Weight Loss Plateau-Stuck
I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 10-11 years old after having a period for six months straight. I'm 27 now. Doctors were never any help, they told me to stop eating junk (which I wasn't) and threw me on birth control when I was 15 to "bandaid" the problems like so many of us deal with. My family sort of pretended it wasn't a problem and told me I just needed to have more willpower when it came to food. They tossed me onto fad diets, like Jenny Craig when I was 12, again when I was 15, would "incentivize" my weight loss by offering to pay me for every pound I lost, and or buy me new clothes when I lost the weight, that was the extent of their "help".
This of course just made my eating disorder and disordered eating tendencies worse. I grew up with a mother who hated her body and made it well known, she was constantly dieting, starving herself, demonizing certain kinds of foods and prioritizing being as thin as possible, despite already being a very thin woman. She never outwardly told me I was fat or ugly but she never told me I was pretty or that I didn't need to starve myself to lose weight, or that I was beautiful the way I was, so I struggled deeply with self hatred and hating my body already at a very young age.
In my teen years I starved myself, then would binge eat, and continue to restrict, I lost like maybe 10 pounds and gained it all back, the cycle continued and I would actually gain more, despite eating nothing and walking miles a day with my friends. No matter what I did it seemed like the weight wouldn't budge or I'd gain more.
Birth control has helped me manage my cycle the cystic acne that I deal with for the last ten years and I have no real complaints about being on it.
Four years ago, after so many years of hating myself, my body, feeling hopeless and getting no help from anyone, doctors or otherwise, I did a deep dive into research on how to take care of my body and get some control over it. I changed how I ate, how I looked at food, I started counting calories but not obsessively, and I focused on the 80-20 method, 80% clean eating and 20% enjoying my life and still allowing myself to have treats and fun meals on occasion without guilt.
I managed to lose 35 pounds completely naturally with really only changing my diet. I have depression and severe fibromyalgia so I struggle with chronic fatigue, pain and a host of other symptoms on top of that, which make exercise very difficult, so I really focused on the diet piece, and it worked.
However the last 10 month or so, I've been stuck around 225-230 pounds, my current goal is to get to 200, hopefully within this year, but I want to do it as sustainably as possible without restriction or triggering my past eating disordered habits so I know it might take longer.
For the last three years I was eating around 1450-1550 calories per day which I track with the Lose It app, and that was where I lost the weight but then seemed to plateau this past year. Recently I upped my calories to 1750-1850 to do a "metabolic reset" sort of after doing a lot of research and tried that for about three weeks. It felt really nice to not feel so restricted calorie wise and food wise, but I know I can't stay at those calories if I want to lose more weight.
I'm unsure if I should drop down again in calories to kickstart my weight loss again or if there is something else I should do, short of adding in more exercise which can be very difficult and at times impossible for me to do. I am trying to add in some walking and gentle movement on the days I'm physically able but I can't do it consistently.
I'm very alone with this, always have been. So any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated. I am personally not interested in going on a GLP-1 or any medical weight loss procedures, though I absolutely support those who choose to go that route!
Any advice\pointers would be greatly appreciated, it's so hard. Thanks!