How do I make this a lifestyle?
7rainbow
Posts: 161 Member
We all know that making a healthy lifestyle and sticking with it is the key to weight loss success in the long run. But how does one do it? I'm one of those people who once I lose the weight goes back to binging sweets again. I want to enjoy life and food but also not gain... Which is a struggle.
8
Replies
-
Moderation is key. Don't cut your self off from foods you like even when you are dieting. Like you said, this is a lifestyle, so you don't need to be at your goal weight by tomorrow or next week or next month. Take your time losing the weight so you are not in huge calorie deficits. Think of it as long as your not gaining weight, your getting closer to your goal. Even if you only lose .5 lb a week or a month, you will get to your goal weight eventually. And when you get there, you don't have to change very much to maintain.10
-
Finding sustainable habits is very personal, but I think a habits based approach and designing your environment for success is a key to creating a lifestyle change. Personally I’ve been going for about 18 month, lost around 50kg and on the home stretch. I’m enjoying life
I have habits around:
- what I eat (food I cook/bring, not spontaneous street food snacks)
- when I eat (if I eat breakfast the rest of my day is improved so I do)
- How much I eat (at a restaurant I split any meal that isn’t a salad, at someone’s house I never take a second serving but thoroughly enjoy my first)
- What is in my fridge (fruit, yoghurt dip with prepped veggies)
- What isn’t in my kitchen (reserves of chocolate bought on sale)
- What my evening activities look like (shifting toward more active and less snacky hobbies)
- What media I take in (less cooking shows and more weight loss podcasts).
I also make an effort to remove a bunch of decisions from my daily life to make it easier to stay on track. These include:
- regular veg and fruit box delivered. I hate food waste so I will use it (and I’m an avid and creative chef) and it means I get a good variety of nutrients delivered to meal plan around without having to make any decisions. Others may use a set rotation of favourite recipes of subscribe to a meal kit to achieve similar results.
- I’ve adopted a daily exercise regimen and an all-weather approach. So the question is never if I’m exercising but what time rain is least likely and how far I feel like running in the prevailing conditions. Others may fix strong habits of always working out on their lunch hour at work or have a set tennis game on Thursdays.
Think about what your approach is right now. What are some habits that you can change? Not so long ago I started flossing at midday on the suggestion of my dentist - it had the added bonus of deterring me from afternoon snacks.13 -
It's a see-saw that many have trouble with. I second just making good choices a habit--both exercise and food.
You'll have to work on the moderation aspect. Binging occurs because we think we shouldn't eat certain foods. They are just food, but perhaps calorie dense. Look at that piece of cake before you eat it and try to calculate it's calories. You may be able to fit it into your day, and this depends on whether it's an exception or a frequent occurrence. If frequent the piece of cake may need to be very small. If it's a holiday or celebration eat your cake and enjoy it all. When you eat these foods don't feel guilty, and just go back to good habits after.4 -
Starting a healthy lifestyle
Adopt a long term view. A lifestyle is something you do for life.
Eating - consider this will be the foundation for how you eat until you die. It can be adjustable but must be 100% maintainable. Therefore the calorie deficit in not adjust by what you eat but by how much and when.
Exercise - Nothing against body builders but that level of heavy lifting cannot be maintained by most past 60 years old. Pick exercises you generally enjoy and build them into your weekly routine. Then surround them with exercise that challenge you and cause you to excel. Again pick exercises you can see yourself doing at 60 years old as your foundation.
Elasticity - If you want something the be a lifestyle you have to be able to keep doing it. Stretching is often overlooked. Life brings us many challenges if you are unable to be a bit flexible physically or mental/emotionally you will have injuries.
Emotional - being fit is more a mental exercise than a physical one. You achieve a victory every time you: eat the right amount, the right foods to support you level of exercise, successfully do a new exercise or stretch, surpass a personal best, fit into that favorite outfit, look at yourself in the mirror and are satisfied. Each of these little victories is self motivational and self accepting. Celebrate the little victories and use them to sustain your daily attitude.10 -
Like the OP, in the past, after weight loss, I immediately returned to over-eating because reaching a certain weight meant I was "done" dieting. Of course, the excess weight went right back on.
I am determined to not let that happen again and need to change that mindset NOW while I'm losing the weight. I don't know if I'm going to be counting calories for the rest of my life - but I now know there is no such thing as "done." I also know that I canNOT allow a lax attitude about regaining even a small amount of weight after I reach my goal. Loving the advice on this thread and hoping to see more.
7 -
I deliberately took a long slow approach to losing the weight - 40 pounds over 2 years. That way the changes would not be overly drastic and would be sustainable. Also, by the end of two years the new behaviour was very ingrained and normalized and it didn’t really occur to me to return to bad habits.8
-
Possibly by making your weightloss diet (verb) a whole lot closer to how you want your maintenance diet (noun) to be?
