how do you stay motivated with a large goal

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Replies

  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member

    I'm eating a Reese's cup for dinner.


    It's fine though I hit my protein and fat targets already and saved the calories. It's fine. (Guac + tuna with tortilla chips for easy lunch. Do that. 10/10 highly recommend)

  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/46421696#Comment_46421696

    i want a peanut butter cup for dinner LOL

    it just wouldnt fill me up for long :/

    hate the new format

    @springlering62 it is the singing dog (do you follow me on IG? its on there) bestie and I are ... modifying the penguins to be CHICKENS! so it will be holly jolly and her chicks!

    we have way too much time on our hands, apparently LOL

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 8,437 Member

    @callsitlikeiseeit

    i assume you are familiar with this little gem?


    https://youtu.be/bRxhgxH6FUI

  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/46424070#Comment_46424070

    LMAO no, i hadn't seen that incarnation of 'Billy' errrr 'Alexa' 😂

  • revinso
    revinso Posts: 11 Member
    Hi guys. I don't check in every day, so just caught up. Some of the reaction to my slightly provocative post was expected. In my case, as I am the house cook and shopper, I don't see a problem with maintaining weight when I get to my target. Part of the reason for this is that for most of my life I was not overweight, and only put weight on through gluttony to be frank when a serious accident forced me to stop competitive rowing for a couple of years but I did not cut the portion sizes back.

    So I will just go back to what I did before - same foods and exercise. I am not really a cake and sweets person, and I hardly ever make things like pizza, so I do not feel I will lose out - I am eating the foods I like right now, just less. However, my biggest motivator is my brother. He is 5 years younger than me, eventually reached 28 stone (though he denied that) and had a catastrophic stroke. I have never been anywhere near his weight (and I am quite a bit taller) but the path to obesity is a scary one for me because of him.

    The reason I posted was largely because of my experience in the health group I go to where there is a clear pattern of long term failure cycles, and a tendency not to set proper targets and stick to them. Almost all of the participants make excuses for their frequent lapses. They expect to fail and many of them do. For some reason I find this very frustrating. To me weight loss and fitness building is a straightforward scientific thing. The coaches know perfectly well pretty much from day 1 who will achieve their targets, but the process is non-interventionist, so it is educational rather than prescriptive and people are not forced (or shamed) to follow any regime.

    My leisure background in competitive amateur sport - rowing and then equestrian sports then motorcycle sports, meant that my weight and fitness was a factor that I always had to monitor. I'll be fine, but the experience of being forced to lose weight, look at calorie counting and monitor nutrition, has been very interesting as I have never had the need to do this before to any significant degree. The psychology of it is in many ways even more interesting.
  • elaroch05
    elaroch05 Posts: 29 Member
    I agree with others...it's not about motivation, it's about habits. I'll further it by saying: make the habits easy for you (meaning: change your environment). The more difficult something is, the harder it is to make it stick. We become overweight because the habits we have created lead to weight gain. An example of environment change: if you put your fruit/veggies where you can't see them and grab them, but leave cookies in an easy to see place, what are you going to grab? Overtime, that becomes a habit. Put a bowl of fruit on the counter and eventually, that becomes the habit. Little things added up make a BIG difference (like 1% changes...things so simple that they don't look like they'll make a difference). Essentially, make your life more healthy, and the changes will follow. It won't be overnight, just like gaining weight doesn't happen overnight, but eventually, it just will be...does that make sense?
  • revinso
    revinso Posts: 11 Member
    Some good thoughts there Coblujay. Photos are a nice idea, so I will copy that. Regarding exercise, I found the exercise part of MFP too difficult to make work for me, and it seems to be a means of giving me permission to eat more. So I do the exercise (in my case rowing machine and weights 5 days a week) plus whatever physical work I do at home, and ignore it for calorie purposes. The effect is to increase my deficit obviously, but as long as I feel OK I treat this as fine.

    Getting the crap out of the house is also ideal. I can't do that as my wife does like her cakes and biscuits, so I just have to live with that. My solution so far is to drink water or eat an apple if I feel like a snack or if she has sweets or something. Wish there was some other inspiring gap filler I could think of.
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    edited November 2021
    The big problem with ignoring the exercise is that at some point you are going to want to stop losing weight. If you don't know what your actual burn from exercise is, that's going to be a problem. You'd do well to figure it out now, and account for it - even if it's just doing the math backward to figure out how much it's giving you and to keep a consistent deficit WITH EXERCISE INCLUDED.

    Because again, you're not doing something short term. This is a forever thing. Which means you're GOING to need to be able to figure out how to eat to maintain your weight and fuel yourself when you're ready to STOP loss.

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 8,437 Member
    @revinso
    “ Wish there was some other inspiring gap filler I could think of.”

