Thoughts, Epiphanies, Insights, & Quotables
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@NovusDies .. with your determination an strength ( that I see daily on this forum) you got this!👍0
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The only way past is through
I love this saying. I find myself saying this to myself when I don't really look forward to a task that I need to do to achieve a desired result. I just need to roll up my sleeves, cop the best attitude I can about it, and get it done.
I love that quote too but I know it a little differently, not that I think it changes the meaning. “The only way on is through.” That quotes has gotten me through some very difficult times.1 -
real_change wrote: »The only way past is through
I love this saying. I find myself saying this to myself when I don't really look forward to a task that I need to do to achieve a desired result. I just need to roll up my sleeves, cop the best attitude I can about it, and get it done.
I love that quote too but I know it a little differently, not that I think it changes the meaning. “The only way on is through.” That quotes has gotten me through some very difficult times.
I like your variation. It has a bigger scope to it. "On", to me, means "On with your life." The one I know, to me, is looking at a temporary obstacle. Sometimes it is just about the boulder in the road and sometimes it about the road beyond.1 -
"I've done it before, I can do it again."
I don't really deal much in quotes and such, but this is something I tell myself pretty often. It's likely not as helpful to others as it is to me, but this time around I don't feel like the changes I'm making are impossible. If I lost 100 lbs 9 years ago, I can do it now.
The challenge is to not repeat the mistakes I made in the past.4 -
Time is going to keep passing so you might as well lose a little weight while it does.
This is just a reminder that rage quitting makes no real sense because no matter what we do time will continue to move forward. In the past I would get mad at my lack of quick or consistent results and throw in the towel. Of course that just led me back to gaining weight. It was a blind spot that took me way too long to uncover. Instead of trying to strangle time for results I need to just allow it to happen on the easiest path forward I can find.
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Time is going to keep passing so you might as well lose a little weight while it does.
This is just a reminder that rage quitting makes no real sense because no matter what we do time will continue to move forward. In the past I would get mad at my lack of quick or consistent results and throw in the towel. Of course that just led me back to gaining weight. It was a blind spot that took me way too long to uncover. Instead of trying to strangle time for results I need to just allow it to happen on the easiest path forward I can find.
So true. I’ve done this too many times to count. I’m so much happier this time around being focused on slow weight loss. It really takes the sting out of the scale (every .10 loss is a victory and every .3 uptick gets shrugged off as long as I’m trending down) and I’m enjoying myself so much more.
I also have enough to unlearn without feeling frantically hungry all the time. I have some big habits to break. Accepting slow weight loss is way less stressful than learning to quit secret stress binging. I feel like I now have the mental and emotional bandwidth to take that on since I know now that I can have “hungry days” and eat up to maintenance calories. Those days often felt overwhelming in the old days of rapid weight loss. It’s incredibly freeing.3 -
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
There is some dispute who to attribute that to so I will leave it alone.
It was probably never meant to be applied to weight management but I think it fits. I think most Larger Losers would agree that weight loss = more freedom. Everyone that I know in life that effectively maintains their weight within 5 to 7 pounds of their goal is vigilant. They don't all use the same monitoring systems one doesn't even own a scale she simply will go back to a deficit when she feels her clothes getting tighter. However they monitor their weight in whatever intervals they choose to do it they never stop watching it.
I doubt I am alone in being worried that I could lose it all and then regain some or all of it back so I have been reminding myself that whatever plan I eventually have for maintenance has to start with being watchful always. I don't want to live scared but I want to live vigilant.6 -
@NovusDies Living vigilant is key.
I lost 80lbs, kept 60lbs off for 5-6 years. The 20-25lb regain is attributed to medical issues and a loosening of my vigilance because I was focused on the medical issues. But I consider myself a success for having kept off the 60 for so long. Despite the medical issues, I still managed to maintain the bulk of my initial weight loss.
Vigilance is key. I would also say that setting the correct expectation is key, as well. See, I didn't have the right expectations. I lost 80lbs and was flying high. I was losing a size every 10lbs. I was changing, rapidly. It felt good! It was awesome. I was booking at a solid 2lbs per week rate that makes my 2012 graph look positively amazing. Picture perfect.
