Losing weight, keeping it off, frustrations, and compliments

[pandafitness]

Prior to owning my charge hr i weighed 163+ January 2015-May 2015. May 2015 I got a part time desk job, June 2015 I got a personal trainer and met with a week. August 2015 I got my first fitbit the charge hr.

I continued to work twice a week (some weeks were not consistent with my personal trainer) and then mid March 2016 I went to full time desk job. I've lost about 20 lbs in 11 months. 

Goal weight is 130 lbs. I've got about 13 lbs to go!

Questions for those who successfully met their goal

1. What are three tips that made you feel you were successful to make you lose weight?

2. How did you keep it off?

3. How did you overcome feeling frusturated?

I'll start with answering some.

1. Exercising regularly and increasing the intensity for my heart rate  (my personal trainer reminds me I need to move faster)

2. I can't answer this one yet

3. Still working on this one too. I get frustrated and upset when I make poor food choices. People compliment me on my weight loss but it's so frusturating that I haven't met it yet. My goal was 1lb per week. For awhile it worked, but now it's not working. I weight myself once a week at the same time. I broke through plateau. and now i lose like 0.5 lbs a week.

😞

[Zimni]

1. Staying consistent with the workouts and diet, charting goals which are realistic to achieve, and celebrating the small milestones instead of only eyeing the finish line.

2. Still working towards those last few pounds, but I think the trick to keeping the lost weight off lies in continuing with the healthy practices - not in bootcamp mode but making sure to add fitness and clean eating in the weekly schedule. For me, that would be running 5k thrice a week probably.

3. Struggled a lot with good workout days dampened by poor food choices later. What helped me was to make peace with this constant struggle to keep it perfect and realise that I love certain foods too much to totally banish them - so instead of beating myself on cheat eating, I learned to adjust the overall calorie deficit with an extra something in the exercise the next day. 

Also, I stopped weighing myself some months back. The weight fluctuates over a single day and I found I couldn't subject myself to fearing a number. I now rely on how my clothes fit me, and them getting looser is good enough!

Cheers 🙂

[FitBeforeFifty · Accepted solution]

I reached my goal weight in 2012 and have maintained it +/- 5 lbs since that time.

For me, the key is simple, logging. When I log my exercise and my food everything else just takes care of itself. I can usually maintain my weight without logging for a few months but eventually my weight starts to creep back up a little and I have to start logging again.

Progressive goals

Having progressive goals also helps. When I first started my journey my only goal was weight loss. As I neared my goal weight I realized I probably needed to find another goal to keep me motivated, so I set a goal to race a 5K. Then a 1/2 Marathon. Then a full Marathon. Then I set weight lifting goals. At one point I set a goal to get below 10% body fat. 

Expectations

Regarding frustrations, I don't get frustrated because I don't have short term expectations. I know if I'm active and log my food the results will come. I focus on the process and not the results. As long as the trend is in the right direction I don't really care about the velocity.

In other words, there is no end, it's a lifestyle. My goal is to generally maintain an active lifestyle and eat real food.

Maintenance

Regarding maintaining your goal weight when you get there, these are some keys:

1. Once you reach your goal weight, get rid of all of your old oversized clothes. If you have clothes in your closet that you can switch to you will
2. Set a warning weight ... for me that is 3 lbs over goal. If I hit that weight or higher for more than 1 or 2 days that is a signal that I have to temporarily go back into weight loss mode. Usually 2 or 3 weeks of logging gets me back to baseline
3. Don't do anything to lose weight that you aren't willing to do for the rest of your life. If you do something temporary to lose weight your weight loss will also be temporary. 

[win2017]

I've achieved my weight loss goal of 60 pounds. The trick for me was to eat what I wanted to eat. Just simply use a weight log to estimate the calories and therefore not exceed my daily intake goal. This way I wasn't depriving myself by craving the food I truly enjoyed. I also threw in exercise to speed up the weight loss and improve my overall health.

Now I need help with ways to keep it off.