How do you intentionally lose weight while also knowing about the perils of the diet cycle?

I feel a big disconnect between what I see on communities like this and what I experience in my life and with clients. I’m a mental health counselor and have a few clients with disordered eating behaviors. I also was raised in an environment in which I was very abused by my mom for being “fat” (I literally wasn’t at all, normal BMI), constant criticism and disgust of my body and how I ate. I often restricted, binged, and/or felt the need to exercise off any “cheat” meals I had. I always felt guilt around eating. I was a college athlete and naturally after college couldn’t maintain an exercise regimen of 2 hours of cardio per day (nor was it kind to my body).

Point being, I feel frustrated. With myself, with not knowing what the truth is? My training, my work with clients, my own life experience has taught me that intentional decisions to restrict calories or food groups or times when you eat will inevitably lead to increased hunger, cravings, surge in appetite and/or binges, due to the feelings of psychological deprivation.

Literally any time I try to restrict at all- even try to eat 100 calories less per day or even just TRACK my calories, I immediately feel a panic/anger, and a bunch of cravings pop up. Or if I have a few successful days of weight loss, when I see the scale I think, “thank god, I can actually eat now.” Even if I was only restricting like 100 calories.

I struggle a lot with how easy? It seems to be for so many people on here to do these things to lose weight. Do you literally not get the increase in cravings or binge urge? When they come up, how do you talk to yourself to make them go away? Do they go away? What’s your internal world like as you embark on this? After you achieve your goal, how is your relationship with food and movement? Is it always guilt, fear or shame based?

I’m a very self-aware person and try hard to be kind to my body. But it doesn’t feel like intuitive eating and increasing movement a bit will actually get me to 50lb weight loss. (I gained 50lb while pregnant and my body didn’t lose any of it.)

it just seems like I would totally have to disconnect from my body and its urges and cravings, or be super mean to myself, in order to do the weight loss I see posted here.

Can someone help me understand ? I’m not trying to be a dick just really stuck and nothing meshes.

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post weight loss issues

I am half way through losing around 100ibs. it was a very slow process( 2 years) and I did intentionally so that my body and mind are able to adapt to the new life style and so that I can avoid issues such as lose skin as much as I can. However half way through and I still don’t even resemble closely what I’ve imagined. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy with the progress but the only thing I can think about is a stomach fold and stretch marks that will never go away. What do I do? Is there hope that I’ll achieve the body of my dreams at the end of weightloss? I’m not aversed to surgery but obviously I’d be happier if I didn’t require it.

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Is it normal to get progressively less happy with your achievements?

Hi everyone, I'm 22F 158cm and lost 25kgs in the past year. I went from 82kg to 57kg. I'm now at a healthy weight.

But I still see a fat person in the mirror and it's getting worse. At first I was really happy about my achievement and liked the way I looked. But the past few months I've been maintaining weight, and as time progresses, I am less happy about myself. A theory I have is that when I was losing weight, I took lots of pictures and was able to see my progress really well. So even if I wasn't healthy yet, I was already really proud because of the difference. But now there hasn't been any weight loss in so long, meaning my body has not changed. And I keep seeing the same thing, it's not special anymore. I genuinely feel fat again and I don't know what to do to make these thoughts go away. Are these thoughts a normal thing to happen for someone in my situation? My boyfriend says maybe I should start exercising, which is something I definitely want to do. But I don't think that's going to fix my broken self image. Because when I was 80kg I also thought that if I could weigh under 60kg that I would be so happy, and I'm not. So I don't think exercising is going to fix my self image. A temporary fix maybe, I don't know. I just want to know if anyone else feels the same or if anyone has gone through something similiar. Thanks for reading.

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The Truth About Football Season Weight Gain (and How to Bounce Back!)

More than one-third (37%) of men would give up football games or other sporting events for two months if it meant they could sport a six-pack or a flat stomach, new research suggests.

In a new poll of 2,000 American men over the age of 30, 39% said their belly is the physical attribute they’d change about themselves.

And as football season comes to an end, men are feeling the effects. Thirty-seven percent said they usually gain weight from September to January, with 53% claiming they gain 10 pounds or more.

