How did you stop sabotaging yourself?

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  • melissafeagins
    melissafeagins Posts: 1,421 Member
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    garystrickland357 wrote: »
    Here’s what I did - stop dieting...

    I eat the foods that I like - I just stay within my calorie budget. It’s just that simple. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy.
    In order to lose weight you must maintain a calorie deficit. That’s all there is to it. Eat what you want. That said, be smart. You know what foods trigger overeating FOR YOU. Avoid them. Make better choices.
    Don’t think about motivation. Make choices. You can stay where you are or you can change. You get to decide.
    A quote I heard here helped: “If you want permanent results, you need permanent change.”
    Diets end. Choose to change your life.
    Good luck.

    This. I lost from 225 to 160. I put back 20 over two years because my husband's mother and then my dad got really sick and I ate my stress, usually in fast food or Starbucks at the hospital.
    I am losing that now and have reduced my carbs because I discovered by process of elimination that my gall stones bother me less and more importantly elevate my liver enzymes less if. I do. I still eat pretty much what I want though, just less refined sugar.
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
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    For those of you who are talking about it as a "lifestyle" - can you explain what you mean?
  • LiLee2018
    LiLee2018 Posts: 1,389 Member
    edited December 2018
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    I'm doing keto and what helped me at first was a health scare. Honestly that's what clicked my brain in to stopping the excuses I always told myself to start eating junk again.
    I started having chest pains and it scared the begeezus out of me. I was only 38. About to turn 39 with the prospect of a possible heart attack or needing heart surgery etc. Thank fully it was due to stress and everything checked out fine.
    Now on the rare occasions that I crave something bad, I remind myself that the junky food isn't going anywhere. It will be there later. I've already wasted SO much time being unhappy in my body. SO many regrets when I gave up on a diet and gained back anything I lost.
    Do you want to continue on with your life being unhappy with your body? Waste your life trying diet after diet? Or do you want to take a year or 2 or however long on a diet to get healthy ( yes I know healthy eating is for a lifetime)? A year from now... are you going to look back and feel nothing but regret b/c you gave up once again. Or are you going to look back and feel proud of yourself for sticking with it. Maybe not perfectly, but you stuck with it.
    It sounds like you're "all or nothing". You also have to get out of that mentality. Just b/c you fall off the wagon doesn't mean you can't jump right back on. It doesn't mean you have to do something extreme to get back on it either.
    I see that so often with keto dieters. Someone cheats and then freaks the hell out and think they need to fast for 2 days or something. It's ridiculous. Just get back to doing what you were doing before. Stop "starting over" and just CONTINUE ON.
  • coderdan82
    coderdan82 Posts: 133 Member
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    LiLee2018 wrote: »
    It sounds like you're "all or nothing". You also have to get out of that mentality.

    I had a problem with this too. It wasn't until after I got over it that things really started rolling.
  • Poisonedpawn78
    Poisonedpawn78 Posts: 1,145 Member
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    kgeyser wrote: »
    Poisonedpawn78 wrote: »
    CurlyGirl_OnKeto wrote: »
    I am with you girl! I have quit evvvvvverything. I am finally sticking to Keto. What I decided was that I was going to commit to three months. Commit to myself for three months. No matter what. I was going to stick with it for three months and at the end of three months decide if I was going to stick with it. Decide you're worth it!

    And what happens after the three months and you decide keto is not for you. Or the next fad diet..do you plan on just eating the way you did before which got you to the point of being unhappy?

    I would suggest stop looking at it as a diet and learn to have the foods you like in the proper proportions for your goals. Be it lose weight, Maintain or gain. Then you never have quitting problems ever again.

    Perhaps the three months has to do with people being more successful in reaching goals when there is a specific time frame involved. What's wrong with breaking long term goals down into smaller, manageable chunks? If she's happy at the end of three months, she'll likely keep going with it. If not, she'll continue to utilize the parts she likes, and ditch the stuff that isn't working for her, while she continues on towards her goals. There's an entire spectrum of options other than just going back to habits that led to weight gain.

    And what happens when she reaches her goal? the point is that looking at it and labeling it in time frames shows that its a temporary thing. Not the kind of change that is truly necessary. Getting to your goal is 10% or less of the battle. Staying there is FAR harder and MUCH longer(hopefully).
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
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    I had to finally accept that I needed to change my way of living forever, not just for a period of time. Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes was my motivation, but the real change was accepting that I will never be able to eat all the food I want unless I want to be overweight and unhealthy. For the rest of my life, I need to eat only the food my body needs, no more than that.

