Afraid to lose too fast

fnm101

Hi everyone! Like many of you, I've been down this weight loss road before. I have about 20 pounds to lose, down from 30 pounds at the beginning of this past summer. I lost about 14lbs rather quickly, but gained half of it back once the fall and my busier schedule picked up. So here I am again, working off what I gained back, PLUS 14 lbs more.

Here's the thing....

I am so afraid of losing weight TOO FAST this time around. I know what to do to lose about 2 lbs/week, but I'm afraid that doing so will only backfire because it's not sustainable. At the same time, I keep telling myself that I just want the weight OFF and then I'll figure out how to maintain once I'm there.

Right now I'm trying to play the "lose a pound a week" game to hopefully see whether that's sustainable over time. But I'm really worried that the weight will take FOREVER to come off. Each day I keep debating how much of my exercise calories I'll "eat back" because I know that if I don't eat them back I'll lose a bit faster initially.

Is anyone else in the same boat? What do you do to balance the urge to drop the weight quickly?

Has anyone been down this road before and found that the 1lb/week versus 2lbs/week (or more) is more sustainable long-term? If so, have you found maintenance to be easier when you lost the weight more slowly?

(Btw, I have read a million posts about "eating back" exercise calories, so please don't start to lecture me on why I need to do that. I already get it.)

melsinct

This is my first time losing weight. Suddenly, last February, I realized an extra 30 pounds had crept up on me. I wanted to lose weight quick quick quick and set MFP to lose 2 lb/week. I ate 1200 calories a day, didn't eat back exercise calories, and was hungry. This lasted about a month and a half when I went into a 6 week plateau. Finally I started reading the MFP boards, realized I wasn't eating near enough food, and backed down my weight loss to 0.5 lb/week. That was last May and since then I have plateaued again, set MFP to maintenance for a little while, gained 2 lbs. during Christmas that I am now re-losing...but all in all, the slow loss has been very sustainable. I am a very impatient person, so losing slowly has been rough. However, looking back, I am glad I did it this way.