How to avoid quitting 2 days in?

Cliche for sure...but I just did it and exercised some discipline.

@mjc8080,

Do you have reasonable expectations for weight loss?

Do you have a reasonable and sustainable eating plan?

Do you restrict certain "bad" foods?

Are you eating enough?

First of all if you can be patient 1 pound a week will be easier. As your weight drops you will have to lower your calories to continue to lose. If you start low you will feel like you have no where to go. The truth is you would just lose slower but you might get frustrated about it.

Other things that have helped me were to be very careful about how much carb and sugar I ate. I'm not doing low carb, I'm just being sure to balance my diet. Whenever I find I'm getting out of control (I'm on maintenance now) I look at how much protein and veggies I'm eating. Usually I'll find that all my snacks have been carbs and that I skipped making any vegetables for dinner etc. I'm about 2.5 years in now and can see the pattern whenever I feel like I'm hungry all the time.

One other thing is to take a look at when you eat if you are hungry or if it is emotional. Maybe try to find something to burn off the emotions other than eating. I still catch myself eating when I'm upset. A long brisk walk can do wonders.

As you start to see results you will get more motivated and it does get a little easier. Maintenance is a whole other story, lol but by then you don't want to gain it back. Hang in there you can do it.

Food diary.

It’s a thing to do. Do it no matter what. Eating too much is not a reason to abandon your diary. The accountability is right there.

Calorie counting is a pain at first. Stick with it, it gets easier.

Yeah, if you are struggling with 2 pounds then it's better to take your time but get there eventually. It took me a year to lose the last 20 pounds! But by that point I was down quite a bit and wasn't stressing about it anymore. With 150 pounds to go you might find it really hard to stick to it if you are struggling already. Like you say 1 pound a week is better than 0 pounds. ;-)

The other thing that may happen is as you drop lower you will get more motivated and cut back more or you might start exercising and that increases the calories you can eat and still lose weight. All I ever did for exercise was walk but that gave me more calories and also made me feel better. I still try to get at least 8000 steps a day. I had to start alot lower than that tho, lol. Everything I did I started slow and worked up until it became normal for me. So far I've kept 106 pounds off from my highest weight (pre mfp).

At the start it's hard to believe it will really happen. But I'm here to tell you it will. Go to success stories and you will see loads of folks who have made it. It seems overwhelming at the beginning but each pound that drops off brings you closer to your goal.

I set my goal to 0.5 lb per week when I needed to lose over 100 lb. That gave me a high daily calorie budget. For the first week, I changed nothing and logged everything. After that first week, I looked at my food diary and weight chart to discover that my normal workday consumption was already a deficit to my new calorie budget, and my normal weekend consumption was enough of a surplus to maintain my 270 lb+ weight. It really was easy to figure out ways of getting through weekends without surplus. The perpetual problem, of course, is consistency. Still, I've lost a lot of weight, failures and all.

I agree that setting your goal for 1 pound a week won't be so dramatic. If you decide to increase to 2 pounds in a month or two when you have the hang of it that's fine but 1 pound a week for all 150# works to.

A tip I read here recently that struck me was if you have a big meal you don't intend don't do it again the next meal. So if you mess up at lunch eat a normal dinner that is in line with your goals. Don't punish and starve yourself, just get back on the path to your goal.

You should know 100% why you want to lose weight. This is important for when it gets hard or you get frustrated. Your why should be a strong solid answer and it's different for everyone. Some of my "why" is I want to be able to keep up with my nieces and nephew. I will play as long as they want. I don't want to have the health problems my parents do because I am overweight. They have so many health issues. I want to be "up for anything". Last minute hike and 20 mile bike ride? Sure. Can you help me move? Sure. Obstacle course race? Let's do it.

Know your "why" inside and out. Write it down if you want and look at it often. You can do it.

VUA21 wrote: »

If both logging every day and trying to lose weight seem to overwhelm you, start by just logging every day. Set your goal to maintenance, and ignore trying to lose for a week - just focus on logging what you normally eat for a week or two. Once the logging gets to be more of a habit, look at your diary and see what can be changed or eliminted.

Changing your entire life is very difficult to do all at once, changing one thing is easy. So start with one change, your logging habit. Then when that change becomes habit, make another change, such as just try to eat below your maintenance calories everyday, even just 100 calories under maintenance will lead to weight loss.

Then keep repeating going through your diary to see what changes will be easiest to make to increase your deficit for your weight loss periodically. It takes a bit longer this way, but by making one change at a time and turning that into habit, the results will have the best chance at being permanent.

It took me nearly two years to drop 170lbs. Then I took a break for a year, I was able to maintain my weight without any work as all of my little changes I made over time became my lifestyle habits. Now I'm back to lose another 20lbs, maybe more.

You can do this.

Exactly this! I was also going to suggest just logging for a week, without considering changing anything else, and then looking at your log and seeing what might be the easiest things to change. If you’ve been eating a big surplus or maybe even gaining weight consistently before, having a few weeks to learn consistent logging and maintaining might be helpful. I’m doing what the poster above is suggesting - for the first few weeks, I lost 0.1kg per week, which is only a 100kcal deficit per day. Then 0.2kg for a few weeks, and now I’ve been at 0.3kg for a few weeks. Trying to speed up a little, hopefully reaching a 0.4kg weekly pace (for comparison, 1lb is 0.454kg)

Also, I think there is no bandwagon and no rails, from which one can fall. There’s just life, in which you make choices. Weight loss isn’t a thing where you’re in or out, it’s a result of how you live your life. Some days you may focus on it more, some days less. Just keep logging everything and focus first on the choices you make every day or every week. Changing my breakfast habits a year ago was, well, a game changer. I eat the same breakfast routinely every day, without paying much attention to it while I’m still trying to wake up, so switching into something that has more protein and less calories was a fairly easy change that has really affected both my hunger levels and calorie deficits.

Logging every day eventually gives you an idea of how many calories are in things - yesterday I had logged breakfast, lunch and snacks during the day, then went out to a restaurant and a friend’s house party. It turns out my internal sense of where I was at calorie-wise was within 100kcals of correct, and it was actually pretty easy to turn down things like punch and focus on the treats and foods I actually wanted to eat because I instinctively knew how much I would be overconsuming if I gorged on it all (which I undoubtedly would have done a year ago). Sure, I was over my calorie goal, but, importantly, still under maintenance.