Feeling discouraged
melto1989
Posts: 140 Member
I thought id struggle with cravings (real sugar addict) but I've been on weight loss for a week and haven't over eaten on the bad that comes as a surprise since that's always been my fall.
But all this logging foods and reading that using scales to make sure you log correctly just sounds like too much of my life when I just want to eat a dang meal without freaking that my calories are logged correctly.
Is this my life for the next few years while I try to shed 30kgs.
Not to mention I just weighed myself and it's no better than the day I started. I'm already being so conscious of what I eat and I've had the scales go up and down all week do I need to start using scales to log correctly.
Feeling depressed and just want to excersise off my whole breakfast or until I shed a kg
But all this logging foods and reading that using scales to make sure you log correctly just sounds like too much of my life when I just want to eat a dang meal without freaking that my calories are logged correctly.
Is this my life for the next few years while I try to shed 30kgs.
Not to mention I just weighed myself and it's no better than the day I started. I'm already being so conscious of what I eat and I've had the scales go up and down all week do I need to start using scales to log correctly.
Feeling depressed and just want to excersise off my whole breakfast or until I shed a kg
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Replies
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Yup it sucks having to weigh every single little thing you put in your mouth! I cook so I have to weigh by ounces or pounds then convert everything into grams. So I quit doing it. I was 1.5 pounds from goal when I gave up. So now I've gained 8 pounds since August, lol. Here's what I've noticed, if it's too hard to log I don't eat it. So I'm going back to weighing everything until I hit goal this time. Then I'll quit weighing and measuring and then when I've gained 5 pounds I'll go back to the drudgery. I weigh myself everyday and average my weight on Saturdays. My weight can vary up to 3.5 pounds daily probably because of salt.
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It's not your whole life, just your life when you first start logging.
Eventually you build up foods in your account, which makes logging easier because the item is already saved. Then weighing and logging is a few minutes out of your day. Since you just started a week ago, you're probably hyper-focused on weight loss, measuring food, your body weight on the scale, etc, which tends to cause people to doubt the process.
You also might find once you get into a groove that the counting stops being a big deal. I generally have some calories left over to account for errors, and after observing my counts over a few weeks, I learned that I could afford to be a little more flexible and it wouldn't mess up with my weight loss. So if I did have a little more one day, or didn't stop at one serving of something, it didn't throw things completely off-track.
It sounds like you are doing fine, and this is only week 2. If you want to open your food diary and have others look at the entries to see how your logging is going (good choices of entries for different foods), that's always an option. Most logging errors are from just picking the wrong entry.4 -
Over time, you'll find ways to make the weighing and logging of food while you're cooking more efficient. Using the "My Meals" and "Recipes" features on MFP is a huge help. I've been weighing and logging for just over a month now and while I'm not the most efficient at it (yet), it really only adds about 5 minutes to my total prep and cooking time, and that's with recipes that contain a lot of ingredients.2
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I do not log nearly as accurately as I used to, but I find when I stop logging completely, I fall back into some bad habits.
So basically I do not weigh things anymore, and have a staple of foods that I consume and I do not have to think too much about what I am ingesting. If I ever get to a point where I can see my pants arent fitting so well, I get a little more serious about the logging again.
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It's not your whole life, just your life when you first start logging. Eventually you build up foods in your account, which makes logging easier because the item is already saved. Then weighing and logging is a few minutes out of your day. Since you just started a week ago, you're probably hyper-focused on weight loss, measuring food, your body weight on the scale, etc, which tends to cause people to doubt the process.
You also might find once you get into a groove that the counting stops being a big deal. I generally have some calories left over to account for errors, and after observing my counts over a few weeks, I learned that I could afford to be a little more flexible and it wouldn't mess up with my weight loss. So if I did have a little more one day, or didn't stop at one serving of something, it didn't throw things completely off-track.
It sounds like you are doing fine, and this is only week 2. If you want to open your food diary and have others look at the entries to see how your logging is going (good choices of entries for different foods), that's always an option. Most logging errors are from just picking the wrong entry.
Definately hyper focused on weight loss, that's a relief that it gets easier and quicker to log. I can't give up though since the reason I've given up over the last 7 years is because I didn't get instant results. I will see if I can figure out making my details open for public only logged 3 days on here but started cutting cals from the 31st.0 -
Yup it sucks having to weigh every single little thing you put in your mouth! I cook so I have to weigh by ounces or pounds then convert everything into grams. So I quit doing it. I was 1.5 pounds from goal when I gave up. So now I've gained 8 pounds since August, lol. Here's what I've noticed, if it's too hard to log I don't eat it. So I'm going back to weighing everything until I hit goal this time. Then I'll quit weighing and measuring and then when I've gained 5 pounds I'll go back to the drudgery. I weigh myself everyday and average my weight on Saturdays. My weight can vary up to 3.5 pounds daily probably because of salt.
