Looking for advice.

andreajean2014

Hello, everyone!

As my title says, I am searching for some advice. I feel like it is so typical to say this, but I really have tried time and time again to lose weight. I have struggled with my weight for years. About 4 months ago I was eating 1200 calories a day, exercising four times a week, and had lost 12 pounds. Then one day I got upset about something, ordered a pizza, and over the next few weeks gained all the weight back. I've put on even more weight since. It's so depressing. I am looking for your guys' advice. How do you stay motivated? What small changes to your life helped you the most? I am in college full time and work 32+ hours at a grocery store each week, so I'm decently busy, and am around temptation quite a bit. How do you stay motivated in these situations?

Thank you in advance for reading this. It means a lot to me.

Ninkyou

Moderation, not deprivation. Order the pizza, work it into your calorie goal. Just keep going. Log everyday, no matter what your calorie intake is.

itsflaccoi

Listen you obviously must not want this lifestyle as much as you want to eat a pizza or count on motivation if you want something as much as you want to breathe than you'll get it you just need to really want to be lean learn some discipline and learn to say no start off again slow "if you want something go get it, Work for it, with an 0 excuse limit" that is my motivation GL hope this help

Lounmoun

What has helped me the most is pre-logging my food. I log the whole day in the morning. No surprises at the end of the day, no deprivation.
I did not stop eating pizza or any other food- I just eat appropriate portion sizes for my goal now. I eat regular foods and that makes this a sustainable weight loss for me. No extreme restrictions or fad diets.
If I'm getting food from a restaurant I think about my choices in advance and look up nutritional information.

Choose a reasonable goal. If you have less than 20 lbs to lose then aiming for .5 lb a week is good.
You don't have to exercise like crazy or give up a bunch of stuff to lose weight. Just stick to your calorie goal.
Log everything you consume as accurately as you can. Get a food scale.
If you aren't going to give up pizza forever you need to learn how to fit it in your goals. I pair things like pizza with a salad so I eat less pizza.
If you tend to overeat when you are stressed, emotional or bored then you need to work on new tools for dealing with that stuff. Instead of eating talk to someone, listen to music, write in a journal, exercise, meditate, make art, play a game... whatever works for you.

CoffeeNCardio

When I started this, I just followed the most common piece of advise on the forum. Make Pizza day your Cardio day. It's repeated often in not so many words, but the basic point is, if you don't want to give up foods you like, you shouldn't have too. Just work them out. 300 calorie pizza? 300 calorie jog. 1000 calorie restaurant meal? 12 miles on the treadmill at 4 mph (that one is personal experience ha ha).

I am a grown-a** woman and I'll be darned if someone is gonna tell me what I can and cannot eat. But I would like to also be a thin grown-a** woman so I eat my pizza, or rather drink my heavily creamed and sugared coffee, and then I get off my butt and work it off. If I want more? I work out more.

This is really very simple math. If your MFP calorie goal is 1200 a day (please consider that this may be too low and you should try for a less aggressive goal that gets the same results without so much deprivation) and you want to eat 2000 a day, you just need to burn an extra 800. Can you get by on 1500? Great, 300 is MUCH easier to burn off.

If you have trouble stopping eating something once you've started, practice tricking yourself by setting one piece of pizza out, putting the rest away, EARNING that one piece with your little jog, THEN eating it. If your brain won't learn delayed gratification on it's own, force it to do so by engaging in habits that teach it rewards are better when delayed (participation ribbons are the devil). It really does work.

andreajean2014

CoffeeNCardio wrote: »

When I started this, I just followed the most common piece of advise on the forum. Make Pizza day your Cardio day. It's repeated often in not so many words, but the basic point is, if you don't want to give up foods you like, you shouldn't have too. Just work them out. 300 calorie pizza? 300 calorie jog. 1000 calorie restaurant meal? 12 miles on the treadmill at 4 mph (that one is personal experience ha ha).

I am a grown-a** woman and I'll be darned if someone is gonna tell me what I can and cannot eat. But I would like to also be a thin grown-a** woman so I eat my pizza, or rather drink my heavily creamed and sugared coffee, and then I get off my butt and work it off. If I want more? I work out more.

This is really very simple math. If your MFP calorie goal is 1200 a day (please consider that this may be too low and you should try for a less aggressive goal that gets the same results without so much deprivation) and you want to eat 2000 a day, you just need to burn an extra 800. Can you get by on 1500? Great, 300 is MUCH easier to burn off.

If you have trouble stopping eating something once you've started, practice tricking yourself by setting one piece of pizza out, putting the rest away, EARNING that one piece with your little jog, THEN eating it. If your brain won't learn delayed gratification on it's own, force it to do so by engaging in habits that teach it rewards are better when delayed (participation ribbons are the devil). It really does work.

Thank you so very much.

dawniemate

You've done it once. .do it again! You can still have pizza chocolate etc . Just fit it into your allowance. Remember it slow and steady wins the day. Good luck you got this

PinkPixiexox

Staying motivated really is down to you.

It's always nice to have support systems in place (MFP is a brilliant one!) but ultimately, your success will come from your own effort. The importance of reaching your goal will determine how much commitment you give your lifestyle change. I 'started' the process around 5 or 6 times and promptly gave up after a few days. I didn't want it badly enough.

Once I was serious about changing my life, I grabbed it with both hands and giving up simply was not an option.