Football isn’t the only thing men would give up either. The poll, conducted by OnePoll and commissioned by Nutrisystem, also revealed that a quarter of men surveyed would give up their love life for two months for a flatter belly.

5 Men’s Fitness Tips to Get You in Shape

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The poll also showed that almost one in five men began to lose confidence by the time they reached their early 30s.

More than 50% are less comfortable dating over 30 because they are less confident in how they look. And forty-seven percent of men admit they worry that their significant other doesn’t find them as attractive as they used to.

Men’s health and wellness seems top of mind more now than ever before as 43% of men believe that mental and physical health are equally as important as wealth and current lifestyle. If given the choice between getting a promotion at work or losing 20 pounds, 30% would choose to focus on their weight loss goals.

“Losing weight will not only lower total body fat but also stubborn belly fat,” said Courtney McCormick, MPH, RDN, LDN, Manager Clinical Research & Nutrition at Nutrisystem. “Excess fat around the abdomen responds well to a high protein, low GI diet, so be sure to pay attention to your portions, eat plenty of fruits and veggies and stick with whole grains and lean proteins.”

8 Misconceptions (And Truths) About Men’s Weight Loss

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Even more interesting, a whopping 68% believe social media has created unrealistic body standards for men over the past decade.

But most men believe making a change could help. Half of men surveyed believe that losing weight would make them feel better about themselves. And 45% said they would need to lose 11 pounds or more to gain more confidence, which isn’t surprising since 46% of men said they gained 21 pounds or more over the last 10 years.

“Having a game plan is crucial,” said Hall of Fame quarterback and Nutrisystem ambassador, Dan Marino. “For guys especially, simplicity, variety and correct portion sizes are key. Programs like Nutrisystem that are delivered to your door and easy to follow are the best bet. And when you start seeing the results, it makes you motivated to keep going.”

When it comes to getting back on track, 53% of men said having an easy-to-follow plan for healthy eating would help them best achieve their health goals. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said teaming up with a partner and 35% said having healthy meals delivered to their door would fuel their success.

Meat Lover? 11 Beef Dinners from the Nutrisystem Menu

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TOP 5 THINGS MEN WOULD DO TO FEEL MORE CONFIDENT

Start exercising more             (53%)

Lose weight                             (51%)

Quit smoking                           (31%)

Improve their love life             (24%)

Change jobs                           (23%)

The post The Truth About Football Season Weight Gain (and How to Bounce Back!) appeared first on The Leaf.

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Any advice for long term weight loss success?

I lost a lot of weight in my early 20’s by excessively counting an extremely low cal diet and basically not eating. I obviously lost weight fast which I think is what made it easy to stick to after the initial hump. I started exercising and eating a little more healthy foods and was able to maintain my weight loss for five years. Now I have had four kids in four years and I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been and I hate it. The truth is I start out great and lose a couple of pounds but then I start getting discouraged because I feel I should be losing weight quicker then I start to get lazy with my goals. Does anyone have any advice for losing weight in the long term? I’m not really sure why this time I’m having such a hard time getting over the hump to have long term success.

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Reach All Your Goals—Every Time!

You’ve heard it before—set a goal, then write it down. Don’t believe it? Consider this: A study conducted by Harvard Business School found that people who wrote down their goals were making 10 times as much money after 10 years than those who didn’t put pen to paper. And it will probably help your weight loss and fitness goals, too. Before you start scribbling, though, check out these tips to make every goal you set more likely to succeed.

Be SMART – SMART is an acronym that will help you set effective goals. If your goals meet all five criteria spelled out by the capital letters, the SMART system says you’re more likely to reach them.

• S is for specific. Instead of saying, “I want to lose weight,” go for “I want to look great in a little black dress.”
• M is for measurable: Maybe it’s a specific dress you’re after, or a specific size, which can be measured.
• A is attainable: If the dress you’re after is too short for you, it may not work at all. Make sure the goal isn’t so ambitious that it can never be reached.
• R is realistic, which is different from attainable: It’s not whether you think you can do something, but whether you will or want to attain this goal. Are you willing to do what it takes to reach the goal? If so, set a deadline:
• T is for time-bound. In our dress example, a SMART goal might be: “I want to lose 18 pounds to fit into the black dress I wore to my 10-year high school reunion in six months.”

