Got burned out...
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Taimeinhappy
Posts: 38 Member
In 2015 I lost 40 pounds using Myfitnesspal. I stopped losing weight 30 pounds from my goal because I lost the drive and passion. Weighing all my food and tracking it all got to be too stressful and time consuming. So here I am 2 years later and 30 pounds heavier.
Do you have any tips for making logging easier or more fun? I used my own food and recipes. But it felt like such a chore to make meals.
Also I'm looking for anyone who would like to be friends, I'll be at this for a while.
Do you have any tips for making logging easier or more fun? I used my own food and recipes. But it felt like such a chore to make meals.
Also I'm looking for anyone who would like to be friends, I'll be at this for a while.
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Replies
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My story is very similar to yours, except I lost the drive when I retired. Now, 25 pounds heavier I'm starting over and will probably discover the weight comes off slower than when I was working. But I am determined to get it off.2
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Don't think in terms of dieting. Dieting is a temporary project, reach goal weight and then DONE. But we're not done, instead we start a new phase......maintenance.
Look for lifestyle changes, things you will do forever to be a healthier person. Some of us will need to log forever, some will not. Can you be more active? Can you eat more veggies? It doesn't have to be super strict, it just needs to be consistent.5 -
Don't think in terms of dieting. Dieting is a temporary project, reach goal weight and then DONE. But we're not done, instead we start a new phase......maintenance.
Look for lifestyle changes, things you will do forever to be a healthier person. Some of us will need to log forever, some will not. Can you be more active? Can you eat more veggies? It doesn't have to be super strict, it just needs to be consistent.
I need to do this. Logging was working so well, it just never got easy for me.2 -
Logging can indeed be daunting/off-putting if you do most of your own cooking/food preparation. Entering recipes, even for me and my OC tendencies, can be a PITA. If I didn't have way too much time on my hands the past couple of years, I probably would have never tried calorie counting as someone who can count on 1-2 hands the number of frozen dinners eaten in the past year and dining out combined.
Have you considered portion control for yourself via a lot of, granted processed, packaged foods? Not forever, mind you, just until you lose the weight you want?
It's not always the story of "But if you do that you'll never learn along the way so you won't be prepared for maintenance." There are people who succeed by having an, albeit it boring, limited menu at first for tracking purposes. Once the weight is off/mostly off, they then appear to be fairly motivated to keep those hard won results by logging accurately even as their dietary world expands and become more difficult/time consuming to track as a result. And as the statistics show us, a lot of people who slog the "hard way" to maintenance tracking-wise are still not prepared and end up on the yo-yo anyways.
There's one dedicated calorie counter I found a while ago and still lurk her blog every now and then whose diet for the first 16 months was a choice between two breakfasts, the same lunch, the same snack, a choice between two desserts, and a (I assume rotating line up of) frozen dinner with a salad. Granted, exercise in the form of walking (then later jogging/running) and swimming happened, too. She ate at 1600 kcal/day, IIRC, and lost 110 pounds in that 16 months. She also no longer eats like that, limited/processed/strict, and hasn't for some time. By her writing account, she learned to maintain just fine for six years until a kidlet came into the picture. And even with, she's been struggling with the last ~15 lbs over her BC - before child - weight, not 60. But she found and has written before the consistency and ease of that path at the beginning is what worked for her.
If you choose to stick with eating/tracking home cooked foods calorie-wise, I personally found the food tracker/recipe maker over on Lose It! to be far easier/more enjoyable to use than here as far as custom food and recipe entries. Namely because I enter them all and do not rely on their database at all. Time consuming still? Yes. But for me, it's less of a chore than here.4 -
grinning_chick wrote: »Logging can indeed be daunting/off-putting if you do most of your own cooking/food preparation. Entering recipes, even for me and my OC tendencies, can be a PITA. If I didn't have way too much time on my hands the past couple of years, I probably would have never tried calorie counting as someone who can count on 1-2 hands the number of frozen dinners eaten in the past year and dining out combined.
Have you considered portion control for yourself via a lot of, granted processed, packaged foods? Not forever, just until you lose the weight you want?
