Out of nowhere, I was wondering why no matter how hard I try to lose weight, I ended up gaining more. This led me to do quick research on Youtube to check if I was not the only one having this problem. It turned out.... I wasn't.

After browsing though it, I found many people are having the same questions as I do. Why can't we lose the weight? Why do I gain my weight back? this was all frustrating after a week restricting ourselves with fewer calories.

As long as I have remembered, weight loss has been a part of my life. I gained weight, I lost it, then gained it all back. Perhaps, it is a natural cycle of life but these days, I find it struggling to lose it. I tried doing my old ways of losing weight. Just as I've always remembered, my mom told me " stop eating late", " stop snacking", " just eat less". But I never pay attention to her. It was all just unforgotten winds. During High School, I was attempting to lose my weight with some of my friends. That was also when I first knew about the Intermittent Fasting Method. It was called different then I followed it. However,I was ignorant when it comes to nutrition. I was only following the advice of " eat whatever you want" which was not helping at all. Until about the prom night, I was nominated as one of the fattest kid in the school. That moment, I realized I have to really lost my weight. Fast forward, I did it. I lost a lot of weight and I was a new person. It took me about a year to lose about 30kg and I was at my ideal weight which is 57kg. Then, something happened.

After dating my ex and I was on a pill, I gained a lot of weight. All the hard-work that I did which was including starving myself went in vain. It got worse after the breakup. I started finding comfort on food, just like I always did when I was younger. Days turned into months, months turned into years. I managed to accumulate a lot of excess weight. But along the way, I learned about nutrition.

I mentioned couple of times that I was trying to be a vegan, then pescatarian, vegetarian, whatever is -rian out there. This sparked my interest on nutrition. I learned which vegetables has vitamin B, C, B12 and so on. I also learned where to get my magnesium, zinc and iron. These were helping me switching my perception about food. With this knowledge, I managed to almost minimize the consumption of fast-food and processed food. However, I was still not losing the weight permanently.

There are days when I relapsed and fell into binge eating because I starved myself for couple of days. I latched on to the idea that if I want to shed some KGs, I would have to eat below 1000 calorie a day. This was my meal plan back in 2019.

This meal plan was only about 1000-1200cal/day. I was also doing some cardio and went to gym 4 times in a week. Did I lose weight with this meal plan? not really. I was only losing the first week but then gained it all back the next week. This all been going on until I learned some of the things that are fundamentally wrong.

Find how much you should eat.

When people told me to eat less, I thought less was below 1000 calorie a day. They straightly assumed that daily I would eat 4000 calorie.In fact, when I counted it, in average during my binge eating days I would only eat 2700 calorie which is obviously will make me gain weight because I should have only eaten about 1500 calorie/day.

The fitness guru call it the "Macro". When I heard about it during my highschool, I never understood what they meant. Though I know what is Micro calorie. So, I thought as long as I eat less carbs, more protein and more vegetables, I was all set. Oh well, I was wrong too.

Have you ever thought about how much calorie do you need a day?

Meet TDEE

Link : https://tdeecalculator.net/

Important note : This calculator is only an estimation.

An example of the result from the calculator

This calculator shows you an estimation of how much you should eat based on your weight, age, height and activity. It also shows you if you want to maintain, cutting or bulking. This was one of the thing that I did not know. I was depriving myself and wondering why I got dizzy, having low energy and hunger pang. So, what I learned is that find out how much calories you need in a day.

Do not rush into heavy exercises

I love some sports. I love swimming the most but when it comes to weight-loss exercises like cardio or aerobic, I dislike it. Still, I would fall into exercising an hour a day when I finally snapped and committed " let's lose the muffin top". You know all the youtube tutorial out there? most of them are not overweight or obese friendly. Majority of them are performed by normal weight person who has been trained to do it for years. So, if you want to build a good exercise habit, don't be like me who rush into difficult exercises and not taking my time. You know, this resulted in me hating the exercise therefore making me inconsistent about it and having sores. The next one is also relating to exercise.

Do not feel guilty when you don't exercise

Are you lazy like me? if so, I have a good news for ya.

There is something called Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. What is it?

So by exisiting alone, you are burning calories.

Even when resting, your body burns calories by performing basic functions to sustain life, such as:

breathing
circulation
nutrient processing
cell production
Basal metabolic rate is the number of calories your body needs to accomplish its most basic (basal) life-sustaining functions.
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If you lay in a starfish motion and even like just moving around the house, you are burning some calories. Now let's go back to the chart.

This is how much 23 years old, 160cm 60kg with sedentary job can burn their calorie. 1,324 calorie alone just for existing.

So imagine when you eat less than 1,324 calorie/day. Is that sufficient to even do the basic life functions? not that optimal. Because as per calculation, it is estimated that profile needs 1589 calorie/day to maintain the 60kg weight. Obviously when you lose the weight, the estimation will changes as well. So that is to keep in mind.

note : 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories.

Next time you see a diet tips or people sharing their diet or what they eat in a day, keep in mind that yours may differ and be very skeptical when you try to follow " what I eat in a day" type of content.

This discovery was huge for me. I felt like I had an epiphany on what was wrong all this life. Why I was hungrier, craving foods I shouldn't, and turned into food when I was stressed or sad. This could be the factor that I was not eating enough for my weight profile. The food that I ate was able to sustain my basic body function. So, for those of you who struggle with losing weight, provided you don't have any illness that hinders it, you might need to check on how much calorie you need a day and how much you have been eating.

Summary : 1. Check your needed daily calorie estimation, 2. Do not rush into heavy exercises 3. Find your BMR estimation.

Some informative videos to get you started :