Day 2 and I want to quit already

Hi Mylyn,

I've been where you're at.
Please see my post under the Motivation Folder.
It's called "Find Your Motivation Now".
Hopefully it helps when the times get tough.

Take care and don't give up!

I'm new here and desperate to lose weight, but I can't control a diet and joining a gym and getting undressed in front of other men is out of the question. What can I do?

Do a ketogenic diet. You'll get results quickly and you don't need to exercise until you feel like it.

At first I was the same way. But then I was like if I just give up I just failed without trying and I knew that would hurt me more. Now that I lost 60 pounds I'm in that boat again. I just try to remember if I stop, I have to start over again so it is better to make mistakes and keep going. You also have to really want it. If you truly 100% want it you will find a way to make it stick. Maybe you haven't had your omg I need to do this moment yet. When that hits you will be more willing to go forward. I attempted to diet 4 times before having that moment. You will succeed once you decide it is time. Just remember nothing worth working for comes easy.

Do a ketogenic diet. You'll get results quickly and you don't need to exercise until you feel like it.

You can eat at a caloric deficit and never exercise and you'll lose weight. Period.

If you don't work out, you'll likely get to your goal weight and figure you need to lose 10-15 more pounds because you till look flabby and don't understand why.

Eat a reasonable deficit -- a moderated diet with ALL the foods you like, find physical activity you hate least -- do that 30-60 minutes 3-5 times week. You will get there.

Do a ketogenic diet. You'll get results quickly and you don't need to exercise until you feel like it.

You can eat at a caloric deficit and never exercise and you'll lose weight. Period.

If you don't work out, you'll likely get to your goal weight and figure you need to lose 10-15 more pounds because you till look flabby and don't understand why.

Eat a reasonable deficit -- a moderated diet with ALL the foods you like, find physical activity you hate least -- do that 30-60 minutes 3-5 times week. You will get there.

The reason the starvation of a reduced calorie diet works is because you're also reducing carbohydrates. If you just restrict carbohydrates you do NOT have to starve yourself. The second law of thermodynamics has NOTHING to do with dieting (Calories In/Calories Out.) Dieting has everything to do with controlling your insulin response as insulin is the hormone which stores glucose in your fat cells. If you always have insulin around (most people do), you're always storing fat. If you get rid of the insulin, you start using the fat for energy like we evolved to do over the past few million years. This is basic Science folks. The low-fat diet with 7-11 servings of grains each day is NOT helping our obesity problems, is NOT preventing heart disease and is NOT healthy!

I'll keep posting this until you guys stop telling me I'm rubbish just because I don't agree with your nonsense.

Exercise is a wellness tool. It is not a weight loss tool.

Most people feel better and function better if they get a modest amount of regular exercise. On average across the population, thin people get more exercise than heavy people. People who exercise regularly across a lifetime live longer. But the extrapolation of these observations – that if heavy people exercised a lot more they’d be thin and live longer – is not supported by science. Nonetheless, that is the message that many health care professionals and the media consistently communicate to heavy people.

Here are some basic (but often ignored) facts. Fitness is primarily an inherited trait. Training can increase aerobic power at most by 10-20%, but (figuratively speaking) a different choice of parents would increase or decrease your fitness by as much as 50%. It takes about 350 miles of running or 1000 miles of cycling to burn off 10 pounds of body fat (assuming that your appetite doesn’t increase or your metabolism slows down). Unfortunately, when heavy people exercise regularly, their resting metabolism slows – this is not a typo! – it SLOWS by 5 to 15% on average. Based on the results of 4 tightly controlled, inpatient human studies, instead of losing 10 pounds, the average person loses 7 pounds with this much exercise, and some people lose as little as 2 or 3. These studies specifically demonstrated that this less-than-expected weight loss was attributable to the observed reduction in resting metabolic rate.

Exercise done by heavy people causes a lot of collateral damage. Think ankles, knees, hips, and low backs. So here’s a radical idea: let heavy people try carbohydrate restriction first, lose some weight (which most do without resorting to exercise), and then let them decide when to become more active once they are empowered, energized, and lighter of foot.

Making heavy people exercise is punitive. Enabling heavy people to lose weight and then become more fit is smart.

Most people told me to pack high protein meals in and then eat veggies when I am hungry between meals. I have digestive issues and so raw veggies are harder for me to eat. I eat salad but I can't just munch celery all day. I have protein bars and almonds to munch on at work and then at night I try to eat cooked veggies. Making healthier choices that last and are not short term are the best for you. They are what will help you remain healthy and maintain weight.

That said, the first month was hard for me. I was hungry all the time. Due to my digestive issues, I had resorted to carbs for most of my meals in the past. They are easy for me but that caused me to constantly be hungry. I had to break that cycle. I would even say I had to retrain my body so that I wasn't always hungry. I would get headaches. Aggravation was a huge issue. It's hard to deal with work and in the back of your mind be thinking about how hungry you are. I've only recognized that I am less hungry over the last 3 weeks. I can sit at dinner and have everything measured out for my calorie limit for the meal and not have to eat it all. I can walk away satisfied and not feel like I am missing out.

I did not drastically cut my food intake and starve myself. I set myself up for success by having healthy foods on hand so I wasn't tempted to go grab junk. When I did grab junk food, mainly for stress eating, I didn't feel as guilty as I used to. Each meal and each snack is an opportunity to make a healthy choice. Small victories. I hope at the end of the day to be at my calorie target. I plan for it. I am not always successful. Each day I am I give myself a pat on my back. I had a lot of false starts over the last two years. This time I think I have learned what works for me. Hope some of this was helpful.

Please don't give up on you ! It is hard at first , but over time it will become a way of life

Friend request sent, good luck to you.

How about just concentrate on logging everything you eat for a week, with no restriction - just eat normally. Take your average calories for the week, and the next week try to average 250 less a day than that. After a week or two, if you are not losing a pound here and there, try to average 100 less than that. Forget calculators - use your weight loss/gain (averaged over a week or two) to know where to go. If you gained, you are eating more than you burn and need to cut back some. If you lost, and the rate is acceptable and reasonable, keep it the same until it stops then reevaluate. RInse and repeat.

And you can look into "volumetric" eating in the beginning... i.e. get a larger volume of food for fewer calories so you dont feel like you are eating less... I.e. watermelon - you can almost eat the whole thing. Salads with more lettuce and veggies and less dressing. Oatmeal with extra water.

Personally (and this definitely doesnt work for most people), I take my goal in 100 calorie increments... I.e. if my goal is 1700 calories - I can eat 17 times that day at 100 calories each time! That is at least once an hour, and a small salad is only 100 calories depending on what you put in it, so its not like I am eating peanuts (though sometimes I do!). Sometimes I do it in 200 calorie increments, etc. I like to eat often though, so I have to spread my calories out for it.

Figure out something that works with your style of living/cooking/eating. Work with that. It will be easier in the long run to keep it up and not feel like you are sacrificing much at all, so you can keep going much longer!