Frustrated but determined!!

fmichelle57

Hello MFP folks!
I have been overweight for a good 20 years if I'm going to be honest with myself. I have lost and gained the same 30 lbs so many times! I'm over it!
I feel as though my mind is finally in the right place. I am tired of not liking the way I look when I walk by a mirror. So on June 12th, I started for the very last time on a healthy body journey. I am only eating basically what God put on this earth...proteins, veges and fruit. Add some cheese and greek yogurt and that's about it.
I am working out about 5 days a week in different ways, some days longer and harder than others, to build different muscles and eating correctly. I have only lost 11 pounds.
My only thought is - maybe old school muscles weigh more, so the weight is coming off slower??? I'm in this for the win and to make me amazing. Any thoughts on how I may be able to change things up a bit to speed up the process? Tricks and Tips are so welcomed!!
Have I mentioned that I am impatient? LOL

Carriehelene

11 lbs since June 12th is actually more than 2 lbs a week. You need to adjust your expectations. Like seriously adjust. If I’m reading your post correctly, you now only have 20 lbs to lose? You should only be losing 1/2 to 1 lb a week at this point. Under eating can be as dangerous as overeating. Try eating some more calorie dense foods like nuts, peanut butter, even a cookie 😀. Best wishes for you!

Lietchi

You mention losing and gaining the same 30lbs. What are you doing this time to ensure it's different? Racing to the finish line and eating only "proteins, veges and fruit" and some cheese and greek yogurt does not sound like a sustainable approach, or can you imagine eating like that the rest of your life?

And nothing 'only' about those 11lbs.

AnnPT77

If you want this to be the last time, focus on finding, practicing, and grooving in easy, sustainable, permanent changes in your routines: Eating and activity habits you can continue almost on autopilot forever when life gets complicated . . . because it will.

Fast loss tends not to accomplish that, so can be an on ramp back to weight yo-yos.

(Said from the perspective of 6+ years at a healthy weight so far, after 3 previous decades of overweight/obesity.)

nanastaci2020

11 pounds since June 12 is AMAZING. You mentioned losing & gaining 30 pounds repeatedly over the years, but did not indicate your overall weight loss goal. If you have 20 or so pounds to reach your final healthy weight, then .5-1 pounds per week is a realistic goal from this point onward.

Patience IS hard. Try to focus on the physical improvements you are making. Can you do more for longer now than 6 weeks ago? That is the real benefit - building a healthier you to enjoy life.

Chef_Barbell

Patience will be your friend in this journey. Wish you well.

fmichelle57

I really appreciate the feedback! My husband and I cook very well! Very different fun healthy foods-he gardens and I use it all! So eating like this to me is very attainable. Sure...let's add some bread or carbs back in at some time, but not right now! I have to lose 50 lbs total. I am seriously taking it 10 pounds at a time, but to not lose any weight in a week drives me crazy...can I repeat...I am a workhorse when it comes to work and life very impatient when it comes to myself! LOL

musicfan68

fmichelle57 wrote: »

I really appreciate the feedback! My husband and I cook very well! Very different fun healthy foods-he gardens and I use it all! So eating like this to me is very attainable. Sure...let's add some bread or carbs back in at some time, but not right now! I have to lose 50 lbs total. I am seriously taking it 10 pounds at a time, but to not lose any weight in a week drives me crazy...can I repeat...I am a workhorse when it comes to work and life very impatient when it comes to myself! LOL

You will have weeks you won't lose weight. You need to learn patience and slow down your weight loss. Otherwise you will get frustrated, burned out and quit, again.

sijomial

"but to not lose any weight in a week drives me crazy" - that's not a good place to be. People going for fast weight loss are massively over-represented on these boards reporting weight loss stalls and results not meeting expectation. And of course giving up and failing.

"I feel as though my mind is finally in the right place" - I would disagree, maybe in a better place but you are still driven by a need for rapid and consistent weight loss.
Ask yourself how much these slow weeks will matter in a year or five years from now?
You really have work to do on your mindset if you think 11lbs in a short timescale is described as "only".

"Tricks and Tips are so welcomed!!"
Tip - look far further ahead (months and years not days and weeks), slow down.
Tricks - main trick is to make the process sustainable, not absolutely miserable and as easy as possible. You can use your motivation and work ethic to do it right instead of do it fast.

AnnPT77

fmichelle57 wrote: »

I really appreciate the feedback! My husband and I cook very well! Very different fun healthy foods-he gardens and I use it all! So eating like this to me is very attainable. Sure...let's add some bread or carbs back in at some time, but not right now! I have to lose 50 lbs total. I am seriously taking it 10 pounds at a time, but to not lose any weight in a week drives me crazy...can I repeat...I am a workhorse when it comes to work and life very impatient when it comes to myself! LOL

One option: Direct your goals and your impatience toward the process, rather than toward the number on the scale. This shift in perspective can help with establishing the new habits you'll need to make this weight loss "the last time", but also exploit your determination and goal-driven workhorse tendencies.

By focusing on the process, I mean set goals about things like logging every day, consistently eating within calorie goal, maybe getting X number of steps or working up to half an hour of some exercise most days of the week, or things of that nature. These are things you can directly control - 100% in your power.

In contrast, the number on the scale is at best a secondary by-product of what you're doing, and while the scale will come around if you do the right things, it will come around in long-term trends, not day by day, week by week, or any limited time period. Our bodies can be 60%+ water, and healthy bodies stay healthy by letting that water retention fluctuate. Digestive contents (on their way to becoming waste) are also not completely controllable, but affect scale weight.

At best, your choices influence your scale weight, you don't 100% directly control it, in a short-term sense.

I'd strongly encourage you to focus on finding/establishing the habits that lead to a healthy weight, and not over-focus on the weight itself. Body weight is an outcome of life habits.

AnnPT77

@fmichelle57, just a bit of an additional cranky-granny meta comment from me: You're getting essentially the same advice from multiple people here, in general from people who've been successful at weight loss and in maintaining a reasonable weight longer term after loss. This isn't all just people theorizing, from their own perspective at the start of the process.

Yeah, the emphasis or phrasing differs from one reply-er to another, but it's all driving in the same direction.

I hear your frustration and eagerness (and understand it, believe me), but maybe give the voice of experience a little more of a serious think, rather than focusing on why it's not the right advice for you?

You may be right, it may not be the right advice for you. But please give it serious consideration. I'm quite certain everyone commenting sincerely wants to see you succeed. I know I do, for sure.

Readytokickass2003

Add me . I am new to this thing .I don't know how to add anyone . We can help eachother .

ktilton70130

sijomial wrote: »

"but to not lose any weight in a week drives me crazy" - that's not a good place to be. People going for fast weight loss are massively over-represented on these boards reporting weight loss stalls and results not meeting expectation. And of course giving up and failing.

"I feel as though my mind is finally in the right place" - I would disagree, maybe in a better place but you are still driven by a need for rapid and consistent weight loss.
Ask yourself how much these slow weeks will matter in a year or five years from now?
You really have work to do on your mindset if you think 11lbs in a short timescale is described as "only".

"Tricks and Tips are so welcomed!!"
Tip - look far further ahead (months and years not days and weeks), slow down.
Tricks - main trick is to make the process sustainable, not absolutely miserable and as easy as possible. You can use your motivation and work ethic to do it right instead of do it fast.

this is great information and feedback I found it very useful and needed the reminder to keep moving forward even though my weight loss appeared to have stall. I do feel better so I will continue to focus on that and use it as motivation.

fmichelle57

Does anyone else see that logging the daily foods doesn't seem to match the number they give you at the bottom after you have completed the diary for the day?
It's an incentive for me to see that in a 5 week period - you will weigh this amount...I get excited by it. I never go of course and I see that, for example 5 weeks ago, it said I would be 15 lbs lighter. That did not occur. I am wondering if it is really true??

