PLAN!!
If it's possible, plan out your day. I often log my meals even before I eat them, and I nearly always check calorie counts in restaurants before going out to eat. These nutritionals online are real eye openers!
Logging exercise before you go to the gym, or out to walk, will push you out the door.

Good luck on this journey. We've all been there!

Bobbie

Great advice given here...... I agree with all the points made....and would add to just take one day at a time...try to eat well and move more, wherever your baseline is, just do more activity...and each day - or each week - do more. If you have a good day it will spur you on and if you have a bad day put it behind you...it's gone, don't worry about it, get back on track ... you will get there ... :flowerforyou:

Jean

I still have the 'newbie' stamp on my forehead too, but thought I'd chime in with some stuff that has worked for me in the past and seems to be helping this go 'round...

1. Agreed with planning and logging. I log my whole day (at least) in the morning generally, then I know what I still need to add. Honestly, I'm struggling with getting all the calories they want me to eat (one of the reasons my diary isn't public) but believe I'm making overall good choices. I close out my daily diary when I'm done eating for the day.
2. Candy, cheetos (yummmmm) and chocolate in general are simply not part of my daily routine any longer. That is one of the most significant changes I've made. I've also cut my diet pepsi intake from 48+ oz/day to 8- 16oz; i'll reduce that further but gradually (can we say migraines?!)
3. I wrote up a couple of documents that I go to when needed. One is 'alternatives' (to grazing my way through bad food choices). it has lots of ideas that work for me - from brush my teeth, read a book for 15 minutes, shop online for clothes in the size i want to be, to go OUTSIDE - mostly just stuff to break my brain thoughts. The other I call motivation - reminders why I'm doing this and motivational one & two liners i've found appropriate for me.
4. I have been forcing myself to get off my rear. Treadmill is my only 'exercise' for now, but i thought I'd die the first time I got on it & I'm doing lots better. Little stuff too - dancing to music while I do my chores, parking further away from the store, etc
5. Don't get down on yourself - even when you mess up. On one of the success stories I read here, he said 'don't let a bad day mean a bad tomorrow'. That resonated with me.

Let's DO this!
-marilyn (ker) :drinker:

I found that if I am craving sweets (especially, but not restricted to my all time favorite, dark chocolate, which I don't even keep in the house in any quantity anymore) I eat a couple of Big Fat Green Olives.

:glasses:

It gives my tastebuds the big *POW* the are looking for and derails my mind from obsessing about grabbing a sweet.

It took me a year to talk myself into starting MFP. I had make my own rules because I knew if I felt deprived that would be it. My choice was to lose weight slowly in the hope that my skin would have time to cover the extra wrinkles.
1. I love chocolate so I could have 2 squares and no more of high cocoa dark chocolate per day. I am surprised that my craving for chocolate has actually decreased.
2. Record everything every day. I like wine when I go out for dinner which is quite frequently. The most important part is to still record everything (everything that passes my lips!) even on days when I go way over. That way I am learning a lot more about restaurant meals. For the wine, I wait until the food comes and restrict myself to 1 or 2 glasses. It's easy because I know I need to record it.
3. The biggest help I have found with MFP is the support provided by my ”pals”. I have a great group of people I have met on here who are positive and encouraging.
4. Of course, the more you can burn calories with movement and exercise the better. For medical reasons, I cannot do much so I concentrate on what I eat.
All the best on your journey. It is a journey and it is important to enjoy yourself while you are on it.

My only advice would be to log everything! Also, just take it one day at a time and don't give up. Try not to force yourself to give up a favorite food because, in my experience, that only discourages one from keeping with the program. I had to give up gluten 2 years ago for my health and believe me, it has been extremely hard and I'm still not 100% adjusted, though I do feel much, much better (and I have found substitutions for most of the food I had to give up).

Keep logging and moving and don't ever give up on yourself. Good luck on this lifetime journey to better health and fitness.

3. I wrote up a couple of documents that I go to when needed. One is 'alternatives' (to grazing my way through bad food choices). it has lots of ideas that work for me - from brush my teeth, read a book for 15 minutes, shop online for clothes in the size i want to be, to go OUTSIDE - mostly just stuff to break my brain thoughts. The other I call motivation - reminders why I'm doing this and motivational one & two liners i've found appropriate for me.
4. I have been forcing myself to get off my rear. Treadmill is my only 'exercise' for now, but i thought I'd die the first time I got on it & I'm doing lots better. Little stuff too - dancing to music while I do my chores, parking further away from the store, etc
5. Don't get down on yourself - even when you mess up. On one of the success stories I read here, he said 'don't let a bad day mean a bad tomorrow'. That resonated with me.

