Why do people give up?

sugarfreesquirrel

I should know the answer to this but I don't. I'm on day 5, and it's mostly so easy. It's just making a few small changes to how you usually do things everyday and writing down what you eat. You don't have to do anything else.

Why do people like me quit? I've been unsuccessful hundreds of times. And how do you keep going day after day, week after week?

Machka9

Varying priorities

snowflake954

Yep--for some people life gets in the way. Many come back and try later. Maybe they just weren't ready. Something does click inside when it all comes together.

My very best advice is to make fitness and portion control a habit. Then you'll stick with it. You'll know that the day that you don't exercise and just feel like crap. But, it's crucial that you pick an exercise that you like.

88olds

Start with this- “I should know the answer.” Says who?

Calorie counting works but there’s a pretty long learning curve. You’re right, calorie counting and logging isn’t that tough. But weight loss has 2 parts, eating in a calorie deficit and living with it. It’s the living part that trips people up. For instance, right now it seems pretty easy. But it isn’t going to seem that way all day every day. What do you do when you blow up your numbers? Do you shrug it off, vow to start over tomorrow and then start over a month later?

Here’s how to never have to start over again. Ever. Make your food diary the center of your program. Everything that you eat or drink that has calories gets recorded. Over your number? Log it. Crazy over? Log that too. And you will go over your number sooner or later. Fatigue, loss of concentration, bad planning, bad choices, even math mistakes or misread menus or NI can mess up our numbers. Weight loss is mostly about problem solving and persistence. At the end of every week look over your food diary. How’d you do? Your diary will show you your problem areas. How are you going to do better next time? Keep solving problems long enough and you will get to goal weight. Your food diary is a thing to do. The only way not to do it is to decide not to. Don’t let the voice in your head talk you our of it. We won’t always get our numbers right. Sometimes we do everything right but the scale goes wrong. The scale cannot be controlled. But we can control our food diary. And we can keep trying to improve our plan.

I lost the last 35lbs of 100lbs at Weight Watchers. WW is really just calorie counting dressed up for copyright protection. I went to the meetings. I made Lifetime and kept going to meetings until we moved to another state. I’ve been to hundreds of WW meetings. Heard hundreds of stories about quitting and regaining. The thing I didn’t understand- why do people refuse to keep their diary when they go over their number? Our bodies are going to keep track of it whether we log it or not. Going over our number is a problem to be solved. Everyone goes around saying “We all make mistakes.” But in weight loss people go to pieces for making even one. Or there’s that thing about “Experience is the best teacher.” Why? Because of mistakes. We learn from mistakes. It takes persistence to keep at it when things aren’t going well. Never quit and you won’t need to know why people do it.

ninerbuff

IMO, people tend to be afraid of succeeding. Because once you get there, that's the measuring stick you use and staying there for many is hard. I believe deep down inside, many know how hard it is to maintain the goal they reach and it's much easier to cave in and give up rather than carry on. It happens in sports or just about any competitive contest as well. You win the championship, and the next time you try to repeat, trying to keep up the same hunger and fight to attain it again usually isn't as strong. It's why many teams who win don't end up repeating.
It's so easy to get out of routine and if you do it long enough, getting back to it takes some good effort. And especially as we age, it doesn't get easier as well.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

JaysFan82

What keeps me going is that I've done so well that it would be a shame to screw this all up. I'm so close to hitting my goal that I thought was unfathomable a year ago. I feel 1000% times better. I have more energy at age 40 than my 25 year old baseball teammates.

It's never too late to change your life.

Xellercin

Most things are easy to do for a few weeks.

However, change takes effort and most people don't have a whole lot of extra capacity in their busy, demanding, stressful lives to permanently add more effort into their day.

When life gets tough, which it does, something always gives. And typically, it's the newest added challenge that goes first, not the old, established habits.

So you may find logging food, maintaining a deficit, or going to the gym easy. But then life rears its ugly, difficult, stressful head and suddenly the first thing to fall off your list of crap to do that day is exercise, or logging, or struggling through a new, healthy recipe.

Not when you could just skip the workout and throw together an old faithful of the same pasta and cheesy bread dinner that you've made ten thousand times in your life (sub whatever your easy, comforting, calorie dense go-to meal is).

Something will ALWAYS be dropped. This isn't failure, this is a normal function of life, and it's totally unavoidable.

Most people don't know how to get healthy habits ingrained enough that they aren't the ones to be dropped.