What's one thing you know now...
makethistimedifferent
Posts: 31 Member
Replies
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1200 is not enough calories.18
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Exercise calories are crucial.
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Consistency is more important than perfection33
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Fat doesn't make you fat.
I ate so many gummi bears because they are "FAT FREE!"
...and wondered why I was still gaining weight.16 -
For me it's my daily goals of 4 servings of veggies and 64 oz water.
I'm 15 lbs to my goal AND feeling well
Consistency is the ONLY key to achieving my desired result13 -
Personalization of tactics is key. Different people do best with different tactics, depending on their individual preferences, strengths, limitations, and overall lifestyle.
For a specific individual, finding the habits that are easy enough to be pretty much flying autopilot, is likely to make loss, and especially long term maintenance, much easier.
P.S. I kinda disagree about consistency. I'm inconsistent AF, but lost and maintain OK anyway.
ETA, in case it isn't obvious: I'm perfectly willing to believe that consistency is important, essential even, for some people, maybe even most people. Why would I disbelieve what others say works for them?9 -
makethistimedifferent wrote: »
I agree with you... to a degree! I lost 5 stone in 10 months without exercising, and I ate 1600-1800 calories a day so I definitely wasn't on an extreme calorie cut.
Prior to this, I had successfully lost lots of weight on numerous occasions, and had never exercised either.
After losing the 5 stones in 2014, I felt more body confident and I did start going swimming. I dropped another stone in the next 6 months while eating my way up to 2000 calories a day. I've maintained that 6 stone+ weight loss since April 2015.
When we went into the first lockdown in March 2020 (UK), I began walking 10,000+ steps a day, and I've definitely lost inches, and a few more pounds, to the point now that I'm looking quite bony, and my loose skin is more crepey. The latter is definitely something I'm building up to addressing but feel apprehensive about eating more or walking less! My recent weight loss is probably a result of slightly undereating about 50 calories a day over an extended period of time, more than as a result of lots of walking. However, I appreciate the walking/exercise may have played some part too.
Overall, and it's only my opinion, I think exercise is good for losing inches, more than a necessity for weight loss, but I don't expect everyone to agree with me!
OP, I'm going to think more about your question so I might be back!6 -
Personalization of tactics is key. Different people do best with different tactics, depending on their individual preferences, strengths, limitations, and overall lifestyle.
For a specific individual, finding the habits that are easy enough to be pretty much flying autopilot, is likely to make loss, and especially long term maintenance, much easier.
P.S. I kinda disagree about consistency. I'm inconsistent AF, but lost and maintain OK anyway.
ETA, in case it isn't obvious: I'm perfectly willing to believe that consistency is important, essential even, for some people, maybe even most people. Why would I disbelieve what others say works for them?
Methinks you are more consistent than you imply.
You may be inconsistent day to day, but when you take three giant steps backwards you would see that, overall, you consistently avoid eating more calories than you expend. I think that was the idea that @londoneye was putting out there.
And in general, thank you for all your well reasoned contributions to our little family.4 -
Personalization of tactics is key. Different people do best with different tactics, depending on their individual preferences, strengths, limitations, and overall lifestyle.
For a specific individual, finding the habits that are easy enough to be pretty much flying autopilot, is likely to make loss, and especially long term maintenance, much easier.
P.S. I kinda disagree about consistency. I'm inconsistent AF, but lost and maintain OK anyway.
ETA, in case it isn't obvious: I'm perfectly willing to believe that consistency is important, essential even, for some people, maybe even most people. Why would I disbelieve what others say works for them?
Methinks you are more consistent than you imply.
You may be inconsistent day to day, but when you take three giant steps backwards you would see that, overall, you consistently avoid eating more calories than you expend. I think that was the idea that @londoneye was putting out there.
And in general, thank you for all your well reasoned contributions to our little family.
Perhaps.
I'd say I average around the right number of calories, but I eat anything from just under goal (which represents as small deficit, even in maintenance) to literally 2-3 times my TDEE (so 5000+ calories). My bodyweight fluctuates wildly (mostly water weight changes) as a consequence - have had others here tell me it would make them crazy to see that. But, yeah, it has stayed in a healthy zone for 6+ years so far.