It's not always the story of "But if you do that you'll never learn along the way so you won't be prepared for maintenance." There are people who succeed by having an, albeit it boring, limited menu at first for tracking purposes. Once the weight is off/mostly off, they then appear to be fairly motivated to keep those hard won results by logging accurately even as their dietary options expand and become more difficult to track. And as the statistics show us, a lot of people who slog the "hard way" to maintenance tracking-wise are still not prepared and end up on the yo-yo anyways.
There's one dedicated calorie counter I found a while ago and still lurk her blog every now and then whose diet for the first 16 months was a choice between two breakfasts, the same lunch, the same snack, a choice between two desserts, and a (I assume rotating line up of) frozen dinner with a salad. Granted, exercise in the form of walking (then later jogging/running) and swimming happened, too. She lost 110 pounds. She also no longer eats like that, and hasn't for some time. And by her account and writings, she learned to maintain just fine for six years until a kidlet came into the picture. And even with, she's been struggling with the last ~15 lbs over her BC - before child - weight, not 60. But she found and has written before the consistency and ease at the beginning is what worked for her.
If you choose to stick with eating/tracking home cooked foods calorie-wise, I personally found the food tracker/recipe maker over on Lose It! to be far easier/more enjoyable to use than here as far as custom food and recipe entries. Namely because I enter them all and do not rely on their database at all. Time consuming still? Yes. But for me, it's less of a chore than here.
Oh my gosh. Thank you for all this. You completely get it. Do you know the name of the blogger you follow? I'd love to read her stuff! I think making a simple diet will make my life so much easier. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it!3 -
I find foods that are easy to make, cheap, fun(ish), and enough to cycle through the month or weeks. Basically the same food cycled throughout the month. Monday, Wednesday, and Saturdays are basically cheese and beef quesadilla, minus the spice (sensitivity issues), and no sauces. In other-words a hamburger on a flour tortilla.
Most of my breakfast meals are simple, and the same thing almost every day/week. I am still waking up at this point and can careless if breakfast is exciting. Same usually goes for lunch ( I am in a big hurry and have little time anyways), while I have a lot of recipes for lunch, I usually have 2-4 that are cycled over and over throughout the weeks, or it is leftovers. Usually each week is the same thing every day to make logging easier for both lunch and breakfast. Dinner is where I like my variety if possible, and while 3 days of the week are the simple tortilla "hamburger", this is because of easy logging on late work days.
I eat a lot of the same foods over and over while losing my weight. Every now and then I'll pick a day or two (once a month), where I eat at maintenance.4 -
Maybe you need to ask yourself what means more to you.. reaching your goal weight or saving a few minutes measuring and logging your meals.
I don't want to sound unkind here, but is this seriously what stopped you? If that alone is all that it took, maybe that wasn't really the problem.
Maybe it was a lack of actual drive from the start. Or maybe there was something else that was difficult about it and that was either the straw that broke the camel's back or just the scapegoat reason.
I just can't wrap my head around that being a something worth stopping over. Logging and measuring have to be fun or easy or it's a deal breaker?
We all got to be overweight because it was easy and maybe even fun for some of us. It doesn't take work to put it on (for overweight folks, like myself, anyway), but it does take a little work to get it back off. It won't be all sunshine and rainbows, but it's worth it to be happy and healthy. Isn't it?
Weighing 30, 40, or 70 pounds less, whatever we're talking about here, seems like a super trade in exchange for what takes all of <5 minutes/meal.
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My story sounds so similar, but for me it was stress that caused me to fall back into old habits.2
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Maybe you need to ask yourself what means more to you.. reaching your goal weight or saving a few minutes measuring and logging your meals.
I don't want to sound unkind here, but is this seriously what stopped you? If that alone is all that it took, maybe that wasn't really the problem.
Maybe it was a lack of actual drive from the start. Or maybe there was something else that was difficult about it and that was either the straw that broke the camel's back or just the scapegoat reason.
I just can't wrap my head around that being a something worth stopping over. Logging and measuring have to be fun or easy or it's a deal breaker?
We all got to be overweight because it was easy and maybe even fun for some of us. It doesn't take work to put it on (for overweight folks, like myself, anyway), but it does take a little work to get it back off. It won't be all sunshine and rainbows, but it's worth it to be happy and healthy. Isn't it?
Weighing 30, 40, or 70 pounds less, whatever we're talking about here, seems like a super trade in exchange for what takes all of <5 minutes/meal.
I appreciate your..bluntness, I suppose. Here's the thing. When you're weighing out meals for yourself 7 days a week for a year, it gets to be a lot. I work full time as the breadwinner in my household and cook all the meals (by the way measuring/weighing out every ingredient for an actual recipe and then weighing it's cooked weight after, takes longer than 5 minutes).
Stress is real and weighing and logging was just one more thing to add to my plate. In my OP I said it was stressful, I just didn't feel the need to get into the nitty gritty details of my sob story (who actually cares). So yeah I'm asking for advice, and I clearly got some good advice from others which I am implementing.
I'm sorry you can't wrap your head around it. I guess I respond to stress differently than you, which is fine.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.3 -
redneckwoman2012 wrote: »My story sounds so similar, but for me it was stress that caused me to fall back into old habits.
Mine was stress too. It's just too easy to go back to old habits. It feels like auto pilot.1 -
Taimeinhappy wrote: »Maybe you need to ask yourself what means more to you.. reaching your goal weight or saving a few minutes measuring and logging your meals.
I don't want to sound unkind here, but is this seriously what stopped you? If that alone is all that it took, maybe that wasn't really the problem.
Maybe it was a lack of actual drive from the start. Or maybe there was something else that was difficult about it and that was either the straw that broke the camel's back or just the scapegoat reason.
I just can't wrap my head around that being a something worth stopping over. Logging and measuring have to be fun or easy or it's a deal breaker?
We all got to be overweight because it was easy and maybe even fun for some of us. It doesn't take work to put it on (for overweight folks, like myself, anyway), but it does take a little work to get it back off. It won't be all sunshine and rainbows, but it's worth it to be happy and healthy. Isn't it?
Weighing 30, 40, or 70 pounds less, whatever we're talking about here, seems like a super trade in exchange for what takes all of <5 minutes/meal.
I appreciate your..bluntness, I suppose. Here's the thing. When you're weighing out meals for yourself 7 days a week for a year, it gets to be a lot. I work full time as the breadwinner in my household and cook all the meals (by the way measuring/weighing out every ingredient for an actual recipe and then weighing it's cooked weight after, takes longer than 5 minutes).
Stress is real and weighing and logging was just one more thing to add to my plate. In my OP I said it was stressful, I just didn't feel the need to get into the nitty gritty details of my sob story (who actually cares). So yeah I'm asking for advice, and I clearly got some good advice from others which I am implementing.
I'm sorry you can't wrap your head around it. I guess I respond to stress differently than you, which is fine.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
A 16 hour work day is not uncommon for me, but it's never less than 12 and occasionally I'll get in a full 20 hours. I also cook all the meals in the household and do all of the housework.
If it helps any I have found that simply changing your perspective on a situation can reduce or eliminate the stress altogether.
If you look at like "oh great, I have to weigh all this out and measure it and then I still have to cook and do this and that and I don't want to," then yeah it's going to be rough.
If you can change your view and go in with the mindset that "I am doing a freakin great job logging and measuring, I've been rocking it for a full year already, I got this!" then it's not so bad.
Reframing something can make the results like night and day. Anyway, I hope you find something that works for you to get back on track.6 -
Taimeinhappy wrote: »Maybe you need to ask yourself what means more to you.. reaching your goal weight or saving a few minutes measuring and logging your meals.
I don't want to sound unkind here, but is this seriously what stopped you? If that alone is all that it took, maybe that wasn't really the problem.
Maybe it was a lack of actual drive from the start. Or maybe there was something else that was difficult about it and that was either the straw that broke the camel's back or just the scapegoat reason.
I just can't wrap my head around that being a something worth stopping over. Logging and measuring have to be fun or easy or it's a deal breaker?
We all got to be overweight because it was easy and maybe even fun for some of us. It doesn't take work to put it on (for overweight folks, like myself, anyway), but it does take a little work to get it back off. It won't be all sunshine and rainbows, but it's worth it to be happy and healthy. Isn't it?
Weighing 30, 40, or 70 pounds less, whatever we're talking about here, seems like a super trade in exchange for what takes all of <5 minutes/meal.
I appreciate your..bluntness, I suppose. Here's the thing. When you're weighing out meals for yourself 7 days a week for a year, it gets to be a lot. I work full time as the breadwinner in my household and cook all the meals (by the way measuring/weighing out every ingredient for an actual recipe and then weighing it's cooked weight after, takes longer than 5 minutes).
