Journey to abs

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olz

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Long story short: I am clinically depressed and anxious, early while struggling with it I went from skinny fat and slowly crossed over to obesity in the span of a couple years. I think this was mainly due to a lack of caring about everything. Since then I've worked on my mental health more and tried to slowly clean up my life, losing weight is part of this (healthy body, healthy mind). I've already gone on a 100 day diet losing around 40 to 50 pounds but i stalled for a few months and now (terminator voice) i'm back.


Side notes:
  1. I'm a fairly private person but at the end I'll post a before and after photo of my belly, I have an old picture from when i was 250-260lbs to give a full view of where i came from.
  2. I like to add up all the calories i have had over my diet and get an average days calories, doing this avoids the trap of overeating one day and spiralling. Averages move up and down much more slowly giving a more holistic view of how the diet is going. Plus i just like to see an average because I'm weird. ADC = average daily calories.
  3. Before coming here i completed 5 days of my diet, I'll drop that at the bottom.
  4. I've never had abs in my life so ultimately, that's my goal.


Stats -
Age: 23
Height: 6'4"
Starting weight: 211lbs
TDEE: 2600

Goals -
Average daily calories (ADC): 1600 ± 50
End weight: 185lbs ± 5lbs
Weekly weight loss: 2lbs
Stay on diet at least 50 days
Do a weekly weigh in


Day 1:
calories: 1600
ADC: 1600
notes: a lot of mental struggle to try and convince myself to go through with dieting.

Day 2:
calories: 1850
ADC: 1725
notes: I was hungry and couldn't sleep with my stomach rumbling so i had a very small snack which got me to sleep. Partially my fault for bad meal timings.

Day 3:
calories: 1500
ADC: 1650
notes: I've made up a few calories from yesterdays mistake and started taking multivitamins and fish oil to ensure my health. I've organised my mind a lot more and feel dedicated to doing this. I've reminded myself that to achieve anything i need to be willing to sacrifice something and adopt the mindset of do or die trying.

Day 4:
calories: 1550
ADC: 1625
notes: made up a few more calories to bring the average down.

Day 5:
calories: 1600
ADC: 1620
notes: Had a couple of anxiety spikes, nothing too dramatic, i think i need to ease up on caffeine consumption. I'm going to throw some exercise into the mix tomorrow so i can afford a couple hundred extra calories and hopefully give myself a boost mentally with those brain chemicals.
 
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I only need to lose 6 more pounds to officially be "healthy" in bmi.
 
Day 6:
boxing: -300
calories: 2450
ADC: 1758
notes: someone had a BBQ today but I still managed to keep my eating pretty balanced, I ended the day in a calorie deficit which is good, seems like a win to me. I will have to bunker down the next couple days to get my ADC back under 1650.

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Haha, that gif is amazing. The struggle is realllll. Well done for resisting going too mad at the BBQ. Sounds like you know what you need to do. Welcome to the forum and good luck!
 
Day 7:
hiking: -600
calories: 1400
ADC: 1707
notes: Finally finished week one, 43 days to go and my ADC is almost below 1650 again. Calories are the amount after exercise (so don't panic), today i ate 2000 and did a 1 and a half hour hike to burn 600. Anxiety has subsided to a lower manageable level again. Will weigh in tomorrow morning, wish me luck.
 
Day 9:
calories: 1800
ADC: 1694
notes: depression has been coming down on me hard the past couple of days, i still just about stuck to my diet though. This comic is so accurate and made me laugh -
1rev.png


 
That sushi cartoon is great. At least you have a good sense of humour alongside the horrible depression..! Calories looking good too - well done on your 4lbs1
 
Hi Olz,
My daughter struggles with depression and anxiety - it is not easy!
The comic about the sushi is something she deals with regularly.

If there are days you can't, give yourself some grace, not all days are perfect and they don't need to be.
The important thing is to come back to it on the next meal.

Good for you for sticking to your plan and nice work on those 4lbs down!!
 
