Failure Stories

One thing that helped me was to sit down with myself and really hash out my goals. What do I really want out of weight loss? What is fitness going to do for ME? "Look hot" "Lose that extra padding" "Work out cuz it's healthy for me" have never been very motivating goals for me. Like I could look hot later.. OR have that extra taco NOW. I could work out because healthy OR I could watch that extra episode now.... This sends me into that start and stop cycle much like you. What really got me going was to figure out what exactly I wanted to accomplish with diet and exercise. For me, I was sick of not being able to hike anymore and not be able to keep up with my husband without feeling like death. It took the fun right out of an activity I once felt pleasure doing. So I focused on that. I began training and doing exercises aimed at getting better at hiking so I could do it with ease the next spring. Weight loss was part of that goal to. It would be easier to lug less weight up the mountain. I lost 20 lbs in 9 months and was able to accomplish that goal. Now, I am struggling with much of the same and also need to take my own advice and re-evaluate my goals, lol. I have been very lax with counting (not at all). And my summer felt so busy I had trouble focusing on working out. Back to the drawing board for me if I want to continue and not slide back.
For it to feel less overwhelming one thing I've learned from past failures is to start one thing at a time. I would always go "START ALL THE FITNESS!! ALL THE CALORIES!! ALL THE HEALTH!!" Which would leave me feeling overwhelmed and hungry and I would just give up. I would say start with one thing at a time such as just counting (not reducing) your calories until you get the hang of it. Then scale them back. Then add work outs when you feel ready. And then just keep tweaking and changing little things as you go. It will soon become habit. When you slip up, just get back to it as soon as you are able. Not all days (or weeks even) will be perfect. But the more you get back into your new habits, the easier they will become to stick with. And the longer lasting your results will be.

Many of us have started over. It is not uncommon to lose and regain. I used to see it as failure until I started over this time. I actually see it this time as a tool to help me figure out how to not let it happen again. I spent a lot of time taking an honest look at what did and didn't work for me before and figuring out how to use it now.

I knew this time it had to be more than just losing weight...it had to go beyond that. While weight loss is very important to me what I found is that my quality of life was more important. First thing I had to do is figure out what "quality of life" meant for me. I found out that it was so much more than just how much I weighed. I looked at how I ate and the foods that I was eating and ask myself how did this fit in with what I wanted out of life. My activity level came in to play...I knew one day I wanted to climb a mountain(not literally...but maybe). You can't climb mountains sitting on you behind. I also took time to ask myself what I wanted my environment to look like...did I really need all of this stuff around me. I did a whole house purge and rid myself of things that just really didn't bring my life any joy.

It takes time to figure these things out and can be quite difficult at times. I just took one at a time and kept working on them. I also read this book about making new habits...it taught me a few things. I learned that yout bad habits never really go away(they are always waiting to take over)...you just have to learn to control them. Make knew habits that you turn to instead.

No one can tell you how to do this...you have to figure out who you are and what you want to be in the future. We can change if we want to and are willing to put in the work. I am 67 and I can change. My bad habits had a whole lifetime of control...it is my time now...what time I have left!

One last thing...find a way to make it fun, enjoyable whatever. No one wants to get up every morning and be miserable...

Like the poster above me I started MFP in many moons ago, the first time I logged was in 2012. I lost about 20 pounds then and packed it all pack on about 4 months later. Then in 2014 i lost about 35 pounds but then i got pregnant with my first kiddo and again packed it all back on. Now in 2019 I've lost almost 40 pounds and am doing my darndest to keep it off.

The thing that has been somewhat life-changing for me is that I now realize that I'm going to have to do some level of tracking while in maintenance for a WHILE. When i started this time in March i said that i would track for at least a year and its been over 6 months and this is the longest I've been successful at continuously losing weight and not having a full blown meltdown about it.

The biggest change has just been mindset. Take things one day at a time and realize that if you want to change you have to be willing to make that change literally stick forever. I'm not exercising 3-4 times a week to lose weight, I'm exercising 3-4 times for the rest of my life so I feel better and i don't die of a stroke at 45. I'm not tracking my calories to make myself feel bad for eating food that I like. I'm tracking so that I am aware and cognizant of what I am putting in my body and making sure that my day has balance.

I have always approached my diet/exercise as a total dichotomy either I literally barely move my body and I act like exercise is a complete punishment and I eat literally anything my heart desires and to the quantities that make me sick OR I restrict to the point of not enjoying life and exercise about 5-6 times a week, this last time was the first time I didn't do that and it did take me longer to lose the weight but I was so much HAPPIER in the process.