Both in calories and in food choices.2 -
We all know that making a healthy lifestyle and sticking with it is the key to weight loss success in the long run. But how does one do it? I'm one of those people who once I lose the weight goes back to binging sweets again. I want to enjoy life and food but also not gain... Which is a struggle.
You have to change your mindset...you're not "done" when you reach whatever weight on the scale. Also, you'll more than likely need to change your mindset from weight loss being the be all and end all and recognize how important good nutrition and regular exercise is for your overall health and well being.
Beyond that, eating healthfully doesn't have to be bland and boring and endless salads and exercise doesn't need to be droning away on an elliptical or treadmill...eating healthfully can be quite delicious and getting out and just being active is great exercise. Binging on this or that is another matter...not really something you can do if you want to maintain a healthy weight, but most certainly indulgences can be enjoyed in moderation.
I've been more or less maintaining (except for this COVID weight ) for almost 8 years. Eating healthfully most of the time...enjoying my indulgences in moderation and regular exercise and/or activity most days.4 -
- Start logging what you're eating NOW for a month with no changes. Look at what's surprisingly high calorie and find things that are maybe not worth it. I did this and kind of recoiled in some places. WHY AM I USING TWO HUNDRED CALORIES OF MAYO ON A SANDWICH. I DON"T EVEN LIKE IT THAT MUCH, OMG. The flip is finding things that feel like 'treats' and are surprisingly LOW calorie and/or healthy. Like blackberries. I LOVE blackberries. I can eat them ALL for not too bad.
- Don't go for a huge calorie deficit to get results fast. Cut as few calories as you can to get decent weight loss. As your weight drops so will the calories you need to lose, and so will the speed of loss. If you have nowhere to go, you're in trouble, but also and more importantly doing a huge cut in calories/what you're eating is setting you up to be 'done' with this and go back to where you were.
Because you're starving and you haven't given yourself enough time to build new habits, making small changes at a time.
- Smaller deficit allows you time to get used to fewer calories, and to make smaller changes that aren't as painful. Get used to the low cal mayo. Add some egg whites to your eggs for breakfast. Try the turkey bacon. See if you can make your own ranch with greek yogurt and a seasoning packet or try the lite. Bulk out your lunch with some more veggies . Just little changes at a time, as your weight and therefore calorie allotment drops. Doing all of it at once is painful and miserable. One or two changes in a month or two is NOT.
- Reiterating another point made by everyone else, but don't cut out food you love. Just... learn to work it in, either in small portions or less frequently or 'budgeting' calories for it or just planning for it witht he knowledge that a pound of fat means eating a surplus of 3500 calories and you can have that ice cream - even a whole pint! - sometimes. Just plan for it because that way you don't feel guilty for 'cheating' and like you may as well say 'screw it' and keep going, or over compensate by over restricting, getting too hungry and then eating too much.
- Take periodic diet breaks. Sometimes just set your calories to 'maintain' and eat there for a couple of days/couple of weeks.
- and for me there is no weight loss goal 'date'. There is no end date. There is a point when I will change my calories to maintain and stay there, but I will not set a 'by now' because that's putting the end date on it and, again, there's no end date. Just a point where my calorie allotment goes up by a couple/few hundred calories. If I have an end date in mind? More than that's gonna change at the end. What I do now I do for life. No 1200 calories, no 2lbs a week, no 'swimsuit ready by June' or 'I want to wear a size 8 jeans' or 'no sugar EVER', or -- whatever. Just. Life. The goal is healthier. For life.5 -
For me: I accepted that the things I do to lose weight (pay attention to how much I'm consuming by keeping a food log, setting activity goals so I'm not a couch/desk potato) are things I'll need to do for life.1
-
We all know that making a healthy lifestyle and sticking with it is the key to weight loss success in the long run. But how does one do it? I'm one of those people who once I lose the weight goes back to binging sweets again. I want to enjoy life and food but also not gain... Which is a struggle.
You got a lot of good advice above, with which I agree. I'm going to pick on a detail . . . but one that I think is important.
You say "I'm one of those people who . . . ". That's a self-definition. Self-definitions are important. Can you nudge your thinking just a little, to "I'm one of those people who USED TO . . . "?
Couple that with thinking about HOW to be different this time, in an applied sense. That's where a lot of the good advice above comes in. Things like figuring out how to fit in treat foods (even calorie dense ones), maybe in smaller portions, or less often; like logging current eating to see which foods are not worth their calorie "cost" once you know what the price tag is; like losing slowly and more painlessly instead of making it a punitive forced march to a finish-line goal. And so forth.
You make it a lifestyle by behaving differently, as a pattern or set of habits: By becoming different, by behaving differently. It's that simple, and that challenging.
I'm in year 5+ of maintaining a healthy weight after 3+ decades of obesity - most of my adult life - before that. It's easier than you're thinking . . . if you take the steps to *make* it easier. And it feels *outstanding*, in diverse ways. Way better than shoveling food I don't even like *that* much indiscriminately into my mouth because it's there. I actually enjoy food *more* than I did when I was obese, because I'm selective and thoughtful about planning and preparing it, and I savor it when I eat. There's *more* pleasure, not less.
