the TRUTH about weightloss
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1.an added responsibility/work for all overweight people
2 .while the normal weight can focus on better things in life than us
3. being overweight because of thyroid or medical conditions Sucks0 -
1. I had no idea how to eat in a healthy manner and had to learn to do that.0
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bump x0
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ALL of the above (mainly)
Goal weight is a lovely number to reach however maintaining that number requires an understanding that the smaller the body (weight) the less calories needed to maintain.
So if you're going low work that maths.0 -
1. It takes a while. It took me a month and a half of exercise and eating at a deficit to lose 5lbs. I'm not very big either so that slows things down.
2. this is your journey. No one elses. You can't expect others to change just because you decide to. And it's not your job to harp on anyone or annoy people with it.
3. You have to be consistent.
4. Portion control and food weighing is soooooooooo important.
5.Even if your body isn't immediately changing from the outside, it's changing from the inside. Be patient. See #1. :flowerforyou:0 -
1) This is about me. I am not on a "diet", I am learning how to eat healthy. New habits take a while to form and overcome 50 years of bad habits. I have good days and bad days. I get mad and frustrated, but then move on.
2) I have to keep track of what I eat. It puts me in control. (it's a mind game)
3) My brain's portion control monitor does not work, I need measuring cups and spoons, a scale and a food diary!
4) I need to drink at least 48 oz of water daily or my weight loss slows down.
5) Learning to eat right is confusing because there is so much conflicting information out there. I had to find out what works for me and it takes a lot of research. There are too many people pretending to be experts. I have to tune them out because it confuses me and then I lose focus. Eating right should be simple not a science project!
6) Good nutrition does matter. It helps me stay off medciation for diabetes, cholestrol and blood pressure. In order for weight to come off there has to be a calorie deficit, but eating food that is good for me matters as much as how much I eat. Low calorie nutritious food allows me to eat more and still be within my limit.
7) Food has to taste good. Variety helps, discovering new recipes and cooking methods keeps me going.
8) For me, eating sugar is an addiction. I have to avoid it, if I start eating it I have a hard time stopping, no different than an alcoholic. (But I still eat it sometimes!)
9) I hate exercise for the sake of exercise. Life is too busy to spend it in a gym. I have a hard time making this a habit! (Please don't tell me how important it is, I know why, but I still don't like it)
10) This is a journey, it will take time, but don't focus on the time. 150 pounds is a lot, but 2 pounds at a time I can handle!0 -
1. Losing weight is easy. Maintenance is a b*tch
1st corollary: It's never too early to begin cultivating a good maintenance mindset, along with the skill set you'll need to be successful long term.
You'll need to settle into a sustainable exercise routine at some point anyway - at least as far as the amount of time you're willing to devote to it is concerned. And you'll have to learn to "eat normal" at some point anyway, and conditioning yourself to normal sized servings is a really tedious process if you're used to having a lot of super-sized variety in your diet. It's best to face both issues early in your diet when your enthusiasm and resolve are at their highest. The transition to maintenance will be a lot easier if you do.
Wait, what? Exercise? What is this thing you call exercise? :huh:
You don't "have" to exercise to maintain weight. And eating "normal" is what got us to our starting weight, so clearly a new normal is needed. Weight maintenance is a kitchen thing, not a gym thing. And if you've been dieting to lose weight, you already have the skills to maintain your weight. All you have to do is the same things you were doing to lose weight, except you have additional calories that you can either eat, or that you no longer have to burn through exercise.
So if you're like me, and you skipped the exercise option because you knew it wouldn't be a sustainable lifestyle change, then you can just eat more than you were before. Woohoo! :drinker:
Or if you've doggedly stuck to the grind and exercised your way to your goal weight, you can simply continue to eat the way you've been eating during your weight loss journey, but ease up on the exercise a bit. :drinker:
If you're one of those bizarre people that likes to exercise, you can do the same level of exercise as before, but allow yourself more calories to eat each day. :drinker:
In all three scenarios, it's still a win, because you get to do more of what you like to do. :bigsmile:
If a sustainable exercise routine for you is no exercise at all, then so be it.
The key word is "sustainable." My point is that it's not a great idea to jack up your calorie budget with an insane level of exercise just so you can eat more. There are other, better reasons to exercise. And burn outs are best avoided, if possible, whether on the calories in or calories out side of the equation. They have a way of being counterproductive.
And of course a "new normal" diet is needed. What seems "normal" at any given point is whatever you're been habituated to, which was the whole point of my post. People who have successfully dieted to lose weight do not necessarily have the best set of skills to maintain their weight. In fact they often don't, or so many wouldn't fail at it. And the failure to establish a favorable "new normal" is responsible for more than a few of those failures.
So many people restrict their diets to a short list of mostly low cal "clean" foods, meal after meal after meal. That's a relatively easy way of doing it - for a while - but then they reach goal (or burn out) and get into trouble when they go back to eating foods that had been temporarily placed off limits. Their portion control skills come up short because the "normal" that got them to their starting weight hasn't changed for those foods.
