Well bla-de-da-da! What's making your blood boil? What's under your skin? What's making you see red? What's up in your craw? Let's hear your weight loss related rants!
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The struggle is real. If you want commiseration, don't read any further. If you want the real deal, keep reading:
- Don't expect people to accommodate you. You can blame your family members cooking, or keeping goodies in the house, or friends inviting you to drink. But that won't make you lose any weight. The McDonald's will still be on your way to work, the donuts will still be brought to the office, the vending machine will still sell candy. You will have to learn how to eat differently than those around you, even those in your own home. It's good practice for the real world and life after your "diet."
- Don't expect people to applaud you. The people who make fun of your fat the most, will probably be the ones ignoring or resenting your progress. You think you finally got the thing done, they'd be proud. They might not be. Prepare yourself. People get weird when those around them level up.
- It's harder than you think it is and takes longer than you think it will. I've lost 54 pounds and it took a long time. Prepare yourself for the long haul. Speaking of the long haul:
- Because it's harder than you think it will be, don't make it even harder. If your diet/lifestyle change of choice is too hard to maintain, you need to find an easier way. I'm not weighing bananas so I can obsess over the 40 calorie difference. I'm still eating out, and enjoy my food. Which, for me, means that my success story took some time. But because it took a while, it's an actual lifestyle, which I do without much effort because it's the "new normal" for me. So make whatever you are doing something you can do. If you "keep getting kicked out of keto," then keto isn't for you. If you're feeling faint doing vegan, vegan is not for you. Do something you can do. That's going to be different for everyone. You have to find something that works for you.
- It gets easier over time. Like WAAAAAAAY easier. The first few months are the hardest and least rewarding. As you keep going, you see progress and your "choices" are becoming "habits." Choices require effort and motivation and discipline. Habits are mostly automatic.
- People who have succeeded will tell you they are not motivated they are disciplined. They are not. They are habituated. That's why they make it look easy. Because at some point, it is.
- The hardest part is the emotions, not the diet. It's dealing with people, their comments, their silence, their comparisons, their suggestions. The easiest strategy is to keep it to yourself as best you can. That way, they don't discourage you by telling you why your strategy of choice sucks. Because people can get really passionate about their eating styles and what they think YOU should be doing instead of whatever it is you're doing.
- Obsessing over calories will help you lose weight quicker than someone who doesn't count calories, or who are less accurate about counting. But that can also pull the joy out of the journey. If counting calories is easy for you, do it. If it's makes it harder to eat well, just eat well. If 1200 calories a day is easy for you and you don't mind losing weight that fast, go for it. If you want to lose the weight slower, or if you feel really hungry and miserable at 1200, then up your calories or food volume. I didn't count calories, because I just wasn't into it. It made it harder for me. I was calorie "aware" which means I know that sub has more calories than McDonald's burgers, even though it looks healthier. And one McDonald's meal is about 1200 calories, so you'd do well to limit fast food.
- You can choose to socialize around food or not. Some people turn down invites to keep to their calorie allotment. I just eat the better options on the menu. The grilled shrimp or steak tacos instead of the chicken stroganoff. The vodka and soda instead of the long island iced tea. The choice is yours and you can do different things at different stages of your weight loss.
- Enjoy exercise. A lot of CICO fanatics will encourage you to focus on diet for weight loss, and it is a big deal. However, so many people lose weight and complain they wish they tightened up during their weight loss process, not after. So I encourage you to exercise. And enjoy it. When that scale isn't moving, but the weight your able to lift is going up, you will be feeling successful and be able to stay in the game.
- Stay in the game. If it's too hard, make it easier. If it's too fast, slow down. But don't quit. If you have a bad meal, don't stress. Just get right back into it the next meal. If you spent the last few days binging Halloween candy, spend the next meal eating something healthy.
- This advice is counter to what some of you hear. I give it because I struggled with CICO, and all the diet advice I got. I once had a borderline eating disorder. It was only after I decided to change my habits one habit at a time, and didn't quit when the weight loss was slow or non-existent, that the weight came off, and my body changed. And I didn't quit because God gave me the strength not to quit. To keep going, despite what looked like it wasn't working. Eventually, those little changes added up to huge improvements.
- Prayer is a great resource to persevere.
- You may start your weight loss journey like a newborn colt, stumbling, and struggling to get a few steps forward. But eventually, if you keep trying, you can gallop with sinewy muscles.
