AIBU to ask how to deal with wasted time? Feel so low

[12monthsback]

I’m so unhappy, my weight is the root cause of all this. I’m 17 stone, and I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot of things because of my weight, and because I didn’t want to do anything. My kids are missing out, and I feel so frustrated and angry, because if I’ve just lost the weight things would have been different. There’s a great 24 hour gym just opened 18 months ago 5-7 mins from my house, and I often just sit back and think, if I’ve just signed up when it first opened I would have been 9/10 stone now. If I could just go 12 months back, and used that time wisely things would have been different.

I’m going to the gym 1st March, but I still can’t help but feel sad and frustrated over the ‘lost’ time.

The weight loss isn't going to come from the gym. It's going to come from how much you put in your mouth.

You could do zero exercise and still lose weight.
Conversely, if you go to the gym and eat the same amount as now, you'll drop a little bit and then no more.

The size you are, you'll be knackered very quickly at the gym and not burn enough calories to make much difference anyway. Walking on a treadmill or floating on a crosstrainer will make you sweat and that's it.

It's your food you need to sort out OP. Not joining a gym.
For the time you'd spend in the gym, you could be out walking and get the same effect for free.
Once you've sorted your food out so you drop the weight and been out walking DAILY to build up some stamina, then join the gym to improve your fitness levels.
But it's fitness levels that the gym helps with, not weight.

Why wait till 1st March? Start today? Start eating healthily and gentle excerise to start with (walks, jog, yoga?) no need to hold off for another two weeks.

Also check out slimming world, really good food plans.

YABU Today is the day to start

Use that energy toward the gym.
Be angry about the wasted time, and use it as the drive to a new start!
Turn it positive!
Good luck

Op today is the 15th so you could do a fortnight of walking daily in the park for 30 mins before you start the gym. It would help to build your fitness and equally important, will produce endorphins which will counteract low mood or low seritonin levels which will help you stick to your diet. You need to be in a good place mentally to change your diet and stick to a new healthy eating plan. Maybe go with a friend to start?

The gym with have a negligible impact on your weight at this point.. It comes down to diet - stop either overeating or eating crap or both. The gym is not the issue, what you are putting in your mouth is the problem.

Start walking everywhere and especially find something more active to do if you head for the kitchen, even housework.

Harness this feeling of time lost and when your enthusiasm wavers keep reminding yourself that you don't want this feeling again if wasted time.

I'm same op. This year is the year I don't want to get to summer for a 12th year unable to wear nice clothes etc.
I've never been so unfit. Today I did 10 sit ups. Sounds small but it's better than nothing.

All those saying excersie won't help.

It does.
. Mentally and emotionally. Once you start to move you feel and see body getting better of course it helps you to control what your eating!!

Theres a while until the 1st March so stop wasting time and get out and walk. Walk 30mins or an hour a day until 1st march and start changing your diet now.

I've started exercising this year and tbh I've not lost much weight as I still eat a terrible diet. I need to start sorting that and you can to

Good luck

Op, I'm sorry to say I don't think your thinking is right, either that or you've missed something from your post.

You'd not loose that much weight from going to th gym in that time frame, you need to change your eating habits.

Have you factored this in?

@Forgetfebuary I agree that exercise is amazing for your energy, mental health and determination.

But she's not saying it's for that. She thinks she's going to lose weight miraculously by going to the gym. She isn't.

And also, exercise 100% helps with those, but appropriate exercise for your fitness level. If she can't even participate in children level activities then she's not going to be able to do a good enough gym workout to make a discernable difference. She's going to walk at a snails pace on a treadmill, fanny around on a crosstrainer, do an aerobics class and give 50% because everything hurts and she feels crap, she'll sweat a bit and then go home thinking she's done something. She won't be able to run at a fast pace on a treadmill. She won't be able to do a weight training programme (better than cardio for weight loss) because she's not confident about herself so is hardly go in to the free weight area with a load of fit gym bunnies.
She's big. So she'll hurt her knees, hips and ankles doing any meaningful cardio. And give up.

She thinks going to the gym will make her thin. It won't.
So when it doesn't work, she'll become defeatist, eat more and think she is an anomaly of science who defies the laws of physics and whine to her doctor that "she's tried everything and something must be wrong".

She needs educating on how to lose weight.
Not Slimming World, which teaches overeaters nothing about portion control.
Not the gym, which you need to work your arse off in to make a difference WHILST eating less.

She needs to basically count calories.
And walk. For free.

