How to stay motivated for the long haul?

I am in the same situation - it's been a year that I keep trying to lose weight, all I did is learn to maintain -

You wont!!! A friend on my FL said to me one time, "Its all about the ebb and flow!!!" It was a very simple statement and I know he had no idea it would resonate with me the way that it did. When I am on a downward spiral, I KNOW I will come back up again. I KNOW it will because I want it bad enough. I had lost about 25 pounds when he said this to me and I knew I would never reach my goal. I now am about 25 pounds away from my goal, and nothing will stop me!!!!! You can do it (its all up to you MMMMMKAY!!) sorry, couldnt resist some retro South Park humor!!!!

To make your plan sustainable,

1. Don't "give up" anything you love. Find a way to include what you love (in reasonable portions) in your plan. I wouldn't have made it even 2 months without including occasional chocolate squares, booze, and pizza in my plan. If you're constantly thinking about foods that you can't have now but you'll have when the diet is over, I guarantee that diet will be "over" LOOOOONG before you achieve your goals. If you're talking about falling off your plan "just this once" over and over again, I'd say the problem is with the plan. Find a way to make that stuff fit in your calories and macros once in a while.

2. Don't make your plan too hard. Everyone wants their diet to be over with sooner rather than later. We want to reap the rewards right away and we want the hard part to be done with. The trouble is, if the hard part is TOO hard, then you end up feeling so miserable and deprived that you just don't stick with the plan. Making your weight loss plan so restrictive and brutal that you can’t wait for it to be over will inevitably lead to crashing and burning. If you can't stick to, say, a 500 calorie deficit for more than 4 weeks, try a 300 calorie deficit. And if your deficit is already more than 1000 calories a day, yeah, you might seriously find it's A LOT easier to have a 500-800 calorie deficit.

3. Enjoy your food! Healthy food in a well-balanced diet is freaking delicious! You do not need to make yourself unhappy to lose weight. You do not need to think that if you’re happy you’re doing something wrong. Experiment with healthy recipes! Try vegetables and fruits and meats and beans that you’ve never had before! I’ve discovered so many wonderful dishes and ingredients while I’ve been dieting. Frankly, I find that I even enjoy my small portions of junk food more when I eat less of them.

For me it really helps to think long term. If I think "I have to lose my scheduled 4 lb this month, and be at X weight by September 1st" that is when I really lose motivation. Instead I think "This is how I eat now, this is what I do...in a year I'll be at this weight or lighter" it really helps me stay on track.

I recently ran into a co worker in our home office that haven't seen for a year. He lost an entire person. He said 70% of it is what you eat, and only 30% of the gym. Every Saturday he and his wife go to the grocery store, and on Sundays after church he said he is in the kitchen preparing their food for the week. Makes sense because I've been killing myself in the gym and haven't lost a pound. My frustration is because I have seriously curbed my bad eating lifestyle, but still no changes. Stuck!

Pretty much when I realized that in order for me to improve my health markers I was going to need to make a lifetime commitment to nutrition and fitness...well, it was at that point that I was able to just take things a day at a time rather than looking to some arbitrary date in the future where I may or may not be at some arbitrary goal.

One place people go very wrong early on is that they try to just change everything overnight and do a complete 180*...that's pretty difficult to do. One does not simply change every habit they've ever had over night...it takes time...one day at a time....baby steps here and baby steps there. In a year you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

Research, research, and more research - Make yourself the project - I spent an evening with a personal trainer who was just in- training herself, she said one thing to be that made so much sense: whatever you put into your mouth make it work for you - get the most bang for your buck! So, research on what is good stuff - sort of like "eat this, not that" - I thought I was doing good with my salad, nope, needed to switch from iceburg lettuce to spring mix with spinach etc. All depending on what fits/suits you so you keep on keeping on.

Another thing I do is (I've lost 87 lbs so far), is making a paperclip chain, one paperclip per pound. I use colored ones for every 10 lbs. I have it hanging on my wall at work, so many of my coworkers come by every so often to see how many I've added... So much encouragement there and her. We've got this!!