Doing better than me I haven't weighed anything except my cereal and just have small portions compared to what I used to eat. Considering getting kitchen scales1 -
First, you've been at this for a week. You need to be patient. A week is a drop in the bucket. Realize that losing 30 kg, 66 lbs, is likely going to take 12-15+ months. Settle in for the long haul.
Second, once you have been logging for a bit, it takes very little time and effort. It takes me maybe 10 minutes a day to weigh and log my food. You don't have to count calories or weigh or measure but if you aren't losing weight without doing it, it is worth trying it out.4 -
There's some good advice above - that once your "recent foods" gets populated, logging is easier, that you should set up meals & recipes where appropriate to save time, and that it will soon turn into a routine.
And get the scale. You can get a decent one for $15-20. Weighing things is much more accurate than guessing (especially important for calorie-dense foods), and it's much quicker and easier than measuring with cups/spoons, once you know some tricks:- Assembling a salad in a bowl, a stew in a pan, sandwich on a plate? Put the bowl/pan/plate on the scale, zero, add an ingredient, note the weight, zero, add the next ingredient, note the weight . . . .
- Using something from a carton or jar, or cutting a slice from a hunk of cheese? Put the container or chunk on the scale, zero, take out por[tion, note the negative value (it's the amount you took out).
- Eating a whole apple, banana, unhulled strawberries, corn on the cob? Weigh the ready-to-eat food, eat the yummy parts, weigh the core/hulls/peel, subtract & note.
- I like to keep a few clean plastic yogurt-tub lids around to weigh small items, like a handful of nuts or chopped hardboiled eggs or something. Drop the lid on the scale, zero, add item, note weight, eat or use - just a quick rinse of the lid under the faucet & you're done.
FWIW, I lost 28.5kg on MFP in 10-11 months (at age 59-60, even), while following the guidelines of slowing down my weight loss rate as I had less to lose. This MFP stuff can be frustrating at first, but it's do-able, and with consistency & persistence, lots of people succeed . . . which is what you want, right?1 -
Yes, logging foods SUCK!!!! I hate having to do it, but I ONLY lose weight when I do it. Now that being said, I don't measure every little spoonful of peanut butter or jelly on the sandwich. I will just skim through the database sometimes, and find something that's not the worst, but not the best. Like PB&J - if, for example, the worst was 350 calories, and the best was 100 - I'll pick something in the 200-215 range - somewhere in the middle. Since I'm at the "starting end" of this journey, it hasn't been an issue. I'm sure at some point I'll need to be more diligent, but sometimes close enough is close enough.
There are MANY things that are already in the database. You can also input your own recipe's to use when you need to.0 -
I thought id struggle with cravings (real sugar addict) but I've been on weight loss for a week and haven't over eaten on the bad that comes as a surprise since that's always been my fall.
But all this logging foods and reading that using scales to make sure you log correctly just sounds like too much of my life when I just want to eat a dang meal without freaking that my calories are logged correctly.
Is this my life for the next few years while I try to shed 30kgs.
Not to mention I just weighed myself and it's no better than the day I started. I'm already being so conscious of what I eat and I've had the scales go up and down all week do I need to start using scales to log correctly.
Feeling depressed and just want to excersise off my whole breakfast or until I shed a kg
Intermittent fasting might be what you need. You just delay eating tell later in the day. I delay it enough (tell about 6 in the evening which make is about a 20-21 hour fast with a 3-4 hour eating window. I don't weigh anything, I don't count calories, I do far less meal prep. Once I start eating, I eat tell full, and I can graze ad libitum for the rest of the evening and I still lose weight (I've lost 40-lbs so far). The fasting acts as an appetite suppressant and I just drink water during the day and if I get real hungry before my scheduled eating time, I take 1/2 tsp of coconut oil and it kills the appetite. My diet is easy and cheap and saves time and I get to eat tell full each evening. It has really helped me out. See the intermittent fast forum, the 5:2 forum, and the OMAD forum. If I didn't lose doing this, I would just shorten my eating window tell I did lose weight. Some people diet for about 23 hours and just eat during a one hour window, but that has not been necessary for me.
