What helps you stay motivated?

journeytohappy2014

I honestly think motivation and dedication are my two biggest issues when it comes to changing my lifestyle for a slimmer body. I can easily eat healthy for a week or two see perhaps a slight change then I always lose that motivation and drive I had before. Most people say when they see a result it then becomes easier or addictive. This doesn't seen to be the case for me. Maybe it's impatience. What makes you keep going?

ReturnToRunning

I find the individual things that at the beginning get me really excited. . .be it reading someones success story. . making saturday a day when I hit a new distance running. . . or time trials. . . .those things can be the best inspiration. I always turn back to those

rayfu75

What keeps me going is the fact I'm getting older. Wanting to continue to be able to play with my youngest kid (5) the same way I did when my oldest (19) was his age. Competing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu also helps keep me going. I need to keep my weight in check and eating well helps me to be able to test myself 4-5 times a year in local competitions. Maybe find something other than eating "healthy" just to eat healthy to keep you motivated?

lucylousmummy

i've got 2 pictures of me taken when i was at my heaviest, i keep one on my fridge, and i've got one on my phone, they serve as both motivator and deterrent cos i'm never going back there

JesterMFP

I don't always feel motivated to exercise. I don't always feel motivated to count calories or weigh food or put down the packet of food when I've eaten enough for the day. I've had to accept that fact. That feeling of motivation is not always there. It's not always exciting.

However. The results of doing those things are important to me. Being healthy, hopefully avoiding the diabetes and heart disease that run in my family, managing my depression and anxiety, being fit and active, hopefully entering old age fit and active and independent, being comfortable with my appearance, being able to fit into the kinds of clothes I like etc... these things matter to me and make it worth it to do what needs to be done.

I also lack motivation to go to work sometimes. When my alarm goes off, I rarely feel like jumping out of bed and rushing to work. If it's a horrible day I'd much rather stay in bed. If it's a nice day, I'd much rather spend it doing fun things for myself. But, having a job is important to me. Paying my bills, and having that financial security, and developing my career etc are all important to me, so it doesn't matter if I feel motivated day to day. It doesn't even matter if I like my job or not, I can't wait to feel motivated, I just have to get on with it.

A lot of it's about habit. Do you only brush your teeth when you feel motivated? No, you have the reason you do it (oral hygiene, not having your teeth fall out, not having bad breath, whatever) and then you have the fact that it's a habit to get up, go into the bathroom, brush your teeth, all without really thinking about it.

Often, when you're seeing big changes on the scale and your clothes are getting too big, and people are complimenting you... can be exciting and has a momentum of it's own. That novelty wears off though, especially when you reach your goal and are no longer seeing significant changes. Once you're in the maintenance phase, you need the results to be important enough to keep you doing what you have to do. Patience is not the word. Healthy weight management is a life long process, so make it a process that you can live with. Don't be "on a diet", counting the time until you can get back to "normal". Create a lifestyle that becomes your new "normal", that you can live with forever. Make it habitual.

In short:
1. identify solid reasons for doing what you're doing. Doing it for vanity's sake is enough for some people, but for a lot of people, that can be put on the back burner quite easily when it all gets too hard or boring. People who are doing it for health/fitness reasons (perhaps on top of vanity reasons) seem to find it easier to keep that momentum going.

2. Don't be super restrictive - have a smallish calorie deficit, keep eating food you love to eat, do exercise that you enjoy doing so it doesn't become a chore. Have rest days. Make it work for you so you don't feel like you're on a diet and you don't feel like you have to fall of any wagons.

3. Create habits. Make tracking your food a habit. Make exercising a habit. Make getting your fruit & veg in (or whatever) a habit. Make it so that you do these things without even really thinking about it.

boxpunk

Other than weight loss, nice clothes, and tough mudder in October, my job will pay me $2 a day to ride my bike to work

Fivepts

I have three stacks of pants in my closet. One are too big, one just right and one too small. My weight went up and down a lot with kids. I keep aiming for that smaller stack. I try on the pants when the scale isn't moving and when I can fit into another pair of pants that keeps me from binging or losing hope.

nanadayana

I relapsed after lost 45lbs in 2009. I lived in denial for past years and feeling demotivated to start losing weight again. Now that I've started again, I tell myself, lets do it in a fun way. I wanna be realistic about it. So I changed the way I treat my food. I used to avoid some foods just because I'd feel guilty after eating them. Now I've learned that we have to respect our food by enjoy eating them moderately. I start chewing my food slowly and enjoy the taste of it. I can finally make peace with them.

What keeps me motivated, I always tell myself that this is not just about losing weight. It's a lifestyle that I want to commit. I try to move on from my past failure. and I hope I'll stay positive along this journey.

We can do it. Good luck to all of us!

RaspberryKeytoneBoondoggle

Right now, keeping track of my Measurements keeps me going.
It changes all the time for me though. When I run out of reasons I look for more.

florentinovillaro

Not wishing this on you, but sometimes you need a life threatening moment to motivate you to do whatever it takes to burn it off to save your life. Find your reason why, and the how will come. Treat it as if your life, boyfriend, husband, kids, family depended on it.

