When the "diet" isn't a new shiny toy?

JustaNoob
JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
in Motivation and Support
I am someone who leads with my emotions. The times I have been successful at weight loss, it was because I was really excited about what I was doing.

So maybe I would "start" Monday and make it two weeks in and lose steam over my excitement of the diet.... but I would gain a different excitement about seeing the scale go down. So I'd ride the "new diet excitement" wave until I hit the "yay! I'm losing" wave, then skip back and forth until-- welllll I burn out.

So I hear people say that motivation isn't actually that important. How do you keep doing it for the long haul when you are no longer excited about it, but it isn't quite a habit yet?

Replies

  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    I was just thinking today that I no longer feel like I am 'on a diet', but rather just... waiting for my weight to catch up (erm, drop down) to reflecting the way I eat and live now. I'm not waiting for an end point, I'm not looking forward and saying 'when I'm done I can eat/have/do'. This is just what I do now.

    My MFP streak is 215 days, so that long maybe minus the past couple of weeks.

    I couldn't give you any secret to HOW I did it, beyond just doing it. I have taken diet breaks to eat at maintenance and will again, and I have some advantages - I LIKE healthy food and always did and a lot of my major problems were just things I did thoughtlessly that added tons of calories but were easy enough to drop or sub, which is nice. I've also never entirely cut anything out, including chips and nutella and pizza or whatever, I just eat it less often, in smaller quantities, and buy and store it differently.

    It still just came down to doing it until I had done it enough that it became the path of least resistance in my life.

    My grocery orders are online for a curbside pickup. My past orders are in the bar at the bottom so rebuying is easier than looking for new stuff or saying 'no' to walking past the brownies in an actual store. We'll keep doing that indefinitely.

    I know how to estimate calories. I know where the hidden traps and pitfalls are now based on my own preferences and life, and I know what the lower calorie alternatives are. I've worked out what is worth it for me (REESES CUPS) and what's just really not (cream in my coffee , buttered toast, or god help me breakfast at all). Candy is stored in the freezer. Chips are portioned out as soon as they come home and are stored with the canned food.

    It's just. The habit and the easier thing now. If I wanted to revert to my old habits I'd have to work on it.

    And I'm lazy so I don't.
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    edited March 2021
    Oh, wait I'm sorry I didn't answer the question (blame the migraine) The between period?

    Breaks where I ate at maintenance, and a lot of mindfulness about what works for me, what doesn't work for me and what's going to make me fall down. What's worth the calorie hit and what isn't. Things that make me fall off the train life-wife.

    Kind of exhausting but I think if you go in KNOWING that you're going to be doing whatever you do for some long but indefinite period of time and work on the little changes and making them as painless as you can, it helps.

    Averaging over a week can also help keep your view long term, instead of TODAY.

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,881 Member
    I'm going to link to one of my own topics, from a while ago, just because the title is so similar:
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10773684/when-weight-loss-isn-t-a-shiny-new-thing-anymore/p1

    Consistency really is key, just keep grinding away and building good habits.
  • girlwithcurls2
    girlwithcurls2 Posts: 2,282 Member
    I think you just get out and do it. The best thing I have done for myself outside of the kitchen has been to work on building movement into my day. Over time, I went from sedentary to short walks, to daily workouts in the weight room and the pool. COVID changed all of that, and I gained 10 pounds because I was so thrown off by the loss of my routine, but here we are a year later, and I have settled into a new routine that involves walking, running, body weight stuff, and rowing. I am rarely motivated to get it done, but I tell myself that "It's what I do" so I do it. No excuses. I also hate flossing my teeth and cleaning my bathroom, but I do that. Keep telling yourself that, and before you know it, it IS what you do. It's just part of your routine and it feels strange not to do it.
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,155 Member
    Bex953172 wrote: »
    Your emotions are screwing you over.

    Feel whatever you feel whether that be excitement, boredom, anger, unmotivated and then just do what you need to do anyway.

    It's not excitement that's making you lose weight, it's the action you're doing at that time. If you carried on doing that regardless of your feelings, you'll be able to stick to it a lot better.

    Yes! Emotions are important - when you notice them, it's good to figure out what they're telling you. They can be effective alarm bells. Sometimes, though, the information they give you isn't important or reasonable, so you have to base your course of action on something else. I find that just accepting that makes it a lot easier to do the right thing.

    Good discipline, in my experience, enables you to prolong the excitement and joy, because you find new things to learn and do as you develop skill and knowledge. If you stay at beginner level, and quit when it gets challenging, you won't get to that point. That doesn't always *feel* motivating, but I know it's true, and I've experienced it in other areas of my life, so I choose to push through even when it's boring.
  • Speakeasy76
    Speakeasy76 Posts: 961 Member
    rosebarnalice wrote: »
    For me it was a TRUE change in point of view from "This is a DIET !" to "This is a LIFESTYLE CHANGE."