But see, that's the easy part. Honestly, the easiest time to lose weight is when you have that extra fat. When I say 'easy', I definitely don't mean easy. I mean in perspective to what comes after that 2lb/week model. I started hitting the fluctuations. I hit the gravel trail after flying 110 down the freeway. Suddenly, it wasn't so quick. I floundered. I'd set incorrect expectations of myself and so I mismanaged my experience.
I landed, face first, in the dirt. So at 80lbs lost, I took a break to reconfigure my expectations. So 2013, I was all into heavy lifting. I'd discovered the forums here and was soaking in all the advice possible! I was trying EVERYTHING.
And inchworming my way to nowhere. Face in the dirt.
Then came the ups and downs in subsequent years with the medical issues, but, I learned valuable lessons. Vigilance is key, but so is managing your expectations. So is making sure that you're mentally prepared for when things slooooooooow doooooown. In 2018, after going through and managing (successfully) my health issues and dietary requirements and re-learning how to eat, I made a promise to myself: I would manage my expectations and find a path that works for me. That means soaking up advice and coming up with my own pathway through the hills. For me, it means gamifying this experience so I can make it fun. Finding things I like. Finding ways to make myself smile when I feel like I've slain another "game boss".
Sorry to derail this thread, but your post spoke to me. I'm terrified of maintenance, it is true. Because even with my general maintenance of at least 60lbs, I've not yet hit real maintenance. I floundered when I hit the overweight BMI category and started going slower. But this time, I was prepared, and I have not floundered when hitting the healthy BMI and now I feel like I'm swimming through viscious mud. I'm in the quicksand of my personal life adventure, but my previous experiences have taught me well.
This got long, hopefully not tl;dr long, but I will end with this: Vigilance, Managing your expectations, and not having "By X date I will be X weight!" goals were key (for me) in maintaining and in losing through this most difficult part of my weight loss determination.
I live off data, because things rarely change for me now. Inches don't drop off like water, they come off in them little bars between the inches on the tape measure that I always forget how to measure, so I flip the measuring tape over for the cms and mms. XD7 -
@dhiammarath
I watch my wife struggle so I know you are right. I am in kind of a weird place so I am really trying to keep my expectations all but non-existent. In an ever growing shorter amount of time I am going to wake up from a surgery that will most likely immediately drop ~200 calories off my TDEE. I believe it will send me directly from losing 2 pounds a week to 1 with no interim 1.5. The very few people that know this is happening do not understand why losing ~30 pounds this way is making me so nervous. I am not just losing any 30 pounds I am losing a transitional 30 pounds. To boot I am going from losing faster than I normally would, to the surgery, to 2-3 weeks of maintenance for recovery, to probably 1 pound a week weight loss. That is quite the roller coaster! I am really thankful that last Thanksgiving I took a 10 day diet break so at least that part won't be a huge shock.7 -
@NovusDies Hug! That is quite a change! Having no expectations is a good start. You’ve got the tools, the data; when all else gets hard you know the process and how it works. That’s your strength! You’ve got this and we are all rooting for you!
I tell myself to remember this: 2lbs, 1lb, 0.5lb —> as long as it’s moving in the right direction, as long as I’m not giving up, then I’m effecting change and making the awesome happen.
Slow awesome is still awesome!5 -
Here's a link that was meaningful to me, it was originally posted on one of The Movie Chair's blogs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFFSYcEMCI
It's a success story of a foster dog.2 -
My epiphany was yesterday and it was about my mindset and priorities. I've gone from "I don't have time to exercise" to "how will I fit exercise in my day?" We had parent/teacher interviews from 3-7pm and I'd forgotten (yep, 'nother story) and was talking with a colleague about how I was going to hit my steps target. We wondered what parents would think if instead of a 10 minute timeslot they had a "2-lap of the cricket pitch slot". Mrs C needs to hit 12,000 steps so walk and talk. Ha ha that's taking staff well-being to a whole new level.2
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maiomaio71 wrote: »My epiphany was yesterday and it was about my mindset and priorities. I've gone from "I don't have time to exercise" to "how will I fit exercise in my day?"
THIS!
It was only a couple of months ago that this very thought crossed my mind. One of my first thoughts each morning is to ask myself what deliberate activity will I do today. My only tweak is that I don't call it "exercise" per se, I call it my activity, as in "go play, have fun, activity".
