As of this morning I've lost 17 lbs. I'm elated and yet in the same breath, I'm damning.
I've started and deleted countless posts lately because I feel like I have valuable tips that others could benefit from but after a few minutes I just think to myself, "nobody cares about my anecdotal bullcrap. It's not even impressive. I'll come back when I've actually done something to be proud of."
But you know, I would NEVER tell somebody else that losing 17 lbs isn't impressive. Never. I would never roll my eyes at somebody's progress picture. I will always encourage people to feel proud of any and every extra lb of fat they lose. Because any and all progress is amazing! So why am I acting like that towards myself? Tonight, I'm not being my own bully. Tonight, I'm going to share my anecdotal bullcrap. So here is my rundown, here is what I've been doing that has worked for me in the past and is working for me now. Maybe it'll help somebody else too.
My focus is macro budgeting/CICO eating at a 500 cal deficit while making hitting my protein the highest priority. I also go to the gym 4-6 times a week - barely do any cardio.... okay, I don't really do any cardio, but I really REALLY push myself on the weights.
- I don't workout to lose weight. I workout to transform my body at whatever weight it's at. I don't want to just be a smaller number on a scale, I want to be healthy and strong.
- I eat what I want. I mean really, it's that simple. I make what I want to eat fit into my calorie budget. Of course I'm making better choices in what I want to eat, I'm compromising with myself because I know I need food volume to stay full but I have not given up any of my favorite foods. I just adjust my portion sizes and sometimes the ingredients to make it benefit me.
- This means I don't believe in "cheat" days or meals. I also refuse to call any food "bad". I refuse to let myself have negative feelings or punish myself because one day MFP has some red numbers at the end of my food log or because I had a piece of cake. But I still hold myself accountable and understand my actions have consequences.
- I test myself to see if I'm really hungry or if I just want to eat (huge step in learning the difference). I have myself on an eating schedule, I go by timeframes. I have to do this because I work at a desk and my workload allows for a lot of do-whatever-you-want time and in the past I'd eat all 8 hours of my shift. If I get hungry outside of those allocated times or if I eat all of my food and I'm still hungry before the next time I'm scheduled to eat - I test myself. First, I drink a bottle of water and wait about 15 minutes. Am I still hungry? I find something to do - if I'm at home I'll take the dogs outside, I'll make sure they and the cats have food and water, I check on the outside cats to see if they need anything, harass my husband, I'll do a report or some billing at work. I'll find something to occupy myself for 15-20 minutes - was I still hungry during that time? Another bottle of water. Still hungry? Eat, Pacie, eat. I'm not in the business of making myself miserable. If I'm actually hungry, I'm going to eat. Now, that doesn't mean I eat more food than I have budgeted for the day. I just borrow some food from the next time slot.
- I plan every.single.thing. I put into my mouth. So, I eat what I want but I have to know the difference between wanting to eat something and wanting to taste it. I'll let cravings build for a couple of days to see if it's something I want to eat or something that I would just like to taste. If I determine it's something I really want to eat, something I don't mind sacrificing other food for (I stay in my calorie budget even when eating something like apple pie when I can), then I plan to eat it. So on Thursday instead of my usual lunch snacks and bedtime popsicle I'll have a small slice of apple pie or something like that.
- MyFitnessPal knows everything I eat and drink every day. Even if I'm calling it a no count day, MFP knows about it. MFP knows how many calories I've had. I track everything. There is no "out of sight, out of mind" here.
- I weigh myself every day. A lot of people frown on this, that's fine. I love it. It encourages me. It keeps me in line with reality. So I decided to make some choices that increase my sodium intake, the next morning I'm going to see the consequences of those choices and then I'll see those "extra" numbers go away when I'm back to my regulated menu. Ah, so it's not the end of the world afterall. I also do this so that I can take a weekly average to account for those fluctuations.
- Diet Mountain Dew... every day. Save me the "they're not good for you" speech, yeah yeah yeah, I know. But listen, I would rather have this nasty, disgusting, liquid gold than all the other snack cakes I would eat if I didn't have it all bubbly in my tummy sometimes. I count the calories. I count the sodium. I count the carbs. Again, I'm not in the business of making myself miserable. When I first started to lose weight I cut them out completely for 3 weeks to prove to myself I could. And I did. Now, I let myself enjoy it with my lunch.
- Meal prep. Meal prep. Meal prep. Now, I cheat in this department. My husband preps the majority of my food for me every week. But when it's done I have no excuse to eat off menu. It's already taken care of. There's no "there's no time to make a healthy choice" it's "let me grab that and go". No "oh I accidently ate 4 servings of that instead of 1", nope, it's all measured out in a bag. My chicken? Measured out and ready for me to pop in the microwave. My lunch fruit? Measured out and in a bag waiting for my grubby little hands.
And well, that's how I've managed to keep on track. Here's a side by side picture of me.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/eukjg9/im_my_biggest_supporter_but_also_my_loudest/
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