Restarting Quickly & Sticking To It - Advice Needed
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robingmurphy wrote: »You guys, these are great tips. Thank you so much. A lot of these are things I have done successfully in the past - planning foods, pre-logging, weighing myself daily, eating on a schedule, delaying my first meal, etc. - it's really just the mental game of starting to do it and sticking to it. As said above "managing myself through the process."
I read everything, and here are the notes I took that really resonated for me:
- Thinking about it as "adjusting my normal"
- Identifying the smallest changes that will successfully take me in the right direction (reduce my intake/increase my calorie spend by 250 a day) and committing to it... I think this is a big one for me. Once I get on a roll, it feels "easy" and I find myself overcommitting and thinking I should have a bigger calorie deficit. I burn around 2200-2200 calories on average TDEE most days. I might start with a 250-500 calorie a day reduction, dropping to around 1800 say once I get going... then I bump up my activity a little, might be burning more like 2300 calories... and when I get momentum going that 1800 feels pretty good and easy and I'm a "more is better" kind of person so I start finding myself eating more like 1600 or 1700 most days. Suddenly that's like a 700 calorie deficit... That might even be a big driver of my failure because maybe after a few weeks of that it's easier to succumb to temptation... and feels harder to get back on a diet with a 700 calorie reduction each day. Maybe I need to just target that 250 reduction and really stick to that for a few months, even if once I get going it sometimes feels too easy?
- Making a commitment to track what I'm eating every day, even when I feel like I'm overeating or off course. I'm never really "off course" because I'm always living my life and trying to eat the best I can. Just some days I'm closer to hitting my target and others a little farther off....or a lot farther.
My biggest obstacle was always getting in my own way. I would take a task that has inherently hard parts and try to come up with ways to make it harder. What other area of life do we do that? If I were going to chop down a tree would I go grab a butter knife? No. I would at least grab an ax because once the tree is down I still have a lot of work to do.
Make the parts you can control easy because there are parts you can't control that will be hard.
The other thing is that I had to stop thinking of what I was doing as a weight loss effort as much as an identity change. I can't just lose weight. I have to lose the mindset and the habits of the person who gained it. That is not an easy task even with small adjustments. This is not a temporary change this is a permanent change - or at least I hope it is. I am becoming a different person. To that I have to change my daily process which means that is the goal and weight loss becomes a bonus prize. When I successfully do my process I am reaffirming new identity which then makes everything I am doing... tada... normal.
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Whoa, this is kind of a revelation to me. Has my tendency to always think that if it's too easy I'm not doing enough been sabotaging me? Maybe I should just set an easy goal and actually stick to it for a long time?11
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robingmurphy wrote: »Whoa, this is kind of a revelation to me. Has my tendency to always think that if it's too easy I'm not doing enough been sabotaging me? Maybe I should just set an easy goal and actually stick to it for a long time?
If you are like I was the answer is yes. There is so much obesity around us and people doing these really hard things to lose weight and we just assume that is what it takes and anything easy must not be enough.
Also we curse ourselves... or at least I would. I would go into weight loss prepared to do battle. I knew it would be a huge struggle so I would get mentally psyched up. When I thought this way I tended to make it happen. A self-fulfilling curse.
The reality is you were going to eat anyway. All you actually have to do is eat a little less. Things like exercise and improving NEAT requires you do something more but eating in a calorie deficit just requires you do less. That is why I think it is best to keep the two things separated. Eat for weight loss. Exercise for fitness.
There have been days everything has been super easy for me. I barely even thought about weight loss. I love those days. I don't want to think about weight loss... not really. There have also been days that sucked but that is normal even if you are not trying to lose weight, isn't it?
When you get up in the morning you should decide you will have a good day. You should do something small that is easy to accomplish. If the day goes south ask why and see if there is anything in your control to have made it better. If it goes great ask why and see if there is anything in your power that you can do to replicate the results.
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Yes, lots of great advice here! A lot that I needed to be reminded of. MFP is such a great community. Only thing I can add is a new lifestyle to improve health and lose weight has to be sustainable to find lasting success. Welcome back @robingmurphy, sounds like you're now off to a great start. Best to you!1
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robingmurphy wrote: »Whoa, this is kind of a revelation to me. Has my tendency to always think that if it's too easy I'm not doing enough been sabotaging me? Maybe I should just set an easy goal and actually stick to it for a long time?
Exactly.
A benefit of sensibly moderate weight loss, for me, was the ability to treat weight loss as a time to experiment and dial in strategies that would help me to not only lose weight, but that were habits I thought I could sustain in order to stay at a healthy weight long term. (I'm at 4+ years of maintaining a healthy weight now, after about 3 decades of obesity.)
I was literally unwilling to do anything while losing weight that I wasn't willing to continue forever, other than a moderate calorie deficit. That meant figuring out how to eat foods I enjoy (not just things I thought of as "diet foods") within my calorie goal, in portions/proportions that amounted to good nutrition, in forms that were filling, practical and affordable for me to buy and prepare.
