Quote:
Originally Posted by lucky8
Yeah my partner says the same think its just when you try sooo hard.
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You can only be disappointed when you have expectations that exceed the reality.
If you expect one week of work to pay off immediately on the scale, you will often be disappointed.
Say you go to work for someone and don't know how paydays work. You think you're going to get paid at the end of the day - only you don't. You work two more days, still no money. You're starting to get sick of this. Do you quit? Or do you ask your boss when you're going to get paid?
It's not the best example, because there is no "set" payment for your work with weight loss. It's more like opening your own business, and hoping that your work pays off, and constantly adjusting your work to get better and better results.
Say you open a shop selling cute handmade items you've made. You invest a lot of money and effort into the items you're going to sell and in opening this shop. You expect for the shop to pay for itself (get you your investment back) in the first week. Only you don't make any money the first week. After a month, you've only had five visitors and none of them bought anything. Now you get the light bill for the shop - you're further behind. Do you close up shop because your plan didn't work?
To judge whether your plan is working or not, you need to find out what is normal for your kind of business. Do you know what the normal results are for weight loss (I would guess not, I didn't).
I always was upset when I got on the scale and didn't see it move, or saw it move in the wrong direction - but only because I thought I was supposed to be (after all everyone else is).
I finally realized it was my expectations were wrong. I was wrong to get upset over the normal things (after all, if I felt like I was failing when I was succeeding, how was I going to get through the tough spots when I actually did make mistakes).
It started with my doctor basically telling me I was full of crap when I complained that I should be losing a lot more than the pitiful 1 lb a month I was losing (I'd lost a total of 30 or 40 pounds by then I believe). I said, "at my size I should be losing a lot more, like normal people."
And instead of saying "Damned right you should be losing more," (like all other doctors had told me in the past," he essentially said "bull poo where'd you get that dumb idea -
Normal is giving up and gaining it all back. Just keeping the weight off puts you in the above normal category - you're at the head of this race, not the tail end.
Wow, I was at the head of the race just by staying in it, because "most people" give up.
Another thing I learned about "most people" is that most people don't go an entire month without a gain. In my TOPS (taking off pounds sensibly) group, we have a very diverse groups. A lot of people with a lot of weight to lose, a lot of people with very little to lose, and a few people at their goal weight or within a couple pounds of it (a person at goal weight is called a KOPS member, meaning keeping off pounds sensibly).
We have a monthly contest in which those who have not gained during any of the weekly weigh-ins and haven't missed a meeting (most people don't miss) split a $10 prize. Out of 25 members, there's only 1-3 people at the end of the month who haven't ever experienced a gain at weigh-in.
That means more than 90% of our members have at least one gain per month. And these aren't slackers. Our chapter has won awards for best losses on average per member (because every month they tally how many pounds lost, and how many pounds gained).
Also by averaging the weight loss per member, I can tell you that the average person loses far, far less than 1 lb per week.
So why are you so upset - because you're doing so much better than the average, or because you didn't know what the average truly was.
For me, it was that I didn't know that I was at the head of the pack. I thought I was trailing far, far behind (after all it took me 6 years to lose 91 lbs). And even so, I'm at the head of the pack, because most people give up and regain it all.
Just losing the 11 pounds you have, puts you at the head of the pack (and if you did it in in less than a year, there aren't that many folks in front of you), and you stay in the lead by staing in the race, not by losing every week - not by losing a lot every week (or losing at all in a week. Just a pound a month, puts you in the top 5%).
Know that you're succeeding, because if you think you're failing (even when you're doing better than 95% of folks) you're going to give up.
If I had known how rare success was. If I had known that even 1/4 lb a week was an achievement most people don't make and keep - I don't think I would have given up. Every time I gave up in the past, it was because I thought there was something wrong with me - that everyone else was doing so much better and having it so much easier. I was so dead wrong. Maybe if I knew that I would have felt like the success I was, instead of the failure I thought I was.
SO DISHEARTENED i tried so hard
im so upset and angry. 
bad times
KEEP AT IT KEEP AT IT KEEP AT IT!
