What Other Factors (Besides Nutrition) Help You Succeed?

My computer wallpaper is a rotation of guys who have the body I am striving to have myself. When I get the craving for ordering a pizza, then I see the six-pack guy on my desktop and think maybe I shouldn't. Google "Ryan Reynolds body" and see the kind of images I'm talking about. Sounds corny but it's good motivation.

usmcmp wrote: »

Simplifying the process was the biggest one to me. As soon as I stopped worrying about eating the right foods or doing the right exercises I was able to make it work. I ate things I enjoyed that kept me full and did exercises I enjoyed.

Second biggest was to stop trying to lose weight so fast. Two pounds per week didn't give me nearly enough calories and once I decided on slower weight loss I was able to stick to it.

This is really it for me. This journey is about what fitness and nutrition adds to my life, not what I have to lose. New foods and spices, new classes and friends, renewed energy and interest in exploring- these all have been making this click for me recently. I don't miss the old ways when the new ones are exciting, fun, and delicious!

Improving my level of activity from low exercise to 4-5 activities a week, while eating reasonably.

My special IIFYM Hotdog Diet™.

1. Support of those around you.
2. Be honest and hold yourself accountable.
3. A lot of this is a numbers game. Knowing your bmr/activity level and which bmr formula works best to determine your baseline is a critical part.
4. Food scale and weighing things in grams (and ensure nutrition info is accurate on your diary entries)
5. Taking progress pictures and measurements
6. Set short term and long term goals
7. Reflect on your progress often.
8. Used to think exercise was the biggest key to losing weight. Now realize it's food calories that play the biggest part in the equation.
9. Fitness tracker. Great measurement tool in itself.
10. Making foods and meals from scratch instead of buying processed foods.

Weighing and measuring all foods, eating more one ingredient foods (veggies/fruits/fish/chicken) and sticking to a daily plan of exercise and eating right.

Finding out I am gluten intolerant made all the difference for me. As soon as I stopped eating gluten I lost 5 pounds in 2 days, which was part of water gained due to my Thyroid medicine being too low. Nutritionist suggested I started with AIP and I've been on that for 13 days (plus 3 gluten free before I had a chance to see my nutritionist), and lost 11.5 LBS. I plan my meals a day ahead and still keep a diary in MFP. I exercise much less than I did before this latest thyroid episode.

My goal is to be athletic fit and have a nice tone body. Since I've had three children I lost my confidence. Now I have support at the gym.

I've tried every diet out there: juice cleanses, sugar detoxes, cabbage soup diet, 21 day fix, low carb, whole 30, etc. I've found that counting calories is THE BEST way for me bc you can eat anything and aren't limited so much!

Sounds cheesy, but logging what I eat on myfitnesspal.com and having a like-minded community. I joined the biggest loser group at work and have a bestie who's been losing for awhile. The sheer fact of knowing that their are others with a similar goal has helped keep me motivated!

I weighed 236 pounds before I started this and what I did was I literally stop drinking everything except for water or unsweetened cold or iced tea and stopped with salt 2 salt automatically comes in the foods that we buy I just don't add any more I use mrs. Dash and I walk a lot and I now weigh 202 pounds and it came off so fast

To do all of that I had to work my way up it I didn't just abruptly stopped with salt and abruptly stopped with processed foods it takes time you just take a little bit out at a time and I remember eating something something that was a favorite tasting it and then had to spit it back out because it was so disgusting and I couldn't get over why I put it back in my mouth in the first place

Relying on habits, not motivation.
It's easy to get tired, stressed or complacent and lose motivation over time. But if you establish habits around logging, watching portions and macros, staying active, you can keep moving forward. Habit is the most powerful force, you can either maintain bad habits or establish supportive habits.

Getting myself to the right mindset has been critical - I now focus much more on the mind than the physiology of weight loss which is CICO as simple as it. But to be in a calorie deficit day after day, I had to

1. Commit to logging my food - my first commitment was to log my food regardless how much it makes me cringe for 3 days, then a week, then to the end of the month. Then of course it became 2nd nature. and once I logged my food, just seeing what I ate changed what I ate. But logging my food those 3 first days took willpower.
2. Identify and change my bad habits/patterns - like the after dinner snacks rewarding myself for surviving another stressful day at work and putting the kids to bed. I was so craving these snacks that I was thinking about what snacks we had as I was putting the kids to bed. Having read a lot about habit formation helped a lot to break my pattern which was really hard the first 3 days (I think I had physical withdrawal symptoms), somewhat hard the next 5 days, then ok, and after a month, the craving were all gone....
3. Manage my impatience to lose weight - whenever I set goals in terms of kgs lost by time x, it creates a stress and I tend to do less well. So I do not have a goal time by which I want to be at my goal weight. I live in a calorie deficit, I set exercise goals and the weight is falling off as a result at its own pace.
4. Be mentally prepared for roadblocks bc life happens - these are my weeks out of the ordinary, I travel for work to different countries with different food patterns, I have crazy work weeks every once in a while when I cant make it to the gym even once, kids get sick, vacation time....I have learned that during these weeks it is best to set my mindset/expectations to maintenance, practice my new good habits but do not necessarily log my food if no mental space and certainly do not stress about these periods. I return to logging and more ambitious deficit when these periods are over. Just now, I returned to logging after two weeks off, first week for work reasons and the 2nd week for vacation reasons. I ate mindfully, moved as much as I could and maintained my weight. As soon as we were back from vacation, I logged my weight, and started food logging again. My goal was less ambitious, I met it, I felt good about it and I did not fall off the bandwagon which I might have if I had continued to lose weight during this period and not achieved it and felt bad about it.

Discovering how much I enjoy lifting free weights and pushing myself to the limit with intense circuits!
Got to credit my PT who introduced me to this but I think the key thing for me has been making it a habit, I'm now in the gym every lunch time during the week and it's that much of a habit that even if I don't feel 100% I still just go and get on with it!
It's just become part of my workday, my life and me!