your mistakes made

derbygraham

Hi

I wondered if I may ask you to share your experiences of mistakes you have made in your journey towards fitness and losing weight please ?

many thanks

Graham

mimimunchery

Not weighing myself. I was so scared of the number on the scale that I just completely buried my head in the sand. Was already heavy and didn’t realize I had gained at least 10 or 15 more pounds.

candylilacs

Not logging food.

shaf238

Thinking that eating clean would balance out the junk food I was having in addition to that (I was stupid af)

slimgirljo15

My mistake was trying to follow diets that were full of foods I didn't like, I never lasted long because I was miserable. I found success when I based my intake on foods I enjoyed and logged them.

MichelleSilverleaf

Not weighing my food. I was busy spinning my wheels until I did.

tinkerbellang83

Not using a food scale - portion control was waaaay off.

Not understanding water weight fluctuations and rage quitting regularly in my 20's because I didn't educate myself.

zeejane4

I'm a long ways into this process and really I can't think of anything I'd consider a mistake, except I stopped weighing myself for a while last year because I became overly confident in my ability to do maintenance. Ended up with some weight creep that I finally got taken care of recently. So making sure I'm honest with myself with my weigh-ins was a lesson I had to learn, even years into maintenance.

JohnnytotheB

My mistakes are not logging food and being way to restrictive on what I eat.

jan110144

Not eating enough (being in too large a deficit) and not realizing how important sleep is. Expecting "maintenance" to be easier than the active weight loss phase

sardelsa

Not lifting weights while losing to preserve muscle, then continuing to lose while lifting and go too low. However at the same time it is the best mistake I ever made since it pushed me to gain and I learned so much, which I likely wouldn't have otherwise.

rainbow198

For me it was not taking proper before pics.

The photos I use in my before/during/after comparison pics I was already close to 30 pounds and 2 sizes down.

I don't have any true pics at my heaviest. When I had to take pics I would find ways to hide myself. Stand in the back. Strategically put my bag in my lap. Cover my belly with my arms. etc.

I wish I had proper before pics to really see how far I have come in my transformation.

emilysusana

My mistake was getting complacent during maintenance. It turns out for me, that when I don’t log and track, the old habits that made me overweight in the first place creep back in and soon enough, I’ve gained back enough to give up...

I’ve also struggled to face the fact that alcohol, for me, is not conducive to good weight management.

kbmnurse1

Mistake: I continue to indulge in alcohol 1-2 x week.

OooohToast

Not weighng food - am still shocked at just how bad I was with portions....

NovusDies

Which time?

For this time:

Looking back at my early log entries I made many classic mistake. There were things I didn't weigh. Things for which I chose the wrong DB entry. Things I underestimated. Things I grossly overestimated. I am glad I didn't actually worry about my mistakes but just kept logging and learning.

I think education is key and it was my ignorance about certain things that held me back on every other previous attempt.

etherealanwar

My main issue was at first I was not weighing my food. My second would be eating out too often so that I could not properly account for my calories in. I have since improved on that and limit it to once or twice a week. Would be nice if it was 0-1 times a week instead but I love eating out too much!

Terytha

Yeah, the food scale made 100% difference. Portions are just impossible to guess if you haven't already been weighing food for a while.

Also not making obvious substitutions. Yeah, I CAN eat regular mayo, but the reduced fat stuff is less than half calories and tastes the same.

seltzermint555

mimimunchery wrote: »

Not weighing myself. I was so scared of the number on the scale that I just completely buried my head in the sand. Was already heavy and didn’t realize I had gained at least 10 or 15 more pounds.

This is by far my biggest one from the past. Never again. I'd rather know where I stand, always, and find the scale to be a great tool and no longer "scary" even when I have gained weight.

SoaringOccamy

I should have dropped sugar out of my diet years ago. Sugar binges have killed every one of my weight loss attempts over at least the last several years.

I know that this isn't true for everyone, but for me it is absolutely fatal to my diets because once there is a major holiday or something and I overeat on sugary treats, I can't get a grip on my eating again due to monster cravings for not just sugar, but every food. Then I gain all of the weight back.

I should have bitten the bullet last time, or the time before. Any time since I realised this trigger might be a thing. This time I am trying to stay sugar free for good.

Again, I know not all people have this issue, but for a long time I didn't even recognise it as sugar cravings because I would just generally madly crave anything I was hungry for. It made me binge all the time and I had a list of what I thought were binge trigger foods that was as long as my arm. I can now eat most of my previous "trigger" foods without a problem. I bring it up way too often on these forums because I did go so long without recognising it for what it was.

thanos5

i tried losing too much weight way too fast. through many kind people on these boards, i learned about eating back exercise calories.

echmain3

Good idea for a thread.

puffbrat

Going to extremes to lose weight faster. Pushing myself to workout hard every day from being sedentary, cutting out foods I love, or sacrificing foods that keep me full in order to save calories for foods I love but aren't filling. All of those caused me to rage quit. I have had to learn to live with moderation, and it has been a hard lesson to learn.

AnnPT77

Kept eating at a deficit after laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. Should've gone to (or near) maintenance calories for a few weeks.

Separate issue: Didn't initially realize MFP calorie goals could be quite far off for a very few people, and that I was one, so underate by accident and lost weight too fast at first, to my detriment.

vggb

"I should have bitten the bullet last time, or the time before. Any time since I realized this trigger might be a thing. This time I am trying to stay sugar free for good."

This is true for me too. I also recently had to quit salt (Dr. ordered) and I dropped some pounds right away, probably water weight but still a good incentive to work at it.

lalalacroix

This has been a long journey for me, mainly due to the mistakes:

Not logging honestly

Stopped logging and regained (5x)

Keto and other diets that weren't for me

Not taking exercise more seriously

Too much wine

Dieting too aggressively


As someone else said upthread, the mistakes have taught me what I needed to get where I am today which is my current success and gratitude.

Commander_Keen

Eating that 1st cookie. - No 1 cookie can derail you from your diet.. But that 1 cookie turns to 2, then 3, then 4.
I wish that the 1st cook was Cookie next door (J/K)

ginjennie

So many but that is part of my journey. Some key ones are;

Thinking I could have that one low call cookie then wind up eating the whole pack. I am not good in moderation.

The quick fix and fast weight loss. Now focused on lifelong changes and not thinking of the term diet.

Not being positive and forgetting to celebrate each milestone victory.

Eating too much processed food.

Listening to negative people

endermako

in the beginning (several years ago) i was following the fads and getting frustrated (keto, water fasting, juicing) they were just making me so sick. then i started to just count calories and weightlift and it's all good now

texasredreb

Many, many mistakes in the past--especially because I didn't understand eating at maintenance. I could lose weight like crazy but I couldn't stop losing weight until I started eating a lot; then I quickly regained way past what I wanted and couldn't stop. Hopefully, with this website, I'll be able to lose what I need to lose and stop when I'm finished and not regain. It's scary to me!!

Right now, I think I'm losing too fast, but I'm loving the results so I'm disinclined to stop. Since I had high A1C's, my doctor is supportive of the relatively rapid weight loss (for now). I'm in it for the long haul.

Yivs_87

Different times at losing weight, different lessons:
1. Losing the weight by fad diets only, no exercise - scale was at the numbers I wanted, but I didn't like the way my body looked;
2. Not eating enough calories and not really understanding how MFP works, what TDEE is, what NEAT is, what Net calories are;
3. Giving up at the first more stubborn and longer plateau and not pushing forward;