My car now carries my gym bag and equipment - so I can be flexible in getting in some fun. Always my walking shoes and workout pants / top. Tennis racquet and balls. Swim stuff. Golf stuff. I am excited that my lifestyle has evolved to be an active assortment of fun activities. I am challenged to be learning new things, like golf.
P.S. I grew up watching my dad play cricket each Sunday afternoon at the Hollywood Bowl fields. Go get that 2-lap cricket pitch slot done!
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Nothing tastes as good as slim feels..........heard this at weight watchers years ago!4
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Focus on what you can do.
I was talking with a woman recently who is going through a really rough period of life. She wants to lose weight but she has all of these learned requirements of what it takes to lose. She is focused on what she believes she MUST do instead of what she CAN do. Maybe she is not at a place where even a daily deficit is a good idea. Maybe a small deficit a few days a week is all she can handle at the moment. Sure it would take her a long time to see results but does that really matter? As long as there is nothing life threatening happening medically any progress is good progress. Later her life will hopefully even back out and she can handle a more traditional weight loss method.3 -
Today is 9/11.
I was surprised to think that since 2001 there is an entire generation of people that have been born and did not experience the events of that time.
Consider taking a moment to reflect on this day, 18 years ago.
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Having weight is hard, losing weight is hard, choose your hard.
I have seen this one float around MFP. Not sure who to credit it to. I think this one really helps when your 'normal' begins to improve and you start getting hooked on the progress. I don't know about other people but because I had been large for a long time I kind of molded my life around it the best way I could. It was when I traveled that I could not help but be reminded how bad off I was. Even sitting in a hotel chair smacked me in the face with my own fat. It is SO hard to be that big. Now that my normal has changed and things like sitting in a booth is possible it is much easier to pick the hard of losing weight. I hope I never forget it.
It comes from the James O. Hill, one of the researchers in charge of the National Weight Control Registry. The NWCR takes people who have lost at least 30 pounds, kept it off for at least one year, and studies what their habits are to see what makes for successful long term weight loss.1 -
Sitting down to eat is one of the things the Beck solution gets you to do. Day three I think it is. I thought "I always sit down to eat". Anyway, the challenge for the week was to sit down every time you ate something so that you were conscious of everything that passed your lips. Preparing dinner every night....I sat on the kitchen floor a fair few times! My son thought I was totally mad when he caught me. But it was quite an eye opener to see how many small tastes of things I was taking. I don't think the calories would have been much, I ended up guesstimating about 100 (I was literally tasting for seasoning or nibbling a carrot) but it is a very interesting way of noticing how often we mindlessly put stuff away. Think I may have burned a few calories sitting down and getting up again too. 😂😂
ETA: I know this isn't the purpose of the 'sit down to eat' part of the cbt but I did it to see how often I was eating standing up, given that my immediate reaction was that I didn't eat standing up. How wrong I was. I guess my belaboured point is that the reality of our behavior is very different from our perception.4 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »Having weight is hard, losing weight is hard, choose your hard.
I have seen this one float around MFP. Not sure who to credit it to. I think this one really helps when your 'normal' begins to improve and you start getting hooked on the progress. I don't know about other people but because I had been large for a long time I kind of molded my life around it the best way I could. It was when I traveled that I could not help but be reminded how bad off I was. Even sitting in a hotel chair smacked me in the face with my own fat. It is SO hard to be that big. Now that my normal has changed and things like sitting in a booth is possible it is much easier to pick the hard of losing weight. I hope I never forget it.
It comes from the James O. Hill, one of the researchers in charge of the National Weight Control Registry. The NWCR takes people who have lost at least 30 pounds, kept it off for at least one year, and studies what their habits are to see what makes for successful long term weight loss.
@magnusthenerd
I have heard him say it but I was not aware it was original to him. Thanks.0 -
MY FAVORITE QUOTES
“Live in a beautiful state.”
“If you want to be happy, be.”
“Fail forward, quickly and often.”
“I can have it, but I don’t want it.”
“Don’t correct people when it matters little.”
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
“I am done harming myself with food forever more.”
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
“It doesn’t come natural until it’s practiced unnaturally.”
“My choices either get me closer to or farther from my goals.”
“When a craving doesn’t come from hunger, eating will never satisfy it.”
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
“See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it. It always works, it works every time, with every person”
“Commitment is the willingness to be uncomfortable and overcome obstacles or options that stand between you and your goals.”4