Thoughts, Epiphanies, Insights, & Quotables
NovusDies
Posts: 8,940 Member
Whether original or something you came across that helped or inspired you this is where you share it if you think it might help others.
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What I am doing is possible and I what I am undoing is the impossible.
So this is the thought that came across my mind last night as I was out walking (re-phrased for posting). The humidity was kind of thick and I wasn't really enjoying the last little .25 mile stretch.
For years I felt doomed to be extremely obese. I tried and failed so many times. But it is possible and I am actually pulling it off.
That last .25 mile believe it or not would have been completely impossible for me to have pulled off 200 pounds ago because there was nowhere to sit and rest in intervals. Even standing for any length of time was painful. You can add that to the list of many things that were impossible but now they are not.
By losing weight I am undoing the impossible and unlocking my life.17 -
Nobody ever had the rainbow baby, till he had the rain.
~Jim Croce~5 -
It is what you learn after you know it all that counts
I am guilty of saying this often in the MFP forums. It goes well beyond weight loss but it basically means that you should never just assume you have all the answers. Always be open to growth. For weight loss I think it really means you should never stubbornly adhere to a plan. If it needs adapting or if it needs thrown out the window it is not a failure it just means you go a different route for a time. As Larger Losers we may experience this more because weight loss can have an impact on various hormone levels over time in a larger deficit. As hormone level are impacted there can be greater or lesser control over our appetites.3 -
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good (enough).
(It is better to be a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one - Confucius)
I was once very much all or nothing in my approach to weight loss and it always failed. If I deviated from what I thought I had to do I would call it a failure and promise to restart. I kept my promise but it was usually months if not years later.
We don't need to be perfect to lose weight. We just need to be good enough most of the time.7 -
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Paraphrased from the writings of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder by Correlli Barnett
For me, this is apt in many parts of my life beyond weight loss. Since I am not truly at "war", this really serves to remind me to manage my expectations and make sure they do last beyond first contact. The only thing I guarantee myself every day is that I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this and see what happens.
It segues quite nicely into another concept I've learned at work through the Scaled Agile Framework.
Inspect and Adapt
“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”
Whether you timebox your interval at one month, one week, three months; the important part is that you are continuously inspecting and adapting to the real world behavior of what you're trying to accomplish.
No plan (or expectation) survives contact with the enemy (or the reality of any given situation), true, but through adaptation, we can reform new ways to achieve our goals and earn success.
When you feel it's not working, inspect what you're doing and adapt to your unique situation.5 -
"Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth" Mike Tyson
One of my favorite quotes, similar to the one @dhiammarath shared. Plans will fail from time to time, regroup, replan, move forward.
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Having weight is hard, losing weight is hard, choose your hard.
I have seen this one float around MFP. Not sure who to credit it to. I think this one really helps when your 'normal' begins to improve and you start getting hooked on the progress. I don't know about other people but because I had been large for a long time I kind of molded my life around it the best way I could. It was when I traveled that I could not help but be reminded how bad off I was. Even sitting in a hotel chair smacked me in the face with my own fat. It is SO hard to be that big. Now that my normal has changed and things like sitting in a booth is possible it is much easier to pick the hard of losing weight. I hope I never forget it.9 -
If you want to be in the 20 percent you can't do what the 80 percent are doing.
I don't know what the actual percentages are for failed weight loss attempts but I have seen the 80/20 thing batted around and it is possibly true.
I have adapted this for weight loss but I often say if you want to be in the top 10 percent of anything you can't do what the 90 percent are doing. I have a few people that I mentor and I tell them this to remind them that goals don't often come without hard work and smart decisions.
With weight loss I think the first person to reference in the 80 percent is usually yourself. What made you fail in the past? How can you avoid making the same mistakes again?
