Mental Weight Loss

This page has really helped me to figure out how to lose weight without it being a stressful thing in life.
community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/3817-eat-more-2-weigh-less

Good question and a helpful explanation of your situation. So maybe we can help a little bit.

Yes there is a lot of mental in weightloss and its not very often discussed. But you've got some different issues than me. So your mental issues are different.

How do you prepare yourself mentally before beginning a weight loss journey?

So the issues you've identified are exercise, cooking and changes in routine/hubby home.

Strategy is the answer. You need to find strategies that can accommodate your needs and requirements. For example, when hubby is home sounds like you want to eat out all the time. Is that right. So that's only 4 days so maybe that's the time you can take a break from cooking and go with the flow but when he goes you have to get straight back on the cooking program. Or you could prepare a lot of foods so that you don't eat out quite so much but you don't have to cook either when he's there. If you have all these dishes already in your freezer, you get the best of both worlds. Of course you still can't eat like a crazy woman on those days. You still need to moderate your eating and try to make good choices.

Sounds like your exercise routine is already good enough. You don't need to do any more. Weightloss is more about diet than exercise. Keep doing what you are doing and don't do stuff if you don't think you can keep it going indefinitely. Seriously you don't need to do any more exercise. You are doing great as you are. I have lost all my weight this year with minimal exercise. A lot less than you in fact. And i've chosen to do this because its sustainable. IN the past i always did a lot of exercise with weight loos but when i stopped i'd regain. So now exercise is only what's sustainable.

Not liking cooking is probably your biggest problem. I do not think people can lose weight and keep it off in the longterm if they don't cook for themselves. The reason is that most bought food is over flavoured and causes over eating. Its also less nutritious. I have been through long periods where i do not enjoy cooking and do not do it beyond some spaghetti and tuna. Its a special phase i go through when i'm in weight gaining mode. I just eat a lot of sweets and not much vegetables. I also eat a lot of carbs in those periods such as cereals with milk.

This year i quit sweets. When i stop eating sweets, i have more palate for vegetables and other healthy foods. And then i can start to enjoy cooking. At the beginning of this year, i started out cooking all my meals but they were fairly simple. Fried rice, pasta, salads, bean salads (which were very useful and healthy meal for me because i don't eat meat). Fruit and natural yoghurt. Even at the beginning i was eating cornflakes for breakfast some days. But of course i never ate sugary cereals. So anyway find some simple recipes that are healthy for you. One thing i like is steamed then sautéed vegetables. I cook up about 400grams of these and include a potato. I sauté in 3tsp of olive oil. Its very yummy. You can add spices and herbs and top off with natural garlic yoghurt if you like. Its very simple and quick.

But eliminating the hyper flavoured foods from your menu is important. Another very quick and easy dish is grilled fish. Choose a nice quality of fish that you like. Atlantic salmon is a good one. Rub a little salt on the flesh, a small drizzle of oil and put it under the grill/broiler for a few minutes each side. Serve with lemon. That combination of vegies and fish is a perfect easy meal. You can vary it in many ways with different vegetables. Sometimes i add mushrooms which i don't team. Sometimes i add shredded greens which also don't need steaming. They just go into the sauté pot.

As time has gone on, i have explored cooking with more recipes because i need to find many ways to cook up vegetables. I cook a whole recipe so that i have several meals and can store it in the freezer. I try to have numerous dishes ready to go in the fridge at all times. This enables me to only heat things up when i'm hungry or with minimal preparation. I cook when i'm fresh and not tired or hungry. This is when you can focus on the cooking and enjoy it more.

I am enjoying my food more than ever and my cooking repertoire has grown and i do not begrudge cooking at all anymore.

When you live like this you can have a wide variety of foods in your cupboards. So food is always interesting. I have a variety of cheeses, a variety of nuts and seeds, in the freezer i have various seafoods and fish as well as leftovers. I even have package pastry but i don't cook those a lot of course. I also make savoury tarts from time to time but i have recognised that its better to make a bunch of small tarts rather than one big one.