    There's nothing wrong with keto, or indeed most diets, IF they help you to eat only the food you need without feeling desperate. The trick is to find a way of eating which will work forever. For me, that means limiting carbs to about 150g daily, mostly eating lean meats and food I prepare myself at home with a minimum of added "stuff," and then running and lifting a lot to earn enough calories and keep my glucose down enough to have a big old mess of French fries, peanuts, pasta, and other high calorie foods three times a week. I'm down 125 lbs and maintaining eight months so far with this approach (also, my blood glucose numbers are great). It works FOR ME. You need to find what works for you. But the first step is to stop thinking of it as temporary.
  • HoneyBadger302
    HoneyBadger302 Posts: 1,973 Member
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    Firstly, accept that there is going to be some trial and error - the key, however, will be to not let it get out of hand! If you are going to try something new, give it a timeline to see if it will work for you - long term. If, after a few weeks, you are finding it unsustainable, try some modifications and see if that helps.

    You need to figure out what works for you, your responses to food, and your own natural eating patterns. It may not be what's popular, it may not be trendy, or maybe it will be. The ultimate goal, however, is to find a way of approaching food and eating that stop the gains, and can help you lose.

    As an example, for me, I landed on my own variation of "IF" (although I never really have a "fasting period" - hence it being my own variation). I examined my lifestyle, eating habits, and natural eating patterns, what I was and was not willing to give up, and started doing things that way.

    If I want to lose an appreciable amount of weight, I still have to count calories and track my food and stay in my range, but I find it MUCH easier to do this with my current eating plan, and it's something that works for ALL of my life, and is something that I can sustain long term. This wouldn't work for everyone, and it's not really a "fad" or "popular" "diet plan" but it works for me, and is sustainable.

    You're going to need to find that for yourself. Examine your life, your needs, and your natural tendancies, and work to come up with a plan that works for YOU.
  • wmweeza
    wmweeza Posts: 319 Member
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    What helped me? I started out 80 pounds ago, I have 40 to lose still, so far so good!
    -Eating enough protien,
    -Using spices so my food is more interesting. (tonight is crab sandwiches!)
    -Having a day off once every 2-3 weeks....but I STILL log all my calories from that day off
    -Eating home cooked food 85-90% of the time. I do go out, but eat in moderation when I do
    -This is not a diet for me, it's a life change, as I never EVER want to be big again
  • OddDitty
    OddDitty Posts: 248 Member
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    I can only tell you that self-sabbotage comes easy to me as well. So the first thing I've had to do was tell myself what I said when I quit smoking:

    YOU'VE COME THIS FAR, DON'T STOP NOW! Applying it to weight loss:

    -then you have to start all over again and go through all the pain associated with starting
    -then you have to deal with whatever new damage you've done to your body
    -then you have to figure out how to fit your now bulging bod into the smaller clothes you bought

    But I'm also doing something quite different this go around. I'm not following any of the fad diets. If I have to toss out an enormous amount of food to be on it, I don't go on it. When I tried KETO they said to toss out the carbs around the house. I must have thrown out more than $150.00 in pasta, wheat, rice, potato stuff... you get the idea.

    That would have been a grocery bill for a small family and, since most of it was open, I couldn't give it away.

    When the doctor put me on low sodium, it wasn't a big loss to get rid of things higher in sodium than I could eat. Giving away unopened jars and cans and unused frozen meals was easy. And I didn't have that much anyway. Maybe about $10 worth?

    My biggest sodium faux pas was salting the food as cooking and after cooking. Easy enough to stop that habit, actually.

    So maybe you should think about not following a "diet" per se, in terms of the fads going around and start thinking "Moderation In All Things?"

    Just a thought.

  • whatalazyidiot
    whatalazyidiot Posts: 343 Member
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    deepseth wrote: »
    whatalazyidiot wrote: »
    I used MFP like 10 years ago when I first lost weight (60 lbs in like 4 months). And for some reason now, it is soooo much more difficult. I have NO idea why my brain can't just stick to calorie counting and exercise, and be done with it.

    Whoa. That's mega. I managed to maintain that rate for 1 month (15lbs in a month) before I plateaued and fell back into bad habits.

    Reading the rest of this thread, it sounds like we've both sprinted a bit too much and need to slow down and try to form more sustainable long term habits.

    Increasing the daily allowance seems like a good shout, so there's still space for the occasional chocolate bar :smiley:

    For sure.. sprinting is definitely a bad habit of mine. I go from 0 to 100 instantly. Moderation isn't exactly my strong suit lol. I remember when I got to 199 lbs, which was a BIG deal, I basically just sabotaged myself from there. Super dumb. But it wasn't healthy and it wouldn't have been sustainable anyway.

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