Between October and December last year I worked my ass off through a combination of IF, CICO, and jogging to lose 20lbs. It felt utterly amazing but, despite all my best efforts to continue losing weight, I faltered. I let myself take time off between Christmas and the first week of January, I didn't go completely overboard but the 4lb gain it caused made me feel awful. Unfortunately, since January I've been in a horrible cycle of losing and gaining all while remaining in the same 5lb window of 213-218lb. It's been incredibly discouraging as it's like I'm consistently erasing all my hard work by falling off the bandwagon so shortly after. What's worse, this came after the three months between October-December where I lost the most weight I ever have (I've been obese since very early childhood) and was definitely at my healthiest.
To (somewhat naively!) feel like I've overcome a lifetime of bad habits by putting in 3 months of solid effort and then to just bounce around the same 5lbs for 8 months has taken a huge toll on my self-confidence. I've never wanted to give up on trying to lose weight but I have noticed that I've been feeling for months now like I'm losing the fight and perhaps I'm just not strong enough or not in the right place in my life right now to make a positive change.
Fortunately, this subreddit has given me a kick up the butt. Seeing other people struggle and succeed has made me feel far less ashamed and alone. I have made a point to look at one of my various weight loss and health subreddits every day with r/loseit being the main one. I've made 'discipline not motivation' my internal mantra coupled with the idea that every day is either a step closer to or further from my health goals. I changed from weighing weekly to weighing daily, as another reddit user suggested that would help me feel less caught up in the scale number as progress every week.
I've disassociated exercise with weight loss and instead, make the focus of my workouts to improve performance and build strength the results of which are so motivating that I now actually want to challenge myself to do more. Thanks to all of this, I've managed to push past the 5lb window I've been in for ages and I've consistently lost weight for 5 weeks in a row. Initially, this was only a small amount (I lost less than 1lb each week) but last week I broke through the 5lb window and in this morning's weigh-in, I was amazed to see that I've dropped a further 2lbs down from that window. It's also the lowest weight I've been in almost three years.
I know mindset is important to consistently making healthier choices but it isn't until today that I realised that was what had been holding me back. I wasn't trying to make healthier choices because I wanted to live a healthier life but because I was frustrated with myself for not staying on the bandwagon. I wasn't being healthier, I was just perpetually punishing myself and then either 'rewarding' myself or losing hope for a couple of weeks until I was back at the higher end of the 5lb window again. This is something I've seen people talk about a lot on here yet, I didn't realise I was personally struggling with it until I sat down and thought about why I've managed to break out of the 5lb yo-yoing.
I have a very long way to go, I know that. I also know that I'm not completely clear of the window yet. But for the first time since last December, I was excited rather than frustrated about what the scales showed and that, along with my realisation about what's changed, feels like an important step closer to what I want to achieve.
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