Ditto on the exercise: I needed to figure out what kinds of activity I could fit into my life, and enjoy, while still maintaining good overall life balance (i.e., enough time and energy for other things important to me).
I couldn't give up social events, celebrations with food, potlucks or anything like that, because I wasn't willing to give them up permanently; I had to figure out how to manage them.
Maintenance and weight loss are the same thing: Call it weight management. Maintenance just gives a little more calorie flexibility. If you can figure out how to make weight loss easy, that'll make maintenance even easier . . . and easy things are more likely to be sustainable.8 -
robingmurphy wrote: »I can commit to at least tracking. I admit that a lot of times when I start going off track, I stop tracking altogether.
That's exactly one of the first of signs of me going off the rails.1 -
I've been listening to the podcast We Only Look Thin, which I found thanks to @kshama2001. You might want to check it out. It's a couple who talk about their struggles and successes with weight loss. Both of them have been maintaining a 100 (husband) and 150 (wife) pound weight loss, and the focus of their podcast is that there is no finish line in weight loss if you want to maintain it.
They consider themselves people who "only look thin" because they have to consciously maintain habits (and be willing to reflect and create new habits if old ones stop working) to maintain their losses, otherwise they will easily revert to the habits that made them overweight. I really like the podcast because I enjoy them as a couple, they present a lot of good, common sense ideas that I see on here all the time, and it's nice for me to be reminded of a lot of the things that have helped me be successful.
I've lost a total of about 75 pounds, regained some, and maintained about 50 of that for probably around two years. While I'm still in a healthy BMI range, I want to lose back to where I was about a year ago. Their podcast is helping to reinvigorate me and remind me of the habits I have let slip a bit and to reflect on how I can reincorporate habits that I believe I can maintain for life to help me get to where I know I want to be, as well as continue to maintain my current and future loss.5 -
What's really blowing my mind is that I've heard the advice to "lose weight only by doing things you could do forever" and "lose weight with maintenance in mind" advice before and kind of dismissed it with the though "Oh, yeah, I never do any extreme dieting." But when I wrote out what I actual do when I try to lose weight it became clear to me that I may start out doing something moderate and sustainable but when that feels too easy I feel the need to continue pushing until it becomes unsustainable... and then I fail. The "eat in a way that you could maintain forever" advice really DID apply to me and I've just been overlooking it this whole time because in my mind "Of course I'm not doing anything extreme! I have a hard enought time restraining overeating at all, let alone doing something extreme!" ... but that was just a story I was telling myself and not the truth.11
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robingmurphy wrote: »What's really blowing my mind is that I've heard the advice to "lose weight only by doing things you could do forever" and "lose weight with maintenance in mind" advice before and kind of dismissed it with the though "Oh, yeah, I never do any extreme dieting." But when I wrote out what I actual do when I try to lose weight it became clear to me that I may start out doing something moderate and sustainable but when that feels too easy I feel the need to continue pushing until it becomes unsustainable... and then I fail. The "eat in a way that you could maintain forever" advice really DID apply to me and I've just been overlooking it this whole time because in my mind "Of course I'm not doing anything extreme! I have a hard enought time restraining overeating at all, let alone doing something extreme!" ... but that was just a story I was telling myself and not the truth.
This was a huge thing for me and it seems like a lot of other people. For some reason I was in the mindset that I had to suffer for my weight loss. That if I was doing it easily and effortlessly then I wasn't 'earning' it.
I think I used to view losing weight as a form of punishment I had to endure for all the years i'd been 'bad'. That I had to struggle and make things hard for myself to make up for and atone for letting myself go. It was the most self defeating thing ever! Eventually I'd get sick of everything being so hard and give up since you can't exist in a state of constant misery forever. Then next time I'd make things even harder and make myself suffer even more for failing again.
The day I realised that misery doesn't burn any extra calories was a turning point. It struck me that I could get where I was going without beating myself up. That losing weight easily mean something was right not wrong, and that if I could do this effortlessly meant that I could do it forever.12 -
robingmurphy wrote: »What's really blowing my mind is that I've heard the advice to "lose weight only by doing things you could do forever" and "lose weight with maintenance in mind" advice before and kind of dismissed it with the though "Oh, yeah, I never do any extreme dieting." But when I wrote out what I actual do when I try to lose weight it became clear to me that I may start out doing something moderate and sustainable but when that feels too easy I feel the need to continue pushing until it becomes unsustainable... and then I fail. The "eat in a way that you could maintain forever" advice really DID apply to me and I've just been overlooking it this whole time because in my mind "Of course I'm not doing anything extreme! I have a hard enought time restraining overeating at all, let alone doing something extreme!" ... but that was just a story I was telling myself and not the truth.
This was a huge thing for me and it seems like a lot of other people. For some reason I was in the mindset that I had to suffer for my weight loss. That if I was doing it easily and effortlessly then I wasn't 'earning' it.
