What does a "lifestyle change" mean to you?
GirlonBliss
Posts: 38 Member
Hi, All! Have you ever said "I don't wanna diet. I want a lifestyle change" ? What does that even mean, to you?
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It means I am not going to do since ridiculous quick fix nonsense that provides only temporary results or is dangerous, but instead make changes I can keep with for the long run.14
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I've never said it, but to me it means eating this way for the rest of my life.9
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It means I get better nutrition than I used to and exercising regularly rather than sitting on my *kitten* doing nothing and drinking beer and smoking 3 packs per day. Lots of good, nutritious foods and regular exercise.9
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Trying to live a balanced healthy life style, focusing on the long term7
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Finding something sustainable that I could do, and am happy doing, indefinitely.6
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I'm expecting to continue yo-yoing for the rest of my life, except that instead of going up and down 25 or 30lbs, I'll be going up and down 5 or 6 lbs. Meaning that I will go back to eating at a small deficit whenever I need to, and will try to balance my CI with CO as closely as possible the rest of the time. So yeah, this is my forever lifestyle.11
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A BS platitude3
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sunnybeaches105 wrote: »A BS platitude
It's not my favourite expression (I used to think, "Oh really? You're planning on eating at a deficit for the rest of your life? Good luck with that"), but once I started slowing the weight loss process way down (losing 1 or 2 lbs a month), it got a lot less silly.
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goldthistime wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »A BS platitude It's not my favourite expression (I used to think, "Oh really? You're planning on eating at a deficit for the rest of your life? Good luck with that"), but once I started slowing the weight loss process way down (losing 1 or 2 lbs a month), it got a lot less silly.
Talk to me in 5 years. If you're still on track then yes you changed your lifestyle. My point is that it's work. I'm sticking with BS platitude the vast majority of the time.1 -
fewer Funyuns3
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I hate the way it sounds but unfortunately it's the truth. It means this is not a job to be done so I can get back to my normal life, I will live this way (watching and counting and keeping control) for the rest of my life...I hope.3
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"I don't wanna diet. I want a lifestyle change"
From what i've seen, this is commonly said by people who don't want to go to the gym 3 times, eat a salad for lunch for one week and then give up. The same people also usually then try to "overhaul" their life and try and do an "instagram" lifestyle, gym, eating clean etc, but with the mentality of it being a forever lifestyle. Then in a week, they give up.
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sunnybeaches105 wrote: »goldthistime wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »A BS platitude It's not my favourite expression (I used to think, "Oh really? You're planning on eating at a deficit for the rest of your life? Good luck with that"), but once I started slowing the weight loss process way down (losing 1 or 2 lbs a month), it got a lot less silly.
Talk to me in 5 years. If you're still on track then yes you changed your lifestyle. My point is that it's work. I'm sticking with BS platitude the vast majority of the time.
I agree with this in many ways...most people talk a good talk about "lifestyle change" and it's certainly trendy vocabulary at the moment...unfortunately many do not know how to actually implement such a change and they still ultimately go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before.
I'm 4 years in almost and have been maintaining for over three years...the way I lead my life now is about 180* from the way I lived my life four years ago. I don't log or otherwise keep a diary...I just do the things that I see healthy, lean, and fit people do and the rest just seems to take care of itself.7 -
A whole different way of looking at food and exercise, which replaces the way that I thought/felt about it before. A complete 180, for me.3
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At about the same time I stopped using porn and food as sources of self-gratification. I suppose that's a lifestyle change.2
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"Lifestyle change" is one of my pet peeve phrases when used in reference to weight loss. Eating differently is just a change of habit.
I think lifestyle is much more comprehensive than that. Having a baby would do it. Getting married (or divorced) or moving away or winning the lottery or losing your job might do it, too. Big life alterations that happen to you.0 -
I don't use the phrase but I think I get the mindset. For example, I fully expect to eat like this all my life (if I can pull it off) - not at this level of deficit but at this level of calories. Because I am eating at the sedentary TDEE of my goal weight, so either that's all I get, or I need to move more to create room for more. I can never go back to eating as I did or moving as I did AND maintain the weight I want to be. That is how I understand the term.5
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If it requires a long talk with family and friends and a complete change of wardrobe, it's a lifestyle change. If in just eating a few different things in smaller portions, it's a change of habits.3
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Constant improvement1
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GirlonBliss wrote: »Hi, All! Have you ever said "I don't wanna diet. I want a lifestyle change" ? What does that even mean, to you?
No, I've never said that.
To me, a "lifestyle change" means I'm planning to do something different for the rest of my life or that may significantly influence the rest of my life.
"Dieting" and "lifestyle change" are two completely different things.
