Getting back on again

Kinya4571

Question has anyone had a few bad days of going overboard and got back into on the healthy bandwagon of logging, exercise etc? Were you still ultimately able to meet your weight loss goals?

sollyn23l2

JJust About every month or two 🤣 as long as you pick yourself back up and keep going, you'll be fine.

yakkystuff

Yep

Consider it "practice"

Don't quit, just keep taking another crack at it. No need to wait for next meal, next day or next week... Just start again each time you eat... eventually, you'll get more consistent and have some good stretches going :)

Hang in... don't dwell in the guilt. Acknowledge the struggle, figure what to change or keep same, try more - you'll get there.

R0shyy

Yerrruppp, I'm trying to get back into a solid routine again but it usually kicks in when I start to feel terrible, bloated and generally depressed.

cmriverside

"acknowledge the struggle" Thanks, @yakkystuff

I think weight loss is one of those things about which I could say, "Two steps forward, one step back," and not feel bad about it. It took me a long time to gain that attitude, though.

We learn through our daily lives and work that there's a "RIGHT" way to do stuff. In weight loss there's a lot of distraction and a lot of psychological stuff that has to be sorted out. Although it's easy enough to lose weight (just eat fewer calories than you need to maintain your current weight) it's not at all easy to figure out how to do it comfortably and long-term.

age_is_just_a_number

yes. All the time. one, two … or seven days does not define us. This is a lifestyle not a diet. It is the consistency and trend over the long haul that matters.
I recently posted a precision nutrition article. I like their ‘dial’ approach. It really puts things in perspective for me.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10941290/some-good-reminders-doing-something-is-better-than-doing-nothing

littlegreenparrot1

I have to be mindful of not being all or nothing, and remember that it is not a moral failing.

PAV8888

anyone had a few bad days of going overboard and got back into on the healthy bandwagon of logging, exercise etc? Were you still ultimately able to meet your weight loss goals?

One of your very best friends when trying to manage your weight is yourself being able to step out of yourself and look at yourself from the outside 🤔

And then think through pretty much most of everything that is not helping you meet your goals! 🤣

By definition, everyone who ultimately meets their goals has had prior time periods where they weren't meeting them. Regardless of whether the time periods were short or long. So by definition everyone who has ever met their weight loss goals is encompassed within your statement. 😉

Weight management is not a time limited thing. People may want to manage it that way because they may be used to managing other aspects of their life that way. But weight loss, especially major weight loss (so this may apply more or less directly in any one particular individual) is an indefinite time thing.

One evolves away from the collection of behaviors, habits, circumstances, and choices that resulted in one weight level and modifies the collection first into one that allows for weight change to happen and then into one which allows for weight levels to be maintained.

And I do mean something by choosing the word "allows" instead of "causes".

It's a collection of long term behaviors and repeated, default, choices, not a collection of one time, exceptional, events.

So. Three "bad" days in a row. (Whatever bad may mean to you). TEN bad days in a row.

Three bad out of three is terrible! OMG 😱 Disaster! But what about three out of thirty?🤔

Ten bad out of ten means the world has ended!😱😡 OMG! But what happens when a year later it was ten out of 365?🤔

The trap is making things too difficult.

Difficult enough that you don't get back up on your little wagon as soon as you've hit the ground.

Difficult enough that you're hemming and hawing about continuing instead of immediately resuming your plan(s).

The time to implement the collection of behaviors you implement most of the time....is most of the time!🤣

I.e. immediately after straying away!😉

Think next meal. Not next day and not next week.

And, over time, as is to be expected, the majority of choices will bring about the results that correspond to that majority of choices!🤷‍♂️

SimpleZ!😉🤣

No need to wonder if it will work...because it can't NOT work!

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10941887/getting-back-on-again

Do I have days over calorie goal, maybe even days way over calorie goal? Days under nutrition goals? Days when I meant to work out but didn't? Sure. All of that.

I think I feel less angst-y about it though, because I don't usually use words like "bad days", "overboard" and that sort of thing. I think they're decisions, and sure, decisions have consequences. I also think that what matters for calories, nutrition, or exercise - any habits, really - is how well I'm doing on average over a period of time.

Also, I don't think there's a "bandwagon" I can fall off from. I think there's just life. Life is made out of time, and I have a lot of control over how I spend that time.

I like PAV's analysis above of how many on-goal days there are vs. off-goal days, and maybe thinking about whether we're increasing the ratio of on-goal to off-goal days (or weeks, hours, minutes, whatever).

It's maybe a personal fault, but I hate drama. I try to avoid imposing it on myself. If I choose to go over calorie goal, it's not necessary for me to think "I've ruined everything" or "I've already blow today, so I get back to it tomorrow" (when in reality that imagined "tomorrow" may or may not come quickly).

To me, thinking like that is like leaving my house to drive to work, finding I have a flat tire, and deciding to puncture the other 3 tires and go back to bed. Not productive.

If I decide to go over my calorie goal for a day or few, I need to own that decision . . . and also decide that if I want some long-term goal like weight loss, I need to return as soon as practical to habits that will achieve that.

In my experience, as long as I'm arranging my life toward more on-goal than counter-to-goal days, chipping away in a positive direction as much as I can, the consequences of over-goal episodes are typically not as major as I might imagine.

There's an example here of the kind of thing I mean: A long weekend of over-goal choices, then a return to normal healthy habits, with not much oh-so-awful impact on the overall course of events.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10603949/big-overfeed-ruins-everything-nope

Just my experience and opinions, though. YMMV.

yakkystuff

@cmriverside - nods, yes! Almost seems like we have a snarly tangled pile to unravel and put into workable ways for ourselves. It is an on-going, forward-looking process, for sure.

@PAV8888 - 'collection of behaviors' - i like that. Good way to describe it - a collection of lots of different things.

It has helped me to detangle and separate things, this meal, that meal and whatnot - easier than kitchen sinking the whole wad… which gets utterly overwhelming.