The Things No One Tells You About Weight Loss

That just because you ate less calories for x amount of years to get to your goal doesn't mean you're now that skinny girl you grew up with who can eat 5,000 calories per day and not gain a single ounce!

THIS. UUUGGGHHHHH

The protein farts...

It didn't get like this overnight and it ain't comin' off overnight, either! I keep telling myself this over and over. Persistence is the key to winning the battle.....

I actually learned that I can lose inches with out losing any weight. I never read up on that and know I am very knowledgeable thanks to MFP.

This!

For me:
1.The scale will break your heart 335786313689 times. All you can do is keep going.
2. You will have to learn to forgive yourself over and over again because you will mess up more times than you will think possible
3. To do it right takes patience, patience, and more patience.

What things have you learned that you didn't expect?

100% on number 1, every lb my weight drops below 170 while cutting my heart sinks and I get the temptation to go back on a lean bulk. But this year, I bit my lip and drove on. I don't know how much I weigh now but I am the leanest I have been and it feels good.

No one tells you that you will stumble and fall many times during the process and that it is very necessary to pick yourself up and keep moving forward.

Your shoe size will go down.

This is true. Go figure.

Sometimes the scale says "Forget you and your weight loss efforts. I do what I wanna do."

OMGosh THIS!!! I freakin' HATE that scale man! I can crush my Turbo Fire workouts every day of the week and be way under calories and eat GREAT...And it'll say I GAINED weight. WHAT THE CRAP?! LOL

Then you'll have a bad week where you don't workout hardly at all and eat crap food, and the scale is like, 'You lose 5 pounds, She loses 5 pounds, EVERYBODY loses 5 pounds!!!!'

One thing that I'm finding is that the more I'm actively doing to change my life and my body, the less I care what random people in public think about me.

No one tells you how emotional losing weight is.

Now one tells you that you're going to plateau and it's going to SUCK.

No one tells you that eventually, you're going to start craving healthy foods. For instance, I've been craving carrots this week and have nearly demolished two bags of baby carrots in one week.

No one tells you how AMAZING it feels to try on something you 'knew' wouldn't fit...and then it does :happy:

No one tells you how overwhelming it is to look back on all your hard work and realize you've lost X amount of pounds, or gone down X number of sizes.

No one tells you that losing weight means you can lose friends. Not everyone is going to support you in your healthy choices. Some will even become hostile about it :grumble:

No one tells you that you will still have days where you just don't want to do a dang thing. That even after all your progress, you are STILL going to want to be a couch potato from time to time.

No one tells you that YOU are going to be your hardest critic. No one told me that almost everyone around me would be supportive and the b*tchy voice that I heard was MINE. :noway:

A few things:

You will hit your goal weight and still feel fat

If you do not lift weights then you will still look fat :laugh:

That it's not just me feeling the effects. My (very supportive, happy for my weight loss) husband is waking up with dead arms, rib cramps and sore backs because I'm so much smaller, it's screwing up his spooning/sleeping position!!

Just because I don't *have* to be a "cardio bunny," doesn't mean I *can't* be one if that's what I enjoy. Learning to tune out opinionated MUSTs and MUST NOTs has been key.

That said, just because I despise lifting, doesn't mean I shouldn't still DO it - bone health, weight bearing exercise, and all that.

Not everyone will be excited and happy for you when you lose - but you'll find out who your truest friends are.

Speaking of "true friends," sometimes, you'll find out that you AREN'T one to some of the people in your real life, and you'll have to do some work to change that. My best friend of almost 25 years moans and cries about her weight and I get frustrated. It's hard not to offer unsolicited advice, and I'll ashamedly admit it's hard not to think negatively about her sometimes. My mom calls me her "inspiration," even though she doesn't seem particularly "inspired" to actually make changes, and it's positively maddening. I'm actively working on it.

You can't force change in others, no matter how much it may be needed. My husband is morbidly obese, and I have a real hard time walking the line of being genuinely worried for his health without being a pushy, angry bish about it. The more I push, the more he balks and even goes in the opposite direction. But it is a huge concern and I don't know how to address it.