Let's DO this!
-marilyn (ker) :drinker:

Great advice! :flowerforyou:

Jean

Here's a thing I did awhile back... and it helped me change my eating patterns.

First.. I'm a gulper. Looking back, it seems like I've felt hungry ( ! ) my whole life, and of course we know THAT is not true.
But. Give me a bowl of ice cream, or a mound of mashed potatoes, a loaf of hot crunchy bread and I would GULP it down like it was the first thing I'd eaten in three weeks.

I had a friend who is very thin--a wisp, a tiny, frail thing. Sweet gal, but I hated her (if you know what I mean).
We'd go out to eat and.. she literally picked at her food. Toyed with the meat. Cut it up into tinnnyyyyy little pieces, shoved the mashed potatoes around her plate. If she had a piece of bread she'd break off a tiny piece and then ignore the rest, or crumble
it up while chatting and not putting any of it into her mouth.

And dessert!!! Once, we ordered some decadent chocolate thing. I inhaled mine. OMG it was sooo good.
Hers? She forked off a tiny piece, nibbled at it then shoved the plate away. It was all I could do to restrain myself from grabbing
her dessert plate and finishing it off myself.

Then it hit me... NO WONDER she is thin?

In fact, as a child I did the same thing. Picked my food apart, shoved it around, nibbled, messed it up..It drove my mom bonkers.

So I decided to Become Her.
This is different from Becoming Like Her, ok.

You have to seriously adopt the behaviors and attitudes of How Thin People Eat.
You can't just be The Overweight Person Who Needs to Eat Less and Is going to "eat less."

You have to PLAN for it.
If you're going to a restaurant.. sure. Eat healthy. And when the plate comes.. eyeball that mound of potatoes.
Draw a line across them and only eat 1/3, and... nibble.
Eat your veggies first. Let the potatoes get cold.
Put the bread where you can't reach it.
Cut your meat into TINY bites. IS that FAT? UGH. CUT IT OFF!
Toy with the meal. Drink lots of water.

Most importantly... BE THE THIN PERSON.
Don't be the fat person CRAVING the potatoes.. LONGING to put that extra butter on them and dive in..
Be the person who is happy with less.

Clearly, if you could see me now, you'd know that I blew it with this.
But I DID lose 20 pounds back then.. partly because I adopted this attitude.
Exercising helped too, because.. who wants to sweat for 45 minutes and blow it all on a doughnut?

Anyway. It's something to think about.

:bigsmile:

i have been doing the same thing for 1 yr. and 7 months, and have lost 73 lbs, have not dieted and eat anything that i want, the trick,,, i weigh, measure, everything i put in my mouth, i invested in a lot, lots, and lots of measuring spoons and cups, a good scale and everything that went into my mouth was measured, a lot of people know what a normal size is, i didn't, i do now, i know that i cannot go out to eat and get a normal size of anything, so i try to eat at home most of the time.i eat salad and to make sure that i was only using 2 tablespoons, i went to a restaurant supple hose and bought a package of those little plastic container that get at some places for the ketchup, i think the long john silvers has them, anyway they are 2 tablespoons and everything i make a salad i use these for my salad dressing,esp. at home.and i also carry them in my car so when i go out to eat. and if it not enough of dressing for my salad, well, i've got to much salad...if my husband and i go out now i buy a side and he gets the dinner place, after the food comes i take half of his meat (you can never get a 3- 4 0z of any type of meat.and i never bring home a whole box of cookies or little boxed cakes, i buy them, take 2 out and either drop them by my children s homes or give the extras to a neighbor,this is what has worked for me, it takes time but i figure that if always eat normal i will get to a normal weight one day, and i will stay at a normal weight if i always eat normal size helpings,, P.S. my husband has also lost over 50 lbs to....

That's fantastic! I salute your stick-to-it-iveness and your weight loss!!

:drinker:

There are a lot of people here who inspire me, and I just added you to that list!!!