Just posted this on another sub, but thought it fitting for this one too - I would be interested to hear from others who have come to similar conclusions.
So a bit of preamble: I've been off the wagon for months, have been steadily gaining weight and feeling shit about myself. Typically, the day starts out with the best intentions, calorie tracking and everything, but I eventually lose control and overeat. Working from home is doing anything but helping.
But today I randomly decided to have a look back at my pre-pandemic MFP history, to see what I was eating back during my time of steady weight loss (Sep/Oct 2019-Apr 2020), and it really woke me up. The difference between my habits then and now, in such a short amount of time, was truly surprising - I ate like a different person. Some things I realised:
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I consistently ate less. Surprise surprise, right? Who knew there was a link between eating less and weight loss? But considering how ravenous I consistently feel now, the contrast was shocking. It wasn't like I was volume eating, either - on the first day I looked at, all I ate all day was beans on toast, a protein shake, and a vegan pasty. Not too low calorie-wise, but I couldn't imagine waiting hours between meals for such small servings now.
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In tandem with the first point, I wasn't too concerned with eating "enough" or too much. Some days, I might have gone out with friends and eaten and drunk 2000-3000 cals, but on others I just ate 500-1000. At the moment, I tend to struggle with the idea of not eating enough. If I feel full but am under my calories, I worry that it'll make me hungrier tomorrow and make me overeat. So I overeat. The absolute logic. But looking back at my past habits, I have learnt (or re-learnt, I guess) that undereating occasionally does not necessarily make me fall back into binging.
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I have currently been misinterpreting feelings of boredom, stress, etc., as hunger. At the moment, I walk for maybe an hour every other day, for errands; the rest of the time, I'm pretty much sedentary. Back then, I was working a busy retail job, going to the gym semi-occasionally and going for frequent hikes and runs, yet was managing to feel consistently full on way less food. This indicates the importance of sorting yourself out emotionally, constructing good habits, and presumably exercise too.
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I eat more fruit and veg now than I did back then, and also do way more home cooking. During my period of weight loss, it looks like I was very much a "grab and go" type of person, whereas I now make more full meals and prepare in advance. This surprised me, and I would like to find ways of balancing better nutrition and saving money with CICO and weight loss.
I guess these revelations just boil down to "move more, eat less", which is not exactly brand-new information re weight loss. But I'm going to try now to live by my own past example. I need to not be scared of undereating or overeating; find ways of exercising that aren't just walking for necessity; and overall, just learn to accept myself as I am now while simultaneously working towards my goal. If you're not doing better, you're doing worse.
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