They don't call it yoyo 'cause it's fun.

To just to add to what the previous commenter said, it should be a lifestyle change and I think that's the reason why Phil gained weight back. He was doing juice fasts to lose weight and while that might work, it is not sustainable long term. We unfortunately have to put in the work to change our lives or it won't take. :-(

Janetellen2015 wrote: »

So I was thinking about Phil Staples. He is the man in the documentary I watched the other night called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead". He weighed over 400 lbs, and with the help of juicing lost 200 lbs. I wondered how he was doing so I goggled him and of course, he gained all the weight back. He had a variety of reasons for it: a failed marriage, depression and loneliness. And I thought of my own failures in keeping lost weight off and the reasons I have: menopause, too much sitting due to a job change, winter happened! And then it occurred to me that there is always a reason why we gain the weight back and unless we have a perfect future where no one dies, marriages never end, jobs are never lost and winter does not happen, does that mean it is inevitable that I will gain this weight back? That is when I got to the real reason I gained the weight back. I stopped trying. I always stopped trying. Why did I stop trying? Was it not important anymore? Was it not as important as other things? No, I stopped trying because I was tired of the effort it took. And that is when I realized that losing weight and keeping weight off will always be effort. It will always be work for me.

I think that's a wonderful epiphany to share and was pivotal to me as well. While I viewed it as lifelong work, I coupled that with the need for it to be enjoyable. Like the best job in the world!

And forgiveness, accepting that it's not always perfect is important too.

All the best OP.

Janetellen2015 wrote: »

And that is when I realized that losing weight and keeping weight off will always be effort. It will always be work for me.

I have always struggled with this too. My weight has gone up and down for years and in the past I usually managed to lose it effortlessly (money was tight or where I lived meant lots of walking) but for the last few years its only been going UP effortlessly lol and I haven't been able to do anything about it because its all been too hard.

However! I've spent a lot of time working on my mindset. The language I use is very important. Is losing weight a chore? Or is it looking after myself? Is a morning walk a chore? or is it a stroll that's good for my body mind and soul? I don't call it my morning walk any more, I call it my constitutional. There's no magic pill or trick for weightloss but getting myself into the right mindset is sooooo important. And learning tricks and strategies to help me deal with the curve balls that life throws up, so that I don't go running to the pantry or the fridge.

So basically I'm trying to put the effort into looking after myself, rather than losing weight. I'm finding it very helpful, just looking at it from a different angle.

mccindy72 wrote: »

It doesn't have to be work. The best to make something less effort is to make it a habit. When we create habits we do them without thinking about it.
If you weigh your solid food and log it on a daily basis, it becomes easier and quicker. I've been doing this for a long time and it only takes a few minutes to weigh my food and enter it into my log. I don't really even think about it- it's just a part of my meal prep.
When you eat at a calorie deficit, you lose weight. If you are weighing and logging all of your solid food and measuring your caloric liquids, you know you are accurate with your calorie counting, and can stick to your calorie deficit. You will lose the weight; that's guaranteed.
Once you lose the weight, you move into maintenance, and you're already doing the work you'll need to do to maintain. It's no different, except that you eat at maintenance calorie goal, rather than at a deficit.

For more helpful information, read the first post in this thread: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1235566-so-you-re-new-here

Really wish it was that easy, to be honest. I've been on MFP for more than 2.5 years and frankly, it is going to take way more than that for my new habits to catch up with my 25 years of old habits (not counting when I was a little kid, I guess). There's much more to it than logging. Logging won't do me any good if my willpower keeps failing on donuts and cookies. Is exercising a habit? By now, yeah. Lifting weights still isn't because I hate it, but I really enjoy my hour of peace on the treadmill at the gym and I hate staying home and not doing anything now, but the food part will NEVER become a habit. Ok I tend to crave healthier foods than fast food now, but I'll still pick dessert over veggies every time at the buffet. And I'm still hungry. I'd lie to myself if I said I won't have gained any weight back in 5 years, because I don't know if I'll still have the willpower to go to bed hungry half the time in 5 years (I've been maintaining for over a year now).

But yeah, I think the juicing part was a big red flag. It has to be sustainable if you really hope to get anything from it.