My husband and I were both fat and sex was OK. Now that I'm much thinner and he's not, sex is painful. We've had to come up with alternate positions or I feel crushed. Sad truth.

When two people (or more) in the house are dieting, meeting everyone's caloric needs can be a royal pain in the a** for the cook. Because of my new activity level, my intake to lose is about 500 cal higher than my husband's needed intake to lose. If I cook lower calorie foods so that he can eat the large portions he is comfortable with, then I have a hard time meeting my own goal because I can't physically handle that volume of food anymore. (I know... ice cream and potato chips can help, but if I keep ice cream and potato chips in the house, guess who doesn't exercise self control and then there isn't any left for me)

But now that I've listed a pile of negatives, I'd like to end with some positives:

Thrift stores are awesome for the shrinking wardrobe (but you might develop an inability to force yourself to shell out for NEW stuff that fits when you're maintaining, OMG)

Genuine compliments come from some of the most unexpected places - a cashier at my local grocery store recently told me that her 65-lb weight loss was inspired by watching me come in looking smaller every time, and that she paid attention to what I was buying. Someone who works at another store I frequent never fails to ask how I'm doing and how close I am to my goal, which could be weird but she's great about not making it weird at all.

It's not that complicated. In fact, the more simple your plan, the easy it is to implement and sustain.

Phrick wrote: »

Genuine compliments come from some of the most unexpected places - a cashier at my local grocery store recently told me that her 65-lb weight loss was inspired by watching me come in looking smaller every time, and that she paid attention to what I was buying.

Among the SO many truths, insights, and observations conveyed by the wonderful folks in this thread, I somehow feel compelled to take a moment right now to comment on (and celebrate) the specific (and fantastic) reality quoted above... (I just chanced upon this thread, and look forward to later contributing a series of 'hey, guess what'(s) that have been unveiled to my mind and eyes, during my journey , but for now, I'd like to shine a spotlight on the quoted excerpt above)...

Phrick, the fact that your life-changing actions -- and their results -- positively influenced, inspired, and resulted in profound change in someone else's life, highlights one of the gifts we can unknowingly give to others by simply being the best version of ourselves that we can be (and more often than not, we'll never be aware of having had any such impact -- but in some ways, it would seem to be an inevitable reality for it to occur).

While we might not happen to start out with any awareness of how our individual journeys may positively affect the lives of people who we happen to cross paths with (or if/when simply seen by, or casually interacting with, any of various random strangers in our midst (and whose existence or eyes on us (and even if only fleetingly) we might not ever learn of)), it nonetheless remains that one of the many wondrous potential realities that exists as we embark on change, 'double down' on commitment, and 'keep at it', is that any of various consequences of our improved way of living just might 'be' the 'whatever it is' that someone else happens to notice, and just might need, to make a difference in *their* life.

Additionally, on the flip-side, there are definitely others who have no idea that in my having noticed even one aspect of something associated with the 'how' of what they're doing, or the outcome of what they've done, or the confidence emanating from them as they do whatever they've set out to do (or even if/when they're not yet confident, but they forge on, and simply *try*, and *do*), has informed, inspired, and positively affected me in my journey -- let alone, that it continues to... (it's remarkable that some aspect of some random stranger, who happened to be in the vicinity of where I happened to be, at one just-by-chance moment in time, and who was simply living their life -- and unbeknownst to them, served as an example to me -- not only had a positive impact on me, but that it seems to 'live on', indefinitely)...

We have no idea what sort of 'point of light' we might end up being in the life of another, as we navigate and continue our respective journeys... but it's a pretty wonderful consequence...

Ooh, would love to see this thread get going again...

PJPrimrose wrote: »

Lifting heavy is always better than working with light weights for "toning only". Heavy weights increase your tone, strength, and speed for sports even if you can't or do not want to "bulk". The difference was astounding! Also, you burn a whole heck of a lot more calories to support muscle. I didn't know that either. Women who lift heavy don't start to look like men unless they "juice" with steroids. You cannot tell they lift until they flex or lift something really heavy. You also shrink without losing weight with heavy lifting. I've found cardio (my sport is cardio heavy) and heavy weights are the perfect combination.