Well, I hit 135 back in late September and was 131ish at Christmas. And I still have a long way to go. My new, new, NEW goal is 120, which I hope to hit by the end of May.
When you're heavy weight loss is easy. When you have bad habits weight loss is easy. Stop drinking soda, drop 20 lbs in two months. Start at 350, and the weight seems to fall off overnight by dropping to a 2,000 calorie day. Which is awesome, btw. All weight loss is a wonderful thing, regardless of how unhealthy your original weight is or how much you were eating beforehand.
I started at 166 at 5' 2" with a BMI of 30.4, which is like, 2 pounds into the obese category. So while I was definitely big, I wasn't in the worst shape. I started logging my calories and quickly discovered a few things.
I had to drop to 1350 calories a day to see a difference.
But the weight came off pretty easily.
I also discovered that my diet was actually in pretty good shape except for my irrational chocolate intake. It's still hard for me to go more than a day without chocolate. I found the biggest reason I had gained weight as an adult was because I'd eat a pan of brownies in 2 days, and a bag of Dove chocolates in 3 days. I'd put double the amount of hot chocolate mix in my mug with lots of whipped cream.
I was eating only lean meat, drinking skim milk, and I gave up soda when I was 13. I've never been big on salty, fatty snacks--it's always just been chocolate.
So my diet didn't change too much. Which is good for the purpose of long-term maintinence.
For the first 6 months or so the weight fell off at slightly over a pound a week. But then it started to stagnate. As you can see, the angle of the graph below shows me beginning to stall out in September.
Once I got down to a healthy BMI (which was in August) my weight loss rate took a huge nose-dive. There are a couple reasons for this. One is that as you shrink, so does your calorie needs.
Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories you burn by simply existing. If you were in a coma, this is the number of calories your body would burn just breathing and keeping your blood flowing. At my start weight my BMR was 1522 calories day. Factoring in semi-sedentary lifestyle (cuz I'm a lazy ass) I needed 1826 calories a day to stay at 166. So at 1300 calories I had a deficit of 500 calories a day, which made for a roughly 1 lb per week weight loss.
Being almost 40 lbs lighter makes a huge difference. My BMR is now 1353 and I only need 1623 calories a day to maintain my weight. (FYI, these numbers are low because I am a shorty. If you're a short woman who doesn't get a lot of exercise the standard 2000 calories a day is WAY too much for you.) So now eating only 1200 calories I'm only at a 400 calorie deficit.
You see the problem. I'm now eating less but losing less. Plus, slower weight loss means more frustration, which leads to more cheating. I took all of November and December off because I was just do damn tired of the restriction. Fortunately, I maintained even with all of the extra food floating around during the holidays.
At my 1-year mark, January 11, I started over again and I've lost another 4 lbs, but it's already bottomed out again. 7 more pounds to go. I'm almost there. I can taste it. But damn is it a long ride.
Current weight is 127.2. Goal weight, 120. So close. So damn close.
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