Monday, May 19, 2014

Tough Love, Vol. II

I feel like I'm repeating myself, but lately there seems to be an epidemic of sorts with diet bloggers throwing in the towel after not losing weight fast enough.  I get it - it can be discouraging.  But it's not the end of the world, and if you look around, there's plenty of success stories.  Here's my version of Tough Love, Vol. II - aka Shelley's Rules of Dieting:

  1. You're going to be hungry some of the time.  Why?  Because you're eating less food than you're used to.  It's OK.  You'll survive.
  2. You're going to need to pass on eating certain foods for a while.  Why?  Because there are some foods that are a gateway to overeating.  Simple as that.  Let's face it, if we could control our portions, we wouldn't have become overweight in the first place.  So even if your particular diet allows for any food as long as you have the calories/points for it, don't get started on the things you KNOW are trouble. 
  3. Celebrations happen.  People really are not offended if you don't take a piece of cake.  There will be ample cake opportunities in the future.  Go, enjoy the company, celebrate the event, and stay on track with your diet.
  4. Don't drink your calories. 
  5. Provided you stick to it and get the weight off, this diet won't be forever.  At some point you can ease more food back into your day - although, I hate to tell you this - not an awful lot.  You are going to be maintaining a much lower weight than you did before you started your diet, so therefore you just can't eat as much.  
  6. Unless you are in your twenties, you are not going to have awesome weigh-ins each week.  Sadly, everything they say is true and between slower metabolisms and hormones, weight loss is a sloooooow process.  The thing is, those tiny bits all add up over the course of time.  So keep at it.
  7. Exercise.  But DO NOT pay attention to your calorie burn.  Why?  Because you should not let the thought enter your mind that you can eat those calories.  You haven't "earned" them.  I'm pretty sure that most of us are not endurance athletes who need to eat back what we burned off...and those of you who are do not need to diet in the first place.
  8. Exercise.  Because it's good for you, both mentally and physically.  Get yourself moving at least a few times a week.  Find something you like and do it.  Exercise doesn't have to be punishing.  It also doesn't have to take up a lot of your day - thirty minutes would make a world of difference if you aren't doing anything physical yet.
  9. Don't wait any longer to get started losing weight.  It only gets harder as you get older.  
  10. Learn to eat and enjoy healthy food while you're dieting, because you still need to eat that way once the weight is off...or else you'll be back on the diet merry-go-round before you realize it.  Make this the last time you buy a ticket for that ride!
In case you need more, here's the original Tough Love advice from 2012.

33 comments:

  1. Love, love this but Shelley: don't drink my calories? Oh my gosh, you should have told me on Friday before I drank way to many glasses of wine on Saturday and had a weight gain this morning :) Lucky for me I know exactly how that happened :)

    We have the same approach when it comes to weight loss. At the moment I'm not losing because I have too many celebrations and I'm okay with that because I want to keep celebrating life instead of standing on the sideline because I said to myself I can't have anything. This means my weight loss will be slower but I'l get there and had a great time in the meantime.

    Great post!

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  2. Very well said both volumes of tough love. You are spot on with your advice. I use these ideas all the time to maintain my original 40 lb weight loss for 15 years now. As I am getting older its harder to maintain the weight loss but I will never give up and go back to who I used to be.

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    1. It's something, isn't it, that even 15 years later, you have to consciously work to keep the lost weight LOST. Great job with your efforts!!!

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  3. ahhh number nine
    with diets and kinda with most things.

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    1. Yep. Jump in - the water is never going to get any warmer!

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  4. One of my rules about celebratory foods: they have to be really, really good and homemade or spectacularly made by a classically trained chef lol. Seriously, there's just about a birthday a week at my job and if I ate cake (which is always store bought and not great) at each one, I'd be eating so many empty wasted calories. I even feel that way with all the picnics etc. coming up this summer... is that potato salad homemade? No? I'm not eating it!

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    1. I totally get that. Yesterday my manager had his birthday and today his birthday treat was cookies that we bought ready made in the store. I decided it was not worth it if I took one. Had he or his wife baked an apple pie, it would be a totally different story.

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    2. Of course I get it with the desserts, but the potato salad made me laugh - because I realized I do that, too! GMTA, ladies. :)

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  5. love this post and your blog - i just turned 50 and walked my first 10k ever .... i want to be a runner ... oh and lose about 100 lbs.... I am on my way.. thanx for all the tips :)

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    1. Thanks - I'm excited to see another 50-year-old in blogland and am heading over to check out your blog now! :)

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  6. I love all these tips Shelley - when I lost my 70 pounds back in 1999 - it took me 14 months - which averaged out to only 5 pounds a month - but there were WEEKS that I would lose only .6, .7 and then bam, I'd lose 4.2. Slow and steady wins the race! :D

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  7. Great tips! I totally agree with the older you become the sloooower it takes to lose weight. There are days when the frustration mounts, but knowing that I am healthier and do things that I never conceived of doing in my 20s and 30s makes tackling the weight in my 40s more doable.

