Best products from r/askfatlogic

First, I'd like to invite you to join r/loseit, Reddit's weight-loss sub! You'll find a very supportive group of people there. We have a daily question thread there where literally any questions you have can be answered, and a fantastic beginner's guide linked in the sidebar that you should definitely read.

You don't need a gym right now, and in fact 80-90% of your weight loss will come from diet, not exercise. So your first step, I think, should be to create an account with MyFitnessPal (download the app or use their website) and begin logging every. single. thing. you eat or drink. Don't worry about weight loss, don't worry about meeting calorie goals, just log everything for a week so that you can get an idea of your baseline intake and begin to get used to logging (it's annoying at first. It quickly becomes second nature.).

Then, go to Sail Rabbit and enter your information (don't worry about the body fat percentage if you don't know it). I like Sail Rabbit because it has finer-grained levels of activity to choose from, with different levels of "sedentary" that you can pick to match what your lifestyle is like. You may want to then adjust your goals in MyFitnessPal to what Sail Rabbit calculates for you (though, MFP does pretty good on it's own once you plunk in how much you want to lose, so you can absolutely use their recommendations). I'd aim for a 1 or 1 1/4 lb loss per week. That should be a gentle enough reduction from your regular intake that with some smart decisions like buying lower calorie bread or replacing some starches with non-starchy vegetables you shouldn't feel like you're suddenly starving. Making sustainable choices should be your goal here; don't replace rice with cauliflower rice if you hate cauliflower and figure you'll go back to eating rice later, because that's not a sustainable lifestyle change for you (it wasn't for me. I do eat cauliflower rice, but I also eat regular rice, just in smaller quantities).

Now you'll have a calorie goal for each day, which you can sort of think of as a bank account. You'll have something like 1800 calories to "spend" each day on food and drink, and you can decide if you're going to do that or "save up" 100 calories Monday through Friday so that you can use that extra 500 on Saturday for an extra slice of pizza or whatever. If you want to make things easy on yourself and use pre-packaged things with set calories, go for it, just drink a lot of water because they're usually high in sodium. Consider purchasing a food scale (I use this one) so that you can be more accurate with your measurements of things, particularly when you're cooking and also prepackaged stuff (you'll see on nutritional labels that servings will be listed as something like "3/4 cup (54g)"; when you weigh your servings via grams, you'll have a better idea of how much you're eating and exactly how small something calorically-dense like a serving of peanut butter really is).

If you'd like to start exercising at home (It's what I do and it's actually personally done wonders for my anxiety levels. Remember, it's not for weight loss, it's for building strength and muscle, increasing cardio health, and giving you energy.), there are a million exercise videos on YouTube. I started with Leslie Sansone walking videos which are, admittedly, kinda cheesy, but also gentle for beginners. That channel has some of her entire videos available, from 1-mile to 3-mile walks. Jessica Smith also does walking videos and is a little less high-energy chatty than Leslie is. She even has a Fit in 15 series of 15 minute workouts (that link's to the first one) that focus on different body parts and a variety of different types of workouts, like barre, chair yoga, etc. If videos aren't your thing, Darebee has a bunch of free workouts and programs; this is their Foundation Light, which is for people recovering from injury, who have joint issues, or who are severely overweight. I'd recommend starting out trying to exercise at least 15 minutes a day twice a week and then increasing time and eventually days from there as you get used to it. I do NOT recommend throwing yourself all-in at a 5 or 6-day a week program because if you're like me, you'll either get hurt or burn out really quickly. Just because something is a "30-day challenge!" doesn't mean it has to be done in 30 consecutive days.

Whether you want to weigh yourself daily or weekly or monthly depends strongly on your personal feelings toward the scale and your weight. If you DO want to log it daily, I like the Happy Scale app. Get a tape measure and take measurements. Write them down so you can get giddy when you start to lose inches but don't see much movement in the scale (seriously, it happens and it's weird and annoying). If you can stand it, also take pictures in swimwear or underwear from the side, front, and back, so you have reference photos from your beginning. Yes, it feels awkward, but when you feel like you're not getting anywhere and compare later photos to your first ones so you can see the differences that have occurred, you'll be glad you did it.

Good luck! It's a lot of work, but it is so worth it!

I use this one: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CM8TZC?psc=1

$20 and it's lasted me over 5 years now. Still works perfectly. 100% recommend.

12 bucks off Amazon Ozeri Pronto Digital Multifunction Kitchen and Food Scale, Elegant Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004164SRA/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_xle.wbQ85M3X1

Thanks! So if I wear it longer will it make more of an impact when it's off? Also the waist trainer I was looking at was this one.

Camellias Women's Waist Trainer Belt - Body Shaper Belt For An Hourglass Shaper, SZ8002-Black-M https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017LKAZ6U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_W2qFybYHGF9V2