Slow is fast.
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wunderkindking
Posts: 1,615 Member
I've been meaning to write this for a while now. I have some extra time right now, thanks to an injury, so now seems like a good time to do the thing.
This is a partial repost and elaboration of something I have said before, so if you've seen it -- I'm not plagiarizing myself.
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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 more than 80% of the time. Another basic principal that's pretty heavily relied upon is setting up for success, making it very easy for the dog to do the right thing and nearly impossible for the dog to get it wrong.
This applies to humans and weight loss (and a whole lot of life, actually).
We want results fast - in weight loss and dogs. We can see the end result we want in our head. Then we try to leap-frog over the path that leads us there and jump straight to the final result.
In dogs (for illustrative purposes), what this means is you take a dog who has an okay sit at 80% of the time, but decide you want him to learn a really good sit-stay. So you spend 10 minutes teaching the stay, and he sort of gets it so you decide you're taking him to the park now and asking for that sit/stay with kids running around and other dogs and bikes whizzing by. The dog sits, but fails to stay and you're frustrated. Not fair - the dog was always going to fail and you set it up to do so. Also? Now stay not only doesn't mean MUCH, the dog has lost what understanding of it he did have, and you get to start over.
In weight-loss that example looks more like someone who just started tracking their food deciding that they want to do a total lifestyle overhaul. They're going to go from sedentary to 10K or more steps a day and going to the gym four times a week. They're going to have a big deficit. They're never going to eat another cookie or fast food meal again. They're going to have perfectly measured macros. Maybe they succeed for a little bit at home, where they're in total control - but then life happens. They get injured. They have to go to a business dinner where there're a whole dessert table, because they spent the night in the ER and had to eat out of a vending machine, or the stove broke so it's take out or nothing - whatever.
Because the initial habits weren't formed, and solid (at that 80% number), extra stressors or complication throw the whole thing off, and they then failed. They failed because their expectations were to be 100% at everything, and they set themselves up for that failure by trying to do too much. They fail because their expectations were, as with the dog, unfair.
This is where the thread title comes into play:
You can take your time, building individual habits - one at a time and adding a new change only when you are consistently succeeding at the previous one.
Try starting with JUST logging your food. Figure out what your eating patterns and hunger patterns are. Find out the calorie content of things. Experiment with what's worth it or what's not. Add a 'ceiling ' to your calories at maintenance (because not gaining more is valuable too!). Figure out what substitutions you can make and what you can do to achieve a small deficit as painlessly as possible - the things you won't miss much. Reassess when that feels easy and see if you can increase either with a little more movement or reassessing your food diary for things you'd be okay letting go. Build on what you have, only when you have something solid there to build on. Yes, yes it WILL be slow - but it will STICK and it won't be painful .
Or you can spend your time - days, weeks, months, years - starting over and filling in the holes in your foundational behaviors, and being mad at yourself for failing to sustain something that wasn't sustainable, and wasn't fair to ask of yourself in the first place.
This is a partial repost and elaboration of something I have said before, so if you've seen it -- I'm not plagiarizing myself.
---
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 more than 80% of the time. Another basic principal that's pretty heavily relied upon is setting up for success, making it very easy for the dog to do the right thing and nearly impossible for the dog to get it wrong.
This applies to humans and weight loss (and a whole lot of life, actually).
We want results fast - in weight loss and dogs. We can see the end result we want in our head. Then we try to leap-frog over the path that leads us there and jump straight to the final result.
In dogs (for illustrative purposes), what this means is you take a dog who has an okay sit at 80% of the time, but decide you want him to learn a really good sit-stay. So you spend 10 minutes teaching the stay, and he sort of gets it so you decide you're taking him to the park now and asking for that sit/stay with kids running around and other dogs and bikes whizzing by. The dog sits, but fails to stay and you're frustrated. Not fair - the dog was always going to fail and you set it up to do so. Also? Now stay not only doesn't mean MUCH, the dog has lost what understanding of it he did have, and you get to start over.
