At just 5 feet tall, she lost 18 kg through boxing, trail running and a Mediterranean-style diet. But the most interesting part of her story might be how many times she had to lose the same few kilograms.
Losing weight when you’re petite comes with a particular frustration. You’re smaller, so you generally need fewer calories than someone considerably taller. And when you’re trying to create a calorie deficit, there isn’t always much room for error.
An extra snack here, a generous splash of olive oil there, and suddenly that carefully calculated deficit has disappeared.
For one 5’0″ woman, losing 18 kg took three years. Not because she spent three years following a perfect diet, but because life kept happening.
There were periods of consistent exercise, months of maintaining her weight, and several occasions when she regained kilograms she’d already lost.
Her experience, originally shared on Reddit, is a rather more realistic account of weight loss than the before-and-after photographs might suggest.
The numbers
| Height | 5’0″ (152 cm) |
| Starting weight | 140 lb (63.5 kg) |
| Final reported weight | 100 lb (45.4 kg) |
| Total lost | 40 lb (18.1 kg) |
| Time taken | 3 years |
| Eating approach | Vegetarian, Mediterranean-style diet |
| Exercise | Boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, trail running, skipping, yoga and HIIT |
| Weight-loss method | CICO (calories in, calories out) |
She lost most of the weight in nine months
When you hear that someone took three years to lose 18 kg, you might assume the weight came off slowly and steadily.
That’s not quite what happened.
She actually lost the first 30 lb (13.6 kg) in approximately nine months, bringing her weight down to around 110 lb (49.9 kg).
Then she spent a considerable amount of time fluctuating between 105 and 115 lb (47.6–52.2 kg).
She was refreshingly candid about how those three years actually went.
“It was definitely a very lazy cut haha.”
She admitted that she spent long periods eating at maintenance and occasionally abandoning her routine altogether.
In fact, she lost and regained those same few kilograms two or three times.
And that’s what makes her story interesting. The before-and-after photographs show the result, but they don’t show the months when very little appeared to be happening.
Why losing weight at 5 feet tall was difficult
As she became lighter, she estimated that her total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) had fallen to approximately 1,400–1,500 calories.
TDEE is the amount of energy your body uses throughout the day, including movement and exercise.
With an estimated maintenance requirement that low, she found it difficult to consistently maintain a small calorie deficit.
She explained that trying to accurately track a 200-calorie deficit every single day was simply too demanding.
“Like, one little snack or extra oil in cooking can ruin that small of a margin!”
It’s a frustration many shorter women will recognise. When your estimated calorie deficit is relatively small, there’s less room for inaccuracies in tracking.
Her solution was to combine calorie tracking with regular exercise.
Rather than relying entirely on precise food measurements, she used physical activity to increase her energy expenditure and give herself a little more flexibility.
She loosely estimated her exercise calories using MyFitnessPal, but didn’t treat those estimates as exact.
Of course, her TDEE figures were estimates, and petite women don’t all have the same calorie requirements. Age, body composition, activity and other factors make a considerable difference.
What did she actually eat?
Her eating habits were predominantly vegetarian and Mediterranean-inspired.
She described eating plenty of beans, leafy greens, roasted vegetables, hummus, olives, pita bread, tofu, feta, kefir and other Mediterranean foods.
Not exactly a diet of plain chicken breast and steamed broccoli.
She reported generally eating between 1,200 and 1,400 calories a day during periods of weight loss, occasionally eating less when she was inactive.
She also experimented with reducing bread and wheat pasta while eating more lentils and protein.
There was no particular magic to the Mediterranean diet. What mattered was that she had found foods she enjoyed eating while managing her overall energy intake.
Her reported calorie intake is worth treating as a description of her experience, not a target for other women. Particularly when exercising frequently, eating enough to support recovery and adequate nutrition is important.
Boxing became a big part of her life
Before COVID, she attended the gym five or six times a week, training in boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ).
When gyms closed during the pandemic, she moved much of her training into her garage.
Her boxing workouts, usually three or four times a week, included:
- Skipping
- Shadowboxing
- Push-ups, squats and planks
- Punching a heavy bag
She also tried to fit in short trail runs three or four times a week, yoga in the evenings and HIIT videos once or twice a week.
She wanted to introduce more weight training, too, but complained about the extraordinary price of equipment during the pandemic.
