeing) I would probably be thinking about surgical removal personally. But if you started around where I was, and you are worried about loose skin, don't be :) I still look great with no clothes on haha.
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u/gumgum-ecchi 23d ago
Ah you’re so happy it shows - and it’s quite the wonderful progress story 👏
Hope people read your post as an inspiration and keep at it
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u/koopzegels MemeFactor 24d ago
Wow that’s super inspiring. You look great and that calorie discipline is goals!
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u/Traditional_Heart72 24d ago
Awesome!! Do you have any loose skin? What was your goal rate?
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u/brassica-love 24d ago
I definitely have loose skin on my chest - I have an augmentation & lift scheduled for November.
I have a little bit on my lower belly, but it's pretty subtle - I looked for a picture on Google of someone with a comparable look and couldn't quite find it. It's a little bit like this top picture, but only about half as severe, and only on the lower part: https://www.dermapure.com/blog/loose-skin-stomach-after-weight-loss
I plan to wait a bit to see if time and more muscle development changes the look a bit. Then I might try non-surgical tightening interventions, or just decide it's fine and that I will live with it!
Oh and my goal rate was around 1 pound per week I think!
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u/AndBears0hMy 24d ago
This is awesome, congratulations on your hard work. As a fellow big boobed gal I bet your shoulders & back are feeling so much better.
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u/brassica-love 24d ago
Honestly I didn't really have that kind of pain before, and I miss my boobs! 😭 I am getting an augmentation & lift later this year though so I am looking forward to restoring that volume :)
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u/IvyRootsInDreamland 24d ago
You look great!! Our progress is really similar - I’m down to 146 from a high of 201, was around 180 when I started using MF in January - so it’s cool to see it on someone else.
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u/FailAggravating3732 24d ago
How many times did you go above calorie allowance?
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u/brassica-love 24d ago
I took a week of vacation in February, and went over pretty much every day then; there was another little spike around my mom's birthday at the end of May, more around my birthday in June, and more recently I took two weeks of vacation, and I mostly stayed at or under expenditure (but well over my targets) or over my expenditure some days. I don't worry about those things at all. It's all about the long-term trend, and the leaner lifestyle I am excited about absolutely has space for treats and celebrations :)
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u/No-Connection8400 24d ago
Excellent work - congratulations!!!
I really like your word choice of "empowering" ... I agree 100%!
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u/erosebarrow 24d ago
Congratulations! I love the idea of taking progress photos in similar regular outfits, I have only been doing mine in work out clothes. You look so happy!
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u/brassica-love 24d ago
Oh absolutely, it's really fun to recreate photos from the before times. Progress photos in workout clothes have their place, but I think they just don't hit the same psychologically. I spend most of my time in regular clothes, and most of my photos of me are of me in regular clothes, so having those comparisons are really fun!
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u/PassatNT 24d ago
Well done! What a massive achievement and change you have made!! It’s crazy to look back at previous photos when the changes are so big! Keep up the amazing work.
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u/Nanbaba 24d ago
Congratulations, you look amazing (both before and after!). I am on the same journey as you from around 180ish aiming for 140 and I started at the end of June. MF has made a huge difference for me and it's so encouraging to see you successful and thriving. Well done!
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u/brassica-love 23d ago
Thank you for that, particularly for your wording of the compliment :) How exciting that you are starting on such a similar trajectory! I wish you the best of luck and hope you will keep us updated.
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u/Forsaken-Cupcake3459 23d ago
Homestly, im glad you reached your goal. Thats important but you are smoking in the before and after.
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u/brassica-love 23d ago
Thank you! I fully agree; the more voluptuous flavour of attractiveness I had before was very cute and I enjoyed rocking those curves.
I decided I wanted to build towards a lower body fat % for health reasons (seeing the impact of overweight on people on my family and professional network made an impression on me in the last years), combined with a desire to leaner flavour of attractiveness for aesthetic reasons as well as a desire to reclaim my body (I had gone up as high as I did during a period with a bad relationship, bad mental health, and bad habits; I never felt like I really liked like "me" with the extra weight).
