OMG /loseit! Thank you for your stories of success and challenges. Of your ups and downs. Of your Ah-Ha's and Oh-No's! They've all been helpful in my own progress. Keep posting!
I am 2/3rds of the way to my GW, at which point I'll make a new choice to be maintaining and to be working on strength. For now it's plenty just to work on losing.
My 12 Steps to Losing Weight: I wrote this up for me and my journey. I reread it weekly, and add to it or change it as I learn more about myself and losing weight. I know everyone is different and has their own journey. I’m putting it out here to keep me accountable on my own journey, and also in the case that some portion of this helps someone else. (Portion, yes that was a food joke.)
- Losing weight is actually hard work! (Sounds dumb, but when it's easy I think it'll always be easy, when it's hard I think it'll always be too hard. There are a hundred points in the day where I am asking myself to be on top of my shit and make a positive choice. I won’t always make a positive choice.)
- Eat less than the number of kcals I’m burning and track that shit (smart phones, smart watches, apps, and websites all help to determine what I am burning just to live, plus kcals burned walking and exercising, etc. and a good app lets me set a kcal limit for the day and more easily log everything I eat at every meal, even though I hate to be so anal.)
- Log everything I eat BEFORE I PUT IT IN MY MOUTH (otherwise I’ll put it off, won’t remember what I ate, and I’ll overspend my kcal account—DONE THAT too many times)
- Total commitment to my calorie limit, but… (If I have a cheat day, it’s disastrous for me as I’ll get used to eating too much, so I don’t ever do it. I tend to be polar that way, it’s either 100% or nothing. If I feel I’m too weak or light-headed, I’ll first make sure I’m drinking enough water during the day, at least 3L. If I have been drinking enough and still weak, then I’m prepared to move my kcal target higher. If I go over my limit because I wasn’t able to track my kcals closely enough or forgot to add a food, I disregard any harsh thoughts I’m having toward myself. I just focus on more awareness of logging my food and look forward to the next day where I can do it well. PS on my 99th day of my active focus on weight loss...I ate far too many kcals for dinner, blowing out my kcal bank account by 581, and then I ate a piece of apple pie my wife made...and oh my god was I stuffed, too stuffed, and loving the flavors! I make mistakes and have poor judgement, and then the next meal I get back to my commitment.)
- Experience my food as I eat it (when I eat while distracted it feels like I didn’t even eat, and I immediately want more—I can really tell the difference when I do and don’t pay attention to my food as I eat it)
- Be willing to be hungry sometimes, and not eat every time I want to (hunger isn’t necessarily a bad thing to feel, and self restraint is me gaining power over a part of myself and a part of my life…this is good, makes me feel like a badass!)
- Choose a mix of slower-burning and faster burning foods with enough nutrients (simple carbs in large amounts will not give me sustained energy and will quickly burn through my day’s kcal bank account...goodbye donuts, I’ll miss you but we have an unhealthy relationship and you’re not worth it...okay okay, let’s meet again once I’ve reached my goal weight and have a talk)
- Weigh every morning and track it in Happy Scale (it does an amazing job of helping me to not freak out over the large variation of weigh-in amounts every day by smoothing it all out, plus it creates lots of milestones and allows me to forecast when I’ll hit them. When I’m hungry but out of kcals in my account I can look at those progress charts and forecasts and dream of a thinner day!)
- Recognize the more I lose the harder it’ll be to continue to lose relying solely on eating less (aka At some point I’ll have to get off my lazy ass and expend more energy to create more of a calorie deficit…I’m still unwilling to do so, but I’m putting it out there to future-self that I will need him to get off his ass and do this)
- Find people to share my ups and downs with (people that can celebrate when I’m losing and support my feelings when I’m not, like r/loseit…a life partner can not always support me when they are struggling with their own weight challenges)
- Walk tall and move feeling what it would be like to be at my goal weight (which also helps me to feel the difference I currently have from where I used to be)
- Recognize the weight loss I’ve already accomplished (that’s the “walk tall” part—no matter how long it’s taken, no matter how far I am from my goal weight, no matter the ‘back slides’ etc., put some love into what I’ve already accomplished)
- Plan a maintenance routine for when my goal weight has been achieved (I’ve had the experience of regaining 55 pounds due to not having a plan and not realizing my growing weight reality...not doing that again)
- Realize I may have to always track what I eat, and suck it up like an adult and be okay with that (I don’t know this will always be true, but I need to be okay if it is, or be okay with having far too much weight on my body and deal with all of the shit that goes along with that…if it came down to one or the other, I’ll take the former! I already tried not tracking once I’d lost 40 pounds…that didn’t work.)
That was 14 steps. “Tough cookies” as my mother would say.
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