Size Issues.
Options
MindySaysWhaaat
Posts: 401 Member
I've lost and gained a lot of weight multiples times. I consider myself the queen of the yo-yos. I've always heard about people saying "You'll stay motivated by how your clothes feel." This is my problem:
When I weighed 253lbs before my last WW jaunt (I'm so done with WW btw) I wore a size 3X top and a size 22 jeans. I lost weight and got down to 210lbs, and even though I had lost 43lbs (woohoo) I only went down one size in both shirts and pants in a year, and my bra size didn't even change at all. I found it very discouraging. That plus a personal tragedy kinda bumped me off the wagon. Long story short I gained all that and then some in a little over a year.
Does anyone else have this problem or any idea how to not let my head get to me? I'm starting over again, and even though I'm not currently psyching myself out, I'd like to try to figure out how to deal with it before it starts bugging me.
When I weighed 253lbs before my last WW jaunt (I'm so done with WW btw) I wore a size 3X top and a size 22 jeans. I lost weight and got down to 210lbs, and even though I had lost 43lbs (woohoo) I only went down one size in both shirts and pants in a year, and my bra size didn't even change at all. I found it very discouraging. That plus a personal tragedy kinda bumped me off the wagon. Long story short I gained all that and then some in a little over a year.
Does anyone else have this problem or any idea how to not let my head get to me? I'm starting over again, and even though I'm not currently psyching myself out, I'd like to try to figure out how to deal with it before it starts bugging me.
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Replies
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Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?0
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Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?
This.
For me, it's looking at myself naked and knowing how much better my body looks. And I'm really nerdy so I like looking at the graphs of downward trend in weight and upward trends in fitness. I also love the game-like aspect of the MFP method: you get points for doing exercise, points mean prizes (cake), you set goals (levels) and when you reach those goals you pat yourself on the back and level-up. Like in games, it gets harder as you go along, but providing you set yourself reasonable goals and reward yourself for achieving them it can be great.0 -
mumblemagic wrote: »Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?
This.
For me, it's looking at myself naked and knowing how much better my body looks. And I'm really nerdy so I like looking at the graphs of downward trend in weight and upward trends in fitness. I also love the game-like aspect of the MFP method: you get points for doing exercise, points mean prizes (cake), you set goals (levels) and when you reach those goals you pat yourself on the back and level-up. Like in games, it gets harder as you go along, but providing you set yourself reasonable goals and reward yourself for achieving them it can be great.
Love this! OP, check out the post "What is your WHY" ... it talks a lot about finding your internal motivation and has a lot of inspirational posts
Good luck!0 -
mumblemagic wrote: »Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?
This.
For me, it's looking at myself naked and knowing how much better my body looks. And I'm really nerdy so I like looking at the graphs of downward trend in weight and upward trends in fitness. I also love the game-like aspect of the MFP method: you get points for doing exercise, points mean prizes (cake), you set goals (levels) and when you reach those goals you pat yourself on the back and level-up. Like in games, it gets harder as you go along, but providing you set yourself reasonable goals and reward yourself for achieving them it can be great.
The only motivator I've found that works is the scale. When the number is consistently going down, I feel good and keep going. But that only lasts for a little while and then I almost get an unhealthy obsession towards it (weighing every day is bad etc). When I looked in the mirror (even naked) at 210lbs, I honestly couldn't see a difference from when I was 40lbs heavier. The only time I ever realized that I was smaller was when I recently put two pictures of myself side by side from the heaviest and the smallest. I wish I had done that sooner because I was amazed at how well I did, and then super ashamed because now I'm even bigger than my previous "heaviest."
It also doesn't help that I think my brain is wired wrong. When people start noticing that I'm losing weight and compliment me I start getting anxiety. I think that's when I start to sabotage myself.
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Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?
Agreed.
I want to look good naked, which has nothing to do with clothes. But I also want to be healthy. I know that when I was younger (in my teen years) (and obese) that I wasn't healthy. Having a health scare scared me enough to want to stop yo-yoing. You have to find your reason to want to do this (and stick with it).0 -
mumblemagic wrote: »Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?
This.
For me, it's looking at myself naked and knowing how much better my body looks. And I'm really nerdy so I like looking at the graphs of downward trend in weight and upward trends in fitness. I also love the game-like aspect of the MFP method: you get points for doing exercise, points mean prizes (cake), you set goals (levels) and when you reach those goals you pat yourself on the back and level-up. Like in games, it gets harder as you go along, but providing you set yourself reasonable goals and reward yourself for achieving them it can be great.
Love this! OP, check out the post "What is your WHY" ... it talks a lot about finding your internal motivation and has a lot of inspirational posts
Good luck!
