Your experience with losing weight and suit size

[VintageAudiophile]

In my experience, losing weight is 80% diet, 20% exercise. Eliminate from your diet refined carbs, particularly bread. You should see results pretty quickly.

This is so true. My weight loss has all been from diet which for me is a life style choice really as I won’t go back to eating the way I used to.

I do a ketogenic diet. Take in about 30 grams or less of carbs per day. I feel better than even and has worked wonders on my blood work and just general well being.

 

[orfane]

I would also watch your shoe size. I went from 200 to 160 recently, and slowly replaced clothes when I reached a stable weight. I hadn't considered that my shoe size would change, but after another couple of months I started to notice that my old pairs were far too loose and am now finding that I need to replace those too! I seem to have gone from a UK10 to 8.5, even 8.

You know I never really considered that, but I have noticed that I use to be right around 11, and am now pretty solidly a 10.5. Thought it was just different shoe makes but could be the weight loss too.

 

[papa kot]

I have lost about 1/4 shoe size. Kept all my shoes and now some have a bit more room. However, my feet were always wide so your mileage may vary.

 

[am55]

Lost 20kg. The soft structured stuff looked like a bag and is unwearable (also includes drape cut). The English, structured, flat chest, etc. jackets were a bit tight at the top and a bit comfortable at the bottom, but still worked in both cases. All trousers looked awful and new ones had to be purchased.

 

[ipractice]

I know people are going to start talking about low-carb, slow-carb, keto, and all its variations... Do yourself a favor and pickup the 4-hour Body by Tim Ferris, or just google Tim Ferris Slow Carb diet / visit r/4hourbodyslowcarb.

I've been using it for the past 2 months and the results are maintainable AND consistent. Too many people fail on complete diets because they're inaccessible or too difficult to maintain. Keto, specifically, is very difficult to get right and I don't recommend it at all... I've been doing slow carb and consistently lose 2-3 lbs a week.

 

[TotallyWired]

Good topic as I've struggled with this myself.

I've gone from 250 to about 175 in the past 10 months and expect to lose another 30 pounds or so.

My suit size has changed from a 46S to a 42S within this time. Prior to my large weight gain, I used to be a 38S. At this point I've decided to just buy all new clothing vs trying to tailor all the suits etc. The shoulders seemed OK, but mostly it was the huge difference in chest and waist suppression that I would have needed. Also the pants I went from a 44W to currently a 35/36W so the pants were going to be impossible to make right.

I'm still worried about dropping more weight and then having to get everything tailored again, especially with pants. At my former goal weight I was around a 30/32 waist. The biggest issue I have always had is that while my waist was small I always needed larger size due to my large legs (good ol' squats), so I'm hoping that I could tailor my current 35/36 pants to work enough but if not, more clothes shopping!

250+ to 175 here, 48R to 40/42. I agree with these observations in the main. Nothing from my former size was salvageable. I wore my old stuff as long as I could manage, went through some midpoint sized stuff I still had in my closet from before/during weight gain, and bought new as I was approaching a goal weight. The one thing I will add is that i underestimated how much difference 10-15 pounds would make as I approached my goal weight. I bought some stuff around 185 that needs a lot of work to fit at 175, including at shoulders and other difficult places, and so I regret buying it. I found that smaller differences in weight (eg. 10 pounds) at a lower weight had a much bigger impact from a fit perspective than 10 pounds at a higher weight. In other words, changes in fit were not proportional to pounds lost. This makes sense as 10 pounds lost at 185 is a much larger percentage of total mass than 10 pounds lost at 250. So my advice is wait as long as you can before buying new clothing.

 

[TotallyWired]

I concur with this method, which is similar to what I followed. I will say that there are a number of applications (I used myfitnesspal) that do the calorie intake work for you if you are more digital than analogue. It also has a built in activity counter to capture movement and, less reliably, exercise. My addenda would be 1) that calorie output is much harder to calculate than calorie input without a heart rate monitor or other tool, so be careful how many extra calories you allocate yourself based on your exercise or activity level. My own approach was to ignore the extra calories awarded from exercise and activity and manage intake to the no activity level. And 2) weigh yourself once a week, same time and place, and not every day. I know there is a lot of advice contrary to this but I found day-to-day weight fluctuation to be hugely distracting, and there is a lot to weight loss which is a mental grind managing your motivation and progress. Once a week gives you an accurate trend rate (eliminates some of the noise around water retention etc. which will impact weight on the daily), and you are not going to lose control or reverse direction if you are following the daily calorie diets.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am grateful for what I was able to accomplish in terms of weight loss and getting in shape again. So I figured I’d share a few tips.

Part 1

Unless you have a medical condition that prevents you from shedding weight, you can successfully do so without forcing yourself into extreme physical conditioning. The key to weight loss is understanding how you body converts food into energy. The basic formula is simple: Eat less to lose weight. Spend $100 on three items to get started: a weight scale, a pen, and a notebook. Weigh yourself in the morning, record the weight and then record each item you eat. You may get a surprise if you are like me and snack a lot.

