How long did it take you to adapt to your new way of life?

lessjess22

I'm new at posting on MSP but not to weight loss. I once lost 80 lb and kept it off for maybe a year. I've lost lesser but significant amounts a few other times too. Unfortunately, I was not successful at keeping it off because here I am starting over again, just a few pounds down from my highest weight ever. I weigh 230 and want to lose around 80 lbs again, the same amount I lost (and the same starting weight) I had to lose on my most successful attempt.

My past regains have really made me understand that I need to make gradual, permanent lifestyle changes. However my recent attempts at weight loss have seemed so much harder than it ever has before. I lost the 80 lb when I was in my early 20s. It was challenging, but nothing I couldn't handle. I remember that my tastes and preferences changed, and I genuinely learned to enjoy exercise and eating healthier foods. That is not happening as quickly this time. I'm now in my late 30s, and I completely expect it to take longer to lose weight than it did when I was younger.

I'm also in no hurry and if it takes a couple of years I'm fine with that as long as the extra weight stays gone forever. However, I just feel much older and more tired this time, and with much lower tolerance for the discomfort involved in being hungry and being tired and sore from exercise. My food cravings are also pretty severe and I hate feeling like a whiny toddler because I can't have a snack that I want.

None of that matters and I'm going to keep on trucking anyway. I made the decision and I'm going to follow through even though it's uncomfortable and hard. That said, I'm hoping that those of you who have been successful can offer me a ray of hope.

So I want to know.... How long did it take you to adjust to your new way of life? What did you do to get through the days where you felt tired/crappy/sore? How long should I expect to feel crappy before I either adjust or feel better due to the health benefits of eating better and exercising more?

AnnPT77

I don't know how to answer that . . . but maybe the specifics of my non-answer might have a hint of one possible answer:

I didn't try to make a giant change overnight in everything all at once, i.e., what I ate, when I ate, how I exercised, etc.

Honestly, I started being regularly active several years before I lost weight. (I stayed class 1 obese while gradually getting very active, and stayed obese despite working out 6 days a week. Even without weight loss, I lost a pants size or two, and got stronger/fitter - it was a meaningful quality of life improvement in quite a few ways.) Mostly, I just tried things until I found some things that were relatively enjoyable for me, that technically were "exercise" but felt more like "fun".

I don't recommend the long wait, but eventually I decided I needed to lose weight a few years later. I didn't adopt some revolutionary new named/trendy "diet program", just started counting calories and experimenting to figure out how to stay reasonably non-hungry eating foods I enjoyed, next working on improving overall nutrition, etc. - kind of chipping away at remodeling my eating, using foods I enjoy. More about that approach here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

By taking an incremental approach, I don't remember ever feeling more than fleetingly truly tired, crappy, or sore, to the point where it was discouraging or hard to keep going. Sure, there were failed experiments along the way, where I tried something that didn't work out . . . but that was a learning experience, and a trigger to try something different, or go at it a bit more gradually, or whatever. I was more concerned with making the process slowly successful, but relatively easy/doable, than with making it happen fast or be theoretically somehow perfect.

I lost 50+ pounds in a bit less than a year, and arrived at goal with a set of habits I could sustain long term (almost on autopilot) to stay at a healthy weight. (I'm now in year 6+ of maintaining.)

Honestly, I stink at things like deprivation, self-denial, willpower, motivation, etc. The less I have to use them, the better off I am.

avatiach

For me, if I am really hungry it is probably because I am not eating things that fill me up. And cutting out most sugar made a big difference in my satisfaction levels. Good luck!

Lietchi

Like @AnnPT77 I never really felt 'crappy' except perhaps fleetingly.

What does that mean to you, feeling crappy? Tired and sore: from an exercise program that is too intense for you?

My current exercise frequency and intensity (running 30km per week, strength training twice a week, and then sometimes walks/hikes on the weekends and on holiday) is something I built up over several years. Sure, I've been tired and sore sometimes, but in a way that made me feel like I got a good workout done, not like I was running myself into the ground. Well, unless I'm venturing into overtraining territory, something I do need to be mindful of. So perhaps you're doing too much too soon?

