A 1 step at a time approach to weight loss to avoid obsessing over it

Intro

I recently lost a good amount of weight and through the process learned about the psychological struggles of weight loss. I had always been skinny-fat and wanted to look fit. I found the most difficult aspect to be obsessing over the outputs instead of focusing on the inputs (paying too much attention to day to day numbers). It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when making so many drastic life changes at the same time.

Backstory

For me personally, the biggest change was tracking calories based on a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). After doing this, I realized that it doesn’t change the amount of willpower I have towards eating, it just quantifies it (although it does eliminate guessing). I kept focusing on the number so much that I wasn’t thinking about how to get there. The thought of eating at X calories a day for the rest of my life was daunting.

Being in the mindset of self-development, I was simultaneously trying to stop biting my hangnails. After a week or so of not biting my hangnails, I noticed I no longer had the urge. I didn’t have to actively resist the habit anymore. That’s when I realized that weight loss, and habits in general, aren’t a commitment for the rest of my life. They’re a commitment for the next week, or at least until the habit is formed. After which, I’m simply maintaining an existing habit as opposed to actively establishing a new one.

I changed my approach to actively adopting one habit at a time, instead of everything at once. It was of course not a walk in the park, but it’s much easier to get through knowing that the difficulty only lasts a week or at least until the habit is formed. For those of you who struggle to lose weight because you feel overwhelmed by all of the changes you have to make, here’s a 1 step at a time approach. One of our greatest strengths as humans is the ability to form habits. We should take advantage of this strength.

Approach

This approach focuses on adopting habits that lead to weight loss, as opposed to focusing on the weight loss itself. Each week, you adopt a new lifestyle change until it becomes a habit. If you find that a week is not enough time to adopt a habit, then adopt a new change every 2 weeks. You’ll know when a habit is formed when you no longer have to actively think about performing the change, when it feels automatic. Focus on one at a time. Track your progress in terms of how well you stick to these habits and I promise you’ll lose weight without obsessing over day to day weight swings.

Lifestyle changes:

1. Tell those you frequently spend time with about your weight loss pursuit
2. No snacks, only 3 meals a day
3. No drinks with calories
4. At least one meal/day cannot contain the following – bread, pasta, non-brown rice, dough, flour
5. 1 serving/day max of junk food - chips, candy, pizza, cake, donut, ice cream, pie, cookie, churro
6. Don’t eat until you feel at least slightly hungry
7. Drink half a glass of water before every time you eat
8. Don’t eat past the point of feeling full
9. Don’t eat within 3 hours of sleeping
10. Sleep at least 7 hours a day

You don’t have to use these exact 10 lifestyle changes, or any at all. I’m just giving you the 10 I would adopt if I started again. You can keep on adding as many habits as you’d like. The point is, it’s psychologically easier to approach weight loss with the mindset that at a certain point, all you have to do is maintain habits you’ve already established.

Tips and notes

In my opinion, telling those you frequently spend time with about your weight loss pursuit is important because it alleviates self-imposed social pressure. If you’re the only one not drinking beer, the only one not eating 3 donuts, or the only one not eating chips and salsa, you’ll feel isolated from the people you spend time with. If you simply tell them what you’re trying to do, you wont feel as distanced. I personally didn’t experience anyone vehemently against what I was trying to do so I can’t speak to how to deal with that.

You should eventually exercise and eat vegetables to maintain good health, but you don’t actually need to for weight loss (calories in, calories out).

Tracking TDEE helps a lot with eliminating guessing, though it can feel overwhelming. If you don’t like the idea of tracking calories every day, plan an entire day’s worth of eating on a spreadsheet. Write out everything you’d eat in a day and adjust things until you hit your calorie goal. Eat this exact plan for a few days, or something close to it so you know what that calorie target feels like. Then, you’ll always have this daily diet as a baseline. For me personally, I ate the same daily diet (swapping a few things with the same calories) Monday-Thursday and after a few weeks a certain level of eating simply became a habit.

My personal progress

Here are my progress pics if anyone’s interested. For reference I’m a 24-year old guy at 6’0”.

Starting – 172 lbs; March 9, 2019

End of weight loss – 147 lbs; July 26, 2019

End of bulk – 169 lbs; December 7, 2019

tl;dr – approach weight loss as adopting habits one at a time as opposed to adopting an entire lifestyle

submitted by /u/eggsan_bacon
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