help i don't want to derail

ktsj2015

hi there, i've restarted my journey this week but i have tried to restart several times during the last year and i keep derailing.

I have always had a real issue with my calorie goal, the minute i overstep and the numbers go red i use it as an excuse to go totally off the rails for 2-3 days.

I know i'm going to go over budget tonight, there is no way around it i won't have time to exercise today and i'm going out this evening as well as having fast food for 2 of my meals...

The rational part of my brain tells me that if i make smart choices and don't go 'too far' over then i won't undo the crazy part of my brain that has a sod it mentality the minute i exceed todays limit.

Overall i've been mostly under calorie goal this week so i KNOW this doens't need to undo all that work, the rational part tells me a day of maintianance or slightly above wont kill me or cancel out my hard work....

Any ideas how to prevent the crazy self defeating part taking over?

88olds

Any ideas how to prevent the crazy self defeating part taking over?

Keep pushing back. Stand in front of the mirror and argue with yourself out loud if you have to. One day I actually said to myself “I’m not letting you win this fight because if I do I won’t make it.”

It helps that the relational side of the argument is in fact correct, one day at maintenance will not defeat your entire effort.
The important thing is to have a plan. You have that.

The thing that will defeat your effort is abandoning the process because you go over your number. That will wreck you every time. Just like it has before. So it will probably feel strange, but keep logging everything no matter what.

It’s just not possible to do calorie counting without missteps. Inadequate plans, bad decisions brought on by fatigue, distractions at critical moments, even bad arithmetic and misread menus and NI. Lots of ways to make mistakes. But log them all. The process is more important than the numbers.

Calorie counting doesn’t have to be perfect to work. This is the winning argument. Stand your ground.

KickassAmazon76

Even with fast food, there are smarter choices you can make... Make them.

Weight loss is like having a credit card... The spending you do in one day doesn't matter as much as the spending you do all month.

If you spend a bit too much today, pay it down over the next couple of days. Is it ideal? No... But its normal and doable.

Start looking at your long game. Look at your weekly deficit. Look at your monthly deficit. Work towards those and give yourself some grace for the day to day living.

Because that's what it is... Living. Enjoy life, watch the long term and adjust from day to day and week to week as needed.

You've got this. ❤️

serindipte

In the app, go to the main menu: Nutrition: Change to "Week View" and "Net" .. Use THAT Net average and Net calories under weekly goal so you can see how you're truly doing. One day means absolutely nothing until compared to the other days. I ate well over last night, but I'm still under by 2k+ for the week which means even if I ate another 2k today, I'd still be under for the week.

NovusDies

ktsj2015 wrote: »

hi there, i've restarted my journey this week but i have tried to restart several times during the last year and i keep derailing.

I have always had a real issue with my calorie goal, the minute i overstep and the numbers go red i use it as an excuse to go totally off the rails for 2-3 days.

I know i'm going to go over budget tonight, there is no way around it i won't have time to exercise today and i'm going out this evening as well as having fast food for 2 of my meals...

The rational part of my brain tells me that if i make smart choices and don't go 'too far' over then i won't undo the crazy part of my brain that has a sod it mentality the minute i exceed todays limit.

Overall i've been mostly under calorie goal this week so i KNOW this doens't need to undo all that work, the rational part tells me a day of maintianance or slightly above wont kill me or cancel out my hard work....

Any ideas how to prevent the crazy self defeating part taking over?

For me I engaged in similar behavior because on some level I wanted to do it. No one forced me to go nutso for days because I ate too much one day. The all-or-nothing was just a really bad excuse to do it. I had to realize that the plans I kept putting myself on were too strict and contained unnecessary requirements when all I really needed was a calorie deficit.

I forget how I have seen it written here but in essence if you get a flat tire do you take a knife and puncture holes in the other 3? It is the same thing. If you go over maintenance today is that a reason to keep going tomorrow and really undo all the work you have done?

In some ways this time around I have restarted 736 times. For me each day is its own journey. No matter how a day ends the next day is the next new start. My goal today is to hit a certain number of steps and maintain my present weight. If I fail to do one or both of those things it won't matter past today unless I need to learn from how it went wrong.

Your goal today is to eat more food because your life doesn't stop just because you have chosen to lose weight. You need to enjoy the extra food and make good use of the physical rest you are getting by not exercising. If you do not enjoy it because you are worried you will undercut the value of eating it.

quiksylver296

What if you set your daily calorie goal to maintenance?

Then every day you are under you know you're in a deficit, some days might be a bigger deficit than others. But it wouldn't ever be red, unless you really went all out.

Do you know what your maintenance calories even are? I found that once I learned my maintenance calories are ~2400, and my deficit target was 1800, I didn't freak out too much if I hit 2000 or 2100, because I knew I was still in a deficit, just a smaller one.

teresadannar

@quiksylver296, where did you go to find to your maintenance calories? And did you use your goal weight maintenance calories or your current weight maintenance calories?
Thanks!

quiksylver296

teresadannar wrote: »

@quiksylver296, where did you go to find to your maintenance calories? And did you use your goal weight maintenance calories or your current weight maintenance calories?
Thanks!

I used scoobysworkshop.com. https://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

And goal weight maintenance calories, but I didn't have a lot to lose, about 25 pounds. If someone had more to lose, I wouldn't go with goal weight maintenance calories, but something mid-range.

Or you can just set your MFP goal to maintenance. Probably easier. That would be for your current weight, so you'd want to update it now and then as you lose.

NovusDies

teresadannar wrote: »

@quiksylver296, where did you go to find to your maintenance calories? And did you use your goal weight maintenance calories or your current weight maintenance calories?
Thanks!

You just add your deficit back into your current calorie goal.

Your deficit is based on the rate of loss you selected when you went through the guided set-up.

For:
.5lb per week = 250 calories per day
1lb per week = 500 calories per day
1.5lb per week = 750 calories per day
2lb per week = 1000 calories per day

quiksylver296

NovusDies wrote: »

teresadannar wrote: »

@quiksylver296, where did you go to find to your maintenance calories? And did you use your goal weight maintenance calories or your current weight maintenance calories?
Thanks!

You just add your deficit back into your current calorie goal.

Your deficit is based on the rate of loss you selected when you went through the guided set-up.

For:
.5lb per week = 250 calories per day
1lb per week = 500 calories per day
1.5lb per week = 750 calories per day
2lb per week = 1000 calories per day

That works, unless you're at 1200 and are bottomed out. If your weekly deficit would take you below 1200, MFP won't allow it and stops at 1200.

NovusDies

quiksylver296 wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

teresadannar wrote: »

@quiksylver296, where did you go to find to your maintenance calories? And did you use your goal weight maintenance calories or your current weight maintenance calories?
Thanks!

You just add your deficit back into your current calorie goal.

Your deficit is based on the rate of loss you selected when you went through the guided set-up.

For:
.5lb per week = 250 calories per day
1lb per week = 500 calories per day
1.5lb per week = 750 calories per day
2lb per week = 1000 calories per day

That works, unless you're at 1200 and are bottomed out. If your weekly deficit would take you below 1200, MFP won't allow it and stops at 1200.

True. It would probably not be a big deal if someone picked the appropriate rate of loss for themselves because they might go over maintenance but only by a little bit. If they selected 1.5 or 2 pounds per week with only 30 or so pounds to lose they would definitely be eating too much.

ktsj2015

Thanks for the reminder!!

I remember now last time I was on here successfully I used to set my goal to maintaining that way it didn’t matter how much I was under the numbers where green, yes really bad days might still go red but mostly I can be abit more flexible .. sometimes I think we need reminding it’s not a race.