I have no idea how to stay motivated , please help?

swegjones69

I’ve never been happy with my weight. I’m 140 pounds and 5’0, and I really want to lose 10-15 pounds in 2 months before I go on vacation. Is that even possible to do? I have no idea where to start and how to achieve that goal... is there any advice or beginners diet/exercise that I could follow? I always become unmotivated so fast and never stick to it!!

concordancia

Motivation is your reason for doing this. Only you can figure that out.
Priority means making the time and energy to do the work.
Dedication means doing the work whether you feel like it or not. It comes from identifying your motivation and setting your priorities.

Did you set up your profile and choose a weekly goal, preferably of about 1lb/month? Eat food that comes to that calorie total. Take the next two months to learn about nutrition so that most of the foods you choose will help you be healthy over your lifetime.

There are no shortcuts.

RadishEater

concordancia wrote: »

Motivation is your reason for doing this. Only you can figure that out.
Priority means making the time and energy to do the work.
Dedication means doing the work whether you feel like it or not. It comes from identifying your motivation and setting your priorities.

Did you set up your profile and choose a weekly goal, preferably of about 1lb/month? Eat food that comes to that calorie total. Take the next two months to learn about nutrition so that most of the foods you choose will help you be healthy over your lifetime.

There are no shortcuts.

Great answer! I just want to emphasize learning about nutrition can be daunting because you have to weed out bad advice but it definitely worth it in the long run.

I found thinking of goals in a very short time span and focusing on them to be beneficial when I started.

The first week I started I chose to pick .5lb/week loss and log what I eat to see if I am in the calorie goals. And with some minor tweaking of reducing the oil I cooked with just a smidge, eating a more reasonable portion of cheese and chocolate I found it wasn't very hard to log everything. The next week I did the same thing and tweaked some food to be a bit healthier. 327 days later I lost 25 lbs and have been living in maintenance mode for the past couple of months!

And the piece of advice that you probably don't want to hear, which I have been learning: everything doesn't magically become easier in maintenance mode, but if you built good sustainable habits during weightloss it is doable.

1BlueAurora

If you're diligent about setting a weight loss rate of 1 pound per week, you'll have lost about 8 pounds in 2 months. Just log your food and exercise as accurately as you can, and stay within the calorie limit that MFP has set for you. And please do not let yourself feel discouraged if you are short of your goal. So many people set a time limit then are disappointed when they don't reach it. It sure is counterproductive to feel like a failure when actually you're on the road to success. This is a long-term goal, so be happy with any progress you make. Try to eat reasonably well while on vacation, then when you're home get right back to using MFP. Then you can work to reach your ultimate weight loss goal.

Motivation: you need to decide why you want to lose weight. It can be for health or you want to get stronger or you want to fit into your favorite jeans, whatever it is. What you need to develop is discipline. Eat the food you need, then stop for the day after you've hit your daily calorie limit. If you plan to walk or go to the gym, put on your workout clothes and GO DO IT even if you don't feel like it. Good intentions don't get you results. You'll often find that 10 minutes into the exercise you didn't feel like doing, you'll be proud of yourself for accomplishing it. They say 90% of success is just showing up. Best of luck!

Courtscan2

If by motivation, you mean that initial "I can do this! I'm so excited for this change!" feeling that makes you leap out of bed to workout at 5 am for the first week or so, then the unfortunate thing is that there is no way to keep that, except by constantly quitting and restarting, which will get you nowhere. Great way to get you started, but in order to stay where you want to be, you need (boring as it is) habit. Just keep at it for long enough, don't expect to feel thrilled about it every day, and eventually the habit of the thing will keep you going. It stops being "I'll try to get up and workout first thing" and becomes "I get up and workout. That's just what I do." Or count your calories, or make healthy choices or whatever it is you are committing to.