Motivation, please!

My trick it to lose the diet concept, it is about health. One day / meal at a time. And never give up, if you trip or fall off the wagon it is not a ticket to stay on that track. It is ok to eat anything but only in moderation. Do this for you, you can do this, FP has helped me keep track of what I am eating and how to be careful with eating habits. Set small goals, you got this!

I started June 2013 at 277 lbs (I was so young then lols) I am 5'3" and 48 yo. Currently, I am at 165 - and am slowly losing and hope some day to be in non-obese, or now non-overweight category. Yep, I want to be normal!! Well, everybody can have one normal thing, right?

I had to deal with some tough health issues, with constant prednisone, hives and seizures (weird, but no diabetes or heart issues). I started with a good look at why I was fat. At first I couldn't walk, so very sedentary (eventually I was able to walk. Now I can walk 7-8 miles!) I had to be really creative to tackle my issues. I recommend thinking creatively to get past the, "I can't lose weight" thinking pattern. You can if you know your personal pitfalls. Also, it is helpful if you aren't in a heap of denial (I massively was). I mean, it is what it is. Here were some of my road blocks:

1) I didn't really want to give up eating my favorite foods. I know this works so well for other people. I hear it all the time "favorite food in moderation". These people are wonderful, and I am grateful that they can do it. Because so many others can do this, I thought I could do this too. But I can not moderate my favorite foods! My emotional need of favorite foods was intense for every. single. meal. I dumped the scale and "eyeballed it" it was not a pretty scenario. I just didn't have the amount of fight I needed to do this like others can. I found that it was just easier to keep them off the menu and instead volume eat safe and nutrient dense foods veggies, egg whites, etc. etc. I recommend if you are generally a hungry person, consider the volume eaters thread.

2) Volume eaters thread is how I dealt with the hunger. Once I went both feet in with the volume eating of some good foods with an eye on my protein I did so much better! I also have included fiber in my daily count. Before this new way of eating, my protein was practically non-existent. I literally never hit my protein goals. When I started addressing this, I was less hungry all the time. Enough that I could continue for a very long time. I made it to 230 lbs when I really decided to deal with this issue (whew that was a brutal hump for me!). Sometimes I wonder if my out of control hunger was really this: body to me "feed me protein - create hunger pains" me "I am hungry, I hate protein I will eat carbs and oil!" Still hungry because the body didn't get what it wanted, not that I got the protein memo! I was quite deluded.

3) I HAD to deal with my restaurant habit. I cannot seem to eat "half a meal" at a restaurant. I also went to dives which are infamous for never revealing the calorie count (it isn't for 5'3" sedentary older people like me that is for sure!)

4) Once I got here.. which was 80 lbs lost.. I finally picked up a walking habit. At 197 lbs. I hit a weight I NEVER thought I would!! I was in onederland for the first time since I was 19. Yep, an old sedentary lady who was sick all the time!! I got a weird break with peri-menopause, my allergies which were brutal with the hives and pretty constant: oddly abated. I had been on prednisone from 2003 to 2021. My cycles were utterly brutal, but I did finally get IV iron and could actually build muscle, that was a nice boon.

5) Holding the line. So once a week on Sundays, every week without fail I have had a special day! I calculated maintenance at my ideal weight (135 lbs, which I was at 16 years old) and set my Sunday to eat that calorie count. Also, I added an incentive: I can eat back allllll the exercise calories!!!! Yep, Sunday is super special!! I did this for two reasons. First, I started so heavy weight wise that I knew this would be a long journey. I didn't think I could just suck it up and be all Conan all day every day all week every week all month every month for however many years. I tried to be realistic. Sundays, I usually don't hit my protein or fiber goals and I usually buy a special something for that day. Could be any kind of food, treat, snack, etc. Second reason I did this was to train for maintenance. I would like to know how to maintain my weight like a knowledgeable, thoughtful, diligent person! I want to get to my goal weight and be a maintenance athlete! This is key for me, since I have no reason to lose weight if I do not learn how to keep it off. In this journey, I have had some maintenance months. They are super fun, and I love them. I just did this for January of this year. I literally held my weight to the freakin ounce!! Yep, I realize that is just one month (and the other months I have done this). But this really gives me confidence that I can do this for the foreseeable future.

Don't give up before you start! I know it feels impossible, it did to me too. But with habit building, listening to what is really derailing you, being honest about it, and then being creative you will absolutely get there! (time may vary) I wish you the best of luck and sorry this is so long ((((((hugs))))))

I've been bad at 'weight' all my life, and when I look back I know it started when I was quite small. We were all very thin, didn't have a weight 'problem' but there was a level of neglect there, dinner was a stable meal usually, but not any others. So I developed an opportunistic 'eat it all when you can' habit which is associated with food insecurity.

So removing food insecurity has taken me 52 yrs to do. Prioritising food in terms of my paycheck has been very hard to do after a lifetime of eating what is cheap. I have had to hit a point where I had the money for it. And prioritising the kinds of foods I want to eat and actually like has been another lesson because with food insecurity: you eat whatever is available. You do not 'like' or 'dislike' food. (Well you do, but you shovel it down anyway and keep it to yourself.)

They all go together towards helping me out. If I want marshmallows I buy the sugar free ones. They're expensive, and not quite as wonderful as real ones, but they do the trick. I buy dark chocolate bars, plain 72% chocolate. I buy big kilo bags of frozen blueberries and plain greek yoghurt. I have vache qui rit cheeses that I will eat on cruskits with an ounce of salmon each.

I'm a glutton, and it's helping. I have made one huge change: reach for high nutrient food. Buy food you love. Don't walk past those strawberries every week because they're expensive! Buy them! Revel in the pleasure of natural foods.

Yes I also eat sausages - but I reach for the best sausage I can afford. Luncheon sausage is probably indefensible but I have it because I love it, (low carb high fat diet for me rn due to diabetes) it's a joy with my 50% sugar reduced watties tomato sauce.

Revelling in and enjoying food has been step 1 for me.

The second has been in understanding that my stomach can empty out, and not hurt. What hurts it when it empties out, is irritation. So I would always eat when my tummy rumbled. Now I don't seem to eat foods that irritate my stomach. That could be the high fat, or it could be the natural foods. So my stomach will shrink down to empty, and it's not an event. It doesn't have to trigger more food.

Third thing: having one huge meal a day. I think they call that intermittent fasting. A meal might look like this:

1 oz butter
4 rashers bacon
3 eggs
1 tomato
1 avocado
pudding: 200g blueberries, 100g greek yoghurt (unsweetened), and 1 tsp fake sugar (I use Natvia).

I try to push together all of the food I want into a 2 - 3 hr window. I might eat the above, and then have cheese. OR I might have an omelet and put the cheese into that.

I think having a meal that satisfies and ends with pudding of some kind makes an enormous psychological difference to me. I have always found pudding made the meal, thought it was the sugar. but with fake sweeteners it still happens, so it must be psychological.

Or it's the protein and the fat in the yoghurt.

Anyway I am not at the end of my journey at all. I think this time I was 230 (104kg) and am now down to 91.4 this morning, which is 201 lb. I go up and down and up and down, and slowly move towards down.

Remember: every day you don't increase, you didn't increase. That's really underrated. Not losing may be sad: but staying the same is still a triumph. So maybe just try to stabilise, sit still for a fortnight, don't go crazy over the exercise, look at increasing protein and fat and reducing carbs a little, see if that changes anything?

xx