In weight-loss that example looks more like someone who just started tracking their food deciding that they want to do a total lifestyle overhaul. They're going to go from sedentary to 10K or more steps a day and going to the gym four times a week. They're going to have a big deficit. They're never going to eat another cookie or fast food meal again. They're going to have perfectly measured macros. Maybe they succeed for a little bit at home, where they're in total control - but then life happens. They get injured. They have to go to a business dinner where there're a whole dessert table, because they spent the night in the ER and had to eat out of a vending machine, or the stove broke so it's take out or nothing - whatever.
Because the initial habits weren't formed, and solid (at that 80% number), extra stressors or complication throw the whole thing off, and they then failed. They failed because their expectations were to be 100% at everything, and they set themselves up for that failure by trying to do too much. They fail because their expectations were, as with the dog, unfair.
This is where the thread title comes into play:
You can take your time, building individual habits - one at a time and adding a new change only when you are consistently succeeding at the previous one.
Try starting with JUST logging your food. Figure out what your eating patterns and hunger patterns are. Find out the calorie content of things. Experiment with what's worth it or what's not. Add a 'ceiling ' to your calories at maintenance (because not gaining more is valuable too!). Figure out what substitutions you can make and what you can do to achieve a small deficit as painlessly as possible - the things you won't miss much. Reassess when that feels easy and see if you can increase either with a little more movement or reassessing your food diary for things you'd be okay letting go. Build on what you have, only when you have something solid there to build on. Yes, yes it WILL be slow - but it will STICK and it won't be painful .
Or you can spend your time - days, weeks, months, years - starting over and filling in the holes in your foundational behaviors, and being mad at yourself for failing to sustain something that wasn't sustainable, and wasn't fair to ask of yourself in the first place.
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Replies
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I agree that changing just one thing at a time can be a successful strategy. At least it's been working for me. I felt that trying to change too many things at once, while it might produce results in the short term, wasn't something I was likely to stick with long term.
First I just started eating better (cleaner, healthy), without worrying about quantity or calories. From years of dieting (
) I already knew a lot about what's good for me and what isn't. So the idea was to get away from the junk and break the sugar habit with the ability to have something else to eat as much as I wanted, so I wouldn't be hungry.
Then I started tracking. Just to learn the ins and outs, develop the habit, so it became easy and automatic.
Then I set calorie goals and started sticking to them.
Then I started tracking exercise. I wasn't really exercising much, just started taking the dog for longer walks, but this helped me learn how to do it, and also see what a little exercise could "buy" me in terms of more calories. As of today, I'm down 40 pounds, and still going strong, so - so far, so good!
My current phase is MORE EXERCISE. I went to the gym for the first time last week, but it was only once. But it was my first time to a new gym, so it was still an achievement: I got familiar with it, got the orientation, my picture taken, etc. I have to figure out how to fit it into my schedule and make it a habit. It's harder now that 1. I moved, and 2. I WFH and don't have to drive by the gym on the way home from work. So I need to develop this habit. But with the others more on auto-pilot, I'm optimistic. Step by step!
Now I just need to apply this pattern to my dog so she will be better behaved! (She's a JRT and a rescue, so really has a mind and habits of her own. lol)3 -
OnceAndFutureAthlete wrote: »I agree that changing just one thing at a time can be a successful strategy. At least it's been working for me. I felt that trying to change too many things at once, while it might produce results in the short term, wasn't something I was likely to stick with long term.
First I just started eating better (cleaner, healthy), without worrying about quantity or calories. From years of dieting ( ) I already knew a lot about what's good for me and what isn't. So the idea was to get away from the junk and break the sugar habit with the ability to have something else to eat as much as I wanted, so I wouldn't be hungry.
Then I started tracking. Just to learn the ins and outs, develop the habit, so it became easy and automatic.
Then I set calorie goals and started sticking to them.