So I've been successfully losing weight with CICO and exercise since January 1st of this year. So far I've lost 62 pounds and I've really loved the process and especially getting back into running/hiking and being more active. Thank you r/loseit!
However, I've had the worst fall in years for getting sick. I work in a health center at a big University (and I also travel for work) so it's standard to get what's going around, but this year I've had probably three bouts of the cold since August and one bout of the flu in October. The flu wasn't as bad as it could have been because I'd had the shot but following it I just can't seem to get my energy back and I'm tired all the time, don't have the energy to run or do strength training, etc. I've also lost a lot of strength I think.
I have an 8 day camping and hiking trip to Zion and Grand Canyon planned for the end of November and I'm starting to get anxious I won't be up to it. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I just cut my calorie deficit down (previously I was aiming for 1600->1900/day) and am now eating more like 2400/day and I'm hoping that will help. I'm probably close to my goal weight and aside from still having a bit of a belly I'm ready to start putting on muscle and am considering what to do with my calories following this trip. I'm sort of thinking of keeping a slight deficit because I still have a lot of fat and below average muscle so I should be able to gain some strength while still keeping a small deficit.
Thoughts?
Sorry if this was rambling. Lots to think about! And thank you to this community for being so inspiring over the past 11 months!
So in the 2nd half of 2017, I was able to lose about 30 lbs (for context: I'm a female who stands at 5'5". During this time I went from 220->190lbs). I kept this weight off for about a year, until I came away to grad school.
My eating has spiraled out of control, due to there being very convenient sources of snacks surround me constantly. (I live across from 7/11 currently, and about 2 mins from a McDonalds. As a result of severely poor eating habits and calorie spikes, I've gained back about 10 of the pounds that I lost a year ago.
The confidence that I had while looking at myself during that year has faded, and turned to disgust. I can see every place on my body where those 10 pounds have distributed to, and I feel absolutely awful that I allowed this to happen. My face has ballooned up, and I've been living in an oversized sweatshirt to hide my stomach.
I've started (within the last 48 hours...have to start somewhere) to try and get things back on track. Counting calories once again, and trying the whole intermittent fasting thing.
It's so hard to commit to change at the start, before you get any results. Once you start to see weight coming off, it's easier to feel motivated to keep it up. But right now I'm at the beginning phase and I feel so hopeless and ugly.
Has anyone else experienced relapses in their weight loss journey that left them feeling this way? What did you do to overcome it, and more importantly, how did you stay mentally well during this time and fight feelings of self hatred? I could really use some anecdotal tips and motivation right now.
I’m 29F, 162cm (5’3”) and 77.3kg (170lbs). I’ve been on and off the weight loss wagon for 10 years. The best I ever got down to was 53kg. The biggest was somewhere above the 95kg mark.
One of my biggest issues is the ever present urge to weigh myself. When I don’t like the number on the scale I immediately lose all of my motivation and often I just throw in the towel. I’m trying to hold myself to a once a week early morning weigh in so I don’t get discouraged. But I still get this devastating urge to weigh myself at any time of day. I can drink a few litres of water, eat dinner and then want to weigh myself. Of course I know logically the number is going to be bigger than in the morning but I still get frustrated when it is. Then I binge!
I’m wondering if anyone else has this same urge to weigh and then a defeatist attitude when their numbers are up? If so please tell me how you manage it?
Also, sorry for the formatting, I’m on mobile.
TLDR: can’t stop weighing myself and giving up when the numbers are bad.
For the past year I've been going on and off keto because I just can't keep the diet up because (mainly my mom) simply refuses to understand that I cannot eat certain foods and keeps feeding me shit, and kicking me out of keto and I'm back to square 1. I went from 97kg to 93 kg and back to 100kg and I feel like I won't be able to achieve anything meaningful until I have complete control over my diet. Numours times I've been hearing them calling me a whale in the other room.
Rant alert: They've never been fat. They've never put 100% into achieving a goal and being beaten to the ground, and being depressed. They haven't been trying to turn their life around for months and months. And they don't understand that "just go out and go for a run" doesn't fucking help anything. I told them that going for a longer run makes my liver cramp. I can't tell if they don't give a shit or have selective hearing, since my reasoning and justifying have no meaning to them, and they cannot comprehend how their brilliant fucking advice wouldn't work, and their idiotic mindset that diet is a negligible part of weight loss. Isn't it great being raised in a carb addicted narrow minded family? Sorry for the rant. I'm sick of this shit.
