The scale can be like a toxic friend. Punch that friend and listen to the mirror!
My goal is to look like a previous version of myself. My weight is a big driving factor but I’m going to compare the numbers, too. If the weight matches but other things don’t, then it’s not a success. If the numbers are good but the weight is heavier than the goal, then I might take it.
That would be a win, but part of my weight concerns is wear and tear on my joints when I try to do athletic things. I guess you could say my top priority is a certain look but weight is definitely still on the radar.
I’m also starting to consider that I can do all the things I want to do at a heavier weight than I previously thought. I’ve kind of realized that I quit doing things like running because of wear and tear, but I may be wrong. Maybe I need to stop avoiding things and start rebuilding myself so that those things don’t hurt to or break me.
I’m turning 36 in a few months so I should probably start watching what I am eating… but I’m not. I’m eating every chance I get, and whatever I can get my hands on. 4 whole eggs and a 4 second pour of egg whites every morning. Meat, cheese and fruit for lunch and I eat until I can’t for dinner.
Also, every lifting day, I’m finding the difference between “ok, I’m done” and “I physically cannot bring myself to do another rep”. Reps and weight have been going up every lifting day and I’m feeling more and more like my old self.
Another (small) check in the win column is dropping nicotine from my horrible vaping habit. I just need to stop the oral fixation compulsion and I’m free and clear. This is a big one, as I’ve been smoking/vaping for nearly 20 years at this point.
Reading that back, how the hell am I old enough to say that, lol.
I chewed for about 8 years and quit cold turkey in 2011. The habits I built around chewing were the hardest to break - dip after a big meal, dip during a long drive (anything over 15 minutes), dip during yard work. I feel like the nicotine part passed pretty quickly.
This and fishing/hunting. A tin will last me a week or so normally. But if I go on a road trip, fishing or hunting, I try to make my lip fall off. Like you said, it’s not even the nicotine, it’s the habit. It feels like it passes the time easier.
My first failure on the diet front yesterday. I had a leaving do for one of my staff at work. I’d fasted all day to save my calories but that also meant i had a empty stomach for drinking. I had about 8 pints and half a bottle of wine.
Feel rubbish this morning and annoyed at myself, i know its an English culture thing but after 4 pints i’ve got no off switch.
Pretty much that. I tried quitting in college while I played baseball. I substituted my Skoal for sunflower seeds. Those wrecked my mouth more than dip so it didn’t work out. It’s kind of like being on a cut and craving something that will slow or derail your progress. Keep the prize in mind and try to think about something else.
Day 3 of lent without alcohol and already I’m realizing my normal one or two a night has become a pretty ingrained habit. Not hard to do without, but I’m thinking about it more than I thought I would. I haven’t gone 40 days without alcohol since I was probably 16.
When I quit drinking I was surprised at how many times I would reach for a drink out of habit and my husband would say “are you sure that’s a good idea” and I would put the drink back. It took a while for me to stop reaching.
Where’d you play? I played in CA. Grizzly green was my choice. Once I quit playing, I quit chewing tho. Now I just pop a 3mg zyn a couple times a week.
I watched a lot of games from the dugout as a useless pitcher at Wichita State. Redshirt freshman year due to shoulder problems. Had surgery sophomore year to finally fix shoulder problems and sat the bench another season. Hated it by then so I didn’t go back for my junior year.
I probably should’ve went back but man, I was miserable. I did all the things we’re told to do - get good grades, work hard in the weight room, help out where you can. I caught bullpens, made sandwiches during practice, whatever would help someone. Didn’t matter. Guys who carried a 1.8 GPA and skipped workouts started every game. It broke my spirit.
My regret is that I didn’t give myself enough credit to play 1st base so I didn’t try. I didn’t think I was good enough. Everyone built me up as a pitcher in high school and I believed them.
But at least after I graduated I was able to use my last year of eligibility to walk on to a Division 2 basketball team and prove to myself that I was good enough to play college ball.
This took me a long time to come to terms with, but eventually it was kind of freeing. Sometimes dudes are just better at something. At least I was able to get out of my head that I just wasn’t working quite hard enough and there was some magic drill someone else was doing that I was missing.
To bring that full circle and back to a transformative topic here… I’m having maybe the easiest (not the fastest) dieting phase I’ve had by trying less. Typically I get frustrated and try to pull out all the stops, thus beating myself into the ground. This time, I’m nailing the planned training days, getting my steps in, taking my supplements, hitting my protein targets, and just not worrying about it. Voila, I’m steadily losing about 1 lbs a week after the initial drop, and I feel fine in the gym and at work. Anyone else “figure out” their magic drivers?
That’s the thing with baseball.. It’s so skill dependent that athletic ability may not matter.
