All or Nothing?

thompsjared3 · February 2021

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to get some opinions on the "all or nothing" approach to MFP. I have tried to do more of a balanced approach but the demon inside of me says, "no way pal." This isn't quite a hindrance to my weightloss, I actually prefer it, but maintaining (I'm saying that loosely when I get there) is crazy hard to transition to.

I'm a program manager by trade and my MFP revolves around logging everything to the T. I even log my Extra wintergreen gum, gosh dang it! But has anyone flourished with the all or nothing approach? Like I said, I'm not as worried about starting (i'm day 4 yay!) but maintaining is always a troublesome approach.

I'm torn. I love logging and it puts a fire under me to keep on MFP all day to reach my goals. My personality is geared like this. I love structure! But when I have bad days it is a tough pill to swallow.

Is any of this making sense? I feel like I'm babbling but would like some input if anyone has any. I guess I can proceed forward like this until I make maintenance, when that time comes. Who knows? Anyone in the same boat? Lemme know!

janejellyroll · February 2021

Hello, fellow program manager!

What helped me was thinking about it like a budget. If I find out that a certain bill is $50 more than I budgeted for, do I say "Forget it?" and spend whatever for the rest of the month? No, I don't. If I have a moment of weakness and buy something I've had my eye on, do I go on a spending spree and buy everything else I want? Nope, I make adjustments elsewhere.

Once I began thinking of my calorie/activity level like that, I found it easier to let go of my perfection mindset.

And the bad days? Well, those are just additional data. Sometimes there is something to learn from them (like, maybe I notice when I have a lot of sugar and not much fiber at breakfast, I'm wildly hungry the rest of the day). When you're on a project and things are going badly, do you shut down and not look at the data? Or do you try to get into your data and figure out why? If you're like most people in our job, you may be bummed or stressed, but you still try to figure out what to do better next time.

sijomial · February 2021

I lost weight very differently to how I maintain weight but the difference between you and me seems to be was that I was already good at maintaining and losing was my weakness so I applied project management / business skills to plan and execute my weight loss. The transition to maintenance was effectively a return to normal but at a lighter weight.

If you are the opposite then I would say work on your weakness.
Why do you regain as this seems like it's not your first cycle of loss and regain?

ninerbuff · February 2021

The drawback with the "all or nothing" approach is many people can't handle a couple of days of nothing and give up. Our bodies don't work in a linear fashion and we're not machines. We have so many response systems that react to stimuli and if one isn't working correctly, the body does what it needs to survive. The example in weight loss would be if one's deficit is too high, the body reacts by slowing metabolic rate.
And for the all, even if one was perfect to the T one week and had good production, then did the very same thing the next week to a T, the result could be the opposite. If that's the case, what are you going to fix?
CONSISTENCY and PATIENCE is what people need to do in order to see results long term.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

thompsjared3 · February 2021

@janejellyroll yessss! Perfect way to put it into my PM brain. I love the analogies and you’re right, I need to think of it like my projects. Just because I go over doesn’t blow the whole project away. Seriously you put it perfectly. Thank you 🙏🏻

thompsjared3 · February 2021

@sijomial i think my gain, loss, regain boils down to this all or nothing approach. I just can’t shake it every time that I try. So I agree with you 100% that I need to work on that weakness. Thanks for the great reply. Glad to see so many PM’s represent 👏🏻

thompsjared3 · February 2021

@ninerbuff seriously love what you said about being linear! You are right they don’t work like that, which is something I’m trying to wrap my head around. I don’t want to set myself up for failure again so you’re right, I need CONSISTENCY AND PATIENCE. Thank you so much for the honest reply cuz I need to hear that 👊🏻

Theo166 · February 2021

My read is that you are noting you are a bit OCD in your logging, and the alternative is to just stop when you hit maintenance?

