I've discovered a few things recently that have put things into perspective for me.
One of them is that often the most successful weight loss journeys happen slowly. I have a good friend from college who lost over 200 lbs in the last few years. I asked her how she did it. She said that the two things that helped her the most was choosing to lose the weight slowly and finding a sport she loved. Which makes sense because it's easier to keep active when you're having fun rather than just spending a lot of time at the gym.
The other I've learned from looking at before and after photos. They're my guilty inspirational go to. I've found that when I look at the dates on a lot of them, the most successful drops came over the span of a year or more. I guess that makes a lot of sense. The longer you take, the more time you have to adjust to your new lifestyle. I've always been the impatient crash dieter. I set extremely high goals and work towards them. In the past I could lose up to 40 lbs in the span of 3-4 months. But then I would get burned out and gain all the weight and often more back. We're programmed to think it's possible to attain these super high goals often because of all the weight loss TV shows. Just look into where a lot of the Biggest Loser contestants are now. A lot have gained the weight back. It's just not sustainable.
The plan my friend suggested is to try and lose around 50 lbs in a year. It almost feels harder for me to lose weight that slowly. I want to be skinny
now! So what I did was make a graph. This is what is helping me to put things into perspective. I'll post the link to it before I even start explaining it. Otherwise I think it would get too confusing.
Weight loss graph
My main goal is to reach 150 lbs. That means I'm planning to lose 65 lbs in about a year. The graph begins with my start weight and week 1. It then ends at 52 weeks with my goal weight. The straight line is just a guideline. Weight loss is definitely not linear like that so it's just a way to help me visualize whether I'm on track or not.
The blue lines are BMI milestones. For example at 185 lbs I will go from "obese" to "overweight." The lighter blue lines show approximately the time I'll ideally reach those goals. So for this example I'm aiming for around mid-July.
Each week I track my weight. I've been on a plateau for the last 2 weeks and it's been super frustrating. But when I look at this graph it shows that I'm still on track and that it's okay.
If anyone wants help setting up a graph like this I can help.