My weight loss progession (and how)

So like a lot of people, I piled on the pounds during lockdown, then moved to working from home and the weight kept increasing. I moved very little, some days I was doing at most 300 steps, got food delivered (groceries) and ate a lot of take away.

I however see a lot of weight loss pics of the before and after on here, and not many for how people are doing it. Sure its fairly obvious, increase exercise and cut calories, but I thought I'd share my story, as a complete novice.

I went on holiday in June and the moment of realisation hit me, when I struggled to keep up with everyone else, I could barely carry anything, I knew then I was out of shape. It was time to change. I didn't want to go on a specific diet, I wanted to make slow life style changes, that would bring me back to a healthy weight, a good level of fitness and whatever other benefits that would bring me (hoping for less pain in my knees.)

The Start (Introduction to habit of weighing myself + slow diet increase + step increase)

Week one was back in the start of July. I had my body fat measuring scales, and yes, fine, they will never be an exact science, I'm aware of this, but they do (and are doing) what I need them to do - measure trend. I weigh myself on them every morning, and I keep an eye on what each of them is doing.

When I first started out, my body fat was over 42%, which scared the hell out of me... nearly half of me was fat. It was pretty clear I needed to exercise more, and my body weight alone told me I was eating too much, however the BMR gave me a useful figure to base what I should be eating off of. For my first week I started on 1700 calories (I'm really short!), and each week I shaved 100 off until I got to 1200.

I know this is working for me, based upon the calculations I did from BMR, and also because fitbit tracks my calorie deficit, and I am happily losing at a rate of roughly 1lb a week.

For the whole of July, my goal was two simple ones, lowering my daily calories down towards 1200 a day (baring in mind this is net 1200 - if I burn 200 in exercise, I eat 1400), and increasing my steps.

I found going on a 30 minute walk on my lunch break, and an hour walk in the evening gave me the recommended 10,000 steps a day, and that was my goal.

By the start of August, I noticed the calorie burn for my walks were starting to reduce, and I realised that my resting heart rate was lowering thanks to the extra walking and the weight loss (I was 8lbs/5kg down at this point).

I don't know a huge amount about heart rate, but I know my fitbit has zones (rest, fat burn, cardio and peak), and my standard walking pace had been getting me into fat burn, so I was burning off calories nicely. Now I was walking and it was staying in the rest zone, my calories were lowering.

I started introducing jogging, to counter balance this, setting up an interval work out on fitbit to buzz on my wrist, I was doing a 15 second jog with a 1 minute 30 walk. Two weeks ago I changed that to 20 and 1 min 25, and this monday I set it to 25 and 1 minute 20 seconds. I have a plan to shift this by 5 seconds every 2-3 weeks until I can jog without stopping for the 55 minute evening walk/jog session.

It's been rather pleasent watching the weight drop off, after a fairly static trip into the world of obesity. I'm not there yet, as per the screenshot of the scales from today, I'm still in the obese section for weight and body fat, and 'overweight' on the BMI scale.

I have changed as follows though:

Weight: 158lbs/71.6 kg --> 145.2lb/65.8kg
BMI: 29.8 --> 26.2*
Body fat: 42.6 --> 39.6*

*BMI/Body fat does have a little extra jump in them, as I actually properly measured myself in early august and realised I was a few cm taller than I thought (and had on the scales/fitbit apps).

--

As a little sort of 'summary':

My July focus: Lowering my calories towards my calculated target amount and increasing the amount of walking I was doing.
My August focus: Amending my newly lowered calories into a better ratio of carbs/fats/proteins (macro focus), introduction of jogging to my walking routine, and attempting to sort out my sleeping pattern.
My September focus: Increasing the jogging ratio, continuing diet macros (still having issues with these, though the high protein yoghurts are helping).

I have a long way to go still, I'm only just over two months in, but I'm nearly one stone down (5.8kg). I am finding it important to not deny myself anything, I am still having the odd take away, still sneaking in the odd donut, but my mindset has changed much more towards making better choices.

Sure logging food is a pain in the ass, but like today, I didn't log any food until 2pm, I just opened the app and stuck in my breakfast and lunch without having to weigh anything, I just knew the sizes now (100g of cucumber is about the length of my finger etc.)

I am about 1/3 of the way to my goal currently, and I am more than aware I won't want to do an hour jog every day in december, so my plan is to lose as much as I can before the weather gets rubbish, and pick it up again next year. I started this journey to change long term, so if you're considering doing the same, go for the long term, not the quick wins.

Dog tax - my parents pooch Rosie, who is... a little on the side of old and worn down now but still loves head scratches. (Also - sorry for any typos!)