Activity-wise, I do anything from literally sitting all day except for fetching food, to several hours of quite hearty exercise in addition to daily life activity. I often eat all nutritious-like, but sometimes eat a whole good-sized thick pizza all by myself, with beer and dessert. I drink zero alcohol, or I drink . . . well, enough, occasionally.
I don't think that's what most people visualize doing, when they say consistency is important for them.
Balance is important to me, and the concept of averaging over time is vital to that. I like variety, including a variety of types of variety.
And thank you for the kind remarks, sincerely.13 -
Personalization of tactics is key. Different people do best with different tactics, depending on their individual preferences, strengths, limitations, and overall lifestyle.
For a specific individual, finding the habits that are easy enough to be pretty much flying autopilot, is likely to make loss, and especially long term maintenance, much easier.
P.S. I kinda disagree about consistency. I'm inconsistent AF, but lost and maintain OK anyway.
ETA, in case it isn't obvious: I'm perfectly willing to believe that consistency is important, essential even, for some people, maybe even most people. Why would I disbelieve what others say works for them?
Methinks you are more consistent than you imply.
You may be inconsistent day to day, but when you take three giant steps backwards you would see that, overall, you consistently avoid eating more calories than you expend. I think that was the idea that @londoneye was putting out there.
And in general, thank you for all your well reasoned contributions to our little family.
Perhaps.
I'd say I average around the right number of calories, but I eat anything from just under goal (which represents as small deficit, even in maintenance) to literally 2-3 times my TDEE (so 5000+ calories). My bodyweight fluctuates wildly (mostly water weight changes) as a consequence - have had others here tell me it would make them crazy to see that. But, yeah, it has stayed in a healthy zone for 6+ years so far.
Activity-wise, I do anything from literally sitting all day except for fetching food, to several hours of quite hearty exercise in addition to daily life activity. I often eat all nutritious-like, but sometimes eat a whole good-sized thick pizza all by myself, with beer and dessert. I drink zero alcohol, or I drink . . . well, enough, occasionally.
I don't think that's what most people visualize doing, when they say consistency is important for them.
Balance is important to me, and the concept of averaging over time is vital to that. I like variety, including a variety of types of variety.
And thank you for the kind remarks, sincerely.
WILDLY inconsistent day to day.
Three giant steps back and what you call balance I call long-term consistency.
You probably already realize my approach is pretty similar. I think it’s semantics, and I think if you weren’t consistent over the long term, you would not be as successful at maintaining your goals. I am a recovering scientist. I used to be a watershed hydrologist. Watershed hydrologists are dilettantes to at least some degree because we can’t observe what we are studying directly. Over time we still manage to help describe processes that occur in the world around us.7 -
Sometimes "hunger pangs" are just... gas.
Waiting a bit before eating at the first sign of "hunger" is key.2 -
that the losing part of it may feel like the goal but the maintaining part is the one you need to plan for.
too many times I have successfully lost and each of those times I had no plan for what to do when I "got there".
Losing may take a few weeks or months or even years depending on your needs but then there is the rest of your life.
Learn to enjoy EVERY minute, hour, and day and not always be waiting for tomorrow to get here when you have reached your goal. Make the journey fun.
these are things it took me a long time to understand.13 -
Personally, for me persistence is more important than consistency or perfection.
Consistency bores me rigid, seeking perfection is a burden.
"Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men" (Douglas Bader) is something I applied to most aspects of life except dieting. I'm very much a guidelines sort of person.
Which explains why previous dieting attempts following others people's rules ultimately failed for me. Taking a framework and personalising it was key for me.7 -
You need to be willing to “do the things” for the rest of your life. If you aren’t then there’s a good chance of regain.
“The things” are what caused you to shed weight. And they vary from person to person.7 -
SummerSkier wrote: »that the losing part of it may feel like the goal but the maintaining part is the one you need to plan for.
too many times I have successfully lost and each of those times I had no plan for what to do when I "got there".
Losing may take a few weeks or months or even years depending on your needs but then there is the rest of your life.