    Oh my gosh. Limitless ideas

    Beef jerky
    Roasted edamame
    Carrots radishes cucumbers and zero cal dressing as a dip
    Navel orange slices
    Skyr or Greek yogurt with honey or granola or hagel or zero cal chocolate syrup
    Cottage cheese with fruit and grape nuts and balsamic
    Cheese slices or Baby Bel
    Trader Joe’s fruit leathers
    Dried fruit
    Iced coffee
    Tea
    Chai

    Get creative. I found tiny little pots of sardine pate that are delicious with little breadsticks. Tin of pate and three breadsticks is 125 cal.
  • sheahughes
    sheahughes Posts: 133 Member
    Regarding the "permission to eat more" from exercise... Sure, if you aren't eating those calories back (either in full or partially) you will have a larger deficit but as mentioned above you will eventually want to maintain and knowing how much your exercise actually uses calorie wise means you will be able to eat maintenance calories and not keep losing.

    Many people exercise to eat more and that is perfectly valid, many people track their exercise and only eat a quarter of half the calories back (particularly if they are unsure if the calories estimated from exercise is accurate) and some people don't eat their exercise calories back at all, or if they are using TDEE over MFP's calorie figures have included exercise calories in their daily budget to begin with.

    I think (and I'm not an expert) that it would be sensible to eat at least some of your calories from exercise back. You don't want to cheat your body of it's necessary requirements, after all. And if you are a petite person or a woman, you may need to eat those exercise calories back to remain above net 1200 calories each day and not risk the health issues that come with eating to few calories.
  • mirianyusm
    mirianyusm Posts: 89 Member
    revinso wrote: »
    I disagree with a lot of the experience here. I think it is necessary to be very disciplined in order to succeed. I simply do not want to be fat. I have worked out home made meals, accurately calorie calculated, in sufficient variety to keep me interested, and I stick to those: no excuses. "Treats" are just lapses, and I simply stopped eating bread, cakes, added sugar, fruit juices, biscuits, sweets etc from day one. Zero alcohol from day one. Very limited potatoes and pasta within the meal plan, and no more than once a week. No manufactured food - I make everything and weigh everything. Moderate exercise 5 days out of 7. Daily weighing first thing. Weekly blood sugar and blood pressure checks and waist and neck and bicep measurement checks. I stay very hydrated, with cold water. There is no point just losing water in a diet. Body mass scales (very cheap now) help with a rough check on this.

    In my case I wished to lose at least 88 pounds and my target date for this is 31 March 2022. I started 6 weeks ago and have lost 31 pounds so far. If I show any sign of not making progress over a period of a couple of days of weigh ins, I eat less until the scales drop again (usually just a day). For me this is a project and the only way to achieve the aim is to be focussed and work hard. My wife is encouraging, which helps. (She s naturally thin).

    Every week I attend a free educational health care course run by the local authority where I live. Everyone on it is obese (mostly doctor referrals), and I am the only male. We have twelve attendees and I have lost more than the rest of the group put together in the past six weeks. Some have put weight on. I think mostly because they have failed many times in paid for weight loss courses where they pile the weight back on eventually, invariably because of alcohol and sugary treats and excessive portion sizes. They could all lose weight if they wanted it enough and stopped making excuses.

    Some delude themselves that they can count calories by estimating their portions. If we want to have a healthy weight, or be thin, then people like me who have become obese simply have to accept that dead calories in alcohol and sugary foods are gone forever.

    In my case I do not want a long term goal stretching into the distance. My aim is to get down to a sensible weight within six months from my start date. By new year I will definitely have lost more than half my target. There will be no backsliding over Christmas.

    I think this is the best way to fall off the wagon and not being able to go back up on. But everybody is different. I wish you the best.
  • revinso
    revinso Posts: 11 Member
    Thanks Wunderking. Yes, I agree, you are right. At the moment I am happy to create a deficit and as long as I don't feel crazy hungry I'm not worried about calculating the calorie burn from exercise at the moment. Next spring when it warms up I will be back on the water either in a pair or four boat, and that will be structured exercise that I will try to calculate properly. With water rowing I will not be able to sustain my total current maximum limit of 1,920 calories per day without significant additional weight loss, so I will have to up the intake until I get stability once I am at my goal fitness and weight. The fitness aspect will in due course be measured on an ergo and by monitoring recovery. At the moment I am just rowing on a water rower to try to get some of my rhythm and strength back, coupled with a bit of moderate weights and stretches. It's not an amazing work out by any means.
  • annliz23
    annliz23 Posts: 3,742 Member
    As I get older for me its consistency and flexibility due to joint pain I make sure I do some exercise daily and eat what i want but in moderation.

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