Help please.

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joanneaugust
joanneaugust Posts: 6 Member
in Getting Started
Hi,
I desperately need to lose weight and could really do with some help keeping me on the straight and narrow . Need to lose about 12 kilos. Have lost and gained the same 20kg all my life, am 51 now! Need to get my head around a sensible eating plan to stop the binge/starve cycle. Thanks to anybody that wants to help.

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  • CurlyCockney
    CurlyCockney Posts: 1,394 Member
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    • Weigh (with a digital scale) everything you eat and log it.
    • Double-check the data for the entries you use on MFP against the packaging or an independent source, as some are incorrect.
    • Read the stickies at the top of the boards for great advice.
    • Don't eliminate anything unless a) you want to or b) you have medical reasons for doing so.
    • Don't eat foods you don't like.
    • Don't make it harder than it needs to be.
  • joanneaugust
    joanneaugust Posts: 6 Member
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    Thanks. Will do.
  • godlikepoetyes
    godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
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    If you follow MFP guidelines you should lose. It's probably that simple. It just takes a commitment. I'm 51 and have lost 89 pounds over the last year. How did I do it? I just followed MFP. You can read my posts under success stories.
  • zoeysasha37
    zoeysasha37 Posts: 7,089 Member
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    Get yourself a food scale

    Weigh all your solids

    Use measuring cups for liquids

    Log the items here on mfp accurately

    Remember that weight loss comes from a calorie deficit.

    Calories in - calories out

    As long as you eat at a calorie deficit- you will lose weight

    Remember that there's no need for special diets ( unless you have a medical condition) and no need for fads or gimmicks. Just eat less then you burn ( calorie deficit) and you will lose weight. Don't be fooled by diet myths or what ever the new vegan, keto , paleo diet is. All you need for weight loss is a calorie deficit.
  • KristinRG85
    KristinRG85 Posts: 11 Member
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    Ok, I'm going to go a really different rout here.

    The best advice I ever got for ending the lose/gain cycle: don't try to change everything about your eating habits at once; it may get you quicker results, but its not sustainable long term (hence gaining and losing the same 20kg). Just try to change one or two small things at a time, and once those become a real habit, add something else.

    Like for ( a really small scale) example, I used to drink a ridiculous amount of coffee drinks. For a long time it was practically all I drank, and when you add it all up, that's an absurd amount of excess liquid calories and sugar. So first I stopped putting sugar in the coffee. Once I got used to that, I switched from milk to half & half (which sounds counterintuitive, but 1T h&h has way fewer calories and carbs than the 1/3 C milk required for the same flavor), and after THAT I switched the majority of the coffees to a variety of interesting teas (black, unsweetened) and flavored waters.

    So, over time, I went form drinking 6 (or more?) cups of coffee a day with milk and sugar to 1 cup of coffee with a tablespoon of half & half and in doing so I cut, like, 300+ calories and I don't even know how much sugar and fat out of my everyday life and it was easy and, more importantly, a real, SUSTAINABLE dietary change because I did it in tiny increments and let it become habit over time, so I don't miss it and I can move on to focusing on a new small change without having to think about that one all the time. Or, ever, really. It takes pretty much no effort now.

    Someone also once told me that his first small change was going to bed half an hour earlier...which prevented his late night snacking...and led to him naturally getting up half an hour earlier...which eventually led to him deciding to use said half hour to exercise.

    So, yeah. The little things add up. Hope that helps.
  • WendyLaubach
    WendyLaubach Posts: 518 Member
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    I haven't hit maintenance territory yet, but here are my thoughts for what they're worth: while we're losing, we learn the skills to balance food and exercise to produce a loss. Then, apparently, lots of us hit a goal and completely relax back to eating whatever our urges tell us, until we've packed 20, 30, or 40 pounds back on. What if we only did that for the first, say, 5 lbs.? Then lose that 5 lbs. with the skills we already possess. If we did that often enough, maybe it finally would sink in what kind of eating habits will keep us at the lower weight. Ideally, we'd find some middle ground between obsessively counting every calorie and paying no attention at all.

    I like to think that some of the new eating habits I've learned over the last six months are permanent, particularly a new appreciation for what a normal serving size looks like, and what an average meal looks like. Hint: it doesn't look like the fully-laden plate (plus seconds and half a bottle of wine) that I'd gotten used to over the years!

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