What's your Secret Truth on Weight Loss?

elisa123gal
elisa123gal Posts: 4,333 Member
in Motivation and Support
Share your truth. The time when you realized truly why you weren't losing the weight.

My pandemic pounds have bee coming of so slow I thought I was stuck....

Then I realized;

- I wasn't drinking my 100 ounces of water.
- - I was eating fruit higher in sugar.
- - I was eating those new prepared bags of salad and putting the packaged dressing on instead of making my own.
- I thought that evening glass of wine or two shouldn't hurt.. I was walking two miles a day!

I changed those little cheats.. and now the weight is coming off again.

Replies

  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,333 Member
    Thanks for your unsolicited advice.. but I have successfully lost all my weight 2.5 years ago without counting one calorie. I sort of know what I'm doing. It works for me and that's what matters.
    The point of the post was to disclose what you've done to start losing weight when you kid yourself that nothing is working at the moment.

    And yes.. those points I made have made me start losing my last pandemic pounds.
  • Fflpnari
    Fflpnari Posts: 975 Member
    CICO
  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
    I changed my workout programming so I was retaining water and the scale wasn't moving.
  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    quiksylver296 wrote: »
    I quit eating in a caloric surplus.

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  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,333 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    I'm up about 10 Lbs from maintenance with the pandemic...I haven't lost it because honestly I haven't really tried. This whole things has been exhausting...hybrid work schedule...kids doing distance learning at home...not being able to go anywhere because nothing is open...not being able to travel out of state to see family because my work requires me to quarantine for 2 weeks and use my annual leave if I do, etc.

    I have generalized anxiety disorder and all of this has made it worse and have had some major anxiety attacks over the last several months. Right now my focus is just on taking care of my mental health ad keeping it together for my family...10 Lbs isn't really very high on my priority list right now...definitely a back burner issue at the moment.

    It is a lot to handle.. and the only reason I'm losing my pandemic weight now.. is stress levels are down and I'm taking advantage of the moment. Nothing is worse than anxiety...and when that's going on..weight loss takes a back seat. I get that. Hopefully the light is at the end of the tunnel with this covid crisis.
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,333 Member
    Chef_Barbell wrote: »
    Ate less... moved more. 🤷‍♀️


    I actually eat more and move less.. no kidding. I used to count calories and starve at 1300 and exercise like crazy at the gym..and never reach my goals.

    When I started eating six balanced meals a day and exercising less.. I lost my weight. I'm a size 10 now.. 5' 10". and need to get back to my size 8 ..should be there early December. That will put me at the lower middle of my BMI.

    Interesting how different things work for different people.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    elisa123gal wrote: »
    Share your truth. The time when you realized truly why you weren't losing the weight.

    My pandemic pounds have bee coming of so slow I thought I was stuck....

    Then I realized;

    - I wasn't drinking my 100 ounces of water.
    - - I was eating fruit higher in sugar.
    - - I was eating those new prepared bags of salad and putting the packaged dressing on instead of making my own.
    - I thought that evening glass of wine or two shouldn't hurt.. I was walking two miles a day!

    I changed those little cheats.. and now the weight is coming off again.

    I'm not really a stall/plateau person, I think, compared to what some people report here. However, lately, working to ultra-slowly lose some vanity pounds in year 5 of maintenance, there have been times as long as a month when it looked like I wasn't losing, and was maybe even gaining.

    At this point, I have the luxury of understanding my calorie needs quite clearly, with or without exercise; and of trusting my weight-management practices (for me, the practices involved in calorie counting), so during those periods that look like plateau/stall, I just stick with it, and what I expect to happen, eventually happens . . . so far.

    Early on, when first on MFP, I made an investment of time and attention in learning how to log in ways that required tolerably moderate effort, but gave tolerably accurate results. ("Tolerable" varies by individual.) Then I just kept going, with the food logging, weight trending app (also misleading sometimes), bodyweight scale, food scale, fun levels of (logged) exercise. Works for me.

    There's no secret in there, anywhere, that I can see. 🤷‍♀️
  • Psyjohn319
    Psyjohn319 Posts: 5 Member
    Wow! I don’t get it. You can lose muscle weight (which is heavier than fat weight) by cutting back on exercise. However, if your caloric intake is higher, it doesn’t make sense physiologically.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    Psyjohn319 wrote: »
    Wow! I don’t get it. You can lose muscle weight (which is heavier than fat weight) by cutting back on exercise. However, if your caloric intake is higher, it doesn’t make sense physiologically.

    Muscle is more dense per pound than fat (smaller volume) but a pound is a pound, when it comes to how it affects the bodyweight scale.

