Hey everyone!
Reading through this sub, there are a few topics about people going through a "failure" process of sorts when it comes to losing weight. Quite a few are long time lurkers and have tried on and off again to do things.
I thought maybe I could lend some helpful advice from someone who tried for 12+ years to lose my awfully shaped fat deposits and improve my mental health overall. I've tried more times than I could count on both my hands and feet.
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Don't be so hard on yourself. This goes without saying a lot on this sub, since it's mostly about owing it to yourself to make the change and commit. But there's a few things that helped me really put in to perspective WHY I was losing weight and HOW I was going to do it. Imagine you're someone you're close to in your family. If they were struggling and upset and needed the help, you'd more than likely do everything in your power to help them work on it. We often forget that we're just as important to our loved ones as they are to us. But that should be internalized just as much. You are one of your loved ones, and imagining yourself from a 3rd person perspective can help out with making decisions.
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Ask yourself WHY you want to lose it I struggled with this for a very long time. I had a very solitary adolescence which lead me to believe that I just needed to lose weight to get girls at my school. It took a long time to convince myself that I was doing it for that ONE reason alone, and never did I actually care about losing it for myself. Pizza, chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, ramen and brownies made me happy in ways nothing else could. I never once thought to myself until I started actually committing on my current journey that I was doing it for me alone. As I moved houses, I realized I had completely destroyed myself after moving out alone and that I no longer had a reason to lose it other than I and I alone wanted to. Make sure your reasoning is in line with something that isn't outside of yourself. You have to want to make that change for yourself, and the more you see those smaller goals approaching and eventually flying by, your self appreciation and self love will skyrocket.
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Don't cold turkey ANYTHING, EVER Seriously. This most likely is Weight Loss 101 but I can't stress this point enough, above others. In a practical sense, this was the bane of all my progress. Please keep that motivation you get day one where you're hyped up and feeling amazing about the changes to come, but don't completely cut everything out of your life that you find comfort in. Whenever I started trying to diet I'd cut 100% of every bit of fat and greasy foods and sugary sodas instantly. Recipe for disaster, my friends. Your body will start to turn against you mentally for this. You must treat your bad habits much like weening off of a hefty medication. Slowly and gradually lower your consumption while still giving your body the satisfaction of receiving its cravings from time to time, and your mental health will improve just as fast as your physical health. This was my most helpful tip, because starting my current (and optimistically, my final) weight loss journey I didn't immediately start regretting it by thinking of how I could never enjoy a slice of Domino's pizza, or a thick and tasty jalapeno grilled cheese ever again. You NEED those things in the beginning.
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Your changes and goals need to be realistic As much as I wish I could drop all my weight to my goal in a month, there's just zero way that will ever happen without me basically dying. Weight loss is a marathon, not a race. But that does not mean you can't trick yourself in to seeing progress faster, right? That's where gradual goal setting comes in! Nothing felt better to me than hitting my first 10 lbs off. Hell, even seeing ONE pound come off on certain days (even if it was just water and sodium I peed out) was such a rush. What you need to do is set small goals for yourself to achieve in shorter time spans. I lost my first 5 lbs, then my first 10 lbs, then my first 15 lbs, then my first 30 lbs, and before I knew it, it had been 5 months and I did not even notice it go by. That's because I was so excited each and every time I saw progress, that I never looked at the final goal and where it was I wanted to be 6 mo, 1 yr, 5 yrs down the road. Weight loss should be just like anything. When you go to college, you don't immediately picture yourself graduating and get upset when you aren't already being handed a diploma right? You get that freshman excitement, and you roll up your sleeves and get to work. You do your homework as it comes through, you go to your lectures and lessons, you attend events etc etc and before you know it, it's been 1-2-4 yrs and suddenly you've made it to the end.
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Make weight loss a "back of your mind" thing, not a "full focus 24/7" thing I found that the more I focused on my weight loss and constantly focused on stressing out about food and exercise, the more likely I was to fail. It wasn't until I treated it much like brushing my teeth or taking a shower before work that I started to see the progress really speed up and stay consistent. At first, this is obviously extremely difficult, but you want to treat it much like a habit you're trying to introduce. Over time, this stuff becomes more or less a "just another day!" type of stuff and less like a "okay whatamigonnaeatwhatworkoutsdoineedtodohaveiweighedmyselftodayhaveireachedmyfinalgoalalreadyarewethereyet" type thing. My anxiety was at it's worst when I spent all my time focusing on obsessively needing to see progress and spending my entire day comparing myself to everyone else.
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You WILL lose weight. It's science This one is more of a logical tip. I was so caught up for the longest time in the emotional aspects of my journeys that I didn't spend much time thinking about just what happens during weight loss. There is zero reason (beyond some medical diagnoses and disorders etc.) you won't see weight loss after making the right changes. You just have to keep this in your mind during your journey at all times. It does not matter how you perceive it, how it feels and how your emotions sway you one way or another. The weight WILL come off, regardless of emotional factors. Of course, this isn't to say emotions play 0 part, because that leads some people (like myself, struggling with food addiction) to comfort eat, become less active, deplete energy etc which can cause weight gain. But weight won't ever just start piling on out of nowhere simply because you feel like you're not doing much.
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Even your biggest "setbacks" are insignificantly minor Ate an extra slice of pizza during a meal? Drank another Coke during a stressful day at work? Grabbed one of those free donuts in the break room? Do yourself a favor and stick that in to MyFitnessPal. Even a fully loaded, gut inflating pizza with all the toppings you could wish for from Domino's rounds up to ~400-500 cals a slice. A can of Coke, while having a pretty large amount of sugar, is relatively small during a week of dieting. A pound of fat is ~3500 calories. To gain a pound, in perspective, you'd have to eat ~7 slices of a pizza EXTRA to gain a pound. Remember when before you even ate the pizza that you lost x amount of pounds? Be it 5, 10, 15, 20, whatever it is, it's SO small compared to your total progress. Caving in is part of the process, and as much as it doesn't sound like it with all these posts here of people that had success, they all caved in in one way or another. Some even caved in 2-5 times a week. The difference between everyone here is that some will take the extra food as a "treat" per-say, and some will let it overcome them. Focus on your mental health as well, and these small mistakes become positive experiences and learning opportunities very quickly. The key is to recognize and be honest with your setbacks, but don't inflate them beyond proportion. Remember, you can't even fit a full pound of fat inside of a pizza. A pound looks QUITE a bit bigger than you'd think. So yeah, indulge! Have that one or two extra slices! Stick it in MyFitnessPal to see you're eating at maintenance for your weight or just insignificantly above your goal for the day. Maintenance means you won't even see a change, so no progress lost!
There's a myriad of other things I could talk about and even elaborate further on all my points, but these are good starter tips. At least they were for me. If you guys have any questions or want any other tips for specific things, feel free to comment or shoot me a PM and I'd be more than happy to help! I'm not a fitness guru by any means, but what I've done has been working for me so far and I feel it's helpful for those struggling with depression, anxiety, confidence issues and self respect issues.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2TRNHq5
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