Any Advice Welcomed

skyvworld90

Hey Everyone,

I am continuing on my weight loss journey as I want to get to my fittest before I hit the big 30 in Dec 2020. I have given myself a year to do it. I want to lose about 40lbs in all this year. I’m 5’9 and currently 210lbs. So I’m trying to stay focused and really dial things in. Any advice and motivation would be appreciated but I look forward to hearing from you all.🤘🏾🏋🏽‍♀️🏆

-Sky

psuLemon

Are there any areas that you are struggling with? Good does your does exercise look like?

Maxxitt

I found that setting "milestone" goals was helpful. Since nature abhors a vacuum () I set two kinds. For the "loss" I looked at 5# increments. For the "gain" I looked at nutrition intake, particularly calcium, fiber, and protein first. Then I set small increases in miles/minutes walking & weight progression in the gym. I found the small victories quite motivating.

spiriteagle99

Since you are in this for the long term, find a way of eating that is sustainable for you. Eat what you enjoy, but less of it. For me, I found that I needed to eat fewer sweets because I was eating a lot of them. I made them a once a week treat rather than a daily one. Look at your portion sizes. Can you eat the same food you do now, but in smaller amounts?

Starting out, any changes you make will likely show results. After a while it will become really important to know exactly how much you are eating. Be sure to weigh or measure everything you eat. You would be surprised at how much more you're eating than you think you are. Be cautious eating out. Most restaurant meals are very high calorie. It was a real eye-opener when I started logging my dinners out.

lgfrie

I think having a long range goal like "40 lbs in a year" is a good way to frame the overall goal but you're more likely to end up 40 lbs less in a year if you approach it one a day at a time - as in "today I'm going to eat X number of calories and do Y amount of workout", and then achieve that. I've learned that long term dieting (for me) is about assembling little bricks of success into a big mountain of bricks, one brick at a time, making sure today's little brick comes out nice and square and right, and then getting up the next morning and focusing on the next little brick.

JoDavo66

Take the big overall goals & break them down into smaller achievable steps.
EG -I've not given myself a time frame but I know roughly what weight range & dress size I want to be and vaguely where I want my fitness to be (I have a minimum level on that).
So Jan- get my water up to min 1500, get ave 7 hours sleep, and move my carbs down by 10% & protein up by 10% with an ave cal allowance too.

AnnPT77

Since you've come to MFP, one piece of advice would be to read "the stickies" (so called), which are posts in the "Most Helpful Posts" section of each forum topic. Start with the ones in "Getting Started" and "General Health, Fitness and Diet", and just chip away at reading them. Here are direct links:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300331/most-helpful-posts-getting-started-must-reads
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300319/most-helpful-posts-general-health-fitness-and-diet-must-reads

These are posts written by regular MFP users, nominated by other MFP users to "stick around" (instead of roll off to history pages with time). There's gold in there!

Best wishes!

Goober1142

Or log your calories on MFP and see how you do. Your eating habits will change dramatically. I started out as a junk food junkie and now I'm eating veggies with chia seeds and nutritional yeast...

[edited by MFP Staff]