Day 11:
calories: 2400
ADC: 1731
notes: I guess some half drunk self analysis and some brutal honesty is in order. I had a pretty good plan for today but i woke up way too late after a long old depression sleep, slept through two alarms and when i woke up naturally i realised I'd messed up my plans fell right back to sleep for a few more hours. When i finally woke up i didn't want to deal with people so i stayed inside. I spent most of the day wondering what the fuck i'm doing with my life and why i'm not good enough to do that thing i want to do. I really wanted to switch off my brain so i got drunk and watched a movie. It's hard to find a point to anything, the only good one i could find is that by keeping moving forward i might inspire someone else to. Tomorrow I'm going to wake up and try again and if you're having a rough time i hope you to do the same.

Depression and anxiety are not who you are, fight back against them. Vent and get back to life.

 
Day 12:
calories: 1750
ADC: 1732
caffeine: mg
nicotine: 18mg

notes: i need to start valuing the level caffeine impacts my anxiety and remove it from my life. I'm adding a new metric to my daily journal to track it. Caffeine seems to reduce the fatigue from depression but triggers anxiety which ultimately seems to lead to more fatigue. For me, caffeine is very addictive. Nicotine is another problem, although i vape so it doesn't effect me as much health-wise, for mental health I've realised it's just as damaging as caffeine. Anything that releases extra stress hormones into my body needs to go. I'm reducing my nicotine level from 18mg to less tomorrow and also adding a new metric for the strength liquid I'm using.

 
Day 13:
calories: 1400
ADC: 1706
total caffeine: 84mg
nicotine strength: 18mg

notes: for scale, two spoons of instant coffee is above 100mg caffeine.
 
Sorry to see you had a bit of a shit patch.. how have the last few days been? Interesting about the caffeine - how much do you normally drink? Did you switch your nicotine level down? I'm still smoking roll ups like a foooool.
 
Sunflower_ said:
Sorry to see you had a bit of a shit patch.. how have the last few days been? Interesting about the caffeine - how much do you normally drink? Did you switch your nicotine level down? I'm still smoking roll ups like a foooool.
Click to expand...

I've had worse days. I worked out that i drank around 350mg on an average day, some days i had more than double that. Haven't switched my nicotine level down yet, i need to grab some more e-juice. Apart from the positive effects on fatigue, there's actually some evidence that caffeine also has a positive effect on anxiety in small doses, of course that never lasts because to feel the same effect you have to increase the amount you have until it becomes all negative. The longer i use caffeine the smaller amount it takes to set off anxiety as well. It's a weird drug when mixed with my brain chemistry :willy_nilly:

Try switching to electronic cigs if you can, pretty quickly you'll be able to breath better, taste and smell again.
 
Day 14:
calories: 1700
ADC: 1705
total caffeine: 84mg
nicotine strength: 18mg

notes: two weeks down. i'm weighing in tomorrow, hoping to lose around 2 pounds.
 
Weigh in
Start weight: 211lbs
week one: 207lbs
week two: 206lbs

week loss: 1lbs
total loss: 5lbs

notes: i was in a rush this morning so i had to weigh in later after i had ate and drank a bunch *shrug*, next week will be more loss than normal if i weigh in right. So far i've "burned" 12530 calories if my TDEE is close to being right, which equates to roughly 3.6lbs of fat (plus some water weight).
 
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Day 15:
calories: 1600
ADC: 1697
total caffeine: 168mg
nicotine strength: 12mg

notes: brought down the nicotine strength but ended up drinking more caffeine. My anxiety has subsided a noticeable amount, one hiccup today where i saw someone i thought i recognised that i really didn't want to see but it turned out not to be them, about 3 minutes of my heart beating really rapidly then a slight shooting pain in my arm afterwards then mild hypochondria that i had to stomp down reminding myself that uh yeah, you're going to feel a little funny after a huge dose of adrenaline (you're not going to have a heart attack or stroke). Either way i feel pretty stable, a little blunted emotionally though. Hopefully i can put the mental health stuff on the back burner for this journal now and just mention it once in a while when necessary instead of droning on about it.
 
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