Or is it to do with the food you eat, tired and crappy because you've changed your macros and it doesn't suit you? Or because you've eliminated foods you like? Or because you've cut your calories too low?
I never radically overhauled my diet, just tweaked it here and there. I never cut my calories very low, I rarely ate below 1700 calories (+exercise calories). I didn't feel like I was depriving myself.

Without knowing precisely what you're doing, it's hard to tell what the issue might be. But you mention following through 'even if it's uncomfortable and hard' and I do wonder if you're forcing the changes. I've lost around 75lbs (in truth I'm still working on the last lbs) since August 2019 - losing 45lbs the first year - and I think this slow and steady approach is part of the reason of my success.

88olds

Starting at 285 lbs, I’ve lost over 100 lbs and have maintained for years. I lost about the last 35 lbs or so on Weight Watchers. WW is just calories counting dressed up for copyright protection. My WW goal was 184 lbs. I haven’t been over 186 lbs since 2006. If you’ve ever done WW you understand the significance of that 2 lb difference.

It took years to lose 100 lbs. and I basically did it in 2 phases. I lost on my own from 285 to about 220. I quit drinking alcohol, “watched what I ate” did modest exercise, mostly long walks and just rode the down trend. I lost about 65 lbs in 18 months. It was fairly easy. Then I became stuck. Then like a lot of people, I decided that if I wanted to get back to losing, I needed to go to the gym.

The gym changed my life. Lots of good stuff about the gym. Lots of amazing benefits from training and fitness. Weight loss isn’t one of them. The gym is vastly overrated as a weight loss tool. But I did build muscle. Enough that people took notice. My wife liked it. (BTW, don’t get into this being “older” thing. I was 44 when I started.)

So I build my body but didn’t lose weight. But I also learned the value of incrementalism. If you take a healthy person, eat enough protein, and train with weights, just basic Arnold 101 sets and reps, that person with build muscle. It has to work, its how our bodies are designed. Later I came to understand that the same process can be reverse engineered into weight loss.

I went on like this for years. No matter how hard I worked in the gym, I never got under 212 lbs. Then one day my neighbor sat down on the couch and died. When I started WL my goal was to get to 204 lbs. Here I was, been working for years, had lost a lot, done all kinds of work in the gym, but could never reach my goal. Now the death of my neighbor was a slap in the face. We don’t have unlimited time to work on stuff. I needed to finish what I had started. I joined WW.

WW is where I learned tracking. We call it logging here on MFP. I soon figured out that to hit my numbers, it was best to make plans. I started making plans for the week. It worked. Sometimes I was hungry. I found that I could tolerate being hungry if 1) I wasn’t too hungry. Too hungry results in a headache. And 2) if I knew what and when I was going to get to eat next. It also helped that I tried to eat things that I liked and found satisfying. Stuff had to be worth waiting for. I wasn’t going to get past the office vending machines on the way out to go home and eat carrot sticks.

As soon as WW started working for me I could see that my 204 lb goal was wrong. It was too much. So I set my sights on under 200. Then 190. The highest official WW goal for me was 184 lbs, to then I aimed for that. It took about 6 months to get from 216 lbs my WW start weight to under 184 lbs and make WW Lifetime.

I went to my meeting every week except when on vacation. I learned a lot. But mostly not what WW thought they were teaching me. I came to think of the meeting as the school of what not to do. People came every week to tell their stories of failure and frustration. They all started out the same- something happened, went over my number, quit tracking, planned to start over but did not. Now it is X weeks or months later. WW had a revolving door. I vowed to not get in it.

My number 1 WL advice- start a food diary and never stop. Unlike nearly everyone else I met at WW, I made goal and kept coming to the meeting. I continued to weigh in nearly every week. My initial tracking project lasted 5 years. I tracked with pen and paper in little blue books that WW handed out. After 5 years I found I could maintain for long periods without tracking. Right now I’ve adjusted my goal to 175 lbs. If I go over for more than a couple of weigh ins, I start tracking again. It has worked every single time I’ve done it. In a typical year I probably track about 2 months. Most of my goals now are fitness related, the number on the scale is one facet.