Once you have a diary of your daily food intake for a few days, try to reduce the number of items you eat. For example, if you are used to eating a banana and a muffin for breakfast, scratch out the muffin. Do this for 1-2 weeks and see what happens. In my case, the scale collaborated the hypothesis: I started losing weight gradually.

The next step is to record the number of calories you consume. Do not get overwhelmed about the precision because as long as you use the same scale, you will be able to track the approximate caloric intake. I used various calculators found online with some approximations. For example, a muffin my wife makes is 100 calories. I have no idea whether this is right or wrong. When you write calorie values for each meal, you’ll end up with a daily caloric intake. Try to get it down by 10% over a few weeks and see what’s up. I used this method to go from about 220lbs to about 190lbs without any exercise.

The final step is to add exercise to your routine. Estimate how much calories you want to burn each day and do it slowly. For example, walking for a mile may burn around 100 calories. If you walk for 1 hour on a treadmill while watching a movie, it can be around 300 calories. Write that down.

Note, I am not adding any weight training suggestions here as I am making an assumption that you want to drop pounds without hitting the gym. That line of thinking is not entirely correct as muscle burns fat and helps you convert blubber into lean tissue. However, the subject is beyond the scope of this post and I presume that you’re just a regular guy who wants to drop a few extra pounds with ease.

If you follow the routine above, your notebook will have the following information recorded for each day:

-Date
-Weight
-Each consumed food item and the number of calories of the item
-Total daily caloric food intake
-Total daily exercise
-The net number of calories consumed

After adding the exercise, I managed to drop my weight to 180-185lbs range. That range was not good enough for me as I lost some muscle mass. I decided to increase my food intake and hit the gym. Now I am at about 200lbs which is right where I like it.

In the next post, I’ll drop a few lines on how to manage a wardrobe during weight loss and gain. Thank you for reading!

 

[PDX-S]

It is nice to see such great tips and kind feedback from everybody. This thread caught my eye because I am in the same boat. While I've always been active and fit, going to a grain free, keto-style, regime has moved my body weight down to 174 from 196 and my (US 42, 44) blazers and suits are ridiculously big at this juncture.
This change is actually what has prompted my online search for clothes and discovery of YOOX, VCH, and eHaberdasher. My recent online purchase of an Italian size 50 suit actually had to be brought in more than I expected.
Previously, I purchased all my clothes locally at better B&M stores. Trying to ascertain what size I am in different makers/styles from online photos and descriptions is certainly a learning curve.
Congratulations to everyone who has much such positive strides in body weight changes. I know my pleasure at my shape certainly outweighs the admittedly expensive and time consuming process of discovering a new wardrobe. I remind myself that just because I lost 15 years worth of wardrobe in 5 months, I cannot expect to replace 15 years worth of clothes in a few months. I just need to take a breath and enjoy the process.

 

[Muffin Man]

Finding a suitable diet, one you can keep and which results in long term change, is different for everyone. I have tried calorie counting and reduction but found it too tedious. Intermittent fasting, 4+3 to lose weight and 5+2 to keep it, appears to be working quite well for me. It sounds quite drastic in the beginning but I found it was easier to limit calorie counting to fast days and eat whatever on feed days. I don't weigh myself, because a specific weight loss isn't my goal and if you don't do it regularly (as described by others above) it can be frustrating because averaging is the key (daily swings can be impressive). After all I don't want it to be a scientific exercise. I am keeping track with my wardrobe though and now suits I last wore ten years ago fit again. I have lost one to two sizes (54/52 -> 50 EU; 44/42 to 40 UK) depending on manufacturer. While I lost a lot around the waist, the loss around my shoulders and breast was also quite impressive, I am down to cup A.

Find a good tailor and sell everything that is far too big, stuff you won't be wearing even after the holiday feasts. If you're on a long path, you might have to change your wardrobe once or twice, so shopping sales, eBay and thrift shops may be a good idea and it can be a lot of fun playing with styles and so on.

 

[Ezio]

It's so difficult to predict how your body will look/react as you drop. All I really want is the belly fat and some of the thigh fat gone, but who knows if my shoulders and arms and lower legs and chest and back will go all wonky.

 

[ran23]

I lost 55 pounds over a 7 week period, just because, I was 5-8 and 220+ and on cholesterol med's that I wanted off. It surprised me shoe size changed a year later. Dark bags under my eyes suddenly appeared. I didn't have any sense of style before, so this was a great time to start. About a year after that, I dropped down to 5-7 and switched out a few odd jackets for 38-S. Still want to hem up a few trousers. I didn't think this thru. Just wanted to.

 

[pony_trekker]

Late to the party but similar story. Went from 250 lbs size 50 to 185lbs size 42 over the course of about 18 months.

Because I wear a suit every day, I bought some interim suits which were quickly moved into the donate pile. Simply put, getting stuff altered is a waste of time. They never looked right. My future advice would be to buy a single suit in an interim size and wear it every day until you get to your goal weight.