Then I started tracking exercise. I wasn't really exercising much, just started taking the dog for longer walks, but this helped me learn how to do it, and also see what a little exercise could "buy" me in terms of more calories. As of today, I'm down 40 pounds, and still going strong, so - so far, so good!
My current phase is MORE EXERCISE. I went to the gym for the first time last week, but it was only once. But it was my first time to a new gym, so it was still an achievement: I got familiar with it, got the orientation, my picture taken, etc. I have to figure out how to fit it into my schedule and make it a habit. It's harder now that 1. I moved, and 2. I WFH and don't have to drive by the gym on the way home from work. So I need to develop this habit. But with the others more on auto-pilot, I'm optimistic. Step by step!
Now I just need to apply this pattern to my dog so she will be better behaved! (She's a JRT and a rescue, so really has a mind and habits of her own. lol)
Great advice @wunderkindking
@OnceAndFutureAthlete, I did the opposite to you, but we've ended up in a similar place. First I started tracking calories, but didn't worry about quality and nutritional content. Could be junk, as long as it was within my calorie budget. Then once I was used to weighing, tracking and analysing my calories and was sure that I was choosing the most accurate entries from the database, I took the next step which was to start eliminating the junk one meal/one choice at a time, gradually replacing the stuff with zero nutrition with food that gave me more sustenance.
Third step was to track my exercise and start to gradually increase it.
Now I'm working on portion control.3 -
My actual pattern/path was closer to what @Bella_Figura mentioned.
I signed up because I realized I was probably not getting enough protein.
Signing up here to track protein prompted me to end up with a calorie goal to maintain (weight loss seemed daunting), and built a pattern of more intentional eating and a habit of logging - and trying not to go over the number because I didn't want to GAIN, even if I wasn't in for weight loss yet.
Once I got the protein thing down, I saw a lot of places I was eating a lot of calories that I didn't much care about so I set to lose a half pound a week and kept logging. Realized I was often coming in under calorie goal and changed it to a pound a week.
After THAT I added more activity. I was pretty active and doing some physical/athletic stuff already, but until the weight came off and my diet was decent the idea of more exercise was pretty painful - and the reality might have been too, both in extra weight on joints and just not having the energy for it.
Regardless of direction you start or where...
I've been doing this a while. I injured myself because it happens. I'm really mentally checked out on 'be fit!'.
But habits are carrying me. Mindless, thoughtless, no effort things that are ingrained. And thank goodness for that because seriously, my presence here not withstanding, my mind is off somewhere else leaving me to do the best I can in its absence.3 -
Thank you for posting... I needed this just now.3
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Thanks for your insight! It was very helpful as I decided YESTERDAY to do something about my weight. I'm nearly at the surgery stage if I can't stick to something this time!1
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Thanks for your insight! It was very helpful as I decided YESTERDAY to do something about my weight. I'm nearly at the surgery stage if I can't stick to something this time!
You've got this
Just do one thing and get that one solid, then move onto the next. Make it as easy for yourself as you can and you'll get there. 2 -
Bella_Figura wrote: »@OnceAndFutureAthlete, I did the opposite to you, but we've ended up in a similar place. First I started tracking calories, but didn't worry about quality and nutritional content. Could be junk, as long as it was within my calorie budget. Then once I was used to weighing, tracking and analysing my calories and was sure that I was choosing the most accurate entries from the database, I took the next step which was to start eliminating the junk one meal/one choice at a time, gradually replacing the stuff with zero nutrition with food that gave me more sustenance.
Third step was to track my exercise and start to gradually increase it.
Now I'm working on portion control.
This sounds like a good plan also.
Basically I'm agreeing with you and @wunderkindking and supporting the one-change-at-a-time strategy. The path each person takes may be different. The key I think is making the first step something you (generic you) have confidence you can achieve to build a foundation for future success.
And @Spotteddingo - keep at it and keep coming here for help and inspiration! We're here for you!2
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