I know exactly what I need to do I just cant seem to do it

Knowing what to do is not the same as wanting to do it.

When the desire to improve outweighs the desire to overeat/be lazy/whatever, only then will you see results.

First and foremost: allow yourself to be HUMAN. Humans are imperfect beings, by nature. We are fallible. That means we WILL stumble. It is not a matter of IF but WHEN.

I've lost close to 150 pounds and one of the girls here at the office said one of the things she really likes about the way I'm approaching my weight loss is that I allow myself to be "bad" - or have something that most would consider "off program." I count it, but I have it.

I've noticed that EVERY time I tell myself, "OK - NO MORE BROWNIES EVER!" That's all I want.

It's all about realizing where you're at - knowing your limitations, and not feeling guilty for being human. Yes, have the brownie. Go to Chik-Fil-A, get a brownie, have it, enjoy it, log it, then move on. It's not about being "super spectacular all world woman" and going to the gym for 2 hours every day and not letting one morself of refined sugar cross your lips, and thou shalt drink nothing but spring water and have lettuce all day long. It's about finding a way to develop a healthy lifestyle that you can LIVE WITH.

Lest we forget that motivation is a funny t hing. Usually when you find a reason that is big enough, you'll be willing to do the work. When where you're at bothers you enough to make you want to actually do something about it, you will. It's the whole, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears..." sort of thing.

Hang in there....Little steps....then more little steps....

stop with the excuses and start now before another 5 years slips by

Knowing what to do is not the same as wanting to do it.

When the desire to improve outweighs the desire to overeat/be lazy/whatever, only then will you see results.

This. I know how to clean out the garage. It's not done because I don't want to do it.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

i agree dont make it so big of a goal. start with maybe 5lbs or whatever. start slow. check out some success stories? seeing people that started out at about my weight and see their progress was so very inspiring for me. in fact, youtube videos are what started this all in my head. i watched shayloss & meghan tonjes people who i highly respected do this and i said well i can too. surely, i didnt really believe it... but i tried..and im so thankful that i did. there are tons of success stories here. read them. see their pictures. feel their power, joy, and happiness. that can be you too. best of luck.

I'm going to tell you what works for me. If it doesn't work for you, then maybe it will help someone else, and maybe someone else's advice will click for you. :happy:

When I am stuck in a rut, eating too much and not exercising, I find the best thing for me to do is find a program I can do. A challenge. For me this last time, it was the book called Move It, Mom that I got for free on my Kindle one day (normally it costs, but it was free that day--lucky me!). It was for postpartum moms (though could work for ANY woman, really), and it started out really easy. I did the strength training and mostly ignored the cardio I was supposed to do (walking--who can get out and walk without a gym membership or a treadmill in Oregon in the late winter/early spring???). Phase one was mostly easy. Phase two had harder exercises, but still only every other day. I wore a pedometer and tried to make 10,000 steps on my "cardio" days, and mostly did, but not because I was walking. Phase three stepped it up to a 5-day-a-week calisthenics with cardio in between sets program. I thought I was going to DIE stepping up and down with a stool at jogging pace for two minutes, but I figured I'd come this far, I might as well finish.

That was almost 4 weeks ago that I started phase 3. (Phase 1 was 2 weeks and Phases 2 & 3 were 4 weeks each). I have one day left. I can't wait to finish, but the satisfaction of actually completing the program is enough to make me finish it. It's short (about 1/2 hour a day), so I don't have the excuse that it's too long, and there's no drive to the gym, no membership fees, no gas spent getting there and back, no babysitting fees... in a word, it was good.

The other thing that really helped was logging my food here. I love to eat, and watching those extra calories add up from my exercise told me I'd be able to eat extra that day! Yay!

Then last night I ate too much and was feeling like extra exercise anyhow, so I did an extra 20 minutes with a cardio video that I had found way too hard about 2 or 3 months ago. Last night, it got me sweating, but never once did I feel like stopping and resting. That kind of progress was a real boost to my ego!

Now I'm moving on to a strength training program Monday. I could just do 3 days a week, but I'm going to do either yoga or cardio on 3 of the off days. I am getting addicted to exercise, and I can't wait to see my progress over the next four weeks!

So in a nutshell, what worked for me was finding a program that I could do that increased in intensity and determining to stick with it to the end. By the end, I was addicted to exercise, and now here I am, excited about exercise!

Oh, I should mention, when I started logging my food, the inches started coming off, which was another HUGE motivation! My current profile picture is in a pair of capris I hope to be able to fit into this summer. The button hole and button are over an inch apart. Knowing that what I am doing is working is motivating enough to keep me at it! Now, if I could just fit into my wedding dress by my anniversary (end of August)...

I asked myself the exact same question back in December, and a very wise friend/mentor told me to stop beating myself up over the whole "why haven't I just done what I need to do?" thing. As she explained it, the ONLY reason I hadn't done it was that I hadn't yet decided to make weight loss (or health, or fitness, or whatever you want to focus on) a priority. Once I truly decided to make it a genuine priority, I would succeed. I argued against her for awhile in my head but ultimately decided that she was right, and at the beginning of the year started reminding myself every morning when I got up that my health is my priority and that the majority of my choices need to reflect that. I then started making some serious lifestyle changes to reflect my new priority, and lo and behold the weight started coming off (34 lbs so far). I honestly believe that the mental switch back in December is what FINALLY got the ball rolling for me, and what makes me continue to believe that this time really WILL be different for me. Best of luck with your efforts!

