Why do I want results fast?

A big change for me came when i stopped thinking of workouts/ eating plans as a "weight loss" effort and more of a "being healthy" effort. If you can switch your brain to realize that you will do something like this from now on (moderate mindful eating, varied activity) then the timeliness are less important. It's not a diet. It's not a short "get fit" effort. It's a new normal.

But i have to keep reminding myself about this too because I'm super impatient.

Everyone wants fast results. Nobody is thinking "Gee, given the choice, I'd like to see my weight loss take longer."

The thing that separates people is, some have learned that "fast results" are not obtainable or especially sustainable, and others haven't.

There are so many reasons why rapid weight loss doesn't work that it couldn't possibly be covered in this thread. But the main thing is, the crash dieting and deprivation required to get super-fast results contain the seeds of their own destruction, which is why almost everyone who goes too fast regains the weight.

Perhaps it might help to realize that you’re never “done”. You don’t lose weight and get “toned” - then go back to whatever you did before (unless you also want to gain back the weight and become not “toned”).

It’s understandable that you want to see changes quickly. But even if you did-you still need to keep doing the same work forever.

So maybe sit back and settle in? This is life now. Forever.

This mindset helps me focus on doing the work and setting my goals as the behaviors I can control. Did I eat “right”, did I do my workout? Yes? Score. That’s all I can do. The changes will happen over time as long as I continue to do the work. I’m also not in a rush to get to “done” since that’s ... dead.

You may be checking the wrong metrics over and over and getting bored. Sure, when I look in the mirror, I don't see a lot of change very quickly, but when I look at my weight lifting gainz from 5 weeks ago, the results are AMAZING. People can't see that by looking at me, and I may be a bit impatient for them to notice, because it's exciting! On the other hand, people at the gym nod at me because they know I'm a regular, and some of them have even noticed that I'm using "big-girl-plates" for squats already!

Your body is making a thousand different tiny improvements every single day, and you're only looking in one place! If you think about all the things your body is doing as a whole, you become a lot more appreciative of the vast improvements you've made in your life through discipline! Your cholesterol may be dropping! You're building lean body mass! Your heart rate is dropping as your body becomes more efficient! Your blood pressure may be improving! You may be less insulin resistant! You might be able to lift twice as much as before or RUN up stairs that would leave you puffing just a couple weeks ago! You have so much going on and you body IS changing super fast! Just - in way more places than you're looking or can easily measure.

Yoga helped me learn patience. How? Because when i first started yoga i was weak everywhere, trembling and inflexible. I heard that you were supposed to do whats good for your body and to practice and over time you will see results. It was hard but i did this. After 6 months i saw a change. At a year i saw more progress. It now helps me in my personal life to tackle school and work in small, steady increments and i am so much more laid back because i have confidence in the process. We are just so programmed to get what we want immediately that we need to slow the roll and unlearn these things.

This is not really an answer to your question, but more like a counterpoint to it.

I think that something often lost in our "instant results" culture is the idea that some of the most profound and useful things will take a patient investment of effort over a very long time period. Learning how to manage that kind of "slow process, low incremental results, big long-term benefit" sort of thing can potentially have a very, very high payoff in quality of life.

If you think about it, this is how we achieve post-secondary degrees: We go to school for a long time, individual classes can sometimes be a drudge and we don't see how they contribute to our lives; then we get the degree, maybe qualify for better employment, see how some of those academic pieces come together in real life application. Or, just the process of starting a job in some field, even without a degree, learning more about the field, gradually building knowlege and skills, getting the promotion every once and a while as our knowledge/experience is more valuable, bumping up income as we go.

Lots of things work this way: Learning a creative art or craft (painting, sculpture, complex needlework, etc.), learning to play a musical instrument, getting good at a sport, getting our personal budgeting under control and saving meaningfully for retirement, and many more.

The basic skills of valuing the process, finding rewards in our discipline/efforts, learning how to manage our own psychology to chip away at a long-term stretch goal: These are things we can learn and practice via the weight management and fitness improvement effort. And, as we get better at those as abstract skills, we can apply them to education, career improvement, budgeting, or any other complex long-term project that may benefit us.

It's powerful stuff. Think about it. :flowerforyou: