Every January I come crawling back here...

@JustaNoob, these are some really good insights you're finding. That bodes well for odds of success, I think.

JustaNoob wrote: »

yirara wrote: »

So where it is going wrong that you can't adhere to your diet plan? Do you want too much too quickly? Do you feel you lose 'motivation'? Is your life too busy? Have you ever considered this question?

Just a few ideas? Set your weightloss goal to the slowest possible goal, 0.5lbs/week. You get a lot more to eat. You might think this is too slow, but just imagine you lost steadily 0.5lbs/week for years instead of giving up halfway through.

Do you need motivation to brush your teeth every morning? I bet not. So what's different with weightloss? How can you get from fleeting motivation to making eating the right amount of calories a part of normal life, like brushing your teeth?

What can you do to reduce stress? Does your house need to be absolutely perfect, next to possibly a job, kids, etc? Do you need to cook several times per day or would eating something quick and cold be an option as well (note, most people in Europe only have one cooked meal per day).

When do you get over your calories? Are you bored, want to eat something badly or any other reason?

I'll probably think of more questions later on.

Thanks for these thought provoking questions. I think it's been a combination.

Last year, I think I just tried to control the outcome so much that I got burnt out when things didn't go my way. I weighed and measured everything I ate. I kept a spreadsheet showing how much calories my apple watch showed me burning vs how much I ate, and how much weight I should lose each day. When the scale wasn't matching the spreadsheet, I started getting really frustrated.

May I suggest that focusing on the process (vs. outcome)? The process is what we can control. I'm talking about things setting calorie/nutrition goals, weighing in or measuring progress regularly, logging food, doing new exercise, etc. If we hold ourselves to account for doing the right process, results will follow . . . but on their own timeline, usually trends over weeks, not one day to the next. Maybe focus on the part you control, the actions, rather than the outcome you influence by those actions?

I thought of weight loss as a sort of fun, productive science fair experiment for grown-ups. For me, that involved reasonably meticulous logging, tracking the many-multi-week trends of my scale weight, adjusting my intake based on my weight change results, trying new routines to see if they were better in some way, etc. Tactics that don't work out are just learning experiences, not personal failings. As long as I learned from them, they were a positive step in the process.

It did not occur to me until later that maybe I wasn't burning as much as what my apple watch said.

The good brand devices will be pretty close for a lot of people, but they're still just estimating based on population average calorie needs of demographically similar people. Individuals vary. Once you have 4-6 weeks of data from a new eating routine, that gives you a better indication of your calorie needs than any calorie-calculator or fitness tracker. If the tracker matches your reality, that's helpful, obviously! (If you have menstrual cycles, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles, rather than using a straight 4-6 weeks.)

To me, it felt like I was working hard and putting in all the effort to weigh and measure everything and I still wasn't hitting my goals. This was from January to May-- and I did lose 20lbs-- I just didn't appreciate it and could only see what I "should have" lost.

Then I graduated nursing school, studied to pass my boards, and started a nursing job in a unit that was super high stress. After 12 weeks of orientation, I moved to another unit that was a much better fit. But I just felt like the season was all consuming and my brain just didn't have space for taking on another thing. I also picked up some bad habits in the new job, like always getting a cookie in the cafeteria, or eating a full breakfast platter every morning, or afternoon trips to the gift shop to grab some candy.

I am more settled and at peace in the new job, but now I have even worse habits than I did last year. Honestly I really just love food and have a massive sweet tooth that is never satiated. And I'm not all or nothing with it-- I've tried to do some sort of 80/20 situation with sweets but it always ends up like 60/40 or 50/50. I think I am going to have to make a hard stance against the sweets-- I really want to be that moderate person who can just eat two oreos and walk away... but it just isn't working out.

Anyways that's this past year. In prior years, I did all the things lol. Extreme diets, not extreme diets, working out like crazy, not working out like crazy lol. I just feel like weight loss has always had to take a lot of attention and intention and it has never become a "brushing my teeth" situation lol.

To me, a mindset shift that helped me was to think of it as "weight management", something I was realistically going to need to do forever to stay at a healthy weight once I got there. Food logging in MFP really helped me figure out how to change my routine eating patterns gradually, to dial in appropriate calories and reasonable nutrition while eating foods I enjoy and find filling.

New habits were a key focus: Figuring out eating and activity patterns I could practice and then continue almost on autopilot long term, when other parts of life got demanding. It's the majority of my days that will determine the majority of my results, not one rare day when I over-eat cake or something.

To me, that kind of mindset makes it more likely that I can put some new habits at the "brushing my teeth" level of automatic-ness. The habits need to be pretty easy, reasonably pleasant, and generally practical. If they require intense motivation/discipline/willpower to keep up, they're never going to be autopilot, for me.

YMMV.