Whilst she's doing that and saving on the gym, she increases her walking distances (and therefore stamina and strength).
She saves the money she would have spent doing the gym 'incorrectly'.
Six months in, when she's dropped weight and can walk long distances, THEN she does to the gym. Because she'll be stronger, fitter and motivated. She spends the 6 months of gym membership she's saved on a personal trainer that can put together a weight training plan for her and beast her every week. Who shows her how to do the gym properly.

Ok Bobby. 😂😂

You've had lots of advice on here OP, I just wanted to add something that I find helpful...

Maybe you "needed" that time to work through some of the emotional and mental barriers before you could begin your weight loss. So the last 12 months aren't wasted time, it's time spent getting you to the stage you are today when you're ready to actually book a gym membership starting on 1st March, ready to write this thread etc.

For what it's worth I find having some tangible exercise goals a really good way to start weight loss because you've made a commitment to a change and you can take a very definite action towards helping it happen (of course it will include some eating habits changing as well)

You're closer to being where you want to be than before and can move forward from this point, good luck

Thank you so much for your kind words. I know losing weight is mostly down to dieting, and I'm working on that. But I really want to combine healthy eating with gym, to get fit and get me out of the house. I've got an exercise bike at home, but find it difficult to use it when I got DS at home. And even when he's at nursery, I have no motivation to get on it. So I NEED to get out of the house, I used to love running pre kids, and I want to start doing that again at the gym.

I got my heart set on 1st March because right now it's half term, and the kids at home. And once they're back at school, I'm going to get all my stuff ready for gym. I've already starting eating healthy. I've got a holiday book in August so I really need to get in shape. As another poster already said, I can't go through another summer being fat. Last summer was horrendous, I feel awful.

Hopefully, I can use this thread to update you guys on my progress. Will be back soon.

Does it take you a week to get your stuff ready for the gym? Why not go as soon as they’re back at school?

In terms of your diet, do you know what you need to do to help how you approach food? You don’t have to answer here but is it portion size, too much snacking, emotional eating, boredom eating? It helps to identify what you’re currently doing that isn’t giving you the results you want. Having an array of different nutritious things ready to hand helps most people. Not identifying everything you enjoy and depriving yourself but making healthier choices, having healthy but satisfying snacks to hand, eating lots of different and interesting veg with your meals, that sort of thing. Most people have made the decision to “lose weight” or “eat better” and then fall down by being too drastic for the change to be sustainable or are vague about they want and then don’t end up changing much.

I would 100% recommend slimming world. I've been very active my whole life, but never lost as much weight as when I did sw. I liked the weight ins and responsibility to go. Staying for the groups also really helped.

I also would recommend the couch to 5k app. I hate running, and decided to give it a go, genuinely, never found anything else that got me so fit so quickly.

I'd also recommend making yourself accountable. Find a 5k run in July to enter.

You can do it!!!!

Every day is a fresh start.

It sounds like you have already made a great start op! Wishing you the best of luck. I also want to lose weight before the summer!

If you can't be doing with sitting on an exercise bike now when there is no effort over and above getting off the settee - why would it automatically happen when you've got to get ready, sort out childcare, get your stuff together, get out of the house and travel to a gym?

I love the gym for it being out, air conditioned, peaceful, no need to clean the shower afterwards, because it's a safe environment (unlike the streets), I don't have the space for equipment indoors (or a swimming pool) and it's a time where I can reset my head and enjoy moving and pushing myself, followed by a sauna/steam room, shower and blow drying my hair, applying makeup and coming home via the wanky snacks and fruit in the adjacent Waitrose. It's not to lose weight - it's being done for its own sake. (I did actually shift 7 stone, but that was from changing what I ate and how much I ate, very little of it was due to doing something I enjoyed).

Food and activity are linked, but are of differing levels of relevance.

You want to run again - well, you're going to need to get a lot of weight off first, as shin splints, knee problems, hip pain, Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis are fucking painful. But you also need to get the good feelings from exercise to keep you from eating your feelings down - so less weightbearing and more strength gains and aerobic fitness are needed, along with stabilising your joints, as everything shifts when your weight changes. Which could mean what I did - warm up with 20 mins on the rower, then 20 mins on something else, a slow circuit on weights, then a swim - or yoga, aqua aerobics, just a swim when you're tired or aching, steam room - whatever. But very little high impact work until I was back within the overweight instead of morbidly obese category, and then still far less than other forms of exercise.

The gym can be a treat for you - but you can start treating yourself now with nice food that is lower in calories but higher in nutrition - and the couple of pounds you could lose in a fortnight show that you can do it, with or without the indulgence (a lovely, lovely one, but an indulgence, all the same) of coming home via the gym every couple of days.

You can do it - but it's not dependent upon you going to the gym. It's dependent upon you being kind to yourself and focusing on the food choices you make, not beating yourself up by saying it would have been fixed by now if only...