Looking for motivation and support

healthier4life2

Hello everyone! My name is Holly and I’m almost 50! Man have the years flown by. I’m getting close to menopause too. I’m looking to lose 10-15 lbs and get toned up. I struggle with time and work stress during the week. I’d love any tips and motivation from those of you that have been where I am at and succeeded. Thank you in advance!!

beanfacekilla

Hey Holly! Welcome!

Time does indeed fly. I didn't know how fast it would actually go when I was younger.

I can understand your battle with motivation. Just getting started is the hardest part to overcome in my opinion. The good news is walking (for example) has been shown to reduce stress by the increased endorphins.

Logging your food is sort of a lifestyle change, but it's well worth it for many reasons. When I started doing it I had no idea what I was eating and what a normal intake actually was. It helped to educate me on food and nutrition, helped me to actually understand what I was eating, and that helped me reduce and change my eating habits.



It's all up to you. If you have the desire to do something it can be achieved. I'm sure you'll do fine. Every thing we do has to start somewhere.

AnnPT77

Hi, Holly, and welcome to the MFP Community!

I'm old here (age and MFP usage), hanging around here at age 66 to stay at a healthy weight, after losing from class 1 obese to a healthy weight back at age 59-60.

My main tip is that personalization is important - figuring out what works for you. There is no "one method fits all" way of managing weight or increasing fitness. There are a zillion named diets and popular exercise routines, and they can be useful . . . when they're a good fit. But tactics with no name can work great, too.

That leads to a couple of sub-tips:

* In my view, motivation is over-rated. I dunno about you, but I can't stay "motivated" for the rest of my life to do something that's hard and unnatural for me. I admit I'm deficient, probably worse than average, in willpower and discipline. When my limited store of willpower charges up, I tend to use it to experiment, find a habit I can change in a positive direction, in a way that will be easy and pleasant (at least tolerable) enough to become an autopilot part of my daily life long term, so it continues when willpower wanes and life gets complicated. That leads me to sub-tip #2 . . .

* I like evolution more than revolution. Some people like to make huge changes in all of their eating/exercise all at once. That would work terribly poorly for me. (You know you best!)

What worked for me, for eating, was to start logging food, noticing what kept me full and happy, tweaking my eating patterns over time to get to appropriate calories and decent overall nutrition, eating foods I personally like and that are practical/affordable for me.

On the exercise front, what helped me was to try a bunch of things that involved getting more movement into my life, looking for things that were relatively enjoyable. (I tried to give any new thing a fair shot, i.e., continue long enough to get past the "newbie blues" phase, where any new thing can seem impossible or awkward at first.) An activity a person enjoys, so does regularly, is 100% more beneficial for fitness than a theoretically perfect exercise that one hates, so procrastinates and defers at the slightest excuse.

It doesn't even have to be official "exercise". Any form of movement is helpful: Home improvement projects that are active, fun video or VR games that involve movement, walking in the park, playing with kids, fun games (frisbee, ping pong, whatever), dancing - you name it. Any extra movement is good, bonus if it's a little bit manageably challenging to current fitness.

Sometimes people seem to think that exercise has to be miserable and exhausting to be beneficial. That's 100% myth. Any manageably challenging movement increases fitness. Any extra movement burns calories (even if not all that challenging!). Same deal on the eating side: Misery is optional, total deprivation is optional, eating "diet" foods we hate is optional.

Treating weight loss or fitness improvement as a project with an end date, that doesn't work for me. There is no success, for me, in "going back to (old) normal" after "dieting". Many people say that maintaining a healthy weight is the harder thing, more difficult than losing weight in the first place. I don't know about that, but I know that maintenance has been easier for me personals because I figured out during weight loss what habits were going to be sustainable for me, to stay at a healthy weight long term. Ditto for fitness.

Wishing you success at finding your best personalized path toward your goals!