Desperately trying to start.

jenny100986

I was once so successful with weight loss. I joined up with weight watchers and lost about 80 pounds over the course of 10 months. Of course I was 10 years younger and it was a little quicker and I want to say easier for the pounds to melt away.

This year has been one of the hardest years of my life. I lost my father in March quite suddenly. I run my own business and ran into some stressors that were relatively unusual. My overall stress levels are higher than I’ve ever experienced them. I know that all sounds like I’m making up a ton of different excuses on why it’s so difficult for me to just start and build new healthy habits. I am literally always in a state of chronic fatigue. It is my hope that I can find some like-minded people who have large goals to reach who are ready to commit to putting themselves first in order to help motivate one another in the journey of reaching those goals. Truthfully I’m looking to lose about half my body weight total over the next 2 to 3 years. I’m not looking for quick fixes and I’m not looking for unattainable goals that always just inevitably sent me back. If this speaks to others I would really love it if we could work together. I would love any tricks or tips on how to start off with motivation you don’t have before you develop the discipline to move through without motivation. Thanks so much.

AdventureRach

Hi
This resonates with me. I'm only just starting out on my weight loss journey and my biggest issue is comfort and stress induced eating. Whie I was at uni I gained some weight but the just over 6 years since have been a lot worse for me. I had severe depression but didn't know what it was or get it diagnosed for over 3 years. During that time I used food as a comforter and to try and help bring me out of the dark feelings. That habbit has stuck and although I know have the depression a lot more under control I am still really struggling with weight and that's part of what is preventing me getting better.

To make matters worse, I broke my a kle 3 months ago and have been pretty much house bound since then. This has also made me put on extra weight because normally I am really active. The recover is going to be loooong! So I am trying to start my weight loss journey through food alone and then when I start to heal then I will be able to add in exercise too.

I have never managed to stick at any weight loss attempts for more than 4 weeks so I'm hoping to find people to help keep me motivated to keep logging and keep losing. I don't have any good tips or tricks yet but I would definitely be up for helping each other out

cmw0620

I can relate. The last few years have been awful. I worked the covid unit and my facility while going through nursing school. Wasnput on antidepressants and gained 50lbs. Ive been trying for a month with no luck to even drop one pound and i know a month isnt much. But it is really discouraging.

somecoolname0411

Morning! I too did weight watchers and found it fairly easy to lose 90 pounds. Then pandemic hit, I couldn't go to meetings for accountability and got off routine. 30 pounds found their way back to me. I started bac meetings a few months ago but stopped because those are NOT my people anymore. I got back on the MFP train about a week ago and found that I'm doing okay here. Hope you have great success!!

AdventureRach

Wow working on the covid ward must have been so tough, well done and thank you ❤

cmw0620 wrote: »

Wasnput on antidepressants and gained 50lbs. Ive been trying for a month with no luck to even drop one pound and i know a month isnt much. But it is really discouraging.

I also put a lot of weight on after starting on antidepressants and have really struggled to shift it while being on them. Apparently weight gain is a common side affect of most antidepressants so I would love to come off them to help with my weight but I know that my mental health isn't in a good enough place for that. I know that my initial weight gain was because if comfort eating when I started on them but even while being really conscious of food and exercise I have found it really hard to lose any weight.