I'm definitely NOT planning to diet for the rest of my life. I'm not even going to diet for the rest of the week. I'll diet today and tomorrow, but that will be it for the week.
Dieting is just a temporary adjustment that takes place once in a while to keep things in check.
And when I do cut back a bit (like I did last year to lose some weight), my diet (the food I consume) doesn't change. I still eat basically the same stuff ... just less of it.
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Creating permanent new habits with regards to eating and exercising.3
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lthames0810 wrote: »"Lifestyle change" is one of my pet peeve phrases when used in reference to weight loss. Eating differently is just a change of habit.
I think lifestyle is much more comprehensive than that. Having a baby would do it. Getting married (or divorced) or moving away or winning the lottery or losing your job might do it, too. Big life alterations that happen to you.
Right ...
I made a "lifestyle change" when I quit my job, gave up my apartment, tossed and sold half my stuff, packed up the rest, moved 2 provinces over, put it all into storage, then cycled around Australia for the next 3 months, then returned to where my stuff was stored and started university ... and 4 years later got my second Bachelor's degree.
That was a collection of lifestyle changes which influenced and shaped what would happen next.
And what happened next was that I married a man who I had gotten to know in Australia (we'd met in France earlier), and I got rid of half my remaining stuff, and moved to Australia to live in a very rustic shack out in the middle of nowhere after the bushfires had destroyed quite a large part of Victoria.
That was a bit of a lifestyle change.
But dieting for a few months to bring my weight back to normal again ... that's just eating a bit less.
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Used to be an asthmatic, obese couch potato prone to anxiety attacks
I now haven't had an asthma or panic attack in over 2 years, I'm within my BMI range at a lean Body fat%, generally active and a gym and weights addict
Total change in lifestyle, and I enjoy it and it feels natural not forced8 -
lthames0810 wrote: »"Lifestyle change" is one of my pet peeve phrases when used in reference to weight loss. Eating differently is just a change of habit.
I think lifestyle is much more comprehensive than that. Having a baby would do it. Getting married (or divorced) or moving away or winning the lottery or losing your job might do it, too. Big life alterations that happen to you.
I don't care for the term myself, but I think for many, choosing activity and appropriate food choices can represent a major lifestyle change. If someone were to go from mostly sitting and eating to much more activity and a focus on healthy food consumption, that could be a comprehensive change.5 -
It means the changes I'm making are forever. Not a diet. Not temporary changes... FOREVER!1
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SugarySweetheart wrote: »It means the changes I'm making are forever. Not a diet. Not temporary changes... FOREVER!
awesome! do you feel you've been making those changes?0 -
It means, to me, a change I've made which I've consistently sustained for a minimum of 5 years. If it's been less than five years, I wouldn't bother labeling it.
That's interesting! Why 5 years? If I think about it I don't think I've been in the same place (location wise) ever 5 years so I'll have to think on that more.0 -
Shadowmf023 wrote: »Creating permanent new habits with regards to eating and exercising.
cool, what habits are you happy to have permanently?0 -
goldthistime wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »A BS platitude It's not my favourite expression (I used to think, "Oh really? You're planning on eating at a deficit for the rest of your life? Good luck with that"), but once I started slowing the weight loss process way down (losing 1 or 2 lbs a month), it got a lot less silly.
So after nearly 10 years of keeping 100 pounds off I guess I can say I made a lifestyle change
I said that all along because I hate the word diet. I never dieted, I changed how I lived and how I looked at food. Once that weight loss slows down things get much more real. I always say losing weight was the easy part, keeping the weight off is where the real work begins 4 -
Well, I don't like calling it a lifestyle change. Change is too extreme of a word to be sustainable for me. I call it lifestyle modification. Now what does this mean to me? Making small modifications to my diet and activity that would allow me to stay within calories without having to make a paradigm shift in the way I'm eating. Basically the way I do it is that I imagine myself already maintaining a healthy weight, then ask myself how would I act?
Examples:
- I don't see myself as someone who would train for 2-3 hours a day so I don't. I keep my workouts manageable 20-60 minutes. I don't enjoy lifting weights, so I don't. I discovered that I enjoy running, and I can see myself doing that long term, so I run a few times a week when I'm able.
- I don't see myself removing any food from my diet, so I eat it all. I can see myself being able to moderate higher calorie foods and balance them out against the rest of my calories keeping to a weekly budget, so that's what I do.
- I found skipping meals, or even having low calorie overall days, to be an easy quick fix for a higher planned dinner, so I do that sometimes.
- I found that planned small weight gains followed by quick weight losses are fine, and I plan to keep doing that into maintenance whenever the situation calls for it, like during the holidays.
Basically, I try a bunch of stuff, and when I come across something that feels easy and natural to me I add it to my dieting arsenal.5
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