When I did start this diet, I did log calories because I had never done that before and it was very informative. I don't do it now to save time.
A lot of women have had success with the 16:8 diet (fast 16 hours including sleep and eat during the 8-hr window). That doesn't work for me eating ad libitum so I do a shorter window.1 -
A good rule of thumb is that a proper serving is the size of your closed fist. With time you will know how to measure food just by sight. Keep pushing! If done correctly, you will not have to worry about the weight creeping back on because you will learn how to manage your food intake.1
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saraidavis wrote: »A good rule of thumb is that a proper serving is the size of your closed fist. With time you will know how to measure food just by sight. Keep pushing! If done correctly, you will not have to worry about the weight creeping back on because you will learn how to manage your food intake.
Huh?
A lump of peanut butter the size of my fist would probably blow my whole day's calories. And I just ate a grapefruit bigger than my fist: Will I (re-)gain all the poundz? (Prolly not, because only 103 calories).
Seriously, I think you needed to say a serving of what.5 -
There's some good advice above - that once your "recent foods" gets populated, logging is easier, that you should set up meals & recipes where appropriate to save time, and that it will soon turn into a routine.
And get the scale. You can get a decent one for $15-20. Weighing things is much more accurate than guessing (especially important for calorie-dense foods), and it's much quicker and easier than measuring with cups/spoons, once you know some tricks:- Assembling a salad in a bowl, a stew in a pan, sandwich on a plate? Put the bowl/pan/plate on the scale, zero, add an ingredient, note the weight, zero, add the next ingredient, note the weight . . . .
- Using something from a carton or jar, or cutting a slice from a hunk of cheese? Put the container or chunk on the scale, zero, take out por[tion, note the negative value (it's the amount you took out).
- Eating a whole apple, banana, unhulled strawberries, corn on the cob? Weigh the ready-to-eat food, eat the yummy parts, weigh the core/hulls/peel, subtract & note.
- I like to keep a few clean plastic yogurt-tub lids around to weigh small items, like a handful of nuts or chopped hardboiled eggs or something. Drop the lid on the scale, zero, add item, note weight, eat or use - just a quick rinse of the lid under the faucet & you're done.
FWIW, I lost 28.5kg on MFP in 10-11 months (at age 59-60, even), while following the guidelines of slowing down my weight loss rate as I had less to lose. This MFP stuff can be frustrating at first, but it's do-able, and with consistency & persistence, lots of people succeed . . . which is what you want, right?
^^This^^1 -
saraidavis wrote: »A good rule of thumb is that a proper serving is the size of your closed fist. With time you will know how to measure food just by sight. Keep pushing! If done correctly, you will not have to worry about the weight creeping back on because you will learn how to manage your food intake.
Huh?
A lump of peanut butter the size of my fist would probably blow my whole day's calories. And I just ate a grapefruit bigger than my fist: Will I (re-)gain all the poundz? (Prolly not, because only 103 calories).
Seriously, I think you needed to say a serving of what.
LOL, I'd kill to be able to a fist sized lump of peanut butter again!4 -
Honestly, you kind of just have to decide which thing you want more: losing weight or "just eating a dang meal without freaking." You're here because you (like me... and like almost all of us) can't do both. It suuuuucks. I compare it to the grieving process, sometimes. It's hard to realize that you're definitely not going to be able to just relax and mindlessly enjoy food for at least a year, and maybe (if you're really like me, and you're a binger) not ever again.
It's good that you're thinking about this now, because this thought process -- this questioning whether it's all worth it -- is what will enable you to either fully commit to losing weight or realize that you're happier as you are. Both are valid choices! You are the total boss of you, and you get to decide. But if you decide you want to lose the weight, then yep, this weighing and logging and constant-vigilance stuff is how it goes.7 -
Do you remember when you first learned to drive? How you could never remember where all the dials were on the dashboard and it felt so difficult to check all the mirrors you were supposed to and you were constantly caught off guard by what others drivers were doing? But eventually most of that became second nature. Everything feels hard and time consuming when you are learning how to do it.
You also don't have to weigh everything forever. Weighing helps you to be able to visualize what a serving looks like.