Small things that made big changes for me

1) I didn't start exercising until i was like 2 months in to tracking
2) I didn't eat anything that I actively dislike for the sake of calories
3) I tracked everything every day even if it put me way above my calories not to punish myself but to be accountable- your body tracks it anyway
4) I realized that this is the rest of my life - tracking and exercising are not a means to an end, they are the way that I personally need to live for a WHILE until it becomes a legit lifestyle.

MFP is new in my life, but the whole rest of my life has been nothing but failures, starting at age 16, my first time in Weight Watchers.

I've had numerous halfhearted failed attempts. Expensive gym memberships I never used. Hundreds of dollars towards "healthy" groceries that mostly went into the trash, covered in mold. Attempts to give up bread, fast food and cake (per Weight Watchers teaching) that failed, crushed against my apathy. Promises broken. Temper tantrums forgotten. Shame shrugged off.

What I've learned is that a person's default emotional state is a kind of positive or negative leaning neutral. Emotions like hate, shame, fear, and also "motivated" and "determined" all cool off because we're just not built to be at a constant emotional extreme. You can't rely on how you feel to make the kind of change that has to last forever because neutral doesn't lend itself to breaking free of routine. To quote Bill Nye: inertia is a property of matter. A great force is needed to break personal inertia and emotion isn't it.

That's why you lose focus. It's just too much work when you have to do a new thing but also feel like it's a Huge Undertaking and My Entire Life Must Change. A whole new lifestyle! Holy cow. Too much emotional force. Exhausting.

Make the world's least exciting change. Log a single food or drink a day. Just make that one tiny change. So underwhelming. Boring. You can do it without thinking about it.

Soon you are doing it without thinking about it. Then you do it again. And again. All of a sudden you're logging everything. You start to see boring ways to cut back: milk instead of cream in coffee, smaller sizes of things, etc. Those changes are also no big deal. Neither is walking around the block every now and then.

Suddenly you realize your lifestyle changed on it's own. This is the new inertia.

No emotional investment required.

I have succeeded in losing weight many times - but then failed at keeping it off. This time I am determined to lose it and keep it off. I realized that I HAVE to track to lose the weight because when I’m not tracking I eat all the things that I wouldn’t let myself eat when I was tracking. My downfall is when I stop tracking for various reasons: my birthday, thanksgiving, Christmas, vacations etc. and then don’t go back to tracking for months. So I end up regaining all the weight I just lost. Now I have decided to do it different. I have made a commitment to myself to track for one year. I have decided to give myself permission to not track on my birthday and holidays but I can only take the day off and have to start tracking again the next day. One day of not tracking isn’t going to derail me but weeks of not tracking will, so I have to start right back up. I am also not depriving myself - nothing is off limits I can eat it I just have to track it. I also realized that this isn’t a quick fix - look at any success story out there and the majority of them took 6 months to a year to lose the weight. Which is why I’m committing to tracking for a year - and will probably continue to do it when I hit maintenance. I have lost 10lbs so far (two months in) and am
slowly working on losing the next 10.

Commit for the long haul and you can do it!

Semele0 wrote: »

THANK YOU! This is exactly what I needed. I can't stop looking at your chart and thinking how you must have felt the first time your weight went back to the start. I think pretty much how I am feeling now. But you did it anyway! Amazing work, thank you for sharing!

I hope I will learn not to feel so down every time I have to start over, and just do it anyway. I owe it to myself.

If you fail, the best thing you can do is to learn from it and not make that one mistake next time. Each time I restarted, I got incrementally better at tracking.

You gave an example above about a piece of chocolate cake and not knowing calories so choosing not to log it. Next time, just pick any chocolate cake in the diary and add it. It won’t be completely accurate, but you can still work with it.

You need to develop the habit of logging everything. It gets easier over time, especially as your diary gets filled with your frequent foods. I also pre-log my day so I have an estimate of whether or not I have extra cals to play with.

I just remembered something...when I failed it was when I was aiming for 1200 calories and I would also try to do cardio and strength DVDs...it was too much. It was an all or nothing approach that made it too difficult to stick with. It took a lot of reading posts on the forums to realize that I wasn’t eating enough. 2018 is when I upped my calories and slowly incorporated walking, then running and finally strength training. This gradual approach along with a mindset shift of knowing that I will get to goal weight (not hoping or wishing I could) that has helped me be successful so far.

If I can do it, you can too! You are worth it!

I lost a lot of weight because I did everything my dietician told me to. I gained it back because she quit and there was no one to tell me how to lose more or how to maintain. I tried other dieticians, but they didn’t help. Now I’m trying to figure out how to do it myself. I have a lot of “aha” moments while reading MFP. Oh, so that’s why she told me to do that.
It’s a lot harder and a lot slower, but I’m getting an education I should have had in childhood and teens, and I definitely should have had before I had kids so I could teach them.

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