Once you are comfortable with your logging and your brain 'knows' the calories of things, why can't you target a middle road, where perhaps you tolerate a margin of error and even swag some things like throwing in quick calories to aggregate those mints and cream for your coffee. Or on maintenance you could set a trigger, where if your weight hits a certain number you go back and log everything for a week (or tell you drop below your trigger)

lemurcat2 · February 2021

I was pretty hard core about logging in some ways -- I don't think I ever went over my planned cals for months after starting out, as that was a pretty hard no in my mind. But I wasn't fanatic about logging every single thing even if it had minimal cals -- in particular, I never logged coffee or tea (I don't add anything with cals), often didn't log mustard or vinegar or garlic, was fine with estimating restaurant food (or just deciding it was probably around 1000 cal or whatever), and that all worked fine. I've also never once weighed a prepackaged item to see if the grams were as stated on the package (I don't eat a lot of single/double serving prepackaged stuff anyway, however). I've also been happy to accept the weight on meat/fish purchased from a butcher and weighed there. I went by results--so long as my results were as planned, I figured my logging was good enough.

With low cal things you eat every day, logging them should be pretty simple, as it's in your diary and you can just add it at the beginning of the day, but if you don't want to add it (like me and coffee), the fact you get that extra 10 cals daily is not going to matter, as presumably you wouldn't cut it out, and if you aren't losing you lower total cals, and that they may be a tiny bit understated (the truth is we all have a margin of error larger than that anyway) won't make any difference.

I'm wondering if you have issues with all or nothing in another way, though. For me, getting over all or nothing thinking was important to my success, as in the past if I wasn't perfect I got frustrated with myself and decided it wasn't working or I couldn't do it (whatever it was), and would quit, or use an imperfect day as an excuse to decide the day was a write off. When I started MFP, I also decided to be patient with myself, and if I had a bad day I would use that as a basis to figure out what happened and learn from it, so as to avoid the problem in the future. Since you seem like a logical thinker, addressing this as a problem solving exercise and logically (for example, if you exceed planned cals by 200, that doesn't actually prevent you from losing that week, so treating it as a failure is inaccurate, as well as unhelpful) may be a good way to look at it.

tinkerbellang83 · February 2021

When I was maintaining, I went for quite a period without logging food, I also did the same again whilst I was working through a Binge Eating self-help program as calorie-counting was discouraged during that period. I instead relied on my trendweight from my daily weigh ins to keep an eye on my weight. If I noticed an uptick in my weight beyond my normal fluctuations and the app I use auto-calculates what my approximate variation to maintenance calories is, I'd keep an eye on my portions again. The thing is it's always here, so you can come back to it anytime. There's still some sort of tracking going on that way which appeases my own OCD but I can focus on other areas such as fitness and wellbeing.

J72FIT · February 2021

ninerbuff wrote: »

The drawback with the "all or nothing" approach is many people can't handle a couple of days of nothing and give up. Our bodies don't work in a linear fashion and we're not machines. We have so many response systems that react to stimuli and if one isn't working correctly, the body does what it needs to survive. The example in weight loss would be if one's deficit is too high, the body reacts by slowing metabolic rate.
And for the all, even if one was perfect to the T one week and had good production, then did the very same thing the next week to a T, the result could be the opposite. If that's the case, what are you going to fix?
CONSISTENCY and PATIENCE is what people need to do in order to see results long term.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

^^^ All of this...

Skyler103 · February 2021

I always felt that way about working out. If I didn't feel like I could have a session that was as productive as the last, I wouldn't even do it. Also, if couldn't work out for a full hour I wouldn't do it. A friend helped me realize that you won't always have the best workout ever, but that doesn't negate the advantages of doing one. I realized on my own that 30 or 45 minutes of exercise is better than 0.

I have lost and gained 15 or 20 pounds on mfp about 4 times. This last time, I did the math and if I had just continued to work out even though I was over eating, I would have stayed the same weight. That was a sad moment for me. I'm not sure what makes me lose it, then go back to my old ways. Now I'm more aware, and I'm going to try not to do that again.

All or Nothing?

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