I've been at this for over two years. I still weigh calorie-dense stuff, and every once and a while I'll take a week and weigh everything to keep myself sharp. Most days I spend all of maybe 3 minutes logging my food. It's far less difficult than carrying around the excess fat I lost
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I get what you are saying. I will admit that I got to a point where I became overwhelmed by weighing every single thing that I was going to eat. It seemed so tedious and time consuming that I stopped logging for a while. I returned to logging and promised myself that I would not obsess over weighing every single thing. For what it's worth, here is my current approach: I weigh many portions of high-calorie foods that I frequently eat (cheese!!!), put them in little plastic baggies (for example, 10 baggies all filled with 1-oz portions), and then keep them in the fridge. For several days I can then just grab and eat, without having to weigh every time. A lot of the time I simply measure carefully (for example, 2 teaspoons of honey or 1 cup of cooked rice). When choosing from the MFP database, I make a quick but logical choice about which option. I don't necessarily choose the lowest calorie option. For example, if I eat 1/2 of a large gala apple, I choose one from the database that looks reasonable. If it says, "apple, 40 calories," that's probably too low. If it says, "Gala apple, one large apple, 130 calories," well that might be a bit high, but I'm going to choose that one since I did not weigh my apple. (And once in a blue moon I have to take a guess out of thin air. I ate a lot of homemade bread yesterday and simply guessed at the calories and logged it. I am sure that it was not accurate!) For now this approach is helping me and I am losing weight well. I feel like I have enough time and brain space to live my busy life AND log my food. All in all, including logging and weighing and measuring, I probably spend 5 minutes logging my food every day. When I get closer to my goal, if I have trouble losing, I might get stricter with the food scale.
I would guess that most people do eat a lot of the same foods over and over again. I think someone else said this, but MFP allows you to view your recent foods. This makes logging much quicker and easier. Also, MFP has a very good tool for adding your own recipes. I use this frequently, and it doesn't take a lot of time.
Don't freak about logging perfectly. Just do your best and be as accurate and honest as you can. No need to obsess and freak out over it being 100% accurate.3 -
The weighing gets easier and quicker.
And for me, every time I stop logging, I gain weight. Logging food is a great tool for successful weight loss.0 -
If you don't want to weigh, don't weigh. Weighing food can help fine tune your logging, but may not be necessary right from day one. If you're losing weight just fine without weighing your food, no need to fix what ain't broke. If after eight or so weeks the your weight doesn't budge, then there may be some significant logging errors going on and a food scale would for sure help you troubleshoot them. But it's really just one more tool in your arsenal; it's meant to help you, not hurt or overwhelm you.3
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Honestly, you kind of just have to decide which thing you want more: losing weight or "just eating a dang meal without freaking." You're here because you (like me... and like almost all of us) can't do both. It suuuuucks. I compare it to the grieving process, sometimes. It's hard to realize that you're definitely not going to be able to just relax and mindlessly enjoy food for at least a year, and maybe (if you're really like me, and you're a binger) not ever again.
It's good that you're thinking about this now, because this thought process -- this questioning whether it's all worth it -- is what will enable you to either fully commit to losing weight or realize that you're happier as you are. Both are valid choices! You are the total boss of you, and you get to decide. But if you decide you want to lose the weight, then yep, this weighing and logging and constant-vigilance stuff is how it goes.
It's definitely worth it since it's been years of gradual weight gain, at least until the weight is lost this is life. I can't seem to be happy in my skin being bigger so some self discipline is what it is going to take to finally stop hating myself. Thanks2 -
Thanks everyone, good hearing all your experience and advice.2
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if its important to you, you take the 5 minutes a day to log your calories.0
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Losing weight is all about eating less than you burn. If you can do that without logging/counting, do that. If you can eat every dang meal without overeating, do that. If you overeat for every dang meal, weighing and logging can be the pause you need to not overeat.
Be fully aware that sweet stuff tastes good, it just does, there is nothing wrong with you for liking sweets. Cravings tend to lessen when you're busy with doing things, when you are well nourished, when you are eating food you like, when you aren't surrounded with what you struggle to moderate. Not thnking about foods as bad/addictive also helps.
Weigh fluctuates and if you have just started exercising, your body will retain water for muscle repair. You may not see a change in weight until you've been eating at a deficit for a month.
All-or-nothing-thinking takes you nowhere good. You can't excersise off your excess weight. It comes off slowly, through a consistent calorie deficit, that has to be so mild that you can sustain it. If you are ready to throw in the towel one week in, you're not going to succeed.1 -
Well done, both - you're a great example of stick-to-it-ive-ness!0
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I haven't been at this long, but believe logging will work if I stick with it. I don't weigh, just measure some foods, and use my best guestimates on the rest. For me, the real value of logging is being aware of what I put in my mouth. Otherwise, it is very easy to lie to myself about how much I am really eating. For example eating spoon after spoonful of peanut butter!0
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