What stands out is that she wasn’t simply exercising to lose weight.
She had developed an interest in boxing and wanted to improve at it. Exercise became part of her routine, something she enjoyed and something she considered important for her mental health.
That’s a rather different motivation from forcing yourself through a workout purely to burn off dinner.
The difference weight loss made to her measurements
One of the things other petite women noticed was how much her appearance had changed.
At 5’0″, she felt that even relatively small changes in weight made a visible difference.
She reported a waist measurement of 23 inches (58.4 cm) and hips of 33 inches (83.8 cm) after losing weight.
Interestingly, she noticed that fat seemed to come off her upper body before her lower body.
She felt that her legs and hips only became noticeably leaner when she was below approximately 105 lb and doing activities such as running and skipping.
That’s her personal observation, rather than evidence that particular exercises can target fat loss in specific areas.
When another woman of the same height, weighing 143 lb, commented on her transformation, she said she’d never imagined she could look the way she did.
For her, the physical changes were particularly noticeable because of her shorter frame.
What happened when her weight stopped changing?
Like many people losing weight, she experienced periods when the scale seemed reluctant to move.
She tried several approaches.
Sometimes she increased the intensity or duration of her existing workouts. Other times she added different activities, including daily walks lasting between 30 minutes and an hour.
She also experimented with eating at maintenance, or slightly above it, for a few days every couple of weeks before returning to a deficit.
She believed that introducing variety helped her overcome plateaus.
However, there’s no evidence that changing routines literally tricks the metabolism into losing weight. Differences in energy expenditure, food intake and normal fluctuations in body water can all affect the scale.
What’s interesting is that she kept experimenting rather than assuming one approach had to work forever.
She also said she hadn’t tried intermittent fasting. Calorie tracking and exercise were her preferred methods.
She regained weight. More than once.
This might be the most useful part of the entire story.
She lost and regained weight within the 105–115 lb range several times during those three years.
As she explained:
“I feel you on that – I lost & regained between 105-115 like two or three different times in this process.”
There were periods when she exercised less, travelled, struggled with her mental health or simply didn’t maintain her usual eating habits.
Rather than deciding she’d failed and giving up completely, she tried to keep some of her routines going.
If exercise became difficult, she paid more attention to food tracking.
If she couldn’t prepare her usual meals, she concentrated on staying active, sleeping well and drinking enough water.
She knew that having all those habits working together was ideal, but it wasn’t realistic all the time.
Most importantly, she had learned that a temporary regain didn’t mean she was back where she’d started.
She now understood the habits that had helped her lose weight and felt confident she could return to them.
That didn’t make regaining weight enjoyable, but it did make it less catastrophic.
What about maintaining her new weight?
After three years, she had reached approximately 100 lb (45.4 kg).
But she hadn’t completely solved the maintenance question.
She was still trying to work out how much to eat to support her boxing, running and other activities without unintentionally regaining weight.
That’s an important part of her experience, particularly given how much exercise she was doing.
Losing weight isn’t the only consideration. Eating enough to support training, recovery and general health matters too.
And although she had reached the number she wanted on the scale, she was still learning how to balance those things.
What I found most interesting about her story
It’s tempting to look at her photographs and focus entirely on the 18 kg difference.
But I think the three-year timeline tells us more.
She lost most of the weight relatively quickly. Then she spent years dealing with the same few kilograms, adjusting her routine and learning how to manage periods when things weren’t going particularly well.
She found a sport she enjoyed, developed eating habits that suited her and stopped treating every setback as a disaster.
Despite the frustrations, she remained optimistic about what she’d achieved.
“Good luck!! I didn’t think this was possible but it’s completely doable!”
Her experience also illustrates something worth remembering about petite weight loss: smaller bodies often have lower energy requirements, but that doesn’t mean every petite woman needs to eat very little or exercise constantly.
There isn’t one calorie target, exercise routine or ideal weight that applies to everyone.
And perhaps the most useful lesson from her experience is that progress doesn’t always look particularly impressive while you’re in the middle of it.
Sometimes it looks like losing the same five kilograms for the third time.
This article is based on a publicly shared weight-loss account and discussion by Reddit user u/IntelligentAnt4804 in r/PetiteFitness. The figures, experiences and routines are self-reported. The Spirit Diary did not interview the contributor.
Original source: Read the Reddit discussion
Further reading
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.