Is it normal to feel this way....

It is very much a battle of the mind. I have to focus on day to day successes or else I'll get bogged down. I can't change what I've done in the past so there's no sense in marinating in regrets. Life is too short for that. You are losing weight. You are exercising. You're training for a race, according to your profile. Those are great steps. Focus on them. Maybe add one weekly goal like logging your food every day or packing lunch instead of eating out.

Yes! it's totally mind over matter. I find that the more positive you are about it the easier it is to stay motivated, eat right and lose the pounds. For me, I got so caught up in my head that even when I hit my goal weight it just wasn't enough... just kept going and losing down to an unhealthy weight! I am still struggling with that.

Unfortunately it is normal to feel this way. My theory is that it's a combination of today's mindset of instant gratification and having "proof" of weight loss happening that much faster on shows like Biggest Loser. I'm assuming that what you're looking for is to establish habits that are healthy and sustainable and will fit within your normal everyday life. You're seeing progress so just keep on keeping on and reevaluate if you begin to not see results. Why try and fix what's not broken?

Also, for me as I'm an avid exerciser and I love to constantly challenge myself, it's important to remind myself that more is not always better. Balance is the key. Keep up the good work and try and get out of your head about it!

You are right about most of the battle being in your head.

Having said that, you need to settle into the process. It's a marathon, not a sprint. It's not about how fast you lose the weight, it's about how you can stick with it and KEEP it off in the long run. In order to do this, you need to establish new habits and new ways of thinking about and approaching food.

This takes time. If you want to stick with it and succeed, you can't afford to beating yourself up all the time, telling yourself that you could have lost more, done better, worked out longer, etc. You'll get tired of it and quit.

As long as the scale is consistently moving down, no matter how slowly, you are succeeding.

Yes it's all in the mind.... I am about 18 months into my new way of life and I really had to just accept it as that, a new way of living. Because once the initial 'easy' weight comes off it is disappointing at times. I can go a month at a time now without any loss, but I try to focus on other improvements to my health and fitness and I hardly weight myself (I weighed multiple times a day at first).

My only rule is NEVER give up .... and that seem to work for me - good luck x

We live in a world of instant gratification. People expect things to happen quickly, and when they don't they get mad/depressed/insertrandomemotion. That's why you'll see in threads on the forums, people saying "reset" or "lower" your expectations. It's true. You really do have to come down from that instant gratification mindset.

7 lbs in 3 weeks is fantastic. Stay the course and the numbers will begin to really add up, even if it takes time. Patience young grasshoppa. :flowerforyou:

I totally get where you are coming from. But trust me you don't wanna overdo it. All that will happen is that you will lose energy to exercise and feel like crap and end up lashing out at people. Think of it like building a house. Crash weigh loss involves building the house out of any old crap as fast as possible. It will fall down as the result of the first setback. Or even halfway through construction. To set yourself up for long term sustainable weight loss you gotta do it slow and steady. And you would be surprised weight loss is not linear sometimes I have lost 5lb+ in a week .. I have absolutely no idea why. It's not as if my deficit was that big ... I think.

This is a lesson I have had to re teach myself multiple times. Or rather the people here have had to re teach me as i cry and wail like a petulant child because the weight wont come off tomorrow and I'm hungry. We are all only human in the end. But as you can see from my ticker I have lost a lot of weight this way. It's taken 5 months. And I expect to be at this a few more. But man ... I look like a different person already.