Ditching the diet mentalilty??

sammy_c_read

Hey everyone. How did y'all ditch the diet mentalilty of being on or off track or what not and just eat healthy?? I feel like I give up because I'm thinking off it as a weight loss instead of becoming healthy but it's so hard to change your mindset

kpeterson539

I think I started to change "mentally" was when I actually started to see the weigh coming off while still eating what I generally did, just less of of it while also becoming more aware of what a portion actually is.

vingogly

It's difficult to say but sometime in the past year I reached a point where I fully internalized the notion that this was a lifelong change rather than a temporary "diet". I think what helped me reach that point are these things:

1. I spent a year in maintenance and convinced myself that permanent lifestyle changes were necessary, and actually worked in that I mostly managed to keep the weight stable during that year.
2. The fact that my first weight loss was back in the mid 1960s and I've been back and forth ever since; I'm 69 years old now, and I've run out of time to screw around.
3. Considering my attitudes toward food, eating, and weight through the lens of cognitive psychology. I firmly believe now that weight loss is 30% diet management, and 70% in my head. I know at my age that I can lose the weight; keeping it off forever is a different matter. EDIT: I've found I need to monitor my self-talk frequently as it relates to weight, weight loss, and food and counter the negative "scripts" I've built up over the decades related to these things.
4. I think some of us are wired differently because we think of or value food in different ways than "normals": a fellow fat guy back in the late 1960s asked me if I'd ever watched a thin friend of ours eat cookies. Us two fat guys would polish off a whole package while Mr. Jack Spratt nibbled slowly on one cookie.

Almost all the threads here focus on the mechanics of weight loss: what to eat, how to log food, how to exercise, how much to exercise. That's all well and good, but how's it going to help me make decisions a year after I "finish my diet", and deal with the decision to order a 800 calorie dessert with friends at a restaurant? Most cases of obesity are behavioral disorders, not due to a genetic abnormality or "glandular condition".

kommodevaran

For me it was when I switched to MFP and started to read and participate in the discussions here. The idea that I could lose weight and eat anything, just watch portions, actually made me more willing to make an effort to eat healthily, and losing the all-or-nothing/black-and-white is the reason I'm maintaining my weight at 18 months.

DanaDark

I've mentioned it in several posts I've made here and there, but I adopted an eating pattern that works for me.

2 days of the week, I eat about 300-400 calories (not consecutive days), and the other 5 days, I don't feel as crazy about "omg my diet" and feel fine even grabbing dinner at Cheesecake Factory.

Another addition is walking as exercise. Its not the best exercise, but going from 3k-4k steps a day to 10k-25k a day has helped burn extra calories and allows me to just relax. A good walk at sunset with headphones and nice music is so nice and a stress reliever.

The two combined have dramatically changed my weight and outlook.

BUT... that's for me. Everyone is different on what works for them!

Edit To add below:

To add to the walking, I got a FitBit... had one for a while but it wasn't working for me really. What worked to get me moving more was using it with friends. Being able to ask "So how many steps did you make today?" and do weekday and weekend challenges and such... that made walking more so much easier.

MissusMoon

For me it's the fact I lost all the weight twice. Guess what that means? This is my THIRD TIME with this huge amount to lose. It's because I viewed each weight loss journey as a diet, and I didn't care enough/try enough/LEARN ENOUGH to maintain. Just slowly went right back to the old way.

I'm super against cheat days or cheat meals, and not everyone is like this, but for me, those are the things that really did me in the long run. If I am "cheating", it means that my caloric cuts are temporary. Cheats didn't impact me on my weight loss journey, but they sure has heck negated everything the mental state needed to live in a more healthy way. What I'm doing now is learning how to truly put all the things I love into my daily intake without going over. If I want to maintain, I'm going to want to be able to enjoy all the foods and drink I love. So every day is part of my future maintenance, because on maintenance level calories--cheat days WILL guarantee weight gain. Why get in that kind of habit again?

I have a friend who is a serious foodie. She is a size 2, tops, but she's always posting photos of these amazing meals and cocktails she's consuming several times per week. She used to be a chubby girl. Knowing her for 20 years, I already knew how she does it. She counts calories, is very strict with portions, and rides her bike everywhere. Once she got the extra weight off she figured out how to make it stick.

I'll add that I'm eating out quite a bit. Yesterday I had three glasses of wine. Tonight I'm having ribeye, albeit a tiny one (but faithfully weighed on my food scale). It is possible to live like this.