Sort of newbie

KCoolBeanz

Hi Everyone!

After much feeling sorry for myself, I have decided to re-join, and give some weight loss an honest go.

My relationship with food is strange. I tend to eat because I have this thought that the awesome food (read: terrible for me food) will somehow make me feel better. When in the end, I feel terrible because I ate terribly, and I mentally beat myself up for it. I eat when I'm emotional, stressed, or bored. I have a difficult time balancing business with eating better. When I joined previously, I don't think I was ever really honest with myself why I was eating the way I had been.

I know that whatever I end up loosing, needs to start with a change in the way I think.

I'm hoping to find some support from those of you that are going through something similar, and I'm hoping to make some friends along the way too (so feel free to add me!).

Thanks!

yasdnilear

Thanks for posting! Totalllllllly can relate. I joined once before too and wasn't serious!! Hope this time around is better!!

kltobin2010

Welcome back! I think there are a lot of us here that have been where you have been (like me)! If you would like some support and motivation, feel free to add me....I can always use more myself! Cheers!

jbuntu

Behavioral changes are by far the hardest. I don't know how many times I bought my last can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco before finally quitting (14 years ago now). Now it's the same with dieting and exercise. I slip all the time but I try not to count the failures, just how many times I get back up again.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Celebrate when you replace a bad action/habit with a good one. Let's just keep moving in the right direction and we'll eventually get there.

KCoolBeanz

jbuntu...I'm also a closet smoker. I tend to be a career "quitter". How did you finally kick the habit and stick with it?

jbuntu

Tough question. The only thing that ever worked for me was cold turkey. Here's what I did:

Find a long weekend when you don't have to be around anybody. This is the detox period. It only takes about 72 hours to break the physical addiction to nicotine. I chose to do it away from everybody because I'd get so irritable and needed to prevent any accidental homicides. :-) After completing detox, be prepared to never, ever cheat again or you'll have to start all over. Then it's all about breaking the bad mental habit. You have to talk yourself out of that cigarette after a meal, or with a beer, or on on a break, or whenever your favorite times are. Remember, you're not physically addicted now so you only have to overcome the mental cravings.

Unfortunately, it will be tough to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, but that is OKAY. Without nicotine you'll be starving all the time at first. It's more important to quit smoking though, so set your initial weight loss goals low at first. Just try to at least maintain where you are at and try to eat healthy foods when cravings hit (fruits, veggies, nuts, yogurt; I also really like Zone Perfect dark chocolate bars). After a month, you'll start feeling so good about beating nicotine that you'll be ready to really focus on diet and exercise.

Stay positive. True happiness can only come from within. It's a fallacy that happiness must be pursued out "there" somewhere. If you know any happy people, you can see that they're happy wherever, whenever. I wish I could be one of them, and I'm working on it.

Let me know if I can help at any time.

gparks

Welcome back, I have also joined stopped and rejoined a couple of times. You can't give up, keep going because I believe there is strength in numbers, so we have to keep encouraging each other to reach our goals and together we can. Good luck.