Stress is real and weighing and logging was just one more thing to add to my plate. In my OP I said it was stressful, I just didn't feel the need to get into the nitty gritty details of my sob story (who actually cares). So yeah I'm asking for advice, and I clearly got some good advice from others which I am implementing.
I'm sorry you can't wrap your head around it. I guess I respond to stress differently than you, which is fine.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
A 16 hour work day is not uncommon for me, but it's never less than 12 and occasionally I'll get in a full 20 hours. I also cook all the meals in the household and do all of the housework.
If it helps any I have found that simply changing your perspective on a situation can reduce or eliminate the stress altogether.
If you look at like "oh great, I have to weigh all this out and measure it and then I still have to cook and do this and that and I don't want to," then yeah it's going to be rough.
If you can change your view and go in with the mindset that "I am doing a freakin great job logging and measuring, I've been rocking it for a full year already, I got this!" then it's not so bad.
Reframing something can make the results like night and day. Anyway, I hope you find something that works for you to get back on track.
Thank you. I will try to change the way I look at it.3 -
I cook every meal at home for myself and my husband - we rarely eat out.
Logging is easier for me with the right tools. I use my iPad and leave it open on the counter while I cook. I have a scale with a tare function which, although it has a small footprint on the counter, will let me put quite a heavy pot directly on the scale. (The box for the scale showed someone weighing a whole turkey in a roasting pan on it!) It was twenty dollars on Amazon, so it should be easy to find a similar scale.
So what I do when I cook a complicated meal is open a new recipe, put my ingredients directly into the pot (or a measuring bowl, or whatever) write down the weight of each one, hit tare to reset the scale to zero, and add the next ingredient. When I make the same recipe again, I just edit the old recipe to reflect the new amounts.
So for example today's breakfast was steel cut oats with walnuts, pecans, and peaches, made with milk. I made four portions at one time: put the pot on the scale, add each ingredient by weight, then put the pot on the stove. It literally takes less time than it would to get out measuring cups and do it without weighing. Since I often eat the same thing, I have the recipe saved, and I usually don't have to do anything but log one serving, but usually I use apples and today I used peaches, so I had to edit the recipe. Still very simple! And tomorrow I won't have to do anything but slide right and add the same breakfast as yesterday. I don't weigh my finished food, since I'm the only one eating this, so a rough estimate of one quarter of the food will average out when I eat the rest. But if I did plan to record servings by weight, the weight per serving would go in the recipe, and then I would serve myself by putting my plate on the scale and adding the food. Again, this takes zero more time than putting food on a plate that's not on a scale, and about two seconds to log.
As you log more, you will have more and more foods saved under recent foods. Also remember to use the scanner for packaged foods and the location search for restaurant menus.
My husband makes sure we have at least one day a week when I don't have to cook. I really recommend you giving yourself a similar break in some way, whether it's finding a healthy option for takeout, or instant meals, or whatever. What we do is he cooks breakfast, and then we order chicken pesto wraps for lunch and spaghetti and salad for dinner from a family owned Italian restaurant which makes great food just the way I would make it for myself. Everyone's situation is different, but figuring out a way to relax for just one day without breaking the calorie bank will help keep you sane. I also have several meals I made in batches, and I meal prep certain ingredients which are time consuming, such as quinoa, stir fried vegetables, and pork tenderloin. Then I can throw together a meal in a few minutes.5 -
@rheddmobile I never thought of doing it all in one pot! I just ordered a 10kg scale so hopefully your suggestion will make it easier. OP I know how you feel... I gained 50+lbs in the last 4 years or so and the thought of weighing everything is down right dreadful to me. Especially cooking for more than one person who isn't trying to lose weight and doesn't like a lot of the same foods.1
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all great ideas here. I like to be practical & don't know if you can use my idea some of the time, but since I cook for me & hubby & he eats what he likes, I cook for him (not always) & myself different but my meals are simple & easy to cook & log. Today I made him a vegetarian lasagna & I had a ground chicken patty & acorn squash. I also will cook 3 lbs of ground turkey patties at once, I measure it first or measure then, make them into patties & freeze them idividually, I do this with ground beef also. That way I can pull some out, make a patty for me & use a few for a dish i'm making..we've been eating the "steamer" frozen veggies alot lately. I am lucky tho in that hubby will eat what I do if I didn't make anything different, he just puts different things on it than I do...more butter & cheese. I'll also add some rice or pasta to his meals0
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My tips for makeing logging food easier: Instead of going to food diary and typing in everything individually, one food at a time, and one quantity at a time... I often try to use MFP recipe function and add a manual recipe. I can type in a laundry list of everything I ate for that meal, and then click match ingredients. I will normally title my recipe something like "Dinner 11-15-17". I may never use the recipe again, but I think it makes it easy to log a meal with a lot of components that. Sometimes I use the import via url button if there is a similar recipe online (you can edit the individual ingredients and quantities with this function).
