Join c/fitness let’s fuckin GET IT comrade [unironic] [not clickbait]

But first and foremost I’ve learned about the idea of “yes and” for food cravings. Like, if you want chips, you can put them on top of/as a side for a lean meat with a side of veggies or something. Ice cream could be a base for fruit with flax seeds and nuts. That way updating your diet isn’t a depriving yourself of foods you want, but it’s about making less room for low nutritional meal choices. E.g. I woooould gorge on McDonald’s, but I just had all this seed&nut ice cream. I think that’s a good way to breed success.

I think a way that breeds a lot of failure and bad feelings is using calorie counting before learning habits that inspire more nutritional density. If you portion out 2 baconators and don’t eat for the rest of the day you’re gonna feel like garbage.

Ultimately, I don’t think you deserve to feel bad about your body for any reason besides your own. Your endeavors for more health don’t have to be based on self-hatred to be successful. Cbum, Mr. Olympia, talks on this point about how people get mad at him because he’s not “of the mindset” with all the rage and pain. However, at the end of the day, if your motivational calculus tells you to change your body, it will always come back, at some level, to taking some responsibility for your diet and exercise.

@WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net had a great reply, so consider this merely an add-on too it:

I do have quite a few thoughts about this. But first of all, kudos for you for wanting to get healthy; that’s great. And we’re absolutely all here for you!

I do think there is an aspect that is similar to other addictions, where there’s a bit of a hump that you kind of have to force yourself over, and that part sucks (and it sucks again when you fall off the horse–because nobody gets it first try–and have to get over the hump again.) I personally think it’s important to sort of face that head on and just recognize “I’m forcing myself to do something hard, and it’s not going to feel good. But I will feel better later.” When you’re feeling down and are craving food, denying yourself that will absolutely make you feel cranky and even physically uncomfortable. Just like if you were quitting smoking. But, you can also try and take pride in that discomfort. The more uncomfortable you feel (within reason–don’t starve yourself!!), the more that means you’re accomplishing something impressive in terms of self-discipline and getting healthy.

I think it can be helpful to do something to “cut yourself off”, like brush your teeth at 8pm and tell yourself “no food after 8. I already brushed my teeth for the night and I’m already in my pj’s and ready for bed and everything. I’m not going to start eating now and do that all over again.”

You can try relaxing supplements like CBD (I think that one on its own doesn’t tend to give munchies??), chamomile, ashwaganda, etc. Heck, you can even go masturbate or something if that’s your thing. Take a bubble bath. Whatever! But doing something else will both take your mind off food and directly address the anxiety that’s making you want to stress eat.

Wean yourself off of comfort eating with healthier snacks. rice cakes, plain popcorn, apple slices… Also, eat plenty of fiber and drink plenty of water throughout the day. On that same note, there are some foods you can more or less eat as much of as you want without consequences, including watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, cucumber, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots.

Finally, diet alone is a really, really hard way to lose weight. Exercise is pretty much essential. But it doesn’t have to be hard! Just getting steps in is enough. Move around during the day, or go for a walk after work. etc etc. The other nice thing is that the two go hand in hand–when you exercise, you’ll feel better and better about yourself. And dieting will make the exercise easier, which will make you feel better about dieting and make you feel even better!

i cannot stress enough how good the results I had from using a rowing machine were. I spent like 240ish on mine, there are cheaper ones though or you could try one at a gym to see how well it works out for you first. But like having any exercise machine is great for me because fuck working out outside, I want to do shit in air conditioning and with a fan on me thanks.

Anyway, I tried like running almost every day for a year + calisthenics, I tried using a rowing machine (set at a heavy resistance) almost every day for a year, I lost way more weight and got swole af with the latter

if you decide to do this just remember you’ll have to do it for a month or two before you start to look at yourself in the mirror and go “woah this is happening” but trust me you will