Set Goals You Can Control Experts talk about “outcome” goals, which revolve around the potential end results of a group of actions, and “process” goals, which focus on the means that can result in those ends. Outcome goals, especially in weight loss, can be out of your control: If you goal is to lose 10 pounds in a certain period, you may fall short because your menstrual cycle causes you to retain water or other things you can’t fix. But a process goal is within your control, and leads you towards your desired outcome. That’s why psychologists prefer this style. A process goal to “stay on my diet plan for 9 out of 10 meals each week,” or “exercise 12 times each month” is entirely up to you—and it can help you reach the outcome you’re after.

Go Big Now that you’re SMART and are thinking process, come up with an ambitious, visionary goal. In a study from The Journal of Consumer Research, participants who set more ambitious goals had higher rates of satisfaction—no matter the outcome—than those who set more conservative goals. So start with an end state in mind, and get really specific about it: What does your goal physique entail, and what do you want to do with that body? What kind of clothes do you wear? What activities do you enjoy? Use this far-off goal as your ultimate endgame, and something from which to frame your smaller goals.

Go Small The smaller goals you set are mileposts on the journey to the larger goal. You may not see the incremental progress towards your ultimate goal, but you can put a notch in your belt because in your second week, you ate an extra serving of vegetables each day or walked for 5 minutes more than the week before. And small, achievable goals are important. According to a 2011 study from the Netherlands, arthritis patients who reached small, realistic physical activity goals saw a direct improvement benefit in their condition and quality of life. The study says these participants experienced higher levels of self-efficacy: That is, they came to believe they were capable of doing things and making changes.

Reaching smaller, shorter-term goals (and having more to strive for) can also keep you motivated—you’ll see obvious progress every day.

Try this Strategy: 5×5
To create a short- and long-term plan, try this five-goal system: Start with a SMART goal for 5 years from now. Then set a goal for 5 months from now that’s on the way to the five-year goal. Then set one for 5 weeks from now. Then 5 days from now. And finally, a goal for 5 hours from the moment you start setting goals. The healthier living example listed above would look like this:
• In 5 years, I will be a person who exercises 4 times per week, eats vegetables with every meal, and wears the same size jeans I did when I was 25.
• In 5 months, I will fit into the black dress I wore to my 10-year high school reunion
• In 5 weeks, I will have exercised 13 or more times to progress towards my goal.
• In 5 days, I will have completed a food log of my eating for 3 out of 5 days.
• In 5 hours, I will have swapped a full-calorie soda for a large glass of water.

Every time you reach a goal, set new SMART ones using this strategy. And write them down!

The post Reach All Your Goals—Every Time! appeared first on The Leaf.

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Giving it my all in 2022

I'm 38M, 5'11". As of three weeks ago, I was 131.6 kg (290.1 lb). I haven't weighed myself since then, and if I'm honest, I'm afraid to. I know that due to a combination of being quarantined due to potential COVID exposure, plus the holiday season, I weigh more than that today.

But I need to change things now.

The truth is that I'm not happy. There are many things that I need to change in my life, including my weight. And while I'm not one of those people who thinks that they'll suddenly be happy if they get down to a certain weight, I do think that my weight is quite realistically an obstacle to some of the things I need to do to make my life better. My greatest fear is that things in my life won't get better, so I need to take charge staring right now.

I have three main daily goals:

• Calorie and nutrition goals - The most important, to be broken only on days when there are professional or social reasons I can't stick to my goals that day. This will be tough, as I know that I have addiction issues when it comes to food and using it to distract myself from emotional pain, so this will take a lot of daily effort.
• Maximize movement - Second most important. Not as important to overall weight loss. I'm not going to sabotage myself by setting a big daily exercise goal and becoming discouraged when I can't meet it, so simply saying to maximize it as much as is practical is a fair goal, I think. For reference, I did 19,196 steps yesterday.
• Minimize diet soft drink consumption - Like with food, this is an addiction. I'm not going to say that I'm going to give it up altogether, because I think that given the choice between missing my daily food goals and this one, this is the lesser of two evils. But I'm still going to try to absolutely minimize it, and drink only water where possible.

My long-term weight goal is 80kg (176.4 lb). I'm giving it all I have.

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