Could you share your experiences as I feel like a FAILURE!!

Hello, I am pretty much the same as you.
I felt pretty much hopeless about losing weight.
I started 30day shred on 11th April, and felt like dying. I stopped a couple of times, but got through it and thought I couldn't do it again.
I did the first week, along with a 1200 a day calorie diet weighed myself, and found I had put on half a pound. I felt like crying.
I read more on here, and increased my calories to my BMR (1590ish), and lost a kilo in 2 days. I've lost 1.5 inches from my waist, 1 inch from my belly, one inch each from my arms and thighs. I'm on day 9 of excercise - I've taken two days out to rest.
The dvd is so much easier now, I'm confident I can up a level after tomorrow.
I am totally sedentary, incredibly unfit usually. I already look forward to my exciercise time. I hurt like hell for the first 4 days, but now it's fine, and I can already feel a major difference in my energy levels.
I hope you stick with it, you deserve to devote some time to feeling better (my OH has a depressive form of bipolar and I *know* how horrible living with that black dog can be). Good luck, it literally can only get better! x

I am 5' 2" and started at 200 pounds. I joined MFP in January 2013 and am down to 178 pounds now. The whole first month, I didn't do anything with exercise. I concentrated on weighing and logging food and planning meals that would fit into my calorie goal. By February, that was a good habit, so I concentrated on drinking more water. March was supposed to be my exercise start, and I did add some, but not a lot - (still working on that!) You can lose weight without killing yourself if you are faithful to your calorie intake. Once you get some of the weight off, it will be easier to exercise. P.S. - I have off times, too, but my MFP friends are good inspiration, and I look at the 90 day progress report to remind myself that I have come a long way overall, even if it hasn't been a good week. Good luck!

Do not expect to be a fitness rock star. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Just do what you can a little at a time. Even if it is 5 minutes. Then the next day shoot for 6.

I started this journey out 5 years ago and started exercising by walking 2 miles a day. I used to get winded by mearly watching a cop chase a perp on CSI NY. Now I can run 3 straight miles and walk/run close to 6. How I achieved that is not giving up.

I'm 5.2, I started at 240 in Jan. I'm 214 now. When I started I could not even ride my exercise bike for ten minutes. so I would ride it 2 times a day until I could ride it for at least 30 minutes, I increased the time every Sunday. Now I ride every morning for 45 to 60 minutes. so you can do this you just have to go slow at first.

So, it's only been a few days. That's not enough time to decide that you've failed!

You've taken the most important step in getting started, so give yourself a big pat on the back for that!

My biggest advice would be to start slow. Take baby steps. Exercise doesn't sound much fun for you right now, so don't leap into it with such intensity that you burn out and give it up as a bad job. You theoretically don't need to exercise to lose weight. I'm not saying that to discourage you because exercise has a ton of benefits and I highly recommend it, but it's not the case that you have to go from sedentary to super-active overnight.

Concentrate on your food and calorie intake. You should be able to get some good results even just with that. I wouldn't make huge changes to your diet, but just start with logging and seeing where you can make little changes to meet your goals. Over time, you may want to make more changes, but try to just make changes that you know you can live with. Don't make such radical changes that you want to give up after a couple of weeks.

Those Jillian Michaels DVDs are quite challenging, especially if your fitness levels are quite low to start with. I'll let you into a secret - I consider myself quite fit now. I run about 3 times a week and lift heavy weights too. Yet I still struggle with those DVD workouts. I felt a failure the first couple of times I tried, but then I realised it's just not my kind of thing. Maybe it is your thing, (and lots of people have had great success with it) but you might need to work up to it. Maybe start with something a bit simpler. If climbing the stairs makes you out of breath, that's a good place to start! Decide to walk up and down the stairs a certain number of times a day - more than you do now.

Also, walking is great to start to improve fitness. For my first few months on MFP, almost the only exercise I did was walking. You can start off gently, but it's surprising how much of a sweat you can work up if you put more effort into it. I see on your profile that you're going to do a 5k - if you can already walk that distance ok, then I'd definitely recommend the couch 2 5k programme. It starts off with really short intervals and gets you running 5k in 9 weeks. I was a complete non-runner before I did that, but I made it! At first, it was hard, but after a couple of weeks, my heart & lung fitness seemed to really improve so that although I was still out of breath, it didn't hurt as much as it did when I first started. It got so much easier!

I'm sure you know this already, but exercise is really important in managing depression. It's not a magic cure, but it really does make a difference for a lot of people. There are a lot of days that I really don't fancy leaving the house to go for a walk or run, and I really don't care about fitness or calorie burns, but I make myself because I know the good it does to my brain. I know how hard it can be with depression. It can be hard to get out of bed and have a shower, let alone anything else. If you can be more consistently active, hopefully it will lift your spirits a bit, which will make getting motivated easier. Also, once you start seeing the scale go down, that will help too.