IMO, a lot of success is figuring out how to personalize the process so it fits easily with your individual preferences, needs, strengths, and limitations. And it's about balance: Balancing calorie intake, nutrition, tastiness, practicality, enjoyable added movement, and more. Just finding your own route through this, mastering your self-definition and behavior, succeeding, will improve your life, and give you a set of cognitive skills you can bring to other areas of your life, like education, finances, career, relationship and more.
It's powerful stuff, and it happens by accumulating small, positive changes. You can make a small change, and stick with it, right?
Cheering for you!8 -
Starting a healthy lifestyle
Adopt a long term view. A lifestyle is something you do for life.
Eating - consider this will be the foundation for how you eat until you die. It can be adjustable but must be 100% maintainable. Therefore the calorie deficit in not adjust by what you eat but by how much and when.
Exercise - Nothing against body builders but that level of heavy lifting cannot be maintained by most past 60 years old. Pick exercises you generally enjoy and build them into your weekly routine. Then surround them with exercise that challenge you and cause you to excel. Again pick exercises you can see yourself doing at 60 years old as your foundation.
Elasticity - If you want something the be a lifestyle you have to be able to keep doing it. Stretching is often overlooked. Life brings us many challenges if you are unable to be a bit flexible physically or mental/emotionally you will have injuries.
Emotional - being fit is more a mental exercise than a physical one. You achieve a victory every time you: eat the right amount, the right foods to support you level of exercise, successfully do a new exercise or stretch, surpass a personal best, fit into that favorite outfit, look at yourself in the mirror and are satisfied. Each of these little victories is self motivational and self accepting. Celebrate the little victories and use them to sustain your daily attitude.
I read this and feel like I'm on the right track. I walk every day rain or shine and its something I hope to do as long as I'm mobile to do so. And yoga everyday, for the flexibility, strength and mental clarity. And eating fresh vegetables. That can be my foundation, with recreation like skiing or kayaking added in as I'm able, or strength training. But I hope to sustain walking and healthy eating habits well into my senior years.2 -
That's great. Forgive yourself quickly when you fail or disappoint yourself. Once you forgive get right back into the routine.
Keep it fresh by adding and switching things up once in a while. Keep your base routine though. Only adjust about 20 to 30%.
Find someone to do it with so you can encourage them But do it for yourself. Don't rely on others. Set new goals that are SMART.2 -
Start working now on building new habits by incorporating treats and staying within your calorie goals (smaller portions, or avoiding everyday "junk sweets" and instead saving those calories up for something really special less often??).
You might maybe also give some thought to your emotional attachments to those treats. Are there other ways to reward yourself or address those needs without falling back into old habits that aren't serving you well?3 -
Hypnosis has been recommended to me. I was considering it. I also like tapping (EFT) to help deal with subconscious mental barriers. My advice for long term is eat healthy (learn to trust your intuition vs counting every calorie), move your body every day (doesn't have to be strenuous, but should make you breathe deeply), and work on your mental attitude and find your "why".
Recommended reading:
"Full-Filled"
"The Untethered Soul"
"Atomic Habits"
"Mindset"
"Grit"2 -
You say "I'm one of those people who . . . ". That's a self-definition. Self-definitions are important. Can you nudge your thinking just a little, to "I'm one of those people who USED TO . . . "?
Just. Yes! To the above!
@AnnPT77 reminded me of something I heard recently, too, which was that we are more motivated by goals we set that have to do with something we are GAINING versus something we have to lose or give up. So, losing weight or giving up treats is not a motivating goal, but being able to lift heavier weights or achieve something previously difficult is going to help us stay committed longer.
After that, habits habits habits. Start with 2 minutes of whatever activity, and DO 2 minutes every day. Then make it 3, than 4... Or whatever your goal is. Make it small, easy, obvious, and fun!4 -
Change your thinking from "i can't....", "i won't....," to "I don't..."
Ex. I can't eat corn dogs anymore.
Actually, you can and you know it. You are physically capable of doing it and implies you still want to but just not doing it right then
I won't eat hot dogs anymore.
You won't?? Why??? You know you will eventually. Requires willpower. Implies you still want to/are still eating them right now but just won't for some reason in the future.
I don't eat hot dogs anymore.
You don't. It's just something you don't do anymore. You used to do it but are not doing it now or any longer. Way less or no internal resistance to battle when you state it this way.
Tell me I can't do something I want to fight about it even if it's myself. Telling me I won't do something makes me want to do it even if it's me saying it, setting the limit. Telling me I can't or won't do something makes me want to to do it even more.
Saying i don't do something is just a statement of fact. I used to do it but now I don't do it. I used to go to school but I don't right now. I used to weigh 180 lbs but I don't now. Etc.
Try it. See if it helps.
2
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.3K Introduce Yourself
- 43.4K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 387 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.4K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.2K MyFitnessPal Information
- 22 News and Announcements
- 897 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.2K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions