Losing Weight: Mental Hurdles
4 Comments Published by Joel October 16th, 2006 in Fitness. Share ThisNow I said “simple,” not easy. Losing weight sucks. The first couple weeks were extremely challenging, especially in the first two introductory days where I limited my caloric intake to just 500-600 calories, to kick-start the fat burning process.
It was painful to start realizing how frequently I ate because I had nothing better to do and how I often gorged myself for…some reason. (I’ll leave the pop psych out of it.)
Here are a few realities you have to own up to if you want to lose weight:
• You consume too much food and will have to eat less for the rest of your life.
• It will take several months of discipline and frustration to lose all the weight you want.
• You will have to turn away food in situations where you may not want to.
Eating too much is obvious: If you weren’t eating too much, why are you fat? (Fortunately, the stomach shrinks quickly, making less food seem more satisfying.)
You also need to get out of your head that there is some trick that will allow you to eat as you do today while still losing weight. There isn’t. You’re going to have to change what and how you eat. It will make you angry.
You’re going to find yourself in situations where you’re being set up to fail: eating out; finding yourself with no food in the house but a pizza delivery number; when you’re very drunk. By anticipating these situations, you’ll be able to deal with them if you want to. But if you ignore the decision you’ll have to make about each of these scenarios until you are faced with it, you’re going to flake out.
If you aren’t ready to make yourself uncomfortable for several months, then don’t start. Enjoy a nice butter sandwich and file away your desires to be thin for another day. Seriously. It’s better to not try at all than to go at this half-assed.
You’re right. Losing weight sucks. There’s a couple of different things to look at… how to lose those extra 20-30-however many extra pounds you’re carrying and then… how do you keep them off?
For losing, I used the Body for Life plan. You can look it up, lots of people have used it. Here’s the thing with it: 6 meals a day, controlled by portion size + lots and lots of exercise. I lost 45 lbs with it over a period of about 3 months. But it is rough.
The sustainment phase is rough too, finding a restrictive diet (because you’re going to HAVE to restrict yourself) that you can live with. I’m still working on that one. A couple years after my big loss, and I’ve gained about 20 of those 45 back (mostly due to lifestyle changes). I’m working on getting back into regular exercise so the combination of a relatively healthy diet and exercise will control the weight.
I personally had great success with The Abs Diet book – both in terms of a sustainable diet (that didn’t really feel like a diet at all) and a good excercise program. Managed to lose a fair amount of weight and since the “diet” didn’t really feel like big deprivation, it easily turned into a lifestyle change that has eased the maintenance phase.
Some more details of my personal experiences can be found here:
http://www.alexkaren.com/blog/2006/10/11/30-by-30-woo/
Good luck to you!
a
Visualization is the key.
I was a size 16 from hip replacement surgery – that’s 167 lbs in femme speak – and was retired from working after 30 years.
One day I visualized 3 things: I wanted a new puppy, I wanted a new wardrobe, and I wanted a new job.
Within 3 months, I had volunteered to get used to getting up, ready and dressed for work. One month later I was working part time. 3 months later, I had a full time job. And 2 years after that, I have TWO jobs.
I got that dog. That dog MADE me commit to moving around more. I had to housebreaker her in a few days because it was so hot 2 summers ago. Walking her made me feel better, without feeling like exercising.
Now I have 2 dogs…one’s the Belgie Shep and the other rescue is a bull terrier mix. We all exercise together (although NOW that I’m skinnier, they can knock me down more often!)
The new wardrobe. When I moved to a new house, I had to pull clothes out of our storage building and viola! already HAD a new wardrobe. It was the OLD wardrobe. And nothing is out of style. What is can be altered, but I haven’t had the need just yet.
The point, is that at 114 lbs 3 years later, I did the best I could with no paid for assistance and did so without drugs, otc or rx. For those who need it, get it.
My blood pressure thanks me for knocking off the “come have some free cake/cupcakes/cookies/candy because it’s ———– fill in the blank’s——-last day working here.
There’s pitfall if ever there was one.
Also, salad at the company cafeteria, not the fried chicken fingers. The chicken 2ce a month.
Also, no all you can eat buffets. Just don’t do it.
Hope this helps.
I don’t think you can blame it all on overeating. I think lack of activity and poor eating habits can play a huge role. Those just happen to be my issues. I not only eat food that’s bad for me, but I only eat about one or two big meals a day, never eat breakfast, and eat late at night. Never exercising doesn’t help.
One way I found that was good to lose weight is to do it with friends. Some buddies of mine got together at work and turned it into a competition: we each threw in $50, and a challenge to lose 10lbs in a month. Everyone who met that goal, got to split the money. It helped that everyone around me had the same goal, so going out to lunch and eating fast food or some other junk was less of an option. Plus it was mostly guys, and making it a challenge had us all competitive about it and talking smack to each other constantly. Someone would bring in donuts trying to tempt the others with it, it was good fun. The big change for me was that I added regular moderate exercise, which I didn’t EVER do before. Another change I made was to eat smaller amounts of food more frequently, as I’ve heard that this is a good way to boost metabolism. I dropped 14lbs in the month. We started with about twelve people, but only four of us met the goal, and it was a nice little chunk of cash to split. We planned on continuing to do it every month, since it worked. Unfortunately, we decided to take a break for a week or two due to an increase in our workload, and we never got back to it. We all took that “break” to cheat a little bit, and it was just so good we never looked back, always found excuses to put it off and do it later. Too bad.
What, when, and how much you eat can all affect your weight, but I think exercising regularly can make up for some of the weaknesses that most people face when it comes to food (I have no doubt you’re going to cover exercise over the next few days). In the end, it has to be a full-on lifestyle change. You have to get used to doing these things and eating this way as a part of your life. If you don’t, you’ll surely fail.