The other things that I see that often make up what the 80 percent are doing:- Weight loss driven
- Go fast and get it done
- Eat to lose not eat to live
- Sacrifice happiness today for a happier tomorrow
- Intimidated by amount of weight to be lost
In contrast I think the 20 percent are doing this:- Goal is a better life and weight loss is just part of it
- Forming new habits for a lifetime not a brief period of weight loss
- Eat in a way that is sustainable
- Fight to be happy now because you deserve to be happy
- Believe in your ability to succeed
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You don't have to love what you do to lose weight but you can't hate it.
This is one of mine. At least I think it is. It is hard to know what are truly original thoughts.
Probably self-explanatory but I do not believe that being miserable is sustainable. There are many ways to achieve a calorie deficit and there are many ways to exercise so making smart choices for ourselves is critical. I also like to say we want to push ourselves not shove ourselves.4 -
I agree! Being miserable is not sustainable, but a certain amount of discomfort is growth.
People can mistake discomfort at change/growth as miserable and fail back to old habits. It's important to try to become self-aware and inspect the things you (collective) feel when you feel them.
Am I miserable? Or am I struggling because I am not used to change?
Is it hard because I don't want to do it? Or is it hard because I set the boundaries too steeply?
Am I upset because I have taken away too much? Or am I upset that I cannot have what I want without being confronted with consequence?
No plan to change your life should be miserable, but some amount of pain with growth and change should be expected. It does get easier and as you grow, you become more adept at fitting in what makes you happy into the long-term goal of becoming healthier and shedding the weight you want to shed.
Also: Don't do right now to lose weight what you are not willing to commit to for life. This is why it's so incredibly important to find a food plan, an exercise plan, a life plan that fits your needs. Learn from others, but tailor any true change you want to make to your specific tastes and natural behaviors! Study yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses.
I am naturally lazy. I'm not inclined to exercise. I've always been a "curl up in a chair with a good book" kind of person. So I manage my weight loss primarily with diet and supplementing (for health) with exercises I enjoy (walking, hiking, swimming). I don't mindlessly go to the gym, but I also know that if I really want to balance the energy equation to allow for what I want, then I have to work harder for it. Whether through "banking" calories, or doing more exercises during the week. I have found a good balance between allowing myself to adhere to my natural tendencies (being lazy) with the occasional motivation when I really want something that requires more work.6 -
The goal is really not to lose weight, it is to lose the mindset and habits of a person that gains weight.
Also mine. I think.
This was one of those epiphanies that happened along the way. There is no point in losing weight if I don't transform into a person that would have never gained it. I have lost weight many times. I have never lost all my weight but I did lose a fair amount on a few occasions. I never changed who I was. I would try to mimic the skinnies and drastically change but it was too much too soon and I couldn't sustain it. It always failed and I always gained my weight back. Now I realize that as I chip away at my weight I need to be chipping away at the things that contributed to gaining it. I need to make small changes over time and not hurry to get to some sort of goal number because I may not be ready for it when I get there.7 -
Comparison is the thief of joy
The first obvious meaning is not to compare yourself to other people. Be happy with where you are and what you are accomplishing. There are lots of things some of you are doing that I would like to be doing right now too and it is okay to use those as motivation but I shouldn't get so fixated on what I can't do as this exact moment that it overshadows what I have done for myself in the last 18 months.
When it comes to weight loss I think this also applies to comparing yourself to a past version of yourself. I can remember being at the weight I am now a long time ago and I could do so many more things. Dwelling on that does me no good either.
I doubt any of us could practice this perfectly so I use it as something to tell myself when I feel myself getting lost in it for a moment.4 -
@NovusDies I so agree with you regarding not comparing ourselves with others. We are all at different fitness levels, have different goals and ways to go about them. Sometimes it's easy to feel bad about ourselves when we see people going further or losing faster than ourself. I'm trying to stay focussed on my own journey and being at a better place than where I was say last month.5
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For anyone taking progress pictures along the way!
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Don't major in the minors
This basically means that you should not get fixated on the stuff that has minimal impact. A good example of this is the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). TEF measures the amount of energy it takes for the body to consume calories from specific sources and that is typically macros. Yes, if you could eat an all protein diet you will probably lose at a rate just slightly faster than 3500 calories per pound but it would also kill you. Your body needs fat.