I can't seem to find the post for "what is your why"![:\](https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/resources/emoji/confused.png ":\")
Is there a way to link me to it? Thanks.
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I feel that way too. I think its because I'm so tall. I lost 50 lbs in college and only one size. It is frustrating, but at the same time think of all the money we save!0
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When you're larger, the size you wear can last for a while. It took me close to 25 pounds to drop a size; now I'm doing it about every 10-15 pounds.
There is nothing wrong with weighing every day as long as you're mindful of the fluctuations, but do you take measurements as well? Those can also help you see how much you're losing.0 -
When you're larger, the size you wear can last for a while. It took me close to 25 pounds to drop a size; now I'm doing it about every 10-15 pounds.
There is nothing wrong with weighing every day as long as you're mindful of the fluctuations, but do you take measurements as well? Those can also help you see how much you're losing.
Even when I'm weighing every day, I only try to look at weekly weigh-ins. That way as long as the overall is down a bit, I feel like I'm doing alright. I never have tried to take measurements of myself. Maybe I should give that a try.
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mumblemagic wrote: »Honestly for me clothing isn't a motivator. It's either too tight, too loose, or too expensive. Maybe something else would motivate you better?
This.
For me, it's looking at myself naked and knowing how much better my body looks. And I'm really nerdy so I like looking at the graphs of downward trend in weight and upward trends in fitness. I also love the game-like aspect of the MFP method: you get points for doing exercise, points mean prizes (cake), you set goals (levels) and when you reach those goals you pat yourself on the back and level-up. Like in games, it gets harder as you go along, but providing you set yourself reasonable goals and reward yourself for achieving them it can be great.
The only motivator I've found that works is the scale. When the number is consistently going down, I feel good and keep going. But that only lasts for a little while and then I almost get an unhealthy obsession towards it (weighing every day is bad etc). When I looked in the mirror (even naked) at 210lbs, I honestly couldn't see a difference from when I was 40lbs heavier. The only time I ever realized that I was smaller was when I recently put two pictures of myself side by side from the heaviest and the smallest. I wish I had done that sooner because I was amazed at how well I did, and then super ashamed because now I'm even bigger than my previous "heaviest."
It also doesn't help that I think my brain is wired wrong. When people start noticing that I'm losing weight and compliment me I start getting anxiety. I think that's when I start to sabotage myself.
That is why I do not point out other people's weight-- esp at work. It feels private to me.
Somehow we have to get past people talking about our bodies. Those people mean well.
Learning breathing techniques has helped me feel less anxious and more comfortable. Here is a video.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sd94Gh4lKOA&index=1&list=PLhiNtEBsgk1SKo-3NnmoWMeu_BkRS_kgw
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What motivated me was weighing in every other day. It took me until i lost 40 lbs before i really started to notice a difference in clothing0
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I love clothes and especially the way they fit now, but honestly I live in my workout clothes so I don't have that many outfits that aren't for that. I cycle around about 5 sweaters all winter and although I have more, I usually only wear one pair of jeans, one pair of black pants and 2 pairs of Athleta skinny pants (that I use for going out and to the gym). So those 9 pieces are my base.
What really motivates me not to gain weight is how I feel. Don't get me wrong, I love the way I look, but I look my way because of the workouts I do and the food I eat.0 -
For me its focusing on forming good habits. Motivation can come and go, but habits have better staying power, so you don't start over you just keep going.0
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Clothes stretch, too. I thought I hadn't lost a size because my 18s still fit fine, but I went to the store and the 14s (same brand) fit perfectly.-1
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Clothes stretch, too. I thought I hadn't lost a size because my 18s still fit fine, but I went to the store and the 14s (same brand) fit perfectly.
I kind of had the opposite problem recently. I didn't realize I had reached the 260's because my clothes still pretty much fit. For the last year though I've basically lived in leggings and men's sized graphic t-shirts. I only realized I was getting bigger because my t-shirts started getting tight. At first I thought I was shrinking them in the dryer since I moved out of my parent's house and started doing my own laundry. Then I got on my scale and basically got the shock of my life
I just recently realized I was even a size 24 in jeans. I thought I was only a 22, and then I went to Lane Bryant over the weekend and none of the 22s fit, so I ended up with a 24.
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Hi there! You sound a lot like me except I am bigger than you. I am in a 26-28. I also noticed when I started losing weight in the past and when people noticed, usually men, I would freak out and sabotage myself. I finally realized that it was due to a traumatizing experience when I was a child. You need to find out why you are doing that to yourself.
