So in May I was all excited: exercised my ass off, ate 1300-1700 calories a day.. down eight pounds by mid-month! Then I stalled somehow, and had it all back — plus one — at the end of the month. I assign the blame to three things:
1. Serious undereating. Cannot have been good for the metabolism.
2. Exercising to the point of burnout.
3. Relying on daily improvements in my weight for motivation.
It’s kind of fun, in a way, to fix a severe short-term goal: I would want to see a lower number — even 0.2 pounds lower — the next morning so much that I’d eat even less, exercise even more, etc. The feeling of success was tremendous, and so motivating. But, one big meal somewhere brought back a few pounds of water weight, which was heartbreaking. It set back a week of “progress” and made my numbers much, much less superhuman.
This is just me rehashing for myself, guys, and trying to drive home my lessons learned. They were: eat less, not too much less. Exercise more, but lightly or moderately, something you can tolerate. And, above all, weigh no more than once a week. Don’t get sucked into competing with yesterday’s number! I’m happier, losing weight, and I don’t really care how long it takes, since I feel fine. The only hard part is maintaining all this patience!
My routine:
1. Consume 1800-2200 calories daily. If I’m not hungry or am too tired, I have some wine or a cocktail to reach my minimum, which feels great. No more 1300-1500 days allowed!
2. 1 hour on treadmill at 10 degrees incline per day, every day, at 2 mph — burns about 400 calories. I play fast-paced, fairly simple computer games to make this go very quickly. (I suggest plantsvszombies.com and surfshelf.com)
3. Eat out, but lightly, and only foods that will be easy to enter into my calorie-counting software! Its too easy to lose the routine once you start leaving things out.
4. Big attitude change: only Monday’s weight “counts”. I’ll weigh myself other days, but I never write it down or enter it in my software, and it gives me some context if the next Monday turns out not to be my best day of the 7. I am not banking on dramatic weekly improvements, either: I can wait to see a two- or three-week trend, and if it’s more than a pound a week, awesome.
Last, I’m not calling myself successful here. I read that telling people your plans gives you a premature feeling of completion. Well, this is just getting started. No success yet here. I’ll be done when all my clothes fit well, when I’ve gained back a couple of belt notches, and when people notice that I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m thinking it’s going to take 2-3 more months for sure.. but we can do that.
Thanks for letting me use this space to reflect on it!
{ 3 comments }
Colin, I feel like you do about the scale. I weigh almost every day, but I hardly pay attention to any of those but the weight on Sunday. Good post.
depending on how overweight you are and your body composition, you may not have people noticing even after 3 months. It took about 4-5 months for people to start noticing my loss from 287 to about 250 or so. Don’t rely on others for you self-affirmation. You’ll feel better, both physically and emotionally, and you’ll see the difference in yourself and how your clothes fit. Try to rely on that instead.
I like your new approach. I don’t weigh myself at all (right now, anyway), but last time I did this, I tried to limit myself to a weekly weigh-in, not daily. It just seemed to work better for me that way. Glad you’re on to a system that will work for you.