Another pill that was hard to swallow was that I could throw 88-91 mph pretty consistently at an 18 year old. I also threw nothing but 2 seam fast balls which is what they call a sinker now. I was good. My shoulder problems were the result of chronic subluxations on my throwing arm (not usually while throwing the ball). My ability to throw hard disappeared. There I was as a freshman, standing on the mound at 6’5" and 240 lbs, facing some of the top hitters in the nation (our cleanup guy led the nation in home runs that year), and I could throw the ball 81 mph with everything I had.
Having no control over what was happening for two years probably had a lot to do with my decision to quit the sport. Again, if I tried to play in the field and hit I could have at least had other skills to work on. But a pitcher with a bum arm is useless.
And back to the original topic…
No, not really. But I’m still trying! I’m kind of doing a carnivore inspired approach and I’m enjoying the food and limiting carbs. I’ll still eat carbs and I’ve started noticing when I might need to refuel after a few days of staying on target. For example, I was pretty worn out after my workout yesterday and it wasn’t from the session. The timing was perfect as I took my daughter out to dinner in place of her school’s Daddy Daughter Dance (her choice) and enjoyed a nice burger and some gourmet Mac n cheese.
Back to high fat and high protein today. My weight dropped through January but stalled last week (ate too much). I’m headed back in the right direction this week. I’ve noticed I’ll start to feel hungry not long after eating a 1200 calorie meal (2 burger patties, cheese slices, guac, and a couple boiled eggs for example)but if I ignore it, it doesn’t get worse. It may just be old habits so if I’m a bit patient maybe that will stop, too.
I’m in this stage. No magic drivers here.
I finished a bulk and have been dieting all February. I’ve had multiple slip-ups, most days after the first week have felt like white knuckling. I didn’t reduce training much, kept running and generally just expected my body to not rebel.
Hope is not a plan. One of these days I’ll manage my expectations better. Or at least not be surprised when I am constantly thinking about food.
I read an article and was able to quit cold turkey immediately.
I’m almost 42 now, and I still have cravings every now and then. I think it’s just old habits. Cravings are the worst when drinking. Every now and then I’ll get one after sex.
With that said, the article basically was something along the lines of this:
For the first 3 weeks, you will get 3 severe withdrawals a day. Each withdrawal will last 30 seconds. The trick is to just breathe and relax.
After 3 weeks, it drops to one severe one a day. After a month an a half they go away completely.
You just have to accept the annoyance of minor cravings which are most likely habit induced.
Ive dieted a fair number of time at this point in my life, and given that I seem to be on an every-two-year schedule as I look back at my last few attempts, I think this is the right approach for most people.
The impulse most have is to “go on a diet” and immediately eliminate everything that isnt diet food, which can be kinda fun and interesting and motivating… for a few days. For most its too much of a change and misery sets in very quickly.
Instead Ive gravitated towards the “just do better” approach. For a “normie” who isnt anywhere close to eating healthy that means Go from 3 free-for-all meals a day to 2 and 1 good meal every day for a week… then 2 good meals a day, and eventually you’re at 3 mostly good meals a day and every 2 or 3 days you find yourself at Taco bell but youre doing so much better it doesnt really matter. And 6 months later its habit/lifestyle and you dont even really want to do it more than that anyway.
And the change is so gradual that the misery index is kept very low.
For my own purposes that means skipping the extra peanut butter I would normally eat before bed (sounds minimal but my god that shit can add up FAST over the course of a week/month if you eat a few spoons every night), swapping a few meals out for just a protein shake a few times a week, and generally just dropping the occasional fun crap that finds its way into a family house where only 1 person is dieting. Handful of Lays here… Sees candy piece there… Pizza night for dinner… its not much but it adds up and those are the easy things to drop.
I also dont add cardio in until a few months in, I like to eek out all of the “pain free” dietary weight loss I can before I start adding that in.
Eventually this will ratchet up as April and May get here, but just doing these trivial to implement changes probably is where the first 10 pounds comes from, almost effortlessly. Im sure I could really buckle down and lose 10 pounds in 6 weeks instead of 12… But this way is just so much easier
Yet another vote on the “slow and steady” approach. We don’t quickly get OUT of shape, and it means we don’t quickly get back IN shape. And the harder we push, the harder the body pushes BACK. But if we just slowly nudge it along, it doesn’t even notice.
I used to poo-poo fasting, but I’m really appreciating it at this stage in my life. It’s just nice to not have to deal with eating.
I was listening to Joel Green on a podcast, and he talked about how “daily” is the antithesis of our biology. Doing the same thing every day is opposite to how we would have functioned “in the wild”. We would have had some days where we got a fresh kill and gorged, and then some days where all we could eat was what we could forage. His idea is that just slamming the body with the same exact nutrition every day taxes the system, whereas variety enhances it. That gels with a lot of my own experience/preference. I like the idea of carb cycling (Jon Heck is the latest voice on the scene for that, and he’s got the bona fides), I liked Jamie Lewis’ Apex Predator diet for mixing up keto and high carb days, I like cyclical keto diets, I liked the idea of “BodyOpus”, etc. I suppose that keeps hailing back to “Chaos is the plan”. Some ordered disorder could do us some good.