I think I used to view losing weight as a form of punishment I had to endure for all the years i'd been 'bad'. That I had to struggle and make things hard for myself to make up for and atone for letting myself go. It was the most self defeating thing ever! Eventually I'd get sick of everything being so hard and give up since you can't exist in a state of constant misery forever. Then next time I'd make things even harder and make myself suffer even more for failing again.
The day I realised that misery doesn't burn any extra calories was a turning point. It struck me that I could get where I was going without beating myself up. That losing weight easily mean something was right not wrong, and that if I could do this effortlessly meant that I could do it forever.
I figured out that I had to forgive myself for gaining all that weight and let it go. Then I was ready to change my mindset. I realized if I was going to be losing weight I should be even kinder to myself. I made a list of non food things to do for myself and I have been diligent with all of them for nearly 2 years. These are not rewards that I have to earn they are just me being nice to me. Making that list spawned a new attitude that has impacted food and activity decisions too. I certainly enjoy myself during vacations and holidays with no "cheating" or guilt feelings. When it comes to adding new or increasing activity I take an approach of pushing myself not shoving myself.8 -
I keep coming back to this discussion because it really changed my outlook. I don't know why some of these ideas didn't take with me before but they suddenly make a lot of sense. I've been telling myself "Oh, I've tried everything and nothing worked with me! Nothing stuck!" but this discussion has helped me see that's not right at all. I've tried everything, and a LOT of things worked for me, some of them very well, but every time they started working they seemed too easy and I started lowering calorie intake or burning more calories until at some point it seemed too hard for me and I spent three days overeating substantially and then I gave up because "It's not working any more."
To give one example of many, a few years ago I started counting calories and switched to a mostly whole foods plant based diet (+ 10% of calories from other things I wanted) and I was able to easily stick to a calorie level giving me a 300 calorie deficit. I happen to have notes on that weight loss cycle and I recently went back and looked at them. I started out eating about 1750 and burning about 2050 calories TDEE. Easy-peasy, dropping some weight steadily. But then I noticed over the following weeks my calorie intake dropped... 1600, 1500, even 1400 on some days. And I started working out more, burning a TDEE of average of more like 2250. Suddenly I'm at a 750 calorie deficit without really consciously deciding to, more at times. And then a day comes along where I'm feeling "off" for some reason (lack of sleep, travel, whatever) that gives me an excuse to give in to my hunger and overeat. And I end up with several days eating like 2800 calories. Then I decide it's clearly not working and give up. Start gaining weight. Repeat the whole cycle.12 -
In 2014 I started with a goal that I would have no day in a month without at least 5000 steps. Took till April to fully achieve that. I probably dropped a little bit of weight in the process too because my then analogue scale went from dial won't move any further limit to dial hovering just above the max mark.
In May I decided to "try and lose some weight over the summer by eating healthy". You know. Things such as add extra olive oil to every salad! Swap an egg Mcmuffin + hash brown for a fruit and fiber muffin! Eat healthy Subway meatball subs every day! ---You can all stop ROFLing now. I didn't say I was smart! -- I did also cut down on my cream and sugar in the coffee, so at least the McDonald's trip wasn't **too much** of an increase in Calories in spite of the jam and peanut butter packet that went with the healthy fruit and fibre muffin! Luckily summer rolled along and trading extra fruit for ice cream helped me drop something like 25lbs.
Out of town visitors in September with one day home/one day eat out ended up with me not gaining anything back. Which was a big win. So mid October everyone leaves and I'm back to eating "extra healthy". This time moving from subway subs to salads!
Remember your discussion about faster weight loss and making things difficult? From October 14 to November 14, I probably dropped 20lbs. Which even at my then weight of ~250 was a good double the maximum I should have been trying to do.
AND I was "this close" to giving it all up because what was the point?
I mean I obviously couldn't continue to eat salad and spend all day walking around for the rest of my life now, could I? (BTW: I was up to 10,000 steps as my daily goal -- nowadays I'm set at 15750 and I am surprised when I don't hit it). This was misery plain and simple! And as soon as I would stop eating this new "healthy" way and started eating normally, I *knew* I was going to gain it all back. It wouldn't be the first time I did that, right? So what was the point?
<-- the astute reader may note the lack of the concept of calories, and of any plan other than eat as 'healthy as possible' and the least amount possible and move a lot more--luckily because of the multiple people I knew who had failed to maintain on Atkins, I "knew" that Atkins wouldn't work so I was only reducing, not eliminating carbs.
Which I set out to find a more "permanent" way to regulate my weight. Discovered MFP in mid November 2014. Started reading the forums. Started figuring out about calories and nutrition, and reasonable and appropriate goals. Started figuring out what I was doing and why. Started using a weight trend application to measure progress. And went on to lose another 72.5 lbs over the next 12 months WITHOUT feeling out of control and ready to give up every day! And another 11.2lbs the 12 months after that. And have maintained within 2.5 lbs of that in terms of weight trend since then.
Because, yeah, making it more difficult than it has to be doesn't get you bonus points. And building your new normal out of multiple layers that are all designed to trend you towards appropriate results means you might be able to go over a life bump or two without long term derailment.10
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