I had a little snoop on your other recent posts (not in creepy way, just to look for relevant info!) and I saw that you're worried about loose skin. Please, please, please don't let that put you off losing weight in any way. I have similar stats - I'm 5'3" and I was 214 lbs at my heaviest. I've lost about 85 lbs (6 ish stone). I'm a few years older than you, and I was obese/overweight from my mid-teens until last year. I have some loose skin, mainly on my tummy and upper arms. It's not pretty, but it's not hideous either. It's really not. The skin on my tummy isn't noticeable in underwear or a bikini (hypothetically, I don't actually have one!), and the wobbly bits on my arms are not enough to make me need to cover them up. I feel 100x better about my body now then when I was bigger. For vanity reasons alone, the weight loss has been so, so worth it. That's not to mention the obvious health benefits, and being able to wear nicer clothes, and being fitter etc. And, there are people that lose 100+ lbs and don't have any problems with loose skin at all. A lot depends on genetics. So, please don't let that put you off! I will also note that the wobbly looseness has only really appeared in since I lost the last 10 or so lbs, so I could have stopped losing then and settled for being a little bit heavier with smoother skin. That's a choice you can make as you get closer to goal.

Keep doing Jillian Michaels. I did level 1 for about 2 months and I started off BAD but, eventually I got there. (I'm about 200 lbs--no exercise in 5 years). I had soreness and even a few injuries, but I did what I could (very small squats for example) and now I'm much improved. Helps with depression! Keep at it. you'll never get there from the couch.

You must walk before you run (as others said)!!! I just walk, walk, walk and while in kitchen cooking I do some arm circles etc just keep moving. Park farther away in store parking lot, walk up the stairs if possible. Each day will get better. Put away the Jillian DVD - even too much for me and I am in pretty good shape and am in maintenance mode.

Saw this from someone:

When you've eaten too much and you can't write it down, And you feel like the biggest failure in town. When you want to give up just because you gave in, and forget all about being healthy and thin. So What! You went over your points a bit, It's your next move that counts...So don't you quit! It's a moment of truth, it's an attitude change. It's learning the skills to get back in your range. It's telling yourself, "You've done great up till now. You can take on this challenge and beat it somehow." It's part of your journey toward reaching your goal. You're still gonna make it, just stay in control. To stumble and fall is not a disgrace, If you summon the will to get back in the race. But, often the struggler's, when loosing their grip, Just throw in the towel and continue to slip. And learn too late when the damage is done, that the race wasn't over...they still could have won. Lifestyle change can be awkward and slow, but facing each challenge will help you grow. Success is failure turned inside out, the silver tint in a cloud of doubt. When you're pushing to the brink, just refuse to submit, If you bite it, you write it....But don't you quit!

DO NOT feel like a failure. You are trying. Just in case you need to be reminded, there is a popular quote...by someone I can't recall that says, "The only failure is the failure not to try."

You are already NOT FAILING because you are trying. Keep going with it, or with something else if you decide that this particular DVD isn't right for you. You get to do whatever you want as long as it is pushing you without hurting you. I'm doing 30 Day Shred right now and while I'm in good enough shape to work out for 20 minutes, some of her moves are really hard on certain parts of my body (I have bad knees and little flexibility in my ankles due to spraining them about a million times when I was growing up), so I find it really difficult to do level 1. That doesn't make me feel like a failure. I'm just powering through it and hoping that Level 2 likes my body a little more. I do what I can and when my knees start hurting or my ankles are getting mad at me, I switch to something else...like running in place, or I take my squats at a slower speed to make sure I'm taking care of my knees and ankles, or whatever other adjustment I need to make. I'm on Day 5 of Level 1. Day 1 of Level 1, I could do 4 pushups without taking a break. Today, I did 11. That's incremental progress. I could have quit on day 1. I didn't. I will be doing 17-20 pushups without taking a break before I move to level 2. That's my goal and it's going to happen. If I have to do Level 1 for 13 days instead of 10 days, I will. That's how I make up for the fact that the lunges and squats scare my knees.

If it's your fitness level that is holding you back, then try to do 30 seconds or 1 minute more of the DVD every day. It might hurt. Actually, it will hurt. Do it anyway. If that's too much for you to handle, then do 30 seconds more every other day. You'll see a difference if you give yourself the opportunity to improve. Just make sure that you still do the proper stretching when you're done even if you stop early. I actually find her warm ups and cool down/stretch out to be inadequate, so I do more. Try taking a walk around the block before you start and immediately when you're done. Then, do 10 minutes of good stretching after. Find some stretches you like for your hamstrings, quads, calves, achilles, triceps, shoulders, abs and back (a lot of the abs and back stretches work both). Take a long time to do them. Appreciate how they feel and start to look for that feeling while you're doing the exercises that are supposed to be working those muscles. I find that works a lot more for finding good form than simply listening to the words they say on the DVDs.

Please, don't be discouraged. You might have a long way to go, but the only way you are ever going to get there is by doing it. Your only other option is to stay as you are. That's clearly not what you want...otherwise, you wouldn't be trying this or asking questions here. You got this.

New here - not new to dieting but I'm determined to keep going. Just like you said "new way of eating". It's your new life, make it work for you. There are lots of alternatives when it comes to prepping your meals, find the healthiest route and take it. You will feel better just knowing you finished your day eating well.

Exercise has to be enjoyable so think about what you loved when you were a kid and perhaps you can think of something that you can do now. Good luck!