FIRST TIME TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY

qttran06

Hello 👋 my name is Andy and I am currently on a weight loss journey. If you have any tip for me please tell me!

let's be stay motivated guys! 💪

nossmf

Welcome to the MFP forums, Andy!

Weight management is all about balancing on a teeter-totter the calories your body burns through movement (exercise, chores, walking to the fridge) and existing (breathing, heart beat, thinking about the mysteries of the universe) compared to what you eat. Eat less, weigh less. Eat more, weigh more.

Commercial diets tell you about the miracle ways to drop huge amounts of weight fast, fast, FAST!!! Several problems, though:

1. Most of them don't work (yes, they lied to you to get your money)
2. Of the ones which do work, once "done" most people revert back to old ways of eating and poof! Weight comes back
3. Most of them involve depriving you of something you found enjoyable, leading to a miserable time during
4. Many of these programs can screw up your internal body chemistry, leading to various health problems

Here at MFP, we encourage the tortoise-vs-hair method of weight loss: slow and steady will last forever, keeping you happy and healthy along the way. We don't sell "diets" we help you develop a "lifestyle." That style may include paleo, vegan, intermittent fasting, or any number of other eating patterns we can help you learn to perform safely.

First step is finding out where you are NOW. Gender, height, weight, and goal are all part of it, but so is an accurate idea of what you are eating and moving now. Get used to recording EVERYTHING, measuring EVERYTHING. Do this for 2-4 weeks. This serves to get you into a new habit, as well as setting a baseline so we know if you eat this much your weight either stays the same or changes by this much.

Once we have a good starting point, it's time to make one small change, track for 4-6 weeks, see if it works as intended. If so, great! Keep it up! Nothing else to change at this time! If not, that's ok, let's make another small change and repeat the process. Why small changes? First, it's a lot easier to accept a small change to your life than a drastic one, plus if we change five things at once, how do we know if all five helped or if only one did the trick and the others were all just along for the ride, making you miserable when they weren't even needed?

Second step (which you can actually do at the same time as the first step) is to read, read, READ! We have threads covering a huge variety of topics, from alternative ways to get enough protein in your diet to which exercise program may work best for you and more.

If you made it this far reading, you have more patience than your average newcomer to the forums, which means I really like your chances to succeed! Welcome again!