Hello! this is exciting my first time on a weight loss blog! Ok too my question, I have been trying to eat healthy and working out maybe 4-5 days a week for almost 8 weeks now, I have currently lost 18 pounds but I still have about 28 pounds to go, I think I lost those first few pounds fairly quick but I'm certain that these last 28 will come off very slowly, even if I continue to do what I have been doing to get the weight off. I'm content with knowing that it might take about 3-4 months for the rest of the weight to come off instead of the fast two months for the first 18, but it just seems like that is SOO far away and I look at all these people who lost weight but it took them 8 months to a year and I just think how did you do it for so long without cracking?!?!? I need to learn how to not think about it so much and be patient about it. I stress everyday that I'm not losing weight fast enough, but I don't want it too come off fast because then I will gain it back fast. So what were some things you all have tried to help yourself realize it is going to take TIME to lose the weight and too not stress so much about how quickly it happens? thanks for reading

I saw this somewhere..I dont really remember where but its always in my head.."A year from now, you'll be happy you started today" dont think & stress about it so much...just think of it as a new lifestyle..eating healthy & putting exercise in a few days...its really what everybody should do..just keep doing what youre doing..everybody slips on the way, but you need to get up, brush it off and keep going...

Instead of looking at how long the road is in front of you, concentrate on the immediate. Celebrate every pound you lose for it is a victory. The road doesn't seem to take so long when you're worried about the immediate rather than the overall.

The overall goal can be there in the back of your mind, but it isn't important until you get there.

just think about how you feel right now & how happy you are knowing you've already lost 18 lbs (: plus for me, its not just about reaching my "goal" weight, but this is a LIFESTYLE change, so it helps to know that i'm living each day a better, healthier, & happier me

It took me 12 years to get through grade school. 6 to get through college (I was on the long term plan...), 4 to get through law school (nights). That all required patience. And I was getting smarter and learning more every day. Same with weight loss. It will happen, I'll get smarter and learn more as I go, and the time is passing anyway, why not have it pass with me getting healthier.

It should be noted that I calorie count, and do not consider myself on a "diet" that has a beginning and end point so there is not "how much longer do I have to do this before I can get on with my life" feeling.

If you read some of the threads, you will see that impatience is one of the worst things that can happen while trying to lose weight. There are threads full of people who wonder why after they were so "good" this week, only one pound came off. Or they start off spending 2 hours in the gym to try to blast away pounds only to end up sick and exhausted and back at square one. Or bouncing from Weight Watchers to Ideal Protein to Atkins to the Cabbage Soup Diet as soon as one week doesn't give them the results they want.

The people on here that I strive to be like, are the ones who stuck with it no matter what, who realized that it is a marathon not a sprint and who lift weights. (No, really, look at their profile pictures. I want that!)

It's all about the way you look at weight loss and diet. When I first began losing, I did look at it pound by pound, since I was shedding weight so quickly. Now that I'm near my end goal and weight is coming off very, very slowly, my outlook and attitude have changed.

This is a completely new lifestyle for me. I'm not on a diet. I've completely retaught myself how to look at food, use food, enjoy food, cook healthy, make time to exercise everyday.

I keep doing this not just to lose the last bit of weight, but because I know that doing it will give me a long, healthy, happy life. I've seen what terrible health problems people have to deal with after a lifetime of being sedentary and eating a poor diet. I don't want to be like that! I want to learn from their mistakes.

Just keep doing what you're doing to live healthy and keep in mind that it's not a race. If you're exercising and eating so you have a calorie deficit, the pounds will come off in time, that's just physics! Enjoy all the other benefits of good health (better sleep, energy, endorphins from exercise, etc) in the meantime!

I'm going to repeat what everyone else has said about making this a lifestyle change. I'll admit that it does seem daunting when you think about how long it will take, and every once in a while, I still seem to focus on that. But once you start thinking about how this is a lifestyle change that you'll have to keep up for the rest of your life, the next few months really is just a small part of that. Lol, I do find the idea of doing this forever a little daunting too, but at least I can get the routine down now while I am still seeing results for my hard work, so that it becomes a habit by the time I get to maintenance.

And because it's a lifestyle change, it's okay to allow small indulgences now and again. I just ate pizza for the first time in over 3 months on the weekend. But it didn't derail me like it normally would have, because I ate well the day before, and the day after, and also didn't eat as much of it as I would have before hand. And when I think about it that way, forever doesn't seem so daunting when I know I'm now equipped to handle little indulgences now and again.

This reminded me of this picture.



It is really hard to keep motivated sometimes. I know my mind usually plays games with me and makes 2 months seem like an eternity, when in reality 2 months in a walk in the park. The way I handled it is I bought a cheap calendar and used a pink marker to X off the days I had stayed on track. After a few days I didn't want to break the streak. It kept me more focused on Xing off one day at a time, rather then dreading the weeks ahead.

You've lost 18 with 28 to go - that's about two fifths of the way done. That first two fifths took two months. You're estimating three or four months to shift the other three fifths. If it happens that way, then the first 18 wasn't fast compared to the rest. I think a perspective shift might be in order: the two months that have passed already seem to have gone quickly because they've already passed; the months to come seem like they'll last forever because they're still in the future. Imagine how you'll feel in four months - perhaps you won't be at your target weight by then, but the six months of your changed lifestyle will seem to have gone by quickly enough.

I stress every day about how fast I'm losing. I weigh daily, and sometimes I feel like I'm losing quickly while other times I feel like I'm stalling for near enough forever. So I put all the daily weight data into a spreadsheet. Turns out that each five pounds took ten days to a fortnight to shift, except for two - one five pounds took three weeks, and the next was gone in one, so they evened out. My perception of sometimes losing faster than other times was clearly wrong, it just took a bit of staring at the numbers and noting patterns to realise that, and now, I'm far less stressed about how long it takes, because I can see that if I just keep doing what I'm doing it will keep coming off steadily enough.