It is best to consider things like that as no more than an intellectual pursuit not a directly applicable one. Sustainability is, imo, always majoring in the majors.
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The only way past is through
I love this saying. I find myself saying this to myself when I don't really look forward to a task that I need to do to achieve a desired result. I just need to roll up my sleeves, cop the best attitude I can about it, and get it done.3 -
@NovusDies .. with your determination an strength ( that I see daily on this forum) you got this!👍0
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The only way past is through
I love this saying. I find myself saying this to myself when I don't really look forward to a task that I need to do to achieve a desired result. I just need to roll up my sleeves, cop the best attitude I can about it, and get it done.
I love that quote too but I know it a little differently, not that I think it changes the meaning. “The only way on is through.” That quotes has gotten me through some very difficult times.1 -
real_change wrote: »The only way past is through
I love this saying. I find myself saying this to myself when I don't really look forward to a task that I need to do to achieve a desired result. I just need to roll up my sleeves, cop the best attitude I can about it, and get it done.
I love that quote too but I know it a little differently, not that I think it changes the meaning. “The only way on is through.” That quotes has gotten me through some very difficult times.
I like your variation. It has a bigger scope to it. "On", to me, means "On with your life." The one I know, to me, is looking at a temporary obstacle. Sometimes it is just about the boulder in the road and sometimes it about the road beyond.1 -
"I've done it before, I can do it again."
I don't really deal much in quotes and such, but this is something I tell myself pretty often. It's likely not as helpful to others as it is to me, but this time around I don't feel like the changes I'm making are impossible. If I lost 100 lbs 9 years ago, I can do it now.
The challenge is to not repeat the mistakes I made in the past.4 -
Time is going to keep passing so you might as well lose a little weight while it does.
This is just a reminder that rage quitting makes no real sense because no matter what we do time will continue to move forward. In the past I would get mad at my lack of quick or consistent results and throw in the towel. Of course that just led me back to gaining weight. It was a blind spot that took me way too long to uncover. Instead of trying to strangle time for results I need to just allow it to happen on the easiest path forward I can find.
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Time is going to keep passing so you might as well lose a little weight while it does.
This is just a reminder that rage quitting makes no real sense because no matter what we do time will continue to move forward. In the past I would get mad at my lack of quick or consistent results and throw in the towel. Of course that just led me back to gaining weight. It was a blind spot that took me way too long to uncover. Instead of trying to strangle time for results I need to just allow it to happen on the easiest path forward I can find.
So true. I’ve done this too many times to count. I’m so much happier this time around being focused on slow weight loss. It really takes the sting out of the scale (every .10 loss is a victory and every .3 uptick gets shrugged off as long as I’m trending down) and I’m enjoying myself so much more.
I also have enough to unlearn without feeling frantically hungry all the time. I have some big habits to break. Accepting slow weight loss is way less stressful than learning to quit secret stress binging. I feel like I now have the mental and emotional bandwidth to take that on since I know now that I can have “hungry days” and eat up to maintenance calories. Those days often felt overwhelming in the old days of rapid weight loss. It’s incredibly freeing.3 -
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
There is some dispute who to attribute that to so I will leave it alone.
It was probably never meant to be applied to weight management but I think it fits. I think most Larger Losers would agree that weight loss = more freedom. Everyone that I know in life that effectively maintains their weight within 5 to 7 pounds of their goal is vigilant. They don't all use the same monitoring systems one doesn't even own a scale she simply will go back to a deficit when she feels her clothes getting tighter. However they monitor their weight in whatever intervals they choose to do it they never stop watching it.
I doubt I am alone in being worried that I could lose it all and then regain some or all of it back so I have been reminding myself that whatever plan I eventually have for maintenance has to start with being watchful always. I don't want to live scared but I want to live vigilant.6 -
@NovusDies Living vigilant is key.
