Three Strikes and I'm Out

Thanks for the encouragement! I know it's an excuse, but life had been pretty hectic for me, as a family member was in the hospital for 7 weeks. Thank God she's better now! I think that gave me an excuse to go sabotage my health. I know...one day at a time. I can do this -- I just lost track. I also need to remember it's a lifestyle change.

*snip*..., but life gets in the way sometimes ...*snip*

I will freely admit, I haven't read all the responses, and I may be repeating someone else, but when I first skimmed your original post, the quoted text leapt out at me. Your perspective may be helping to defeat you. If you tell yourself that life gets in the way of your weight loss routine, you are looking at it as if your weight loss goals are something seperate from your life. If you want to be successful, you need to make your workout, and diet routines a part of your life, not something outside of it.

That being said, the next thing you should probably look at is your goal setting process. Are your goals written down? Are they SMART goals? Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely? Have you set too ambitious an agenda for yourself, and want to lose too much too quickly? You called your weght loss process a journey. Are you making sure you enjoy the journey along the way? Make it fun and you are more likely to stick with it.

Make it reasonable. Break your goal into smaller chunks. Much like the old adage of "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." most definitely applies to weight loss. If you are trying to drop 100 pounds, don't rush it and try to get there in 1 year. Yes it is possible, but maybe it is too much for you in that time frame. Break your big goal into smaller milestone goals. When I started, I saw the need to drop 100-125 pounds. If I would have gone into my lifestyle change with the idea, I was going to lose all of that immediately, I would have set myself up for disappointment and failure. So, I made myself little 10% goals. I was 280, so I told myself, I was going to concentrate on losing 28 pounds to start with. I set myself a goal of losing that in 6 months. When I hit my goal early, I said OK. I'm 250 now, I need to lose 25 more pounds. I still have a way to go to get to my end goal, but I can manage it in small chunks.

Finally, too be succesful and remain successful, you should realize that this is a lifelong lifestyle change. Change does not come easy for the human species. It is imperative that you change slowly, and don't try to do everything at once. It is different for everyone. For me, I failed every other time because of diet. Exercise was easy for me. This time around, I decided I would make sur eI ahd the diet down before I started the exercise regime. I changed my diet gradually, reducing where I needed, and increasing where I needed. After reaching my initial micro goal by diet change alone, I had it down to a habit. That is when I gradually added exercise back into my routine. You don't have to follow my formula, but tailor your change plan for you. Just work one thing at a time and master it before you add the next step in.