What was some mistakes you made when first dieting?

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  • conniehealthygirl
    conniehealthygirl Posts: 156 Member
    This gets all so discouraging. I am eating healthy. Taking my supplements. Going to my fitness class. Now I am logging every bite I eat. Is this sustainable?? Will I loose the extra weight. I am so tired of yo yo
  • carmkizzle
    carmkizzle Posts: 211 Member
    1.Referring to it as a "diet", which (in our society) denotes a temporary way of eating in order to lose weight, and then (after the weight loss has been achieved) going back to eating the same way. This mindset taught me absolutely nothing and I was always impatient and felt deprived and felt sorry for myself...because I wanted to eat all the ice cream and m&m's and skittles :| .

    2.Looking for a quick fix
  • chelseascounter
    chelseascounter Posts: 1,283 Member
    Eating brown rice instead of my beloved white rice.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,622 Member
    Not going to maintenance calories (or at least up significantly closer to them) for a couple of weeks after have my gallbladder laparoscopically removed, but instead sticking with a fairly substantial deficit (no super-evil consequences, but just took even longer than it usually takes an older person like me to get her energy back post-surgery).

    Not re-starting weight training earlier in the weight loss process (hadn't done it in a few years). Progressing the weight training too aggressively, once I did re-start, while still in substantial deficit.

    Staying at a little too high a deficit for a little too long (i.e., kept losing around 2 lbs/week for a bit longer than I should've before slowing the loss rate), and got slightly fatigued. (I then did go to 1.5/week, 1, and finally gradually from 0.5 to darn near nil, over time after that as my weight declined and I got closer to goal, and bounced back.

    I could've pushed a little harder to get even more protein when I had the more substantial deficit. (I did OK for an ovo-lacto vegetarian, even initially, but I learned more as I went along and figured out how to get even more in on low calories.)
  • allenpriest
    allenpriest Posts: 1,102 Member
    Thinking of the process as a "diet" which to me sounds like "temporary"
  • mlinci
    mlinci Posts: 402 Member
    allenpriest wrote: »
    Thinking of the process as a "diet" which to me sounds like "temporary"

    Exactly! For me it was something similar - not giving any thought to maintenance. That's why this time it will be different! I have learned a lot about how many calories my body needs as a minimum (can't go below about 1,400 as I feel awful), how many calories my body needs to lose close to 1 lb. a week (about 1,550) and how many calories I need to maintain (just over 2,000 and a bit more on weekends when I move more). That gives me a good basis for maintenance in the future.

    Oh and one more - thinking that anything under 1kg lost per week is some kind of failure and makes it not worth trying - simple maths now tells me that for a woman of my size, aiming for more than 1 lb. per week is unrealistic.
  • improvedchristine
    improvedchristine Posts: 39 Member
    rnelson88 wrote: »
    Doing too much cardio and burning off a lot of my muscle mass. Made it impossible to lose any fat!

    how does cardio not burn fat? And how much is too much cardio?

  • BruinsGal_91
    BruinsGal_91 Posts: 1,400 Member
    Trying to stick to 1,200 calories a day and giving up some of my favourite foods. I thought because I'm only 5' 2" that was the only way I could lose weight.

    Now I'm eating between 1,400 and 1,600 and I've lost 15lbs since January. And pizza, ribs and beer are very much still on the menu.
  • jessicarobinson00
    jessicarobinson00 Posts: 414 Member
    The biggest mistake: trying to stay at 1200 calories. It's not sustainable-not for me at least! Now I shoot for 1200, but end up around 1400-1600 and my cheat days= maintenance calories. It took the pressure off of "failing" and just seem to make everything click for me...AND A FOOD SCALE: it's a huge eye opener. I found out that I was actually over-estimating calorie counts on all my proteins and under-estimating all my fats (butter/oil/peanut butter).
  • ladyreva78
    ladyreva78 Posts: 4,080 Member
    My biggest mistake? Thinking there's a miracle pill. It worked so well that I gained even more weight than I had lost and screwed over my liver in the process. :neutral:

    Working on getting it right this time around. :smile:
  • EliseTK1
    EliseTK1 Posts: 483 Member
    vingogly wrote: »
    Not planning an orderly transition to maintenance, and following it. Losing weight's relatively easy (at least for me), making permanent lifestyle changes isn't.

    This. Maintenance is much more difficult for me than weight loss. This time I'm going to have to be mindful instead of just going back to eating whatever, whenever.

    I also never focused on strength training and protein intake before, so I tended to lose muscle.
  • jame0529
    jame0529 Posts: 30 Member
    Shana67 wrote: »
    DEFINITELY not using a food scale, and not correctly estimating how much wine I was drink. I was drinking 4000!!! calories per week in wine. Egads! Now I have one small 3z vodka drink every other day and gosh, the weight is coming off so much more quickly :)

    Best thing I bought was a wine glass that has calorie measurements right on it from Etsy. It's not difficult to drink 4000 calories in wine!
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