As far as the motivator clothes don't really motivate me. It's how I feel. Seeing that I am not out of breath to do certain tasks, having more energy ect. You have to want it for you. We can all tell you how you can motivate yourself but you need to find out what makes you tick. Does that make sense?0 -
The only motivator I've found that works is the scale. When the number is consistently going down, I feel good and keep going. But that only lasts for a little while and then I almost get an unhealthy obsession towards it (weighing every day is bad etc). When I looked in the mirror (even naked) at 210lbs, I honestly couldn't see a difference from when I was 40lbs heavier. The only time I ever realized that I was smaller was when I recently put two pictures of myself side by side from the heaviest and the smallest. I wish I had done that sooner because I was amazed at how well I did, and then super ashamed because now I'm even bigger than my previous "heaviest."
It also doesn't help that I think my brain is wired wrong. When people start noticing that I'm losing weight and compliment me I start getting anxiety. I think that's when I start to sabotage myself.
I'm the same way as you. I relate to everything you've said in this thread!
I've had to force myself to do three things: weigh in only one day a week, take measurements, and suck it up and take pictures once a week too. Every Saturday morning, first thing, I strip down, step on the scale, take measurements, and take three pictures in the mirror: one full frontal (lol), one profile, and one closeup of my face. I'm completely blind to whatever changes are happening in my body day to day, but placing photos side by side and comparing them is impossible to argue with. Declining measurements are also impossible to argue with. And weighing in just once a week keeps me from obsessing over the scale, which I know is less important than measurements, how my clothes fit, and how I feel and look.
Your face in your pic makes you look like you are small framed, which could partially account for why it's taking you so much weight to drop sizes. It also takes longer to drop out of larger sizes than smaller ones; I have no idea what I weighed at my heaviest years ago, but I was wearing a tight size 20, and it was forever between that and an 18...These days I can tell you that at 210 I fit comfortably in a 16, I fit a 14 perfectly at 195 (I actually have one pair of size 13 jeans I can wear well right now at 199!), and I can start to squeeze into a 12 at 185. The sizes go by faster as you get smaller (everyone is built differently, YMMV on specifics, etc.)
When I take pictures, I take them on my phone, email them to myself, transfer them to a super-secret hard-to-find folder on my desktop, and then delete them from my phone and my email so I don't have to see them by accident. But I have them, and they're making a big difference this time around. I'm down 12 pounds in almost 5 weeks (weigh in is tomorrow, and I'd guess another 1-2 lb down), and I'm actually looking forward to taking pics tomorrow... because I've been studying the suckers, I can actually really see a difference for a change! Somehow the visual difference between 211 and 199 specifically is tremendous on me. I imagine most people have a similar range where it just seems like everything changes dramatically.
One of my better pieces of advice to offer in general is to wear clothes that really fit instead of stretchy leggings/sweatpants and baggy T-shirts. When your clothes really fit your body, it's a lot easier to see the changes in your body... conversely, when your clothes are designed to be forgiving, it's going to be harder to see those changes in real time because the clothes might fit better, but it will be harder to see that (it's hard to figure out "how much are my leggings stretching across my hips?")
Anyway. I think my big point is that your wardrobe is doing you no favors if you are motivated by how your clothes fit! Find a local thrift store and shop for a couple of cheap pieces that fit you perfectly RIGHT NOW. I bet you'll be surprised by how quickly they start seeming just a little too big—maybe not big enough to need a new size just yet, but not as "perfectly fit" as they were when you bought them. (Clothes for larger ladies are awful this way; they're designed to "fit" women within a fairly large range, so finding the stuff that fits "just right" can be a challenge; dedicate a couple of hours to trying stuff on.) You don't have to wear them in public, for the record, if they make you uncomfortable, just pull them out once a week and see how they look, and see how that's different from last week. You can also use motivator clothes that you DON'T fit into yet, like a pair of jeans you love or a top you really like, and check out how it looks on you each week.
As for sabotaging yourself: I don't know any foolproof way to fix this except to figure out what the underlying problem is and work on that. For me, I've been involved in incredibly terrible relationships, and I grew up with an abysmal lack of self esteem and a general feeling that I didn't deserve anything good in life, and that's always made me freak out a little when things start going well for me, like I'm doing something wrong, or like everyone's going to discover that I'm really just a big fat phony. That's not stuff that changing my weight alone is going to fix, but knowing that it's working behind the scenes and having some tools to combat it is a big help.
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I understand about the clothes thing, for sure. For many years I wore size 22 pants all the way from about 230 lb to 307 lb and then all the way back down the scale too, not even kidding. And I had "tight" 26/28 sweaters and "loose" 1X tops at the same time that both fit me. It was difficult to feel motivated by that stuff.
It sounds like the scale/weigh-ins are a better motivator for you. Everyone's different but for me the thing that really helped me shatter previous low weights and get to a place where I feel happiest with myself, was deciding "I'm going to do this as slow as it takes...if I weigh 10 lb less in a year, that's still good". Maybe I have some deep seated psychological flaw because of this, lol, but seriously if I told myself "YOU MUST get to X lb in X amount of time" I probably just would have gained weight.
