Foundation, foundation, foundation (Alternative title: In weight loss, I am the dog.)

wunderkindking

I'm a professional dog trainer and a dog sports competitor -- stick with me, I have a point.

One of the big principals in dog training is basically about laying a strong foundation, and only increasing the difficulty when you have success 80+ percent of the time. Another one is that you make getting it right as obvious and easy as you possibly can; you set the dog up in a way that makes it almost impossible for the dog to get it wrong.

In weight loss, I am the dog.

There is no big motivation or mindset change for me, really. I started with a very simple, easy, foundation behavior that I built upon. For me that was tracking my food before I ate it. No restriction, nothing else. Just inputting what I ate into MFP. Everything else - getting enough protein, getting used to a ceiling on my calories (at maintenance first), creating a deficit - built upon the previous steps and habits, a lot of which are individual to me and my psychology.

The basics are universal though, and they are still 'lay a foundation of easy behaviors, increase difficulty slowly, add new things only when successful at the previous'.

Everyone wants to results now - in weight loss and dogs, actually - but that old 'slow is fast' saying is accurate. You can go slow and lay a really good foundation - or you can rush ahead to try to get the results you want right now, and spend the next several years or decades fixing problems that result from the holes in your foundation.

Breathe. Relax. Look and think about what things you'd like to see your life look like in the future, and then take the smallest, easiest step toward that. Get that step ingrained. Then add another one. Troubleshoot how to make things easier if you find things getting hard.

LAY A FOUNDATION before you start building.

PAV8888

But can you teach an old dog new tricks?

AnnPT77

I think this is really insightful and useful . . . in fact, truth in advertising, I saw the basic content as a reply on another thread, and asked @wunderkindking to consider making it a standalone post so I could nominate it as a stickie.

If you agree with me, second the nomination here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10260479/nominate-posts-for-announcement-status-stickies#latest

. . . or go there and post if there are other posts you think should be stickies (i.e., put into the "Most Helpful Posts" section of a forum topic area).

wunderkindking

PAV8888 wrote: »

But can you teach an old dog new tricks?

You sure can. Same principal regardless of young dogs, old dogs, or people :P . Make it easy and obvious to get right, hard to get wrong, if mistakes happen it's information not failure - go back, find out what went wrong and take a half-step back to make sure it doesn't repeat.

Also more literally dogs I started a 13 year old deaf dog in agility. she had a grand time playing and even got a few titles. Finding the motivator and fun in things works pretty well for people and dogs too!

406MamaBear

Thank you so much for this! Maybe I need a “clicker” every time I make a good food choice!

wunderkindking

406MamaBear wrote: »

Thank you so much for this! Maybe I need a “clicker” every time I make a good food choice!

I mean.

One of my primary motivations in being good is that at the end of the day I have calories for my freaking reese's cup problem, so... hey, whatever works :P

wunderkindking

I am just now starting to introduce my baby dog (13 months old) to competitive sports settings/competing in public. She doesn't know a whole lot, but what she knows she *knows*. Watching her have more success than a bunch of dogs who are 5 times her age and HALF know a whole lot more reminding me of this thread.

REALLY having fluency in your behaviors so you can just DO IT without having to think about it too much and distractions aren't disruptions matters. It matters a lot more than academically knowing a lot of things but not proofing that knowledge against all kinds of stuff and/or being able to execute any of it very well.

...There's a whole lot of life lessons in dogs, okay?

Including 'make it easy' 'make it fun' and 'you only fail when you give up'.

But the foundation thing is the hill I will die on.

COGypsy

406MamaBear wrote: »

Thank you so much for this! Maybe I need a “clicker” every time I make a good food choice!

Be careful with the “clicker”! My dog is terrified of it. Sends him right under the sofa, every time (although now that I think about it, hiding under the sofa could be it’s own sort of diet plan…).

wunderkindking

COGypsy wrote: »

406MamaBear wrote: »

Thank you so much for this! Maybe I need a “clicker” every time I make a good food choice!

Be careful with the “clicker”! My dog is terrified of it. Sends him right under the sofa, every time (although now that I think about it, hiding under the sofa could be it’s own sort of diet plan…).

I mean my 'clicker' is just the word yes, but the conditioned response being that you're gonna get a cookie might be a problem :P

KateEat

This analogy is incredibly helpful to me! I'm feeling defeated at the outset of this latest attempt to lose weight and keep it off because I'm older and bigger - so that creates a lot of challenges, especially mentally. Trying to approach this attempt smarter rather than harder.

I'm okay with the being old part - I've earned every gray hair - but seeing myself as a dog could really work!
During the tougest years when I put on the pounds with emotional eating my son converted me from being very, very afraid of dogs to being absolutely dependent on them to keep me going. We have gone from 3 dogs to one very sweet, VERY lazy Eng Springer and we both need to get ourselves moving and out of our comfort zones if we want to age happily.

If I can be as encouraging to myself as I am my dog I'll be in good shape.

Thanks for the anology and reminder to focus on the basics.