My diabetes diagnosis on January 26, 2013 is what finally scared me enough to make a change. When I started I weighed 402.6 lbs I could barely walk from my bedroom to the kitchen (about 5 or 6 steps) without being winded and in need of chair to sit down and rest. For the first two weeks I watched my portion sizes and added fruits and vegetables to every meal. I also started doing ten minutes of chair excercises. I sat in the chair and would lift soup cans to work my arms and leg lifts to work my legs. I was so out of breath I didn't think I would make it. At the two week mark I went back for a weigh in at my doctors and I had lost 10 lbs. I slowly added walking into my excercise routine. The day I made it to the end of my street was a major step in the right direction.

I wrote a down what my primary motivation for getting healthier was. Two of the items were "I want to be able to enjoy my life instead of sitting on the sideline" and "I want to not have diabetes. After deciding what my motivation was I set some goals. I signed myself up for a 5K on March 23, 2013. This changed my life. It gave me the motivation to get up every morning at 5:30 am and walk. On day 55 of my journey (3/23/13) I completed my first 5K. in one hour and 35 minutes in the snow. I did that at 370 lbs. On April 3 I went back to see my doctor about my diabetes diagnosis. When they did the A1C test it was a 5.4 which meant that I no longer was a diabetic. It was back in the normal range.

I am 109 days into my journey. I have lost 59 lbs. I have completed a 1 mile race with my husband (who is obese) and I did another 5K on May 11th. I signed myself up for another 5K on June 1st. Setting goals and putting out cold hard cash for 5K races keeps me walking every morning, along with water aerobics and strength training.

I am no longer sitting on the sidelines watching my life go by. I am living it. I am getting stronger everyday. It's not always easy but it is so worth it. I no longer see myself sitting in a wheelchair at a rest home. My future is bright and I can do anything I set my mind too.

I love the quote "You can have results or excuses but you can't have both". I chose results. No one can do this for you. When you decide that living a healthy life is more important to you than the excuses you will find your motivation and get to work.

I hope you find it soon. Take back your life. No more Excuses. Today is the only day you have so seize it and get moving.

I struggle with this same thing sometimes. I know everything that I need to do, I just have trouble doing it. What finally worked for me is to NOT start with every single thing I need to do. I began by picking just one thing out of the pile and working on that until it became habit. Then I choose something else. It was hard at first, I felt very impatient and didn't want to just focus on one aspect. I wanted to be able to do it all right at the start. But that all or nothing approach hadn't gotten me anywhere. It was hard to get past my all or nothing mentality, but I kept at it. It's been slow, but at least it's been steady. Like several of the other responses, don't think about everything you need to do, think about what you need to do next.

I live by this advice,

In three months you are going to look back and wish you had started today. The time passes anyways, may as well be closer to the person you want to be in three months instead of looking back and wishing that today you had committed to changing.

For me, it was watching Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. That one led to watching other food documentaries. I had a sudden epiphany that I was killing myself with food. A lot of people criticize those movies as propaganda and fear mongering, but for me, they worked. And my husband felt the same way, which has helped a bunch. We literally cleaned out our kitchen of all processed foods. We went on a shopping spree and bought tons of whole foods. We are mostly vegetarian, but we both like meat so we give ourselves permission to eat meat if we want. Oddly, we rarely want that; fish seems to work. I'm very overweight, and was 245 when we started this in January. I try to work out, but I'm less motivated there. I still feel "too fat" but I make myself go. It helps, but what has really helped has been changing my diet. I've lost 35 pounds and that I attribute almost entirely to my diet.

I stall and don't lose as much as I want, and then I feel sorry for myself and have a coke, which tastes like syrup and makes me want to puke, and then I get a nice glass of water, and push my way through my whinging and start all over again. You do have to find what works for you, but I guarantee that a change in what you eat is a great start. Find foods that give you energy. Try juicing (not as a fast, but just try it!). Try smoothies. Try no meat Monday.

The one other thing that I've learned on this journey is that, regardless of food that I eat, or a crossfit work out that I muster through, the most important thing I have to do is to love myself. I HAVE to make room in my heart for me, to care about me, to want a healthy heart (literally), a healthy body, a healthy spirit. These things aren't separate and they feed each other. When I look back to myself just 20 pounds ago, the way my body felt was bleah, and the way I viewed the world was bleah. If that was my worldview, it's no wonder I had no motivation to help myself. I had to change the way I thought entirely.

I wish you luck!

Knowing what to do is not the same as wanting to do it.

When the desire to improve outweighs the desire to overeat/be lazy/whatever, only then will you see results.

^^ I like this answer. You really gotta want it bad enough. Then you will succeed.

Fruit is nature's candy! I am a very picky eater, and I honestly hate trying new things as far as food goes. But I decided if I don't try it, I'll never really know what I like and what I hate. There has to be more than 2 vegetables and 3 fruits that I liked.

Something I've been doing for a little while now that maybe you can give a whirl: Once a week I buy one new fruit and vegetable to try. If it's a vegetable generally I will cut a few slices and try some raw, some steamed, some baked and some fried (fried vegetables is ALWAYS tasty by the way lol) - not good for you, but it's a start to trying new vegetables. I have tremendously increased the amount of fruits & vegetables I eat now, because there are so many yummy ones.

I never thought of starting off frying new veggies to work them into my diet...what a great way to transition more types of veggies into your diet.

Also, with fruits I have had success heating (specifically, grilling) fruits like pineapples, peaches, etc...it brings out more of the natural sugar and makes them taste even sweeter.