Living The Lifestyle Thursday. 5/18/23

imastar2

This is a thread for everyone. If you're new to GoaD, or to weight loss, your questions and comments are always welcome. If you're maintaining, or a long-term loser, your thoughts on the topic may be just what someone else needs to hear. If you're reading this, join in the discussion!

Each weekday, a new topic is offered up for discussion.

Monday - crewahl (Charlie)
Tuesday – Wildcard
Wednesday - misterhub (Greg)
Thursday -imastar2 (Derrick)
Friday - Wildcard

Today's Topic: Time! Is it your friend or enemy when it come to your weight loss or maintenance jorney.Do you feel it's on your side?

crewahl

Ah, time - the unknown element that’s NOT on the periodic table.

I guess I’d say it’s more that i’m on time’s side. I’m pulling for more time because I’m doing things and making choices that I hope will both extend and improve the time available to me. I can’t control it, but I can take steps to maximize it.

88olds

I learned incrementalism at the gym training with weights. It also helped that I started reading Arnold Schwarzenegger books. What he said was true. Just keep showing up doing sets and reps and slowly lifting more weight and you will build muscle. It will happen, it’s how our bodies are designed. The rest is just a function of repetition and time.

I reverse engineered this thinking into weight loss. Once I had a working WW points target and could do the calculations all I had to do was “keep showing up” and time would take care of the rest. And by showing up I don’t mean just going to the meetings. I mean doing the process. The WW process was a lot more complicated than the gym. But believing that it would work made all the difference to me. Time was on my side.

I think misunderstanding the time factor is what wrecks most programs. Unfortunately MFP encourages time centered thinking and does a great disservice to people here. On the Motivation board I frequently say “the calendar is not a weight loss tool.” Occasionally I win that point. But mostly folks remain stuck on the “suffer through it” trail. It makes perfect sense to want to end stuffing ASAP.

88olds

Another point on time. There’s a calorie counting learning curve. Folks start a program and throw up their hands and walk away at the first misstep. Its a wonder anyone learned to walk. Guess we hadn’t learned how to quit yet.

misterhub

I am going with friend. Unfortunately, most of us are very impatient people - expecting immediate results with a minimal input of effort.