luxia2020

My! Hello, @jenny100986. I'm sorry to hear about your loss! That's probably the most useless thing I could say, but I hope you'll remember all the good memories you had with your father and smile back on it!
If you have a big goal to lose, I welcome you to join this group of people who have similar big plans or already lost that amount and maintained that loss: Larger Losers Group! I recently joined this group, and I'm finding the group influencing me positively! They're all fantastic people, and it's been excellent sharing my journey with them!
I also highly recommend reading through the links in this post! It's such an insightful read, and I gained new insights from it!
I won't deny that having motivation is always helpful, but sometimes, whether you want to or not, start developing that new habit. You don't think before you fall into a bad habit, do you? The same would apply to creating a new practice. Just start. Keep at it. Track everything. Make everything to maintain this new habit easy. Don't beat yourself up if you missed some days. I don't recommend trying to change everything all at once. That's setting yourself up for failure. Go slow.
For example, I started by learning to track consistently and as accurately as I could (before I got a digital food scale) every day until I was able to do so for 100 days straight. Once I've achieved that milestone, I'm building upon it by reasonably limiting my calorie intake and never going below my basal metabolic rate, so I always have a satisfied tummy, and my body isn't fighting against my weight loss plan.
Reading through MFP forums and doing my little research, I'm quite the firm believer now in CICO (Calorie In- Calorie Out) to manage weight loss. It's all about portion control. Unfortunately, I'm still not keen on exercising most of the week and still sit in front of a computer all day for work. Still, I'm already seeing results even though I reduced my calorie intake just three weeks ago. I still don't eat the healthiest of choices, which is something I aim to fix slowly. I eat out on the weekends by "stocking calories" throughout the week 100 calories each weekday, eat prepackaged food, and let myself enjoy a can of soda every weekend to kill the stash at home.

jenny100986

cmw0620 wrote: »

I can relate. The last few years have been awful. I worked the covid unit and my facility while going through nursing school. Wasnput on antidepressants and gained 50lbs. Ive been trying for a month with no luck to even drop one pound and i know a month isnt much. But it is really discouraging.

I put on quite a bit of weight with antianxiety meds as well. That being said they changed my life so I don't regret them and will never come off of them!

jenny100986

somecoolname0411 wrote: »

Morning! I too did weight watchers and found it fairly easy to lose 90 pounds. Then pandemic hit, I couldn't go to meetings for accountability and got off routine. 30 pounds found their way back to me. I started bac meetings a few months ago but stopped because those are NOT my people anymore. I got back on the MFP train about a week ago and found that I'm doing okay here. Hope you have great success!!

I'm doing the program again (it worked so well for me paired with MFP). I finally found a spot to do actual meetings-- accountability is key for me!

jenny100986

luxia2020 wrote: »

My! Hello, @jenny100986. I'm sorry to hear about your loss! That's probably the most useless thing I could say, but I hope you'll remember all the good memories you had with your father and smile back on it!
If you have a big goal to lose, I welcome you to join this group of people who have similar big plans or already lost that amount and maintained that loss: Larger Losers Group! I recently joined this group, and I'm finding the group influencing me positively! They're all fantastic people, and it's been excellent sharing my journey with them!
I also highly recommend reading through the links in this post! It's such an insightful read, and I gained new insights from it!
I won't deny that having motivation is always helpful, but sometimes, whether you want to or not, start developing that new habit. You don't think before you fall into a bad habit, do you? The same would apply to creating a new practice. Just start. Keep at it. Track everything. Make everything to maintain this new habit easy. Don't beat yourself up if you missed some days. I don't recommend trying to change everything all at once. That's setting yourself up for failure. Go slow.
For example, I started by learning to track consistently and as accurately as I could (before I got a digital food scale) every day until I was able to do so for 100 days straight. Once I've achieved that milestone, I'm building upon it by reasonably limiting my calorie intake and never going below my basal metabolic rate, so I always have a satisfied tummy, and my body isn't fighting against my weight loss plan.
Reading through MFP forums and doing my little research, I'm quite the firm believer now in CICO (Calorie In- Calorie Out) to manage weight loss. It's all about portion control. Unfortunately, I'm still not keen on exercising most of the week and still sit in front of a computer all day for work. Still, I'm already seeing results even though I reduced my calorie intake just three weeks ago. I still don't eat the healthiest of choices, which is something I aim to fix slowly. I eat out on the weekends by "stocking calories" throughout the week 100 calories each weekday, eat prepackaged food, and let myself enjoy a can of soda every weekend to kill the stash at home.

Thanks so much!! I'll check those out!!