Then there's nutrition. Keep your protein up and your carbs down. Minimise refined sugar radically. chuck it out of the house. I do use a little sugar but in savoury dishes only. I do eat sweets on occasion but only about once a month. When someone else offers it to me. I didn't have any at all for the first three months of my diet. I eat lots of fruit. I like fruit, yoghurt and mixed seeds as a combination.

Now for the mental stuff. For weightloss i think its important to get into a very good headsapce mentally at the beginning and then you need to keep it going. Some books help a lot. i would recommend French women don't' get fat. Its a lovely book with some nice ideas. I adopted her approach of eating in courses . Anyway diet books (good ones) are motivating.

In the beginning you have to do a lot of mental priming. As you don't have the distraction of your hubby most of the time, you have the perfect conditions to do this.

Make rules for yourself. Rules you can stick with. Such as no eating after dinner. No snacking between meals except on fruit. I find rules very very helpful. But now, after 10 months, i don't even need to think about them at all anymore. Its become second nature.

Food logging is essential. And regular weighting. Log both your food and weight in a spreadsheet on your computer and keep a diary. Forums help to keep you motivated as well. You do need to be a bit obsessive in the beginning. Never overeat. Try to avoid going hungry. and read books that have a psychological aspect to weightloss such as the one by Judith Beck.

Work out your own diet program. And stick to it, modify it when it becomes evident that modifications are necessary. In the beginning i found it helpful to eat my three meals fairly close together. this enabled me to avoid hunger. And then i think i was losing weight overnight when i was asleep and not feeling the hunger. I did not cut calories severely and this was also key to avoiding hunger. You just need to cut them enough to keep the scale going down.



Good luck.

I don't know what you should do, but I am starting out and some things that are helping me.

1. Taking things in baby steps
2. Being flexible- I have tried a few different strategies for exercise and I think I have something now that I can stick with
3. Don't rush if you don't have to. It's not a race, you are making lifestyle changes.
4. If you wait for the right time, the right motivation, you won't start. just make a little change and you will get going.

For many of the reasons that you describe, I have recently begun using the Beck Diet Solution Workbook. It offer daily exercises based on cognitive behavioral therapy to help you develop the habits of sticking to your plan. One of the most useful exercises I have found so far is one that I thought I would stop doing the day after it was assigned, but it really is helping. I now pre-plan my food for the day, usually the evening before. I knew I would be out of the house all day today, and that I would be having a lunch where I had no control over the where. I brought along a snack to eat before lunch so that I wouldn't be STARVING when deciding what to eat. I still have snack for later in my bag so that I am not tempted to go grab fast food. Tomorrow is my birthday and I can already tell you where we are having lunch. The celebration is event focused, so without that lunch plan, we would probably have ended up at traditional fast food. Another thing that generally helps me stay motivated is to set goals that are independent of the scale: Eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day, drinking X amount of water every day, riding my bike on a specific path. I even have some of these goals set for when I am close to my goal weight. For example, my husband has promised to take an acroyoga class with me when I am no longer overweight, so I need to keep up with my flexibility and strength exercises!

As for eating, I just tend to do better if I focus my diet itself on proteins, veggies, and healthy fats, with occasional fruits and whole grains (ie, South Beach/ Sonoma/ Mediterranean style). I am one of those people for whom starches and sugars can be a trigger for a downward spiral.

For exercise, I have to like most of it, especially the cardio. I walk, dance, bike and hula hoop on a regular basis. It is easier to tell myself to get up and do the strength because it is usually only about 20 minutes and my flexibility exercises help me feel better immediately.

Personally my road block was the feeling that I loved food and would have to give up "bad" food. The last time I was truly successful at losing weight I was on a low carb diet and had to give up "bad" carbs. This time around I'm using macros - and if it fits, I can eat it. And that fact is much less stressful for me. This morning I had a waffle with my kids, so I don't feel like I'm being denied anything.

I prepared for it the same way I prepare for everything else I get myself into in life.

I shrugged, and said "Ok, well... this is what I'm going to do." The next day, I got a gym membership, downloaded MFP, and started keeping track of my calorie intake.

Then again, I'm the type of person that the second I decide to do something, I generally become extremely emphatic about it sometimes to the point of obsessing. lol