Weight loss is mostly about problem solving and persistence. Use your food diary to identify your problem areas. Solve enough problems and you get to goal weight. There is no grand secret, no big “the answer.” We are all just stumbling around trying to learn to live with some reasonable limits. Mother Nature gave us bodies designed to survive hard times by storing extra calories. Those times don’t arrive for most of us. Its a good problem to have but vexing for most people. You are doing yourself a huge favor by not letting the time factor take over your plan. It’s what messes up most people. Always pay attention to how you are living. A plan we cannot actually live with is not a good plan. The good news is ineffective plans can be fixed. Never quit. Not much changes at goal weight anyway. Hope something here helps you. Good luck.

Xerogs

I took a good look at the foods that stimulated my cravings and cut them out. I replaced them with more satiating options, this took some time but it was worth it. I try to eat a whole food as much as possible. I still have days where I didn't get enough sleep where I feel like crap but for the most part I feel a lot better than I did. I don't mind eating LCHF so I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. I eat two meals a day within an eight hour span and I don't snack. If I do get hungry outside of my meal window I eat some boiled eggs or other high protein option.

So getting good sleep, reducing stress, exercising more, and cutting out junk food and sugar really helped me a lot. I also log my meals everyday so I can look back on what might be causing issues in regards to food choice. I really had a bad carb addiction with certain foods so coming to terms with why I was eating that unhealthy way has helped me with sustainability and keeping with this WoE moving forward, the Carb Addiction Doc on YouTube helped me understand a lot about myself.

It's different for everyone and you just need to find a sustainable long term option for yourself.

lessjess22

Just wanted to say thank you for the really insightful and detailed replies. It really encouraged me and helped me remember that I can tweak what I'm doing until it works for me. I don't have to change it all overnight. This is not a matter of vanity, I just want to be healthy and feel better.

88olds statement that "We don’t have unlimited time to work on stuff" is really hitting home with me, and that's why I'm doing this. I don't need to be perfect but I do need to try every single day and never quit. And that's what I'm committed to.

fit4journey

@88olds Thank you for your post. I am another person getting started and looking for inspiration who this helped. I really like your message, "Always pay attention to how you are living." That is simple but so important.

JAC581

Like a number of others have said, I've been changing things up incrementally. First thing I did was pay attention to calories and eat at a deficit using foods that work for me. Once I was comfortable doing that, I added in walks as many days as I could, just to get moving and get my heart pumping more, even if it was just for 15 minutes. Over the last week, I've decided to take on a little bit more and start strength training and paying more attention to macros. Like the walks, I'm starting off with short workouts until I get used to the exercises and get into a habit of doing them x number of days a week, then will gradually push myself more with longer periods of exercise at a higher degree of difficulty.

On the days you feel crappy, it's okay to rest! Listen to your body. If you're exhausted or sore, take a rest day or take a short walk or something less demanding. If you're hungry, have that cookie or whatever it is you may be craving. Just try not to binge and pay attention to your portion sizes. I eat a mini chocolate candy in the evenings usually because I love chocolate and refuse to give it up. You can eat anything in moderation, but it's up to you to find foods that are going to make you feel satiated while staying at a calorie deficit. If I don't get enough protein, I get really cranky, so I try to find options that have more protein and fiber so I feel full and have more energy.

It sounds like you know this already, but you're not going to become this health and fitness expert overnight, and that's okay! We're all learning as we move through our journeys and finding what works for us and what doesn't. The main thing is to keep on going, and if you slip along the way, tomorrow is a new day when we can try again and do our best.

LiveOnceBeHappy

I changed the way I eat back in August. I’m still working on it being second-nature. It’s very easy to go back to childhood habits of eating heavy, calorie-dense foods. For exercise, I just walk.