Never Give Up, Never Surrender

Dawndiva1

Hey virtual reality fitness fam, I’m Dawn. I’ve been a weight loss warrior for most of my adult life. I’m hoping to connect with people who have been living this journey. I’ve been up and down with my weight, but now I want to get to the bottom of this roller coaster ride. Maintaining has always been challenging. I have 25 lbs to shed and I’m looking for an accountability partner or partners.

AnnPT77

Hello and welcome!

I'm not an accountability partner candidate, I'm sorry to say, since I'm at a whole different phase of the process: Currently in year 9+ of maintaining a healthy weight, after just under a year to lose around 50 pounds, which came after about 30 pre-loss years of overweight/obesity.

You might want to check out some of the challenge, support or accountability groups or threads over in the Motivation and Support or Challenges sections of the Community. Your experience may differ, but for me individual buddies didn't work out very well. Most of them faded fast, to be truthful, which was more discouraging than motivating. I've gotten more out of participating here in the Community. The cast of characters still changes to some extent, but there's at least a continuity of supportive discussions.

I feel like a key to getting off the roller-coaster is finding a personalized set of tactics that can become new, routine permanent habits. When I first started losing, I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to continue forever in order to stay at a healthy weight, except for a sensibly moderate calorie deficit until I reached a good weight.

I have to admit, I did that more out of hedonism than insight: I knew I was/am too weak a character to stick to anything that was actually actively unpleasant or required constant discipline/motivation/willpower. Those are not my strengths! 😆

In retrospect, that decision helped create an on-ramp to maintenance for me. Loss was a series of experiments - not all of them successful! - to find tolerable, practical, somewhat more positive routine habits. By the time I got to maintenance, all I had to do was add back some calories, and keep up with those established new habits I'd been practicing.

Wishing you success: If your experience is like mine, the quality of life improvement from being active and at a healthy weight has been huge, more than worth the effort it took to accomplish.

Dawndiva1

thank you for the words of encouragement. I am motivated to maintain and I totally agree with you .this has to be something that you can continue to do for the rest of your life. Congratulations on finding your healthy space. I will definitely look into some challenges and community.