I also recently found out that foods I do manually enter will be under the "frequent tab" in my food diary...I like logging foods on the computer vs the app for this reason, because I can check off multiple items at once.
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I dont look at it as a chore, I look at it as an investment in myself. I think this is the longest I have logged my foods which has been since Oct 1st. and I know if I stop I will fall back into old habits. I have started to lose weight and I love the way i feel.1
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Honestly I have found that like the blogger mentioned earlier I eat alot of the same meals. Once built in my recipe builder I don't have to do much. I too eat the same breakfast most work days and I've been doing this for almost 2 years. I haven't gotten tired of the food. I picked something I could eat regularly because I enjoy it and so every day I know the amount I am consuming. Every once in a while I weigh it again to make sure I'm not slowly increasing the size of my servings. For the longest time I ate Lean Cuisine for lunch because it was pre-portioned. I know it isn't the "healthiest" food but to get going it was a huge help. I have since branched out to making soup and freezing it for lunches and still occasionally use Lean Cuisine if I'm bored. Dinner I do usually weigh my portions. I have gotten pretty good at eyeballing the amounts but since I am on my last 10 pounds I have to really watch every calorie so lately I am weighing alot more. I've lost 85 pounds this way. It can be done.
Of course weighing everything is more accurate and when you stall or your loss slows it has to be done to find out where you are slipping but if you can't face measuring every little bite every day just start and do what you can. Like anything else the more effort you put in the more success you will have but I totally understand the frustration of an eating plan that takes over your life. In all honesty I will have to log for the rest of my life. I have accepted that but I don't have to let it be my whole life.
Throughout this journey the one thing I have repeatedly told myself is my body counts calories even if I don't. I can tell myself I only ate 1200 but if I ate 1300 my body will know, lol. Good luck and please don't let this overwhelm you. It's your program. Do what works for you.1 -
I took a break for about a week, Im still losing but it was too much to do constantly. I didnt go crazy, I just took a break from weighing, Im back at it now (it was 6 full days) I still logged and I still lost weight.
Like you, I am the primary breadwinner in my house, my husband has been going to school for pre-med and prepping to take his MCAT. I am also going to school (online) full time, cooking, taking care of the house etc. I understand how frustrating it can be and time consuming. It helped me alot to make a schedule or a to do list and stick to it my typical to do list for when I get home looks like this:
Dinner- either make, or I do alot of crockpot meals, IMO these were a life saver, you save on calories from not using oil, and you dont have to do anything really
Prep Lunches- Weighing everything, but doing simple lunches so its not too time consuming
Go on a walk or to the gym- most nights its only a walk, and even if thats all I do the dog gets exercise and so do I, I also actually get to see my husband so I look forward to it every night
Homework- this probably doesnt apply to you, but this takes up a few hours of my night every night
Shower- Normal life, lol I do this at night to save time in the morning so I can get the extra 20 min of sleep
Tv/relaxing- my husband laughs at me, but if I dont put it on my to do list, I wont have any time for myself, I do nothing at least 30 min a night, I need to destress and relax, some nights I take a bath, or read its whatever but I think its important to schedule some time for yourself so you dont get overwhelmed
I think its important to find a balance between living your new healthy life, and still getting everything done, if anything becomes to overwhelming, figure out why its too much work and adjust what you can from there. my big one was lunches, I was doing it in the morning and I always ran out of time and it was stressful and I would actually get mad that I had to weigh things because I just wanted to get in my car and leave for work, I started doing it at night and things are much easier now in the morning.
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