I lost 80lbs, kept 60lbs off for 5-6 years. The 20-25lb regain is attributed to medical issues and a loosening of my vigilance because I was focused on the medical issues. But I consider myself a success for having kept off the 60 for so long. Despite the medical issues, I still managed to maintain the bulk of my initial weight loss.
Vigilance is key. I would also say that setting the correct expectation is key, as well. See, I didn't have the right expectations. I lost 80lbs and was flying high. I was losing a size every 10lbs. I was changing, rapidly. It felt good! It was awesome. I was booking at a solid 2lbs per week rate that makes my 2012 graph look positively amazing. Picture perfect.
But see, that's the easy part. Honestly, the easiest time to lose weight is when you have that extra fat. When I say 'easy', I definitely don't mean easy. I mean in perspective to what comes after that 2lb/week model. I started hitting the fluctuations. I hit the gravel trail after flying 110 down the freeway. Suddenly, it wasn't so quick. I floundered. I'd set incorrect expectations of myself and so I mismanaged my experience.
I landed, face first, in the dirt. So at 80lbs lost, I took a break to reconfigure my expectations. So 2013, I was all into heavy lifting. I'd discovered the forums here and was soaking in all the advice possible! I was trying EVERYTHING.
And inchworming my way to nowhere. Face in the dirt.
Then came the ups and downs in subsequent years with the medical issues, but, I learned valuable lessons. Vigilance is key, but so is managing your expectations. So is making sure that you're mentally prepared for when things slooooooooow doooooown. In 2018, after going through and managing (successfully) my health issues and dietary requirements and re-learning how to eat, I made a promise to myself: I would manage my expectations and find a path that works for me. That means soaking up advice and coming up with my own pathway through the hills. For me, it means gamifying this experience so I can make it fun. Finding things I like. Finding ways to make myself smile when I feel like I've slain another "game boss".
Sorry to derail this thread, but your post spoke to me. I'm terrified of maintenance, it is true. Because even with my general maintenance of at least 60lbs, I've not yet hit real maintenance. I floundered when I hit the overweight BMI category and started going slower. But this time, I was prepared, and I have not floundered when hitting the healthy BMI and now I feel like I'm swimming through viscious mud. I'm in the quicksand of my personal life adventure, but my previous experiences have taught me well.
This got long, hopefully not tl;dr long, but I will end with this: Vigilance, Managing your expectations, and not having "By X date I will be X weight!" goals were key (for me) in maintaining and in losing through this most difficult part of my weight loss determination.
I live off data, because things rarely change for me now. Inches don't drop off like water, they come off in them little bars between the inches on the tape measure that I always forget how to measure, so I flip the measuring tape over for the cms and mms. XD7 -
@dhiammarath
I watch my wife struggle so I know you are right. I am in kind of a weird place so I am really trying to keep my expectations all but non-existent. In an ever growing shorter amount of time I am going to wake up from a surgery that will most likely immediately drop ~200 calories off my TDEE. I believe it will send me directly from losing 2 pounds a week to 1 with no interim 1.5. The very few people that know this is happening do not understand why losing ~30 pounds this way is making me so nervous. I am not just losing any 30 pounds I am losing a transitional 30 pounds. To boot I am going from losing faster than I normally would, to the surgery, to 2-3 weeks of maintenance for recovery, to probably 1 pound a week weight loss. That is quite the roller coaster! I am really thankful that last Thanksgiving I took a 10 day diet break so at least that part won't be a huge shock.7 -
@NovusDies Hug! That is quite a change! Having no expectations is a good start. You’ve got the tools, the data; when all else gets hard you know the process and how it works. That’s your strength! You’ve got this and we are all rooting for you!
I tell myself to remember this: 2lbs, 1lb, 0.5lb —> as long as it’s moving in the right direction, as long as I’m not giving up, then I’m effecting change and making the awesome happen.
Slow awesome is still awesome!5