Lietchi

The 5 week projection is pretty useless - I never paid attention to it. It's a bit of very basic math, and presuming every day in the following weeks will be the same.

You don't actually need to close your diary, BTW: all it does is give you the 5 week projection, and post on your wall

AnnPT77

fmichelle57 wrote: »

Does anyone else see that logging the daily foods doesn't seem to match the number they give you at the bottom after you have completed the diary for the day?
It's an incentive for me to see that in a 5 week period - you will weigh this amount...I get excited by it. I never go of course and I see that, for example 5 weeks ago, it said I would be 15 lbs lighter. That did not occur. I am wondering if it is really true??

To put a sharper point on it, for that prediction to be accurate:

1. We'd have to eat the same total actual number of calories every single day. We can't: Think about it. One apple is a little sweeter than the next (so more calories), one burger gets a little more oil on it in the frying, etc.

2. We'd have to move in ways that burn the same number of calories every single day: Same amount of moving around on the job, in home chores, exercise duration/intensity, all the same - or different mix of activities adding up to same calorie total. Not gonna happen.

3. Our logging would have to be exactly accurate. Product labels are allowed to be within a certain percentage of exactly exact, because regulators understand that variation can't be controlled exactly. We have to select accurate entries from the food database for every food we eat. We must not forget to log each bite, lick, taste, or sip of anything with calories. I don't know about you, but I make mistakes sometimes.

4. Our calorie needs would have to be exactly the average for people similar to us in the entries we put into the MFP profile (height, weight, age, etc.). In reality, not every single person is average. Most people are close (rarely spot on), but a rare few are fairly far off. That's just how statistics work. The calorie estimate is just a starting point. We may need to fine-tune goals once we get a couple of months of logging data, to be more in line with our individual needs.

5. Our activity level setting (or synched fitness tracker) needs to to be correct for our daily life activity level (not very active/sedentary, lightly active, etc.). There are only a small number of settings. How can that cover the full range of people's different lives exactly?

6. Our exercise calorie estimates (or those from a synched fitness tracker) need to be correct, too. Here again, people vary and will not burn the same number of calories in the same time period doing aerobics, or at heart rate 147, or whatever.

7. Our water weight fluctuations would have to . . . not fluctuate. Since our bodies can be 60%+ water, and healthy bodies stay healthy by shifting water weight in and out as needed, that's not going to happen. That's several pounds of variability up or down, right there. Digestive contents (on their way to becoming pee/poo) also vary day to day.

14. And more.

Does that mean calorie counting can't work? No.

Calorie counting can work. All of that stuff just needs to be close enough to accurate. That's achievable. Once we get some personal logging experience (month or two), we need to fine-tune our calorie goals to dial in our personal weight loss. That will give us even clearer expectations (MFP may or may not reflect that in the 5-week estimate, depending on what's happening in the data.)

Even then, there'll be some variability from week to week or month to month in our loss rate, but it'll be plenty close enough to let us succeed.

Don't let minor things like the 5-week prediction mess with your head. Staying clear-eyed about calorie counting as a skill, that can work on average, over multi-week periods, is a useful cognitive frame for sticking with it and actually succeeding.

lynz2137

me too and I'm turning 40 next month and getting married next year. Ready to commit!

ChickenKillerPuppy

What happens when you get to your goal weight? As another one of those people who has lost weight (50 pounds) and kept it off for several years, I hate to break it to you but there is no finish line.

Maintaining weight loss requires very much the same lifestyle as losing weight, with a little more flexibility in your calories. Developing habits that you can maintain once you reach your goal is critical to keeping the weight off.

If you want to live the rest of your life at your goal weight (or range), then getting there in 3 months or 6 months or a year is irrelevant because the work to maintain continues for the rest of your life. So cutting out food you like just because you want to lose weight faster can actually be counter-productive to your goal of maintaining your weight loss forever.

Once you really understand there is no finish line, the urgency will go away.