New Year Resolution

This will always be my tip: IMO, the way to reach weight, fitness and health goals is to make a plan that's the absolute easiest to follow while also gradually heading a person toward their goals.

A lot of people seem to arrive here with high enthusiasm, and think they should cut calories to the barest minimum to lose weight fast, eat only "good foods" and never "bad foods" (however they define those terms), maybe follow some much-hyped named diet that restricts them to foods they don't know how to fix and maybe don't even enjoy eating. Some of them then stack punitively intense, exhausting, unpleasant daily exercise on top of that.

Seems like we often see that in intro or early posts, then maybe a couple of questions whose subtext is "how do I keep this up", but often those questions are phrased more as deep self-criticism ("I just keep failing" or "why do I sabotage myself?").

Then, most often, they disappear from the MFP Community. I'd like to think they figured things out and succeeded - because I sincerely want everyone to succeed - but I fear that's not the case. There are too many "I'm back" posts in the Introductions section, for one reason.

None of that stuff in paragraph 2 above is essential for weight loss or fitness improvement. In fact, those things can be literally counter-productive, and not just because they make people so miserable that they give up quickly.

For weight loss, the only essential factor is a manageable calorie deficit. Gradual loss (small calorie deficit) is easier to stick with than fast loss. Gradual loss can potentially get us to goal weight in less calendar time than some aggressive approach that causes bouts of deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the action, or giving up altogether. A person doesn't necessarily even need to count those calories, though that's what most people here do.

Obviously, nutrition is important for health, but "pretty good on average" is fine. It doesn't have to be exactly perfect every single day. (Same is true for calories, BTW: "Pretty good on average" works. Anything below current maintenance calories should produce fat loss, it's just the speed of loss that varies.)

For fitness, the sweet spot is finding ways to move more - daily life or formal exercise - that ideally are fun, but at minimum are tolerable and practical. Do those at a frequency/duration/intensity that's just manageably challenging to current capabilities. As fitness improves, one of those things - frequency, duration or intensity - can be increased to keep a bit of challenge.

"Manageable" makes it easier to stick with without counter-productive fatigue. (Recovery is actually where the magic happens: The body rebuilding itself better.) "Challenging" creates fitness progress. An exercise we'll actually do regularly is 100% more effective for fitness or calorie burn than something theoretically ideal that we procrastinate or skip at the slightest excuse. That's where fun or tolerable/practical come in.

I'm rambling on too long, but you see where I'm going with this: Make a plan that you can stick with more easily. What that plan is will differ from one person to the next. That's how to sustain long term, in my experience.

One more piece: When something goes sideways, that's not a personal failure. It's a chance to improve the plan. It's like a fun, productive science fair project for grown-ups. Not all experiments succeed, and that's fine. We can learn from that, instead of beating ourselves up. If something happens that doesn't support your goals, spend a bare 10 minutes thinking about why it happened, and revising your plans going forward to avoid a repeat. Keep working at it in that way, don't give up the effort, and you'll succeed. Finding new, practical long-term routine habits is the key.

Apologies for the essay. Like I said, I want people to succeed. When I got here, I'd been overweight/obese for around 30 years. I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to continue forever to stay at a healthy weight, except for a sensibly moderate calorie deficit until I reached goal weight. I ate the same range of foods I always did, just different portion sizes and frequencies. I kept doing the same exercises I'd happily done for over a decade while staying fat, because they're really fun, and coincidentally good for me. In less than a year, I lost from class 1 obese to a healthy weight. I've been at a healthy weight for over 8 since.

There are quite a few others who've lost weight and improved fitness here the same way: A gradual, kind of boring, achievable, personalized plan.

The quality of life improvement has been huge, for me. That's why I want to see others succeed: I want that for everyone.

Best wishes for success!