New
RockinNixon
Posts: 21 Member
New to the app. Looking friends for advice and tips or just conversations to stay motivated. Cruise coming up 10/21! Using his date a short term goal.
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Welcome!
Here are two big pieces of advice I wished I'd gotten/learned earlier in my process:
1. Applied to both diet/nutrition and exercise; the program/system/methods that work best are the ones that work best for YOU. It's too common to see posts centered around the sentiment of "I did X and the result was Y. Ergo, X is the best/worst thing on the planet", often where "X" is a specific way of eating, named diet, exercise routine, or diet fad. Figure out what sort of style/framework fits your lifestyle within the context of consistently creating a caloric deficit.
2. Don't count on motivation and/or "staying motivated". Sure, motivation is great and we can all use it to our advantage... when it's there. Everyone has down/off days when you're just "not feelin' it" (whatever it may be). Think about your pitfalls and figure out ways to mitigate them; make the right choice an easy one to make consistently. This looks different for everyone and may entail removing barriers to the preferred choices or creating barriers to avoid the negative ones. Some of the things that have worked for me to foster more structured discipline in my life:
- Don't carry change/small bills. Harder to hit up the vending machine in the breakroom.
- Never grocery shop hungry or tired.
- Take an extra few minutes before bed to lay out workout clothes, pre-workout. Helps drag myself out of bed at 5am to workout.
- pre-plan/log as much food as possible in advance. Eliminates the "I had X for lunch and only have 200 calories left for dinner!" situations
- I don't leave my office for lunch unless I absolutely have to. If I drive by a Taco Bell I will stop and eat way too much.
Good Luck, have fun on the cruise.6 -
What I have done is the intermittant fasting while minimizing carb intake. With a 3 day a week workout four 30 min to an hour. This has worked well and i haven't hated doing it. It might be worth looking at3
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Yeah it sounds like a great idea. Could you spare some details about it? I’d like to put it into action.1
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RockinNixon wrote: »Yeah it sounds like a great idea. Could you spare some details about it? I’d like to put it into action.
Intermittent Fasting helps many adhere to a caloric deficit consistently by artificially limiting the eating window. A 16:8 hour ratio is pretty common. As an example, this would entail only eating between 12pm-8pm and fasting from 8pm until the next morning. By eliminating breakfast and allowing for more calories/meal for lunch and dinner many feel more satisfied after those two relatively larger meals. I tried it for a while and like it well enough, didn't take too long to adjust to not eating breakfast. The issue I found was trying to get enough protein for my preferences in only two meals/day. I also really like breakfast food and it was hard to follow on weekends with invites to breakfast/brunch. If it helps keep you on plan, it's great, but that's the extent of the advantages it provides. There's a lot of speculative benefits that have yet to be replicated in proper scientific studies on people.4 -
I began exactly this 7 days ago. I decided on a four hour window to eat up to 2 meals and get my coffee fix.😂 Surpised to find that I am satiated and have yet to eat the second meal. Pro tips: have your meal prepared beforehand plus a treat —beets & tomatoes for me; advise your love ones that you need support and not tempting offers of brunch out; drink lots of water all day long with a dash of salt; be the master of your domain about your eating window - don’t slide into the next hour; read the community section of MFP often. Cheers1
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Thank for the info and advice you two! I without knowing, kinda gave up breakfast. But I would have coffee in the am and then eat breakfast and dinner.0
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What do you guys think about the Keto diet?0
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Welcome!! Vacations tend to be the best motivators 🤣0
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Thank you. And yeah they do. Lol0
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RockinNixon wrote: »What do you guys think about the Keto diet?
It works the way any other named diet does, by creating a caloric deficit. Personally, I think it’s unnecessarily restrictive and wouldn’t be sustainable. People like it as cutting carbs leads to a sharp drop in scale weight right off the bat giving the appearance of very rapid fat loss when in reality there’s quite a bit of up-front fluid loss (glycogen) contributing. Some have shown success by following it and not counting calories, which some find a benefit. However, just because calories are being tracked doesn’t mean there’s a deficit driving the loss, which gets glossed over a lot imo.0 -
I don’t think I could follow it personally. I’ve had friends try it, brag about it and then go back to eating carbs anyway. I’d rather have something I know I can stick to and not just do it for a little bit. I tried a lot of diets even when I was younger. I don’t know if that’s for me.0
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RockinNixon wrote: »I don’t think I could follow it personally. I’ve had friends try it, brag about it and then go back to eating carbs anyway. I’d rather have something I know I can stick to and not just do it for a little bit. I tried a lot of diets even when I was younger. I don’t know if that’s for me.
I think a lot of it depends on your philosophy. Some people are fixating on dieting where they view it as a finite mode to lose scale weight until they hit their goal (usually with much fanfare) and go back to business as usual, only to often find themselves overweight again in short order because they've not made any sustainable positive changes. Being overweight as an adolescent and at times as an adult, I've learned enough about myself to know that if I try to eat intuitively, or whatever/whenever I want, I get fat; that's just the way it is. I don't particularly like calling it a "fitness/health journey" like many users here do as I don't see any endpoint, just a goal of continuous improvement.0
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