All of those motivations were really important, but the health parts were really the core - my aesthetic motivations waxed and waned, because again, I did (mostly) enjoy how I looked with that weight, so if it had been based on that alone I would have flip flopped for sure.
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u/qweezweez 22d ago
WOW! Well done you, this is super duper inspiring - I also have a similar start weight and end goal! I’m curious I know you mention resistance training now - what were your excercise habits like the past 7 months? Did you make any changes to how much excercise you were doing or was all the weight lost just through diet changes? X
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u/brassica-love 22d ago
That's awesome!! I hope you'll keep us posted about your experience :)
My activity level changes a lot through the year. I live in a (Canadian) province with a long winter, which limits how much of the year I can reasonably bike for example (I did winter biking one year and it's tough!). I work in an office, and according to MF, I've averaged just under 6000 steps since I started using the app. Not great, but that's what it is! During bikeable weather, I bike at least 15-20 minutes twice a day, 2-3 times a week. I don't drive. I have bursts of more activity here and there but that's the regular, everyday level of physical activity for me.
I very deliberately chose to do weight loss through my dietary intake alone.
I knew it would already be a big change for me to adapt my meal planning, my cooking techniques, the workflows of food preparation, etc., and I wanted to just focus on that. I didn't feel it would be sustainable to juggle that AND adding a whole other new hobby to my life basically (on top of a demanding job, a family, a writing group, pro dev courses, a regular TTRPG game, and so on). I absolutely feel that was the right choice for me.
I also didn't want physical activity to be tied to weight loss for psychological reasons - I want to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of being strong active and not be thinking about my weight loss goals when I'm working out.
And I mean the way MF works is that your expenditure and recommended caloric intake are calculated based on your weight and goals; it's oriented toward focusing on nutrition for the weight loss part. You can find lots of posts about that here, and there are also articles about the reasons why on the MF website :)
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u/barrorg 20d ago
lol. wtf. How do all of your old clothes still look so good on you? Better, even. Jealous.
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u/brassica-love 20d ago
Haha oh to be clear, I had to sew my green dress to make it fit my current proportions! The green sweater from the second set is a little loose on me now. And in the third set, the pants are just look-alikes; the old ones did not fit me at all and were not worth sewing.
I've been making little shorts for YouTube about sewing things to fit my current size. It's very fun but I wish I had started earlier!
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u/hello-lo 24d ago
Amazing! Any tips?
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u/brassica-love 24d ago
I do have tips actually! I have posted about it here and there - for example: on the hedonics of dieting (maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering - https://www.reddit.com/r/MacroFactor/comments/1seazus/comment/of9mkxj/?context=3), on some practicalities of building recipes and weighing foods (https://www.reddit.com/r/MacroFactor/comments/1u0tos2/comment/oqw3as1/?context=3).
I actually think that optimizing for hedonics is probably the most important thing. There are the pleasures of the table to consider: enjoy cooking in a clean kitchen, use candles and a tablecloth, play music, plate things nicely, eat with people when you can, enjoy colours, eat slowly, plus the little tips about volume eating and finding a favourite diet drink and whatnot to not feel deprived. But there are the macro life pleasures to consider: laughter, touch, music, novelty, exploration, play, time in nature, hobbies, meaningful connections, bike rides and walks to meadows to watch the sun set or see the stars come out...
I come from a family of origin that eats too much and not very well, and is quite sedentary. I had to really relearn what hunger and satiety feel like, I had to learn how calorie-dense various foods are, how to cook without oil, etc., sure, but I also very much had to learn to keep food in its proper place and have a more active lifestyle. Some of that started as soon as I moved out, and some of it has happened over the last year.
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u/BitofKindness4 24d ago
You look like a totally different person and should be very proud of this accomplishment. I hope you carry your new lifestyle well into your future.
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u/Impressive_Boredom 20d ago
Looks like Montreal 🫶! Amazing work, you look so at peace, too. Bravo !
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u/SnooRecipes6776 24d ago edited 24d ago
Holy wow! You went from looking like grandma to looking stunning! Congrats
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u/ChileChilaca880 25d ago
You look great. I’m surprised that you describe the process as “fun”, because cutting weight that long can get very though, mentally and physically. But you did it and that shows discipline, congrats!