I just need.......something

If planning is difficult. Take one day a week to prelog your week into MFP, leave a little wiggle room and you can always adjust. But the day you do your shopping,make sure to plan.

Sounds like you are doing great and you are on track! Don't look at the big picture but look at one day at a time! I stared with a trainer three weeks ago and my jeans still fit tight but I can see that my body has changes. Scale hasn't gone down much either and it's discouraging but no way am I quitting now! Good luck!!!

We all have this idea that weight loss is or should be a super fast 30lbs in a week deal. Its slow often, but your losing so be patient! Its taken me years to lose 145 lbs and probs awhile more for the last bit

(TL;DR - live, learn and lose at your own pace)
I really understand your sentiment. At the end of my last DietBet I was so focused on losing weight I started worrying that I was developing an unhealthy attitude toward food in general. The constant focus was time consuming and exhausting. I decided to just stop. Stop the tracking, obsessing, denying... I stopped for three months. It was bliss.
In the meantime I went to China and drank way too much beer and ate ALL the dumplings. I also walked through six UNESCO sites. At the end of the three months I had gained two pounds.
What this taught me was that I am making better choices with food and being more active, but I still had to be accountable if I wanted to lose weight. But I didn't want to go back to the psycho calorie hoarder I had come so I simplified my daily targets and reduced the calorie restriction. I increased my activity level to compensate. Now I am losing weight - not my mind

quiksylver296 wrote: »

You look like you're eating very low calories to lose. I'm 5'9", 178 lbs, and losing on 1930 calories. Do you think you would do better if you had some more wiggle room, around 1700 calories or so?

OP has lost 10 pounds in "just over three months," which means OP is at a daily deficit of a bit under 400 calories. If OP moves from 1380 calories to 1700 calories, s/he will barely be at a deficit at all. If the OP is frustrated at the current pace of loss, moving to barely below maintenance doesn't seem like a good solution.

@poorlittlefish , I have had far more success counting and logging calories than I have ever had with any other approach -- I find it gives me more flexibility than any other approach that ensures a deficit. Logging doesn't bother me. I've only skipped a handful of days during three years when limited Internet availability collided with heavily scheduled trips that involved all-day activities with other people. Sometimes I have to estimate, so I do my best. It doesn't worry me. I don't feel like I'm always "thinking about food" or "worrying."

But I can understand that logging isn't for everybody. You need to find an approach that you can live with that will assure that are in a calorie deficit. Whether you do that by planning and tracking, or by sticking to some limited list of foods and meals that you know will keep you in a deficit without having to log each meal, or by intermittent fasting (if you're sure you won't consume too many calories in your eating window), or by some other method, it doesn't matter. Do you think that you've gotten a good sense for how much you can eat of various foods and remain at deficit? Maybe try taking a break from logging and see if you can maintain a deficit and continue to lose.

Totally agree with ahoy_m8. A cheat day, or even just a cheat meal, is enough for some of us to stay on track. I know I'm going to fail at some point, so why not schedule it! Though it's not for everyone, 'cheating' can be a powerful tool;-) (oh, and you are doing awesome btw)

Hey OP, just wanted to drop a line and say that you're doing great so far, way to stay on track, regardless of onesies or twosies here and there.

As far as what seems to be bothering you, the almost neurotic process of constantly thinking about calories and how-much-is-this, etc. If this is your first time doing counting and logging, let me be the first to congratulate you on making 3 months! That's a long time, especially if you're not accustomed to counting and logging. For some people it becomes second nature, for others its a daily set of mental exercises. I personally both love it and hate it; love it because I like quantifying things and it works (no, really, CICO makes so much sense and really does work), but i hate it because its that ever-present thing at the back of your mind, every time you eat something, you're thinking "I need to log this" or "Does this fit into my plan?" and worrying about meal-prepping. It can be a chore, mentally, and it can be draining, though for others it might be a freeing task.

My first time I tried logging, I only logged for about 1.5-2 months, at which point I reached an intermediary goal and took a quick break from logging and went into low-key maintenance for a bit. That didn't mean that I just went overboard and splurged on anything, but I wasn't measuring and logging everything that went into my mouth either. What I did is I learned how my body felt and reacted and I used a scale weekly. I know that for myself, my weight can fluctuate +- 2.5 lbs. That's a 5 lb range centered around my avg/target weight (between how much food and waste is in my system, how hydrated I am, etc) that I just call a cumulative "water weight". I'd weigh myself once or twice a week and if I start to notice a trend in a direction I didn't like (like slowly edging upward, exiting that range, etc), then I would take steps to correct that situation, sometimes through the use of logging, sometimes without. This allowed me to track myself and catch potential issues early on and make small course corrections as I went along without needing to revert to a stricter, more measured approach. And then when I felt I had had enough of a mental break from the logging system, I went back into it, and continued my journey to my goal.

This is just what worked for me and I just felt like your post really reminded me of where I had been after my first time logging, where it just felt like I was going to lose my mind. I hope that this may help you in some way, whether its some idea for your own system or just as motivation/inspiration to keep up what you've been doing. This worked for me, but YMMV. Sometimes you just need to reach out to the community and vent for a little bit and see that you're not alone in this. That's what I had to do when I stopped smoking (something I'm working on once again, lol).

I know it can seem like reaching your goal can seem like forever, but sometimes it takes a bit of a mental attitude change. I'm going out on a limb here and gonna guess that once you reach your goal, you want to maintain that and not revert to where you were. With this comes the acceptance that this is more than just a 6-month thing or 1 yr thing, but a lifetime objective. That means a shift in attitude and thinking about what you're doing. Its a change in lifestyle and it truly can be something which changes your life (almost always for the better). And this is true not just about maintaining a healthy weight and body image but about other things as well. Again, going back to my smoking example, the time I was most successful in putting down the cigarettes, it came down to that realization, acceptance, and embracing that philosophy (now I need to re-embrace that philosophy once again). Similarly people who used to hate running and now love it (yes, they exist) probably have had similar realizations, that it is about lifestyle change and needing to embrace that.

Once again, GREAT work so far, you're coming along really well. I hope that this post and those of others have helped you to deal with your frustration with the system and I wish you the best of luck on your ongoing journey and through your endeavors in life.

quiksylver296 wrote: »

You look like you're eating very low calories to lose. I'm 5'9", 178 lbs, and losing on 1930 calories. Do you think you would do better if you had some more wiggle room, around 1700 calories or so?

You can also go on a "diet break" and eat at maintenance for a month or so. I did that over the summer. It personally didn't work all that well for me, because I had a hard time getting back on track, but some people swear by it.

And...you're in the last ten pounds. Those are the hardest. It's going to come off very, very slowly. You can do this. Good luck!

I would normally agree with this, but given the slow weight loss I suspect she is eating more than she realizes. I say this because she said her thyroid levels are within a normal range right now.

However, those last ten pounds come off at a snail's pace.

If the process is the problem, simplify the process. Once you know how many calories you have to work with, all you have to do is stay within those. I have the app but don't use it and I don't keep a log. I limit myself to 2000 calories. If I have 500 for breakfast, 450 at lunch, and 600 at dinner, I still have 450 for a snack and protein shake. It doesn't have to be complicated.