    If a healthy person cuts back exercise (doesn't eliminate it altogether) I suspect muscle mass loss will be somewhat slow, especially if nutrition (especially protein) is adequate. I can't prove it, but here's what makes me think that: Lazy, pleasure-seeking, and undermotivated soul that I am, I've reduced exercise pretty much every Winter for 15+ years now. Most of those years**, my weight was stable, i.e., I was maintaining, and I didn't have to buy new clothes every Spring to accommodate a body that had materially increased in size (because fat is less dense) at that same weight. (As measured by readily-measurable exercise performance, I wasn't significantly weaker by Spring, either, though of course I realize that muscle mass and functional strength are related but not identical things.) (** In the few other years, I was either intentionally losing weight, or gaining it at a slow-creep rate.)

    If a person loses weight (on the scale) more readily at a higher calorie level, the physiological mechanisms would be things like the effect of fatigue (or adaptive thermogenesis) on daily life activity level, and on exercise intensity; plus the cortisol-related water retention that can come from the physical stress of a long-ish term excessive calorie deficit. Then, of course, there's also the role of compliance with calorie goal, and the possibility of self-denial/selective memory about overeating incidents that are more likely to happen when the calorie deficit is too extreme.
  • Dogmom1978
    Dogmom1978 Posts: 1,580 Member
    Psyjohn319 wrote: »
    Wow! I don’t get it. You can lose muscle weight (which is heavier than fat weight) by cutting back on exercise. However, if your caloric intake is higher, it doesn’t make sense physiologically.

    @Psyjohn319 spoiler alert:

    1 lb of muscle and 1 lb of fat weigh EXACTLY the same amount. Not sure why you would think that muscle would weigh more than fat? I think you might be confused. As above muscle is more dense than fat, but a lb of feathers and a lb of bricks are still just 1 lb each
  • Southernfit87
    Southernfit87 Posts: 39 Member
    Discipline
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,333 Member
    thelastnightingale wrote: »
    elisa123gal wrote: »
    Chef_Barbell wrote: »
    Ate less... moved more. 🤷‍♀️


    I actually eat more and move less.. no kidding. I used to count calories and starve at 1300 and exercise like crazy at the gym..and never reach my goals.

    I eat less and move less. It wasn't until the pandemic that I appreciated how little impact exercise makes on my weight. I mean, exercise is good for me, there's no denying that, but when it comes to my weight, it's almost entirely about what I eat.

    If you look at Past Me in February and Me Right Now, the difference is -10,000 to -15,000 steps a day, but probably also -300 to -600 calories a day. And I'm over 2 stone lighter.

    I used to think I couldn't lose weight unless I ran regularly, and that was just another barrier to doing something about it. Now I know that it's a nice thing to do, but it's not essential. The trick to weight loss is to make it as easy for yourself as possible and to stop making excuses.

    You don't have to go to the gym. You don't have to cut out chocolate or carbs. You just have to weigh everything and log everything. It takes a lot more willpower (and cost) to go to the gym than it does to buy a cheap set of scales and weigh everything you eat.
    I read an article years ago, leading diet exercise researchers gave their thoughts on weight loss. One said the exercise was key to keeping the weight off. However, when losing, it actually made dieters more hungry and foiled or hampered their weight loss efforts. Also..my thought.. I sometimes think I can eat more because I exercised..and most likely get out of the deficit mode.

    Now, what I do is never over exercise.. I get so tempted to want to burn more calories to compensate or lose faster. But, I know I will lose steady and fast if I only exercise at what I know doesn't fatigue me or make me more hungry. Also..I always fuel my exercise by eating right before. It works for me.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    The only secret is taking responsibility for how much food I eat.

    Choices - Actions - Consequences.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,692 Member
    elisa123gal wrote: »
    Share your truth. The time when you realized truly why you weren't losing the weight.

    When I eat fewer calories than I burn, I lose weight.

    When I eat more calories than I burn, I gain weight.

  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member
    I've put on some COVID weight as well and I know why. Changing that now.

    - drinking my calories way too often. For me this is #1. On the rare occasion I went out to coffee shops, I'd gone back to old habits of ordering "skinny mochas" and sometimes even full calorie lattes when I normally - for years post weight loss - I'd had a 5-10 calorie coffee or Americano.
    - baking way too much.
    - feeling like takeout was a free for all. If I was going to a restaurant I'd also go running errands for 2 hours and a hike. Just waking up on a Saturday and ordering takeout, I was burning no calories and actually eating more food because it felt like a "treat" more so than previously.

    Bad ideas.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,885 Member
    With regards to my journey on MFP, there were only two periods when I had seemingly stalled weight loss:
    - a period when I really increased my step count - I was still losing fat, but water retention was masking it on the scale.
    - a period when my calorie intake was hovering just under maintenance (a 100kcal deficit per day, on average) - sort of a diet break/not having the drive for a larger deficit. My weight loss seemed stalled for a while since the slow rate of fat loss was being masked by regular weight fluctuations.

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