Need motivation to be Balanced

blisslyfe

I make bad food choices and over eat but not too much I'm 30 pounds over weight. I don't want to give up chocolate completely. But, I would like to eat healthier and have the motivation to workout more. I've always been on a rollercoaster. I've even tired many fab diets. Any inspiration or ideas to becoming free? Just being instead of worrying and being unhealthily?

kimny72

I find pre-logging before I eat something really helps. I save 100-200 cals for an after dinner snack. When I decide what I want (ice cream, Oreos, pretzels, whatever) I log whatever portion fits in my calories, weigh out my portion, put the package away, and THEN I eat it.

I do the same with work snacks - I pre-log the lunch and snack I'm bringing to make sure everything fits.

The other thing that works best for me is I get plenty of nutritious food into my meals, then I can have 10% or so of my calories from snacks that are literally whatever I want

And sometimes I have a bad day. I take extra servings and go overboard. When that happens, I try to learn from it, shrug it off, and get right back on track tomorrow. I don't try to "make up for it", as that ends up leading to the roller coaster for me.

Good luck!

CSARdiver

I focused on what matters - calories. Alot of this learned from watching others and reading up on MFP. I challenged all of what I thought I "knew" - such as "good" and "bad" food choices.

I ditched motivation - this is an emotion and comes and goes. Stick with discipline. Discipline is a practice and reinforces habits and behaviors.

Start out with small achievable goals - hit these and then move onto larger goals.

As @kimny72 recommends budget in advance. If you look at my diary you'll find the same entries every morning, snack, lunch, and afternoon snack - the dinner and post workout snack is up for grabs, but I leave enough room for ice cream, chocolate, scotch, etc.

cbihatt

Try a small deficit. Set you goal to lose 0.5 pound per week. It will take longer to lose the weight, but you won’t have to restrict your food much. And you don’t have to give up chocolate. You may have to reduce the amount you eat, but you can find a way to make it fit in your calorie allotment.

As for exercise, you have to find an activity you enjoy so that you won’t need motivation to do it.

amusedmonkey

You only need to lose 30 lbs. If you think about it, that's barely a 100 calories difference between your current intake and your future intake if you plan to maintain the loss. I'm pretty sure you can find little ways here and there to cut 100 calories or add 100 calories of exercise in total without completely overhauling your diet and activity level.

Keeping that in mind will help you adopt less drastic changes for your diet. Just think of weight loss as training wheels for maintenance. Pick a small deficit and act as if you're already in maintenance. If you want to eat healthier, add, don't subtract, foods you wish to continue eating during maintenance. Pick a sustainable level of activity and start there. It's not set in stone, if you find yourself wanting to be more active in the future you'll just be more active. For now, just do the changes you think you can handle easily.