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    1. Acknowledging how much more you are capable of now is a kindness, especially when you have some of those frustratingly slow weigh-ins!

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  8. 1. Yep
    2. Yep
    3. Yep
    4. What? People actually do that?
    5. Yep
    6. Yep : (
    7. Yep
    8. Yep
    9. Yep
    10. Yep

    Great post, Miss Shelley! It wasn't even cranky : )

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    1. 4. Empty calories...not good when you are trying to lose weight!

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  9. Great post. The only one I slightly disagree with is #7. Different bodies work different ways. For some reason it stalls my loss when I don't eat a little more on activity days and I know many people who it helps for them to eat a little extra and some people it doesn't help.

    I think what is important is to not let exercise calories be an excuse to eat crap.

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    1. Everyone is different, for sure - but with the advent of the HRMs and Fitbits and the machines at the gym telling you what you've burned, I see a lot of people working hard at exercising but not getting the weight-loss results they expect, and many times it's because they are allowing themselves more food due to those numbers. Still, it's all individual, so if one way isn't working, try a different route.

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  10. Thanks for reading my blog - and best wishes to you on your fitness journey!

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  11. Hello Shelley ....great post! Thank you. I agree w/ everything you say, especially number 8 [speaking as an almost 60 year old!]

    Cheers!

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  12. I love this post! And some of these are things I need to remind myself of again. Especially the idea of certain foods being Big Fat Trouble for me, even if they are arguably healthy snacks, because I have no ability to stop once I start. (Hello, trail mix? I'm talking to YOU.)

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  13. I'm weird in that I like a little tough love sometimes - once in a while a kick in the pants does me more good than you can imagine!
    I am in the process of making peace with the fact that my weight loss is going super slow. Like one pound per month slow. But it's better than gaining a pound each month, right? That's what I keep telling myself. :)

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  14. Loved reading this today, Shelley! And I agree with all of it, especially the "don't wait!" When I set out to lose my extra weight, it happened to be in January, but it wasn't because of the new year, it was because of growing out of one more pair of jeans. I'd had enough. I figured even if I lost a pound a month, in a year it would be 12 pounds by the following January, and anything was better than nothing. I didn't realize that every little bit of progress would also provide such a feeling of personal satisfaction. This was something that I did for ME, and that pride in my efforts served as powerful motivation to stick with it.

    Thanks for the Tough Love!

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  15. I so agree with #6. I remember, when I was in my late teens, early 20s, my mom always said, "just wait until you turn 30!" A slower metabolism is such a bummer.

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  16. Great list! Some I agree with, some I don't (based on my weird personal experiences), but the most important thing is that we recognize and KNOW what does and doesn't work for us.
    My (somewhat unorthodox) motto is, You have to KNOW the rules to know how to BREAK the rules. Or something like that. :)

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  17. I always think people waaaay overestimate calories burned with exercise. They don't take into account what you would have burned anyway. If you did something that said you burned 400 calories in an hour, you really only burned about 330 since you would have burned about 70 just sitting there breathing. So don't reward with a 400 calorie treat.

    The slow thing is Effing annoying me right now, though. Especially when I see others lose weight and it just isn't happening for me.

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  18. Shelley, this is FANTASTIC!!!! (and no kidding about weight not shifting that quickly when you're older! :( ( BTW...thanks for the comment on my blog. Dennis is "Jack of all trades" at the moment for Rocky Mountain Rail. He's on contract until October, but they're a fantastic company and we have fingers crossed he stays on during the off season. Have a great week!

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  19. I swear...you wrote that to me!!!! I'm guilty of #2, but there is NO WAY I'm gonna quit. I might bitch my way through the entire process, but I'll get there!

    I'm so glad you're here for all of us!!!

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  20. "Make this the last time you buy a ticket for that ride!"
    SUCH terrific advice. (I'm going to forget you said #4, though, LOL!)

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  21. Late to the party as usual. (Trying to stay AWAY from the computer somewhat). This is all great stuff!!! #2 is a good reminder, because at times there are more "can't have that in the house" items than others. For whatever reason, I recently realized I need to keep a cleaner pantry than I had been successful with previously. Number 10 is my biggest rule - I have to love the (healthier) things I'm eating since this is forever. Working on #8.

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