🌟 Embarking on My Weight Loss Journey: Seeking Advice! 🌟

@vedra_b I started my weight loss journey in January 2023. Started just by walking, started with a mile and added a little more each week. I also started tracking my calories on MFP, I lost 15 pounds the first few months, but then was getting bored. This was my usual weight loss journey - I would get bored and then quit and gain it all back (and then some) just to repeat the process all over again. Then found the challenges page on MFP and joined a few. Then tried some more until I found the ones I liked best. Not only were they fun, they kept me accountable, motivated, and I met some pretty nice people. I started at 228 pounds - a little over a year later and I am down almost 75 pounds. I can honestly say I would be where I am today without them.

Here are some that are my favorites:

Biggest Loser Challenge - I liked it so much that I became a co-captain and now captain of the Determined Desert Tortoises. We are just one of the teams in the BLC challenge. There is a team that is just right for you. Some focus more on support, others, structure and accountability, maintenance...and even a few specialty teams . You pick the team that fits you best! And don't let the name fool you - even though BLC is also know as Biggest Loser Challenge it is NOT the TV. Just a friendly competition, with everyone working together to reach our goals.

Here's the link to the full information and registration page and ; the next round starts May 1 and runs 12 weeks:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10911853/join-the-upcoming-biggest-loser-challenge-register-now

If you are a Harry Potter Fan - this one is really creative and the next round runs 8 weeks and starts April 5th. It will be based on the first book . Here is the link to the information and registration page:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10912112/hogwarts-weight-loss-challenge-term-49-8-week-challenge-april-5th-june-2nd

Lastly - this one is just a daily check-in with your goals. People are really nice, and supportive. Most give their daily weight and a brief summary about how the day went - others weight in weekly, some just tell whether they have met all their goals. We are finishing the March challenge, but you can jump in any time. The April challenge ususally gets posted a few days before month end.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10910533/️-march-daily-logging-and-weigh-in-challenge-️

I'd suggest focusing on establishing a sustainable routine at a moderate calorie deficit. It's true that you might be able to lose a couple of pounds a week for a while at your current weight . . . but can you stick with that calorie level reasonably happily for many weeks? (That's a rhetorical question, one to experiment with and figure out. I'm not assuming any particular answer! :flowerforyou: )

I don't think the calendar is a good weight loss tool, honestly. Maybe it's just me, but I think the real goal is not just getting to a healthier weight, it's staying at a healthier weight long term (ideally permanently). Doing that relies on finding habits that are relatively easy to keep up. That applies to both eating and exercise.

Losing any meaningful total amount of weight is going to take many weeks to months, maybe even a small number of years for people who are severely obese. A moderate-loss routine we can stick with nearly all the time can potentially get us to goal weight in less calendar time than a more difficult, restrictive approach that causes bouts of deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the action, or maybe even giving up altogether because it's just too hard.

I'm assuming that you'd like to be lighter for your cruise, the wedding, and your reunion, and that some combination of better appearance and feeling better is the intention. Really fast loss isn't necessarily going to optimize those results: Extreme measures can result in looking haggard, being exhausted rather than energetic and vivacious, possible even thinning hair, brittle nails, etc.

I'm not saying your current goals would be too-fast loss. That's a thing to figure out. I think losing 0.5-1% of current weight per week is manageable for most people, with a bias toward the lower end of that range unless severely obese.

For sure, I'm not saying "bad things are sure to happen". It's that the faster the loss, the higher the risks . . . health risks, appearance risks, risks of giving up. The actual right answer is individual.

What I'm trying to say is that it's OK to have some provisional goals for loss, but I think it's ideal to focus primarily on finding a personally sustainable process rather than focusing on "X loss by Y date". My answer to "how to stay motivated" is to find an approach that doesn't take big truckloads of motivation. I don't know about you, but I'm unlikely to stay motivated for months in the face of doing something that's truly difficult, so I'm going to aim for a simpler process instead.

Just as context, I came around to this approach when I finally committed to losing weight at age 59, after around 3 previous decades of overweight/obesity. That was nearly 9 years ago; I'm now 68. It took me just a bit under a year to lose from class 1 obese to a healthy weight, and I've been at a healthy weight since. The quality of life improvement from being at a healthy weight was huge for me, even more so than I'd expected. (I hadn't been there since my 20s.) Now I really, really want to stay at a healthy weight . . . for the rest of my life, if at all possible.

Different people will do best with different tactics for reducing calorie intake. On the eating side, this worked well for me:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

That won't suit everyone, but it's an option to consider. It's more a "remodeling your eating" idea than some kind of structured, rules-y, restrictive approach.

I'm cheering for you to succeed: The results are worth the effort!