My strategy was to "start as I meant to continue." I couldn't see life without pasta and bacon, so I regularly included both in my diet along with any number of other "unclean" things. I just stopped super-sizing my servings and going back for seconds. My diet is cleaner than it used to be, but nearly all of the changes have been lateral in terms of my enjoyment and satisfaction. I haven't given up anything that I miss. So... more than 2 years of maintenance after a loss of nearly 60 pounds and my BMI is still below 20.0 -
1) Don't listen to ignorant people who fail continuously and judge you while doing so...
2) Stay persistent and have a LOT of patience
3) It's okay to slip up sometimes as long as you continue
4) Exercise is amazing for me (helped me the most out of all the changes I made)0 -
As soon as you lose the weight, you find 10,000 other things "wrong" with you! lol0
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1. It's OKAY to be hungry.
2. You don't have to finish what other people don't eat.0 -
As soon as you lose the weight, you find 10,000 other things "wrong" with you! lol
Sooo true 0 -
The reading below is what I've found to be very true about weight loss...
http://body-improvements.com/2013/05/24/undiet-your-diet/
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1122891-9-reasons-fat-loss-is-always-slower-than-you-d-like
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1105036-article-on-flexible-dieting-by-armi-legge?page=1#posts-17068746
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants0 -
1. Discipline is more important than motivation
2. Nothing is more important than calories
3. Everything else is a minor detail0 -
It's interesting to me that so many people say no food is bad food, and that fast food is not the enemy, and other stuff like that. To me, it's important to eat nutritious food. Or else, I'd have a very hard time keeping to a low calorie count.
Most of those people don't mean that you can or should eat fast food, chocolate, bacon, whatever all day every day. They mean that it's perfectly fine to work it into your day. Yes, fill up mostly on fruits, veggies, lean proteins, etc (everything you're calling nutritious food). But if you love bacon, work it into your day (it's got protein and fat, and mostly people can easily have 2 slices without totally throwing off their calories). Allow yourself fast food once in a while if you like it, again fit it into your day or compensate through the week. I have ice cream most nights, but that's because I've learned how to make sure there is room for 1 serving in my calories while still reasonably meeting my macro needs and getting the micros (and note that it's 1 serving, 1/2 cup, most of the time, not a pint every night!)0 -
1. Everybody is different so find out what works for your own physiology/lifestyle/age/state of health or ability.
2. Experiment with food, try excluding certain things so see if you are sensitive to it when you re-introduce it - for me it jump started my weight loss effortlessly and cleared up my IBS and mood swings when I stopped eating gluten and sugar.
3. You can rediscover your love of cooking by preparing all your own meals from scratch
4. You can save money AND time by cooking up batches of healthy food for the busy week ahead
5. Weighing yourself every morning keeps you honest and focused
6. Recycle your big clothes; if you are a 14/16 then everything 18 and above can go to a charity shop to sell on - another (now expensive) reason not to gain weight again!
7. This is not a diet. Diets don't work for me, I've changed the way I eat and exercise for ever. I got my self-respect back.0 -
1. Buy a food scale and create a habit out of using it. Most of us are terrible at eyeballing portions!
2. Dedication and persistence are key!
3. There are no bad foods and good foods. Give your body the nutrition it requires, but don't cut foods out of your diet you don't plan on avoiding for the rest of your life.
4. Patience!
5. You don't need to starve yourself to lose weight. A moderate deficit is all you need.
6. Did I mention patience? It may sound twee, but there is truth in the statement 'the weight didn't go on overnight, and it won't come off overnight'.0 -
Diets don't work in the long run - permanent lifestyle changes do.0
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1. My goals for my body and fitness level are the only things that matter. This is not a competition and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. I'm the only person who needs to be happy with the end result.
2. I'm the opposite of most in that my eating habits are much better when I relax and don't worry about every morsel that I eat. I stay within calories, but I do not get into the minutiae.
3. The best workouts are the ones that I will stick to.
4. Accepting that this is the first time that I've ever been overweight and it's going to take longer than it did to lose the 10-15 vanity pounds that I have in the past.0 -
Diets don't work in the long run - permanent lifestyle changes do.
MFP sure loves its tautologies....0 -
Amen.....0
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It's all just math.
When people stumble, it's because they're doing the math wrong.
Wishful thinking leads to bad math.
Maintaining is easy when you minimize deprivation during the weight loss phase, but you still have to track everything accurately.
Sometimes, you just have to eat everything in sight. And that's okay. As long as you do that less often than before, you're good to go.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. Speaking of marathons and sprints, exercise is really not necessary to lose weight, and should be undertaken to achieve other fitness goals, not simply to burn calories that can then be eaten. It's easier to burn calories by not eating them in the first place. No cupcake is worth an hour at the gym.
Sometimes a simple substitution can make your math much more favorable. Knowing which components of a meal are the real calorie killers is essential. Fill up on the low cal stuff, and savor the smaller portion of the high-cal stuff.
Fast food is not the enemy.
