Restarting Quickly & Sticking To It - Advice Needed

robingmurphy

I keep coming back to this discussion because it really changed my outlook. I don't know why some of these ideas didn't take with me before but they suddenly make a lot of sense. I've been telling myself "Oh, I've tried everything and nothing worked with me! Nothing stuck!" but this discussion has helped me see that's not right at all. I've tried everything, and a LOT of things worked for me, some of them very well, but every time they started working they seemed too easy and I started lowering calorie intake or burning more calories until at some point it seemed too hard for me and I spent three days overeating substantially and then I gave up because "It's not working any more."
To give one example of many, a few years ago I started counting calories and switched to a mostly whole foods plant based diet (+ 10% of calories from other things I wanted) and I was able to easily stick to a calorie level giving me a 300 calorie deficit. I happen to have notes on that weight loss cycle and I recently went back and looked at them. I started out eating about 1750 and burning about 2050 calories TDEE. Easy-peasy, dropping some weight steadily. But then I noticed over the following weeks my calorie intake dropped... 1600, 1500, even 1400 on some days. And I started working out more, burning a TDEE of average of more like 2250. Suddenly I'm at a 750 calorie deficit without really consciously deciding to, more at times. And then a day comes along where I'm feeling "off" for some reason (lack of sleep, travel, whatever) that gives me an excuse to give in to my hunger and overeat. And I end up with several days eating like 2800 calories. Then I decide it's clearly not working and give up. Start gaining weight. Repeat the whole cycle.

PAV8888

In 2014 I started with a goal that I would have no day in a month without at least 5000 steps. Took till April to fully achieve that. I probably dropped a little bit of weight in the process too because my then analogue scale went from dial won't move any further limit to dial hovering just above the max mark.

In May I decided to "try and lose some weight over the summer by eating healthy". You know. Things such as add extra olive oil to every salad! Swap an egg Mcmuffin + hash brown for a fruit and fiber muffin! Eat healthy Subway meatball subs every day! ---You can all stop ROFLing now. I didn't say I was smart! -- I did also cut down on my cream and sugar in the coffee, so at least the McDonald's trip wasn't **too much** of an increase in Calories in spite of the jam and peanut butter packet that went with the healthy fruit and fibre muffin! Luckily summer rolled along and trading extra fruit for ice cream helped me drop something like 25lbs.

Out of town visitors in September with one day home/one day eat out ended up with me not gaining anything back. Which was a big win. So mid October everyone leaves and I'm back to eating "extra healthy". This time moving from subway subs to salads!

Remember your discussion about faster weight loss and making things difficult? From October 14 to November 14, I probably dropped 20lbs. Which even at my then weight of ~250 was a good double the maximum I should have been trying to do.

AND I was "this close" to giving it all up because what was the point?

I mean I obviously couldn't continue to eat salad and spend all day walking around for the rest of my life now, could I? (BTW: I was up to 10,000 steps as my daily goal -- nowadays I'm set at 15750 and I am surprised when I don't hit it). This was misery plain and simple! And as soon as I would stop eating this new "healthy" way and started eating normally, I *knew* I was going to gain it all back. It wouldn't be the first time I did that, right? So what was the point?

<-- the astute reader may note the lack of the concept of calories, and of any plan other than eat as 'healthy as possible' and the least amount possible and move a lot more--luckily because of the multiple people I knew who had failed to maintain on Atkins, I "knew" that Atkins wouldn't work so I was only reducing, not eliminating carbs.

Which I set out to find a more "permanent" way to regulate my weight. Discovered MFP in mid November 2014. Started reading the forums. Started figuring out about calories and nutrition, and reasonable and appropriate goals. Started figuring out what I was doing and why. Started using a weight trend application to measure progress. And went on to lose another 72.5 lbs over the next 12 months WITHOUT feeling out of control and ready to give up every day! And another 11.2lbs the 12 months after that. And have maintained within 2.5 lbs of that in terms of weight trend since then.

Because, yeah, making it more difficult than it has to be doesn't get you bonus points. And building your new normal out of multiple layers that are all designed to trend you towards appropriate results means you might be able to go over a life bump or two without long term derailment.

Yivs_87

@PAV8888 Thank you for sharing your story. It was exactly what I needed to read today.