Lack of motivation hard to curb

adcraw4life
adcraw4life Posts: 9 Member
in Motivation and Support
So I am having the hardest time getting my motivation back. I am seeing an increase in my anxiety and depression and even some medical issues are creeping up again. You would think that would be motivation enough but the mental health is making it hard to get going again. Any suggestions or motivations you can give will help! Thanks for stopping by to check out the post.

Replies

  • littlegreenparrot1
    littlegreenparrot1 Posts: 702 Member
    When I have been struggling with my mental health in the past I have had to keep it very simple and do it a bit at a time to get back into better habits.

    I set myself rules to start with. Easy ones - I'll eat a proper breakfast, at tea break I'll have fruit and not 6 chocolate biscuits. I'll cook a proper dinner and not just have toast. At that stage I didn't worry about calories, more about eating something with some nutritional value as I was mostly eating biscuits and peanut butter on toast. Which doesn't make for great health, or make you feel good.

    Eventually I was able to pay more attention to it but it was a slow process. Be gentle on yourself, small steps still get you there. If you can get some exercise that you like it will only help, I will always feel better for an hour spent out walking in the park or a swim.
  • gorple76
    gorple76 Posts: 162 Member
    This is such a personal thing so firstly read suggestions as they are intended - just suggestions. My suggestion (which seems to be working for me at the moment) is to take an objective, almost scientific approach. Set yourself a time period to track everything you eat (eg 2 weeks), and start collecting data. Calories compared with weight gain or loss. Then work out what deficit you need to start moving in the direction you want. Then take blocks of time (I’m going 4 weeks at a time) and apply your deficit, gathering data every day as you go. At the end of 4 weeks, review and adjust. This approach has removed the need to motivate myself to do anything other than log my food. I’m finding sticking to the deficit is easier as I know I have to log everything that goes on. At the moment I’m not trying to push activity, hitting macros or any of the other things which can help. They can wait. At the moment I just want to get some consistency and ownership over my weight. It feels unemotional (good) and relatively straightforward.
  • boilerdawg2009
    boilerdawg2009 Posts: 979 Member
    Find the simplest thing you can accomplish and focus on that. Success in something small can change your outlook and start a cascading effect!
  • 88olds
    88olds Posts: 4,538 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    Make things as easy as possible and take it step by step.

    Build the habit of logging your food, just log everything for a while. After a few weeks, try to aim for a specific calorie goal, just a bit lower than what you're used to. When you've mastered that, work down gradually till you're in a modest calorie deficit. Don't make things any harder by excluding your favorite foods or aiming for an aggressive weight loss rate.
    In parallel or after that, you can try to become more active gradually. Increasing your step count, for example. Our doing short workouts.

    Motivation is fleeting in the best of circumstances. What works better is creating habits (like brushing your teeth, people aren't motivated to do that, it's just something you do) which is easier if it do it gradually and make it as least unpleasant as possible (requiring the least amount of willpower).

    ^^^This

    I’m a motivation skeptic. It comes and goes. It’s not going to get us far in something as long term as weight loss. We need good habits and routines.

    Try this. Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper and make two lists. One list are the reasons you want to lose weight. The other are reasons you don’t. Think it over. Give it a day or two. Put down everything you think of even if it sounds frivolous or silly. Some people try to deny that they have don’ts. But we’ve all got them. Otherwise we’d think of losing weight and just do it.

    Now look at your lists. What deals or compromises can you make with yourself to get each side some of what it wants? Avoid the temptation to want to run the don’ts into the ditch. The don’ts are legitimate reasons not to lose weight. Why are they legitimate?
    Because they are yours.

    I’ve lost 100+ lbs and have maintained for years taking the easy way out every time I found it. Lots of people reject the easy way because it takes more time. But if we have a program we can live with time can actually be on our side in this.




  • adcraw4life
    adcraw4life Posts: 9 Member
    Thank you all so much for taking time out to reply. I have struggled my whole adult life with how I view weight loss and I am so hard on myself when I don’t stick with something. This last time was a major accomplishment for me because I stuck with it for well over a year. I also had a job I walked all the time and my job now I sit mostly all day but my job now is so much less stress. I have been successful before and I believe my major issue is trying to look at the larger picture too fast and not take small steps.
  • zagadee
    zagadee Posts: 22 Member
    Hello Beautiful people 😃
    Am new here trying to find a partner who we can support each other on this journey I need motivation I have been on this journey for all my life am 50yrs now hope anyone can understand.
    We can motivate, support, encourage, advise each other I stay in Georgia Augusta.but still we find ways to uplift ourselves throughout
    Thanks

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