Disclaimer: I'm not a real doctor nor do I have a medical background. Nothing in this entry should be construed as medical advice, it's just my own research and experience. All care but no responsibility taken. Do not use if operating heavy machinery. Not to be used as a life saving device. If symptoms persist, see a doctor.

Beckie posted a great entry recently about people's mindsets and attitudes and how they affect her and her progress.

For me, the entry also triggered the frustration I feel when I read/hear the sorts of excuses and expectations people have for their weight loss (or lack thereof).

Take my mum. Please. [rimshot] Thank you, I'll be here all week, try the fish. It's low in calories and full of omega 3 to help make your coat shiny. And tip your waitress.

Sorry about that. I love my mum, but she is the perfect example here. While she is enormously proud of what I've achieved, she can't understand why she isn't losing any weight herself.

For example, she walks her dog for half an hour every day.

You'd think that would help, wouldn't you?

What she isn't telling you here is that the dog is a 15 year old, arthritic, half deaf and blind Maltese Terrier cross who takes half an hour to shuffle and widdle her way around the block. Sure, mum's getting a half hour walk, but the effort is scarcely enough to raise her pulse. If your heartbeat isn't in the fat-burning zone at least (220 minus your age times 70%), you're probably not exercising hard enough to lose weight.

"But I only eat tiny meals!" she cries in dispair. And it's true, my mum can't eat a lot of food at one sitting.

You'd think that would help, wouldn't you?

What you aren't seeing is the choices she's making. Yes, she will have a tiny dinner, but she'll follow it with dessert. Breakfast might be two thick slices of Schwobs fruit loaf slathered with butter. She keeps lollies (candy) and crackers in the house to snack on. She orders cafe lattes with whole milk and a little cake to eat with it. I don't begrudge her the daily glass of wine because that's good for you, but with all the other sugar and fat she's consuming? Is it any wonder she's not losing weight?

I see this sort of behaviour on blogs all the time and it frustrates me. How can you realistically expect to lose weight if you're not willing to put the effort in to exercise and eat properly?

Another way to ensure I'll surf away from your site is to have unrealistic expectations.

You know what I mean, someone who thinks they'll lose a kilo (or two pounds) a week or more until they get to goal. Here's the sad truth, folks. Your body is unhappy losing more than 1% of its own weight in a week. Any more than that and it starts to think there's a famine and starts conserving energy. Which means it starts storing and hanging onto every fat cell you possess. With a death grip.

(Note: yes, I have been posting losses of over 1% of my body weight recently. However, if you average my losses since I began in February, I'm barely averaging .6kg a week, well below 1% of my total body weight. I also have no expectation of being able to maintain this rate as I get closer to goal.)

Not only that, but even if you are well over 100kg and could realistically expect to lose 1kg a week, chances are that your metabolism is so screwed up, it's just not efficient enough to lose even 1% of your total weight every week.

If you're anything like me, you've crash dieted and starved yourself and done everything short of taking a cheese grater to your thighs to lose weight. That fucks up your metabolism big time. And the sad truth about that is it can take up to six months for your metabolism to realise that you've stopped tormenting it and that it can come out and play again.

It's bloody unfair, but it's the truth. Now, you've seen my photos. I've done really well. And I'm barely losing .6kg (1.3lb) a week on average. Some weeks I lose more. Most weeks I lose less. And my losses will slow down even further as I lose more weight. That's the hard truth. It gets tougher as you get closer to your goal.

Worse still are those who make detailed calculations of what they should be losing. They work out how much exercise it takes to burn off a pound of fat and then bemoan their fate when it doesn't work out the way they planned.

Calculations are based on a perfect system, a scientist calculating how much heat is required to burn fat in a laboratory using laboratory equipment. You know yourself that your body is NOT a perfect system. You can calculate until you're blue in the face but your body will behave as it chooses and you don't get a say in that. You can give it the exercise and nutrients it needs to perform at its peak, but you're stuck with the metabolism that you have and it might be months until your body is performing efficiently.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you have to be an angel and exercise and eat perfectly nor am I saying that any attempt to lose weight will fail, but be realistic about your behaviour and expectations.

If you do a face plant into the entire McDonald's menu one week, don't whine that you put weight on. Of course you did, now move on and work it off.

If you don't do any exercise and don't lose, well big surprise, sister. If you want the results, you've got to get off your arse and work it. If you have an injury, then find exercise that doesn't aggravate it. If it's raining, improvise something indoors. Don't give me excuses. Don't whine that you don't have time. Yes you do, you just need to find it. If you want it that badly, you find a way to do it.

If you don't lose your expected amount each week, deal with it. Your body is doing the best that it can. You can waste time and energy being upset about it if you want, but there's nothing you can do about it and you'd be better off using that energy to exercise. Better yet, stop expecting to lose a particular amount every week.

For me, if I lose half a kilo a week, I'm thrilled. If I lose more, I'm ecstatic. If I lose less, I go back and have a look at why my loss has slowed down. It's not a cue for me to whine and it's certainly not an excuse for me to eat.

I have weeks where I eat insane amounts of food. I acknowledge that I made the choice to do that and the impact it had on my weight and I move on.

I know they say to set a goal date for losing weight, but I haven't. I would like to have reached goal by my next birthday in April. Projecting an average loss of half a kilo a week, that is achievable. However, I also acknowledge that my body is an imperfect system and chances are I won't be able to sustain that rate. This is not the end of the world for me. It's about the journey and what I learn about myself and my health along the way that is more important than the goal. And I will get to goal. It might be in time for my birthday, it might not, but I will get there.

A lot of people waste an awful lot of time and energy focusing on unrealistic expectations and making excuses for not achieving them. Weight loss is simple. Less energy in, more energy out. But it's not easy. You need all that energy focused on doing the best that you can, not worrying about the impossible.

Do us all a favour. Be kind to yourself. Get real about what you are doing and what you can achieve. Then go do it.

This has been another quality rant by Dr Tree™ - Making nutritional and fitness mistakes for 20 years so you don’t have to.