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The only motivator I've found that works is the scale. When the number is consistently going down, I feel good and keep going. But that only lasts for a little while and then I almost get an unhealthy obsession towards it (weighing every day is bad etc). When I looked in the mirror (even naked) at 210lbs, I honestly couldn't see a difference from when I was 40lbs heavier. The only time I ever realized that I was smaller was when I recently put two pictures of myself side by side from the heaviest and the smallest. I wish I had done that sooner because I was amazed at how well I did, and then super ashamed because now I'm even bigger than my previous "heaviest."
It also doesn't help that I think my brain is wired wrong. When people start noticing that I'm losing weight and compliment me I start getting anxiety. I think that's when I start to sabotage myself.
I'm the same way as you. I relate to everything you've said in this thread!
I've had to force myself to do three things: weigh in only one day a week, take measurements, and suck it up and take pictures once a week too. Every Saturday morning, first thing, I strip down, step on the scale, take measurements, and take three pictures in the mirror: one full frontal (lol), one profile, and one closeup of my face. I'm completely blind to whatever changes are happening in my body day to day, but placing photos side by side and comparing them is impossible to argue with. Declining measurements are also impossible to argue with. And weighing in just once a week keeps me from obsessing over the scale, which I know is less important than measurements, how my clothes fit, and how I feel and look.
Your face in your pic makes you look like you are small framed, which could partially account for why it's taking you so much weight to drop sizes. It also takes longer to drop out of larger sizes than smaller ones; I have no idea what I weighed at my heaviest years ago, but I was wearing a tight size 20, and it was forever between that and an 18...These days I can tell you that at 210 I fit comfortably in a 16, I fit a 14 perfectly at 195 (I actually have one pair of size 13 jeans I can wear well right now at 199!), and I can start to squeeze into a 12 at 185. The sizes go by faster as you get smaller (everyone is built differently, YMMV on specifics, etc.)
When I take pictures, I take them on my phone, email them to myself, transfer them to a super-secret hard-to-find folder on my desktop, and then delete them from my phone and my email so I don't have to see them by accident. But I have them, and they're making a big difference this time around. I'm down 12 pounds in almost 5 weeks (weigh in is tomorrow, and I'd guess another 1-2 lb down), and I'm actually looking forward to taking pics tomorrow... because I've been studying the suckers, I can actually really see a difference for a change! Somehow the visual difference between 211 and 199 specifically is tremendous on me. I imagine most people have a similar range where it just seems like everything changes dramatically.
One of my better pieces of advice to offer in general is to wear clothes that really fit instead of stretchy leggings/sweatpants and baggy T-shirts. When your clothes really fit your body, it's a lot easier to see the changes in your body... conversely, when your clothes are designed to be forgiving, it's going to be harder to see those changes in real time because the clothes might fit better, but it will be harder to see that (it's hard to figure out "how much are my leggings stretching across my hips?")
Anyway. I think my big point is that your wardrobe is doing you no favors if you are motivated by how your clothes fit! Find a local thrift store and shop for a couple of cheap pieces that fit you perfectly RIGHT NOW. I bet you'll be surprised by how quickly they start seeming just a little too big—maybe not big enough to need a new size just yet, but not as "perfectly fit" as they were when you bought them. (Clothes for larger ladies are awful this way; they're designed to "fit" women within a fairly large range, so finding the stuff that fits "just right" can be a challenge; dedicate a couple of hours to trying stuff on.) You don't have to wear them in public, for the record, if they make you uncomfortable, just pull them out once a week and see how they look, and see how that's different from last week. You can also use motivator clothes that you DON'T fit into yet, like a pair of jeans you love or a top you really like, and check out how it looks on you each week.
As for sabotaging yourself: I don't know any foolproof way to fix this except to figure out what the underlying problem is and work on that. For me, I've been involved in incredibly terrible relationships, and I grew up with an abysmal lack of self esteem and a general feeling that I didn't deserve anything good in life, and that's always made me freak out a little when things start going well for me, like I'm doing something wrong, or like everyone's going to discover that I'm really just a big fat phony. That's not stuff that changing my weight alone is going to fix, but knowing that it's working behind the scenes and having some tools to combat it is a big help.
I like everything you've said here. It looks like you put a lot of thought into this post and I appreciate it (I also appreciate everyone else's input too). I do have what I would consider a smaller frame. I'm 5'3" and a half. I always have to find short jeans and even those are usually just a bit long on me.0 -
Honestly, the best thing you can do is to just keep trying. Eventually you'll figure out what works for you. The only way to truly fail is to quit.0
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