A lifestyle for losing weight and being happy.

karia17

Hello everyone, I finally joined a site!:)
I feel that most of my weight loss in the past wasn't keep off because I didn't feel accountable or happy with my accomplishments. I felt that even one cookie or going out to dinner for a birthday would ruin my diet and I would give up, restart and fail again. I am beyond ready for this cycle to end. I want it gone and to stay that way.
One of question is, indulging yourself a little here and there a good thing to maintain a healthier lifestyle?
I do want to lose the excess weight I have which is about 50-70 lbs. I know that indulging myself too much or too little will cause me not to get the results I want because I will either give up or eat too much.
I am trying to find that middle ground and I am not really sure where that starts, when I should say no and when I should give in a little. When I should push myself harder or when I should say today I did enough? I feel like I go from one extreme to the next. I have suffered from ED over this at times.
I am really trying to figure out what that middle ground is and stick with it.
Here's a little of what I've been doing to reach my goals. I work out about two-three times a week. 30-60 minutes of intensive cardio and two times a week strength training for about six weeks now.
I do not count calories as of now. They vary somewhat day to day. Should I be counting?
I am not a fan of the scale and feel it depresses me, is it good to weigh myself to be accountable?
I do not have a strict time limit of weight-loss I know things don't happen overnight and forcing that causes me to fail, I do however want to see steady results so I am hoping a year or under to lose most of the weight and keep it off for years to come.
What are some things I just have to do or cut out to get results?

Any tips for sticking with it or cutting out things slowly would be very helpful! or any tips at all! ))
thank you!

4legsRbetterthan2

Hey Karia -

Welcome and congrats on starting your new life, hopefully you will find the journey fun! Calorie counting is pretty important to your weight loss, and you have to log accurately and be honest for it to work. But basically in my opininon it is really the only way to truely track what you are doing to yourself and be able to accurately judge what kind of progress you should be making. Without the actual number everything is just theory and its hard to tell why things are or are not working. It can be a little scary, if you are worried about it just start logging and don't worry about the numbers the first week or two, just get in the habit. Then when you decide you are ready to make some changes start small. That might be just cutting out soda or finding a better option for your sweet tooth where you can still get your "fix" but in a healtheir way. A friend of mine had an interesting approach where he started with just breakfast, and made that healthy, and slowly changed all his meals over time and ended up with some really good results. In the end though, you are the best one to plan out your diet, you know what you can and can't live without. So start logging, make some friends on the site who can encourage and inspire you, and when you are comfortable with that start doing some reasearch and ask people what they do to cut the calories.

karia17

Thank you so much for the tips:) I am trying to slowly cut a few things that cause extra unnecessary calories. I also need to do more research on what calories I should consume vs. what I shouldn't to keep up my energy and results.
When I type in my goals and it gives me the calorie chart and how much fat etc. I should eat in a day is that fairly accurate?
It's hard to know exact calories if I eat out which I guess isn't a good sign, I should probably cut that out mostly as well.
I definitely want to learn more things to to cut out and better things to eat so I will be lurking around this site a lot!

FrauHaas2013

Hi, and WELCOME!!! Thanks for sharing your story - I find reading everyone's information quite inspirational and motivational!!! That being said, I am following the Food Lovers Diet. I was completely clueless growing up - I didn't know what good food was, the right combos, or even anything about portion size.

So needless to say I am a pretty picky eater, which is why I could never follow any sort of strict diet before. For me, the rule is "eat whatever you want - just keep it under 200 calories." So, if I'm really craving a piece of chocolate or some potato chips, I eat 'em! I just don't eat the whole bar or bag.

Incorporating the use of a kitchen scale has been a Gawdsend for me - I really had no idea how much bad stuff I was eating and how little good stuff I consumed!!!

Good luck to you on your journey - keep us informed!!!

allshebe

I think you really need to count calories or use the diabetic exchange system to get a handle on what you are actually consuming. You may need to weigh and measure your food to get an accurate calorie count - depending on how well you understand portions (or if you are consistent in estimating, that can also work if you then cut back on the amount you eat - if a "normal" portion is "so big", only eat half or 3/4 and you'll automatically be cutting back by some amount (I rarely weigh and measure, but probably tend to overestimate my portion sizes - at any rate, my method seems to work for me - your mileage may vary)). You don't need to make big changes - reducing consumption by as little as 250 calories per day (I think that's about 1 jelly donut, for reference purposes) should result in a loss of about 1/2 pound per week.

The big trap I used to fall into was to tell myself I could eat "X" because I had exercised "Y" minutes, without considering how the calories in "X" correlated to whatever calories I burned (and gym machines are notorious for over-estimating calorie burn).

For me counting everything has been the key to losing, but there are different ways to cont and you may have to experiment as to what method works best for you. Bottom line is you need to eat "slightly" fewer calories than you burn to force your body to burn some of "you" for energy. It seems like slower losses are both easier long term and more sustainable. If you restrict too much, it's easy to forget yourself when you reach goal and fall back into bad habits.