When you're conscious and you count calories, you can eat things that you'd previously thought were off-limits, which feels very indulgent.
Weigh in the morning, every morning. After you pee/poop, but before you shower. Not only will you be your lightest at that time of day, it's the most consistent baseline for measuring your progress.
Did I mention that it's math? Because it's math.
If you don't know why you're not losing weight, it's because your math is off and you're eating at maintenance. Pie in the sky thinking with regards to calorie intake and the calories burned through exercise (and then "eaten back") leads to unintentional maintenance, i.e., "plateau".
People, really, really, really, don't want want to be told they're eating too much. They want to have their cake and eat it too. Literally.
Losing weight feels good, and so does keeping it off, and it's totally worth it. But it shouldn't consume your life and your thoughts.
Some people want you to fail. Some people on this very website want you to fail. You can tell who those people are because they pooh-pooh the importance of calories, even though the whole point of this website is to track calories.
Some people want you to succeed. Sometimes to help someone succeed, they have to tell you what you don't want to hear. Any time you hear something that you don't want to hear, pay attention, because that might be what you need to hear.
Smileys are fun. :drinker: :smokin: :devil: :flowerforyou: :noway: :grumble: :explode: :laugh: :bigsmile: :huh:
^^ So happy you are on my friend list. Every single thing here is true!! Thanks for the reminder!!
Edited since I just figured out how to BOLD! :-)
I also love this and am greatful to have you in my friends list! I have learnt alot from your threds along with other cool people i have come across along the way! Thanks again!0 -
Deleted -- see my response below.0
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It's interesting to me that so many people say no food is bad food, and that fast food is not the enemy, and other stuff like that. To me, it's important to eat nutritious food. Or else, I'd have a very hard time keeping to a low calorie count.
Most of those people don't mean that you can or should eat fast food, chocolate, bacon, whatever all day every day. They mean that it's perfectly fine to work it into your day. Yes, fill up mostly on fruits, veggies, lean proteins, etc (everything you're calling nutritious food). But if you love bacon, work it into your day (it's got protein and fat, and mostly people can easily have 2 slices without totally throwing off their calories). Allow yourself fast food once in a while if you like it, again fit it into your day or compensate through the week. I have ice cream most nights, but that's because I've learned how to make sure there is room for 1 serving in my calories while still reasonably meeting my macro needs and getting the micros (and note that it's 1 serving, 1/2 cup, most of the time, not a pint every night!)
EDIT: Sorry, I meant to reply to this.
In that context, I can see what you mean. Personally, I started learning how to spot "real food" before I trained myself on how to eat less food. Most of the menu items at fast food restaurants barely qualify as food. Many items in the supermarket have little nutritional value. Once I started eating nutrient-dense foods (and that includes high-fat foods such as bacon) on a regular basis, I could not go back to the fast-food lifestyle. In fact, I can't even eat a fast food burger now. Tried it. I just can't do it. So, I do worry about telling someone who is looking for a healthier diet that you can go ahead and work in those fast food meals. I think that if you avoid fast food for long enough, your body changes and craves what's good for it rather than the chemicals they put into junk food.0 -
@ Siansonea, I heart your posts!0
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Well said!1. Love and accept yourself before you lose the weight. Otherwise your journey will be centered around negativity and you won't be happy at your goal weight.
2. Measure everything. The little devil on your shoulder wants to convince you that portions are bigger than they really are.
3. Strength training may not burn many calories while exercising, but it sure makes you feel and look amazing.
4. Read more scientific articles. This does NOT include mainstream media articles. Read everything skeptically and critically in order to prevent yourself from subscribing to myths with little to no scientific basis.
5. Associate yourself with people who actually know what they're talking about. You will learn so much from them.
6. Stop calculating "lose X much weight in Y amount of time." It will only disappoint and frustrate you when you don't meet your unrealistic goals.
7. People have different definitions of "healthy food" and though this is frustrating, you will most likely polarize the people you try to get to see your side of things. Just care less about them and focus on what works for you.0 -
bump0
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1, The scales in the kitchen are so much more important than the ones in the bathroom
2, Be patient.
3, If you have a bad day, have a good tomorrow.
4 Be honest with yourself, if you eat that chocolate and don't log it, it still counts.
5 When you have a victory, shout it from the rooftops, success breeds success.
6 Exercise can be fun, especially cardio.0 -
Just remembered one more rule:
4. Nobody stalls on 800 calories a day.0 -
Mr_Knight1. Discipline is more important than motivation
2. Nothing is more important than calories
3. Everything else is a minor detail
This^^^ I see you already added to your list.
I'll add to it, too.
5. It's really ok to feel hungry and not eat.
6. Utilize your impulsivity for exercise instead of eating.0 -
1. You have to log everything and weigh every bite you put in your mouth.
2. Exercise is NOT the key to weight loss, diet is.
3. If you think to lose weight you have to suddenly begin exercising 6 hours a day and radically alter your eating habits with some fad diet, you are much more likely to fail.0
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