one week in

jmglitter

Hi everybody, after letting myself go for a few years, enjoying pizza and life without dieting I gained 25 pounds and it is time to lose it and put my dresses on again. I have been on a diet one week now, I quit wine a few months ago I think I am serious and committed to stay on this and wear a dress by Christmas. If anyone is in the same boat and needs to chat about motivation and keep the willpower to see this through without straying, let me know. the hardest part of a diet is starting and the second hardest part is staying on it. I find it a little easier to just eat the same foods all the time so i don't have to keep counting calories. why are the days so long when dieting? and why do i have to be so OBSESSED with dieting every minute of the day for this to work? probably because Im hungry haha. So I put a small pair of jeans I'd like to fit into on the table and on top of that, I put 20 little cards. Every week I will remove one card which signifies one pound. When the cards are all gone, so should my weight! Naturally I'd rather try for 1.5 or 1.3 pound a week loss but one pound is better than nothing if I fall short. Good luck to all of us! Think about the cute dress, not the treats in the freezer!!!!

Fursian

Hi, and welcome back :)

Firstly, congratulations on quitting the wine. I like your cards idea! I do however feel I have to warn you that weight loss is not linear, and unfortunately you may not see that 1 lb loss per week show up on the scale (even though you do everything right and are in a deficit), water weight amongst other things can hide our losses. I think definitely still keep the cards, removing them every lb lost, though!

If you haven't already, you might like to check some of the challenges out in the Challenges sub category, or the long running, friendly threads in the Motivation and Support sub, they may be of benefit to you.

All the best with your goals!

nossmf

Welcome and congrats on getting started! Stopping wine is a huge step, but I do see a couple warning flags in your post…

"why are the days so long when dieting? and why do i have to be so OBSESSED with dieting every minute of the day for this to work?"

Though you don't say it, this says to me you're starting with huge, whole-sale changes across the board, including deficits and food selections which may not be sustainable. By this I mean that for the moment you may have the willpower to stick to eating the same thing every day, to eating so little that you're always hungry, but I'm afraid all too soon you'll be later in the journey and life will happen: you'll run into a hiccup as mentioned by @Fursian and either not lose weight or even GAIN weight; you'll get extra stressed because of work, or family, or an appliance breaking down; you'll see a commercial advertising some food item you've given up, your stomach will growl, your willpower will disappear, and you'll be left wondering why on Earth are you doing this to yourself???

Let me suggest changing away from the idea you are "dieting until you can fit in the dress", and swap instead that you are adopting a new way of eating which is going to last for the rest of your life. Never having foods you enjoy sucks; thinking about nothing but the way you hate your food sucks; being forever hungry sucks. But losing weight doesn't have to be this miserable. With some careful thought and some moderation, you CAN fit in foods you like.

I've lost almost 45 lbs from my highest weight, and I still have nightly dessert (usually something chocolate), weekly donuts before church, monthly pizza and burgers. I don't get as much of each as I used to at one time, but I still enjoy every bite of them. And while eating the same foods each day does make calorie math easier, with practice logging and using this site you will become quicker and more adept at doing both and be able to expand your palate. My family has close to 50 meals we rotate between, forever enjoying variety as the spice of eating life.

You CAN do this without hating the process. We are not here at MFP just to do a sprint towards fitness; we are learning the steps to take for a lifelong journey, where there is no final destination, only waypoints to observe along the way. Come join us!

MaggieGirl135

I like the visual that you created with the cards. Keep us posted on your progress.