Janetellen2015 wrote: »

So I was thinking about Phil Staples. He is the man in the documentary I watched the other night called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead". He weighed over 400 lbs, and with the help of juicing lost 200 lbs. I wondered how he was doing so I goggled him and of course, he gained all the weight back. He had a variety of reasons for it: a failed marriage, depression and loneliness. And I thought of my own failures in keeping lost weight off and the reasons I have: menopause, too much sitting due to a job change, winter happened! And then it occurred to me that there is always a reason why we gain the weight back and unless we have a perfect future where no one dies, marriages never end, jobs are never lost and winter does not happen, does that mean it is inevitable that I will gain this weight back? That is when I got to the real reason I gained the weight back. I stopped trying. I always stopped trying. Why did I stop trying? Was it not important anymore? Was it not as important as other things? No, I stopped trying because I was tired of the effort it took. And that is when I realized that losing weight and keeping weight off will always be effort. It will always be work for me.

And excellent first post.

LIke you i yo yo'd for most of my life until now. Last time i started, i was fed up with yo yoing so i determiend that this time i would not do it. So i took on the lessons i'd learned from previous attempts. I decided to take stock of what caused my failures, to create a plan and develop it to help ensure i don't fail again.

So far so good. 20 months after starting. Which is much much longer than ever before and I am convinced I will not fail again. I am determined never to be fat again. There are of course things that could trigger a depression again which makes it hard to eat well and not over eat but handling problems and avoiding depression is one of the keys to my strategy. And so far I have managed pretty well considering depression has been on my plate off and on since i was a teenager.

Another one i will mention since it touches on something you have said. I never find losing weight hard work. I enjoy losing weight. And i do not force myself to do anything i don't feel like doing. In previous efforst when i relied on exericse (a lot of exercise) to lose weight, it didn't seem like work. I enjoyed it. It was fun. But when depression takes over, or tiredness or loss of motvation, then it would seem like work if i forced msyelf to do it. And i don't know how long i could force myself to do it anyway. I'm not that strong.

No to my way of looking at it, losing weight and keeping it off does not mean hard work. It means working out an enjoyable to way to eat and live. In the long run it is good to find some type of activity you enjoy and can do regularly to increase your fitness to a healthy level but you absolutely do not have to be as fit as a professional athlete. You just need to be fit enough to considered healthy. That is why the experts have always recommended moderate exercise.

Anyway i reckon you have to come up with a plan to help you reduce the likelihood that set backs in life will cause a return to bad eating habits and so on. My key strategy for dealing with psychological difficulties is to go and get psychological help asap from a professional. It usually takes a week or two for me to get htere but that is much better htan months as it was in the past by which time i would be sunk in very deep gloom, stress or whatever. Now i go as soon as i can. And i recover incredibly quickly. But i am lucky in that i have people i've been seeing regularly off and on for a while now. My gp and my psychologist and if i get stuck there's even a councillor at hte local community centre i can talk to on the phone or in person. And hten there's lifeline. All these things are part of my strategy to keep me from getting fat again becuase i hate being fat.

But that's only two of the strings to my bow. I have more.

Francl27 wrote: »

mccindy72 wrote: »

It doesn't have to be work. The best to make something less effort is to make it a habit. When we create habits we do them without thinking about it.
If you weigh your solid food and log it on a daily basis, it becomes easier and quicker. I've been doing this for a long time and it only takes a few minutes to weigh my food and enter it into my log. I don't really even think about it- it's just a part of my meal prep.
When you eat at a calorie deficit, you lose weight. If you are weighing and logging all of your solid food and measuring your caloric liquids, you know you are accurate with your calorie counting, and can stick to your calorie deficit. You will lose the weight; that's guaranteed.
Once you lose the weight, you move into maintenance, and you're already doing the work you'll need to do to maintain. It's no different, except that you eat at maintenance calorie goal, rather than at a deficit.

For more helpful information, read the first post in this thread: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1235566-so-you-re-new-here

Really wish it was that easy, to be honest. I've been on MFP for more than 2.5 years and frankly, it is going to take way more than that for my new habits to catch up with my 25 years of old habits (not counting when I was a little kid, I guess). There's much more to it than logging. Logging won't do me any good if my willpower keeps failing on donuts and cookies. Is exercising a habit? By now, yeah. Lifting weights still isn't because I hate it, but I really enjoy my hour of peace on the treadmill at the gym and I hate staying home and not doing anything now, but the food part will NEVER become a habit. Ok I tend to crave healthier foods than fast food now, but I'll still pick dessert over veggies every time at the buffet. And I'm still hungry. I'd lie to myself if I said I won't have gained any weight back in 5 years, because I don't know if I'll still have the willpower to go to bed hungry half the time in 5 years (I've been maintaining for over a year now).

But yeah, I think the juicing part was a big red flag. It has to be sustainable if you really hope to get anything from it.