ChampCrucial

I been putting in that work! What will my friends and family say when I look the same. I am all about fitness and moving. I want to fit a the clothes I never have and be a model. Why stop now?

niqu11

I honestly think motivation and dedication are my two biggest issues when it comes to changing my lifestyle for a slimmer body. I can easily eat healthy for a week or two see perhaps a slight change then I always lose that motivation and drive I had before. Most people say when they see a result it then becomes easier or addictive. This doesn't seen to be the case for me. Maybe it's impatience. What makes you keep going?

I'm definitely motivated by surrounding myself with like minded people. So being on MFP certainly helps! When I hear about others pushing themselves or reaching new goals it makes me work harder. I'm on Facebook a lot more per day than MFP so I make sure to "like" a lot of fitness pages. I also run a motivation group, and seeing everyone's daily fitness updates really gets me pumped up to stay on track.

I also love to switch up my workouts to keep myself excited about exercise. I take all different classes at the gym and I'm constantly buying new home workouts so that I never grow bored of a program. Variety has been key for me!

themommie

I agree with jestermfp. Ehen I first started I wrote down all the reasons for losing weight when I need motivation I go back to it and reread it. I also look at my before and after pics and remind myself I dont want to go back there

GummyHuman

I was raised by a serial dieter in the 80's. I decided I hated dieting by the age of 12 (yes, I had been on many by then, and I was not even overweight) and I thought I would never be able to do anything about my weight after that so I never even tried dieting again... ever. I gained weight every year of my life steadily, until a decade or so ago when I got into jetskiing, which is apparently just enough calorie burn to slow my gain down to the speed of aging denim. (I wore the same jeans for 10 years) But I slowed that down too late, I was already 200+ (215 was PROBABLY the highest - never went near scales) with the diet of a hung over college kid. Life was great! Who needs to be happy with their own body? Psh! Not me! ... Until the doc told me I had high blood pressure (that jerk!) and prescribed medication for it.

That was in September of 2013, at the age of 39. That's when I decided that I cared enough about myself to not let myself die young. I was not in it to look good. I was in it to never pop one of those prescribed pills and live to tell the tale.

So fear was my motivation for quite a while.. a couple of months. I didn't think. I just did. I didn't put anything in my mouth until I had googled it to see if it was OK to eat. I knew NOTHING about nutrition! I quit soda (because I woke up and realized Diabetes was next), quit fast food (which was a daily, sometimes twice a day occurrence), started manually tracking my sodium intake, started getting on my kayak and my bike, and started doing some cardio vids I found online (to lose the 10 pounds the doc said I should lose).

Then I realized that my clothes were too loose, so I bought a few new things and then people started commenting on how I looked, noticing the weight loss... and then it became about something else entirely. That was a great motivation.

Then, in December, I just happened to get a full body picture taken of myself and decided to compare it to a pic of myself in July 2013. I was completely blown away by the difference and that was another new great motivation.

I had two guys buy me drinks in the same week (yes, I am a lush). More motivation!

My second round of smaller clothes is now too big. More motivation!

Coworkers are asking my advice on weight loss. More motivation!

I squatted 95 pounds and my thighs are looking hot, even to me. More motivation!

I have never had so much motivation. Can't wait to see what's next!

firelight4321

My motivation is actually pretty vain... so I can rub it in my fat family's faces. They keep trying to diet and failing, giving some stupid excuses when they fail. I wanna show them it can be done easily with focus and control. So far, it's been pretty easy.

ModernNerd

I don't know about staying perpetually motivated, but I've found that intentionally sabatoging my bad habits works delightfully :happy: For instance, I don't keep much loose change in my bag so that I'm not tempted to toodle over to the vending machine. I set up morning meetings so that I'm more likely to do an early workout afterward. I also have tried to replace the junk food in my kitchen with healthy alternatives so every time I reach in for chips I'm twarted by a Quest bar *shakes fist at self*

Best of luck everybody :flowerforyou:

bwogilvie

For me, it was a combination of things. I love long-distance cycling but found that the hills around where I live were really slowing me down, because I was carrying 50-60 extra pounds. But I also was told my my doctor that my cholesterol was on the border and my blood pressure was getting too high, despite bicycling over 2000 miles a year and being fairly fit aerobically. And then, I was getting tired of sitting on the sofa in the evening and having to deal with a bulging gut making me uncomfortable. Remembering what it was like to be thin, a couple decades ago, helped me keep up my motivation.

clfhanger

My motivation so far has been how I feel physically and mentally when I take care of my body by eating healthy and staying active. I am also motivated to stay healthy to lower my chances of heart disease, etc. I want to be able to participate in activities without being out of breath after 5 minutes.

sonjarogers72

The fact that I feel good overall..and I look better in my clothes!!!:bigsmile: