I'm thinking that I am pretty much near the end of my weight loss journey. Back in March I was diagnosed with high blood sugar - just into the diabetes range at 7%, and I weighed 17 stone 9 pounds. My doctor said he could put me on Metformin, or I could try and reverse it with diet and exercise. I opted for the latter - using Myfitnesspal to monitor calories, and I did Couch to 5k, then Parkruns, and I'm working up to a 10k (just ran 9km this week, on a similar program to C25K).
After my gym workout today I tipped the scales at 13st 5lbs (true weight will be higher - you should have seen the state of my T-shirt after running half an hour on the treadmill!!). But in the region of 13st 7, so I've lost just over 4 stone - and at a pretty constant rate.
Now my BMI is still in the "overweight" range at a shade under 26, and I need to lose another 3-4 lbs to get into the "normal" range. (I'm approx 6 feet tall)
The change in fitness is phenomenal. When you think I couldn't do up my shoelaces sitting down without getting out of breath, and I can now do them standing on one leg, for instance! I used not to be able to keep up walking with my wife and children - if I stopped to take a photo I was continually breathlessly trying to catch them up. Now catching them up is effortless, and they can't keep up with me!
I am wondering if I actually need to lose any more weight - my personal fitness instructor says I don't need to lose more. He has a gadget that measures body fat percentage by bio-impedance monitoring (I've no idea how accurate it is), which says my body fat is at 19.1% which is in the normal range, and so is the visceral fat measure (11 -- with 1-12 being the healthy range). On my last trip to the GP he said I could possibly lose another 5Kg - but I think I've lost a couple since then, so I must be near the end of the journey.
So it seems to me the only reason to lose yet more weight would be if it makes me run faster! (I'm pretty slow). But then I saw someone else posting on a running forum who was previously anorexic, who was frustrated that they couldn't run as fast as they did when they were anorexic and with a BMI of 17 or less. At BMI of 20 they are now much slower ( but clearly 20 is a healthy BMI!)
I really don't want to get into the mindset of saying I must lose weight just to run faster - it's the running itself that brings you joy, not really the numbers, though they are fun to look at and everyone wants to get a PB!
So I have to think about how to level it off, and go on a maintenance regime. It's not exactly as if I'm starving myself at the moment, but my level of physical activity is high - I want to keep running three times a week, and I also cycle to work, and visit the gym, so most days there is a hefty calorie deficit. I don't really want to give the exercise up, so I guess I'll need to start eating more calories - but not the rubbish I used to eat before (lots of choc bars, flapjacks etc between meals).
Has anyone got any experience of transitioning to a maintenance regime?