You don't have to 'pick' one food over the other - that's half of the problem with making it hard work. Trying to find willpower to avoid certain foods is hard and you shouldn't be doing that.
I eat things like cookies, or ice cream, or a cupcake almost every day. And I am not exercising at this point.

That's the point. If you are weighing and logging, and eating the foods you LIKE, you are making them fit into your calorie deficit, you are enjoying what you eat, and still losing weight. That's not work, that's living.

mccindy72 wrote: »

Francl27 wrote: »

mccindy72 wrote: »

It doesn't have to be work. The best to make something less effort is to make it a habit. When we create habits we do them without thinking about it.
If you weigh your solid food and log it on a daily basis, it becomes easier and quicker. I've been doing this for a long time and it only takes a few minutes to weigh my food and enter it into my log. I don't really even think about it- it's just a part of my meal prep.
When you eat at a calorie deficit, you lose weight. If you are weighing and logging all of your solid food and measuring your caloric liquids, you know you are accurate with your calorie counting, and can stick to your calorie deficit. You will lose the weight; that's guaranteed.
Once you lose the weight, you move into maintenance, and you're already doing the work you'll need to do to maintain. It's no different, except that you eat at maintenance calorie goal, rather than at a deficit.

For more helpful information, read the first post in this thread: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1235566-so-you-re-new-here

Really wish it was that easy, to be honest. I've been on MFP for more than 2.5 years and frankly, it is going to take way more than that for my new habits to catch up with my 25 years of old habits (not counting when I was a little kid, I guess). There's much more to it than logging. Logging won't do me any good if my willpower keeps failing on donuts and cookies. Is exercising a habit? By now, yeah. Lifting weights still isn't because I hate it, but I really enjoy my hour of peace on the treadmill at the gym and I hate staying home and not doing anything now, but the food part will NEVER become a habit. Ok I tend to crave healthier foods than fast food now, but I'll still pick dessert over veggies every time at the buffet. And I'm still hungry. I'd lie to myself if I said I won't have gained any weight back in 5 years, because I don't know if I'll still have the willpower to go to bed hungry half the time in 5 years (I've been maintaining for over a year now).

But yeah, I think the juicing part was a big red flag. It has to be sustainable if you really hope to get anything from it.

You don't have to 'pick' one food over the other - that's half of the problem with making it hard work. Trying to find willpower to avoid certain foods is hard and you shouldn't be doing that.
I eat things like cookies, or ice cream, or a cupcake almost every day. And I am not exercising at this point.

That's the point. If you are weighing and logging, and eating the foods you LIKE, you are making them fit into your calorie deficit, you are enjoying what you eat, and still losing weight. That's not work, that's living.

It might be easy for you, but it's not for everyone. Pretty much every day I spend more than 200 calories on sweets I'm regretting it later and go to bed hungry, except maybe one week a month. And that's eating at maintenance overall and pretty much burning 400 calories in exercise most days. Funny thing is that it was easier to eat 1700 calories a day when losing than 1800 now. I wasn't as hungry. Now that I've been maintaining, it's much harder, I'm hungrier, but I have to keep a deficit to make up for the days when I'm actually starving and eating more, or I will gain weight back.

So no, it's not a very fun way to live. Yes it's doable, just certainly not easy for everyone, hence why so many people regain the weight later. Your post is ok about the science part but doesn't take anything else into account - hunger, habits, hormones, circumstances etc.

If it was as easy as you make it sound, nobody would be fat, and nobody would gain the weight back.

I have been reading a lot of books to inform me about menopause and stress and 'mindfulness' comes up quite often. For me, if I have more awareness in terms of what I eat and how it impacts on my health, the more likely I am to stay on track.

I have lost about a stone just from trying to eat less processed and sugary foods. I am now at the stage where I need to maintain and not lose any more but this is always where it is tempting to slip into old habits to make up the calories. I am viewing this as a life time plan but feel I need the support to stay mindful about diet and exercise. MFP seems to be a valuable tool to aid self awareness.

That said, old habits are deeply engrained and it would be unrealistic for me to be 100 percent healthy. I just logged raw nuts for a snack but had some posh crisps instead. I will have to change that. Writing it down will hopefully encourage a better choice next time.

I no longermind the fact that I have to log my food. I just want to live. I want to behealthy and feel good. I got tired of being the biggest person in the room anywhere I go, got tired of never having clothes fit, never knowing if you are going to fit in a seat. So for me the reasons to lose weight are what I cling to. I do not want to feel that way anymore! I have yo yo'd a little along these 495 days but slowly getting smaller and thatsok..