Learn to enjoy EVERY minute, hour, and day and not always be waiting for tomorrow to get here when you have reached your goal. Make the journey fun.
these are things it took me a long time to understand.
That thing you bolded there, @summerskier : That's a really, really good one.
Using some (maybe all) of the weight loss process to experiment, find those habits that are relatively easy to sustain to eat/move in a way that creates conditions to stay at a healthy weight long term, almost on autopilot when life gets bumpy in other areas - that's extremely helpful, IMO.
Treating weight loss as a extreme project with an end date, after which things go back to normal: That can be an on-ramp to yo-yo dieting, IMO.
Excellent point.9 -
For weight loss: I wish I had known the value of calorie counting (to me) earlier. It allowed me to confidently eat more, making weight loss much less painful than when I just “went on a diet.” It also allowed me to slowly tweak and improve my nutrition (I still use it for that purpose today, because the foods I’d choose on my own without thinking about it tend to leave me with too little protein).
For maintenance: The concept of maintenance sounds like a static state, but it is anything but. All things being equal I can maintain with the habits developed from counting calories, very loose food tracking, and a lot of activity—that is until something knocks those habits out of equilibrium. I gained a bit in the first few months of the pandemic, when everything locked down, because my NEAT greatly decreased and I didn’t do anything to compensate for the change. I lost those pounds and kept maintaining through consciously increasing exercise. Recently, I’ve hurt my knee, drastically lowering my activity, and I can’t rely on eating habits right now. Instead I have to tighten up my logging and pay way more attention to protein (or I’m gaining weight or miserably hungry). It’s always changing—if I was expecting otherwise I would be frustrated or no longer maintaining.9 -
I've been thinking about the OP's question since I read their post, and I actually found it quite difficult to think of one thing, until I started posting this reply, when all of a sudden I had a light bulb moment!
Despite never being able to maintain my weight loss before, this time round, I've been fortunate enough to have had very few struggles with maintenance and I've been around/below my goal weight since 2015, so whatever I'm doing food wise is obviously working (for now!). I've adapted and tried new things along the way, but I've always logged and I've nearly always kept within my weekly calories limit.
Possibly the one thing I would have liked to have appreciated a lot more clearly upfront is that getting to, and then maintaining my weight long-term, wouldn't be the answer to all life's problems. When I was obese, and I was for the majority of my adult life, it was very easy to blame the majority of my problems on my weight, or my low self esteem caused by my weight. In the moment, food helped me forget the real issues at play, and probably stopped me from addressing them properly.
However, despite now being at goal for years, and definitely feeling SO, SO much more confident about how I look, lots of the insecurities the 16 stone version of myself felt, the 9 stone version of me still feels!
Since I don't have to stress about my weight nowadays (other than deciding whether I really want to/should put on a few pounds), I've just found lots of new things to stress about, and I'm still not particularly good at addressing them!
So in reply to the OP's question, I suppose my answer would be, I wish I had known how much work I needed to do on myself, and that losing weight is definitely great, BUT it's not the answer to every problem life throws at you.
During Covid/lockdown (UK), when I've had lots more time to evaluate my life due to retiring during this time too, I've definitely come to the conclusion that even at my age, I'm a work in progress!24 -
There’s so much I agree with on this thread - I’ve learnt to worry less about perfection and more about the bigger picture, I’m trying to make permanent changes that will hopefully maintain a healthy weight, that ultimately it’s CICO and everything else is just a route to getting that outcome. But the biggest switch in my head was the realisation that I CAN be slim! I’ve been overweight all my life, and was always told that I should try to lose weight but that I’m ‘big boned’ so will never be a slim person - it’s just not ‘in my genes’. It’s taken 44+ years for me to realise that all of that is rubbish. The penny dropped about a year ago that my bones are no different to anybody else’s and that my genetics can’t stop me bring slim. Suddenly losing weight seems worth it. I’m now at a healthy weight, wanting to lose another 10 pounds to be comfortable and with narrow shoulders and hips, I look slimmer than many others 😂. I guess my point is that we often hear things and don’t question it. And we often have limits on our self belief. Taking a step back and questioning your own beliefs can be a game changer.14
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