    I always viewed a "DIET" as a temporary challenge or game that I could "win" by getting to my goal weight, and then I wouldn't need to DIET any more. But that got me on a perpetual yo-yo cycle, so at my core, I hadn't really changed my relationship with food, and my core food behaviors.

    It wasn't until I truly believed that I had to make lifestyle changes. I had come to terms that my entire relationship with food was both mentally and physically unhealthy, and I couldn't just play a short term "game" to fixt that. For me, making that lifestyle change meant I had to do the work to change my relationship to food--which for me meant dealing with my emotional eating behaviors by learning how to FEEL my feelings rather than eat them.

    This was exactly it for me, too. It was changing my mindset from 'doing this UNTIL I can lose the weight" and doing it permanently for my health. Putting the focus more on overall health was a shift for me, and took that pressure off of wanting to look a certain way/fit into a certain size by a certain deadline. I had heard for so long that it should be a lifestyle and not a diet, but it wasn't until I truly accepted it that I could be successful.

    I also had to accept that the process to losing and weight would be filled with ups and downs, and knowing how to deal with those, as well. If I was just looking for that "high" of losing, I would've eventually became frustrated and give up.

    I was like you, too, and hear a lot of other people speaking/thinking that way about losing weight. I think that's probably why a lot of people give up.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    This why I found logging so important. It's a rote task, like brushing my teeth. I don't get excited to brush my teeth, I just do it because... it needs to be done. If I'm having a good day or bad day, if I'm going to hit my calorie goal or if I just ate way to much, I log it because... it needs to be done. I'm poking around on my phone all the time, so I have no excuse. Logging isnt tied to "weight loss", it isn't tied to doing well, it isn't tied to a goal. It's just something I do.
  • JustaNoob
    JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
    Thank you for the replies!

    So I find myself to be pretty level headed about weight loss at this point in my life. I do see it as adjusting my lifestyle and do not have an end date nor am I doing anything really drastic. In the past month, I have made honest logging a habit and just trying to do a little more physically.

    I think that my worst habit that I have created over time is depending on motivation. When I was really motivated, I ran myself into the ground. When I wasn't I ate myself back up.

    I'd love to see consistent loses again-- with my "new" nonexciting way of eating. I'm not cutting carbs, not eliminating sugar, not going low fat, or doing some complicated diet ... just staying in my calories. I have not hit my stride with this-- though honest logging shows me exactly why. In the past, the shiny new diet was always weird enough to keep me interested for a while lol... but I hope calorie counting and making wise choices for how I feel will be the long game.

    I hope that consistency will be the key (as many of you have said.)
  • JustaNoob
    JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    I'm going to link to one of my own topics, from a while ago, just because the title is so similar:
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10773684/when-weight-loss-isn-t-a-shiny-new-thing-anymore/p1

    Consistency really is key, just keep grinding away and building good habits.

    Woah! Almost the exact same. Definitely going to read.
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    JustaNoob wrote: »
    Thank you for the replies!

    So I find myself to be pretty level headed about weight loss at this point in my life. I do see it as adjusting my lifestyle and do not have an end date nor am I doing anything really drastic. In the past month, I have made honest logging a habit and just trying to do a little more physically.

    I think that my worst habit that I have created over time is depending on motivation. When I was really motivated, I ran myself into the ground. When I wasn't I ate myself back up.

    I'd love to see consistent loses again-- with my "new" nonexciting way of eating. I'm not cutting carbs, not eliminating sugar, not going low fat, or doing some complicated diet ... just staying in my calories. I have not hit my stride with this-- though honest logging shows me exactly why. In the past, the shiny new diet was always weird enough to keep me interested for a while lol... but I hope calorie counting and making wise choices for how I feel will be the long game.

    I hope that consistency will be the key (as many of you have said.)

    Knowing you're prone to this will help; being self-aware does in most things.

    I think the big thing to strive for is for the weight loss part of it - the journey as it were - to fade into the background of your life. Not a thing you focus on, not a project, not a hobby. It has to take your attention for a little while to get into the groove, but after that actively focusing on something else (ie: starting a project, finding a hobby or focusing on an old one, whatever) is pretty much the best thing you can do.

    And I have absolute faith you'll get there.
  • teamhugcpt
    teamhugcpt Posts: 24 Member
    I totally get the shiny new toy thing. For me, it helps to find ways to create variety within a consistent structure. I exercise every weekday morning, but I change the type of exercise every couple of months when the novelty wears off.
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,333 Member
    Losing weight is like saving money.. earning a degree, developing a true friendship. It takes time... and a lot of work. Shiny new thing? well.... It just doesn't cut it when you're trying to make true change.

    When you get bored...and you just do what you need to do.. you'll be onto something.

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