Motivation gets you started, but Habit keeps you going

T

timechaser

New member
Thanks to Amy1985's splendid diary, and her suggestion that I start mine, I be here to put down my story. Unfortunately I am not too good at regularly updating things especially on weekends and holidays so posting this here rather than in the diary section.

I have been fat for as long as I can remember. Chubby baby, chubby teenager and chubby person after that. Used to live in London for about 5 years. Work was hard, and every day when I came back, in the name of relaxation I used to vegetate in front of the TV with a tub of Haagen Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake. Heavenly tastewise but... I put on weight slowly. At first - it was "it's just a kilo", and then my baseline was raised, repeat ad nauseaum.

I landed up at about 100.2 Kilos (November last year). My job involves a fair bit of travelling and meeting clients. I was in one of my favourite shirts sitting down with a client and talking to her when I noticed that a button on my tummy had popped open. Closed it, but it refused to stay shut! And this was a 3 month old shirt! Yikes!

I guess that was my wake up call so I got my ass into gear. I had been going to the gym very very infrequently for about a year and a half, using the services of a personal trainer but whenever he decided to push, I used to slow down and say enough.

So one bright november morning, I rocked up at the gym and told the trainer that I had had enough and it was time to push.

Food control - watching what I eat, maniac calorie counting and pushing myself every day at the gym and I have lost 19.2 Kilos as of yesterday. I am down from a size 40 to a size 32 (as of yesterday) so feeling pretty chuffed.

I have read a couple of places where people are saying that this is not a race, and you dont need to kill yourself. Unfortunately my belief is diametrically opposite. You need to kill yourself to be reborn, to reinvent yourself. And if you dont have a concrete goal - and if you are like me with not too strong a will, you will never achieve it.

My method is simple - push a bit more every day. Set goals (lose 5 kilos, 10 kilos, lift 30lb dumb-bells: whatever basically) AND reward yourself when you achieve. Can be something simple - something you have put off buying for some time. I bought myself new headphones when I hit 85!

So my best wishes to everyone in the same race (yes, it IS a race) as me: good luck to us all.
 
My feeling is that it's all about what works for you. For me, I need to take things one day at a time, change my habits, but still maintain things that don't fit into a normal "diet" (snacking and rare food-based treats, for example). My diet won't work without those things, as I don't have the willpower to do without (or, in the case of snacking, the health). If you can change things so radically and make it into a race, I commend you for it. Updating at different intervals also works for different people- I have the time to and I find it helpful to update every day, and not everyone in the diary section does.

Do you record your calories/ food intake in an electronic format? I use a program called cron-o-meter, others rate FitDay very highly. It makes it easy for me to (among other things) transfer what I've been doing onto my diary here.
 
The longer i am on this forum, the more i see how each of us finds our own level, our own way. Ok some find their way more effectively than others. But we all have to follow our own chosen path. There may be a lot of over lap.

Its often about being receptive to ideas. Sometimes we are just not ready to try things that actually might work for us. It might be 10 years later that we are ready to do what has been suggested.

I've given up the calorie thing for example but it suits a lot of people.

I think the race analogy may be fairly particular for you. It works. I like being firm and strict with what i do but i am not in a big hurry. I am doing this for the long haul. That's why i like your title.

Motivation gets you started but habit keeps you going. I think its an excellent slogan. If you invented it, many anyone who uses it pay you. If you didn't invent it never mind and htanks for sharing it with me.

Mabye we all push differently. My way of pushing is not to keep upping hte ante in the gym - i dont' even go. But i keep away from temptation.

I am loving my diet. I am loving hte food. I'm loving seeing the fat go and me get small and start to look better in my clothes. I know it will be hard at the end. I don't know if i can maintain such a low body weight indefinitely. Its still healthy but i don't know if its right for me. I will see.
 
Amy: I record my calories in an app on my phone called myfitnesspal, anally, every day. Just so I know what I am doing and what I am eating. I am obsessed with data - my job involves a lot of mathematics and statistics so data is god! Therefore the obsession with the entry and tracking.

44: Glad you like the slogan. Feel free to use it. I found it on the wall of my gym so sadly, it is not my own. But I dont think they will mind it too much if I used it - especially here!

The reason I have made it into a race for me - I was sick and tired of being fat. Now that I am down around 20 kilos, I feel fitter, look better and am fitting into clothes which I couldnt even dream of. e.g. on weekends I used to wear loose t-shirts to hide the belly. Now I wear fitted shirts which I can tuck into my jeans without fear!

To each, their own!
 
I absolutely agree. I do the same on my computer program (cron-o-meter), down to the spices I add to food (although those are necessarily estimates as my scales weigh to the nearest gram). I'm not involved with maths/ statistics at all (I was terrible at them at school) but I find tracking everything keeps me in control.
 
There's a clever saying about data. I hope i can remember. Its about what data is not. Maybe is data is not knowledge.
 
Motivation is definitely so important when trying to loose weight and yes, you do have to push yourself and keep going. I think that it's more about trying to change your lifestyle and your eating/exercise habits. Diets like weight watchers are good as it measures food points and doesn't feel quite so regimented as calorie counting. For me, it's finding something that I can stick to.

Alex
 
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