Cant maintain motivation.

I find it helpful to ask myself:

Where will I be in 6 months - 5 years time if I keep eating/doing as I am now? Is that ok with me?

Why do I want to lose weight/get fit in the first place?

Finding out what I value, is key to me.
Looking at thin females in magazines etc, doesn't keep me motivated for long because I don't truly value aesthetics. Once I realised that being healthy and a future healthy mum setting a great example for my kids, was much more important to me, there was hardly a need to 'look' for motivation.

What do you value in your life? Why are you doing this?

Work out really intense. Lift heavy. Burn more calories and then you can manage to eat more food and still be in a deficit. So basically, eat better regardless of your circumstances and/or excuses but if you burn more calories you will have more wiggle room.

Another tip, if your lifting weights they way it makes you feel should be motivation enough.

Motivation will come and go. You need to work on setting up good habits and routines

I log my food because it's part of my routine just like showering or brushing my teeth. I know that not every day will be perfect, but it will be the best I can do on that given day. In the beginning when it wasn't part of my routine, I set reminders and scheduled appointment time in my daily calender just like I would for meetings. I scheduled my exercise time, set time in my morning to pre log my food.

I find it by reminding myself why I started this journey. Then I try to remember all the work I've put in and that pretty much does it for me.

I look at my side-by-side pic (in my profile) and do not want to go back to the old fat me. I also remember sweating profusely, B.O., heartburn (yes - strangely - that went away with the weight loss - probably due to an improved diet), etc.

^^^This^^^ keeps me going.

I tried to quit logging once I hit goal, but found that I stayed at weight if I stayed with logging. Logging for life lol ;-)

Everyone has good and bad days! I find that keeping certain encouragement things around me helps-- in my room, in front of my TV, I keep two jars. One jar has rocks in it with all the pounds I want to lose. The other has all the rocks in it with pounds I have already lost.

Also, it's super important to get a few friends on your side. For me, one of my best friends who is around a lot knows to ask about what I've been eating. If she sees me eating junk, she gently confronts me about it. She's not really even a health nut herself, but she is willing to do ask me because she knows I'm trying to do this.

Hope this helps! You can do it!

Motivation is really all about the level of priority you place on the end result. If you REALLY want to be fit and do things with the bf; if that is a top priority, you will be motivated to make it happen. If that's just a "yeah, it would be nice if..." goal, it's not a priority and probably not gonna happen. (And that's ok too.)

If it's a priority, you will make it happen; If not, you will make excuses.

Also as a side laugh, my friends right now on chat are pressuring me to go a chocolate festival in the city tomorrow. Obviously my friends are very supportive :grumble:

A chocolate festival? I want to move to where you live

I'm motivated by vanity mainly..I want to look good and I don't want to be the fat mum at the school gates. I also want to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes.

I'm lucky that I enjoy exercise and I have a couple of friends who I exercise with, so we motivate each other. I also don't really like junk food. The only 'bad' things I like are chocolate and homemade cake, so I just allow myself something like that once a week so I don't feel deprived. I find that 'treat day' once a week keeps me going.

Take photos so you can measure your progress and also make sure you check if you've lost inches, because sometimes the scale doesn't reflect weight loss as much as the tape measure does.

I sometimes feel like I've had enough, mainly when my baby has been up 5 times in the night, or when my 3 year old is having a tantrum, or when my husband is on late shift and I'm on my own all evening with 3 kids who are refusing to go to bed! But when I look at my weight loss photos from after my 2nd baby, it reminds me where I need to get to.

We are ALL naturally lazy and naturally unmotivated. But those are not good excuses. Stop telling yourself that, and start thinking and saying that you feel so good when you eat healthfully and exercise, and that it's a priority for you to do it.

Also, don't ever have a day or a week where you just don't worry about what you eat. It's the QUICKEST way to falling off the wagon permanently. Absolutely have treats once in awhile, because those keep you going and not feeling deprived. But once you have developed a good habit, protect it like you would a treasure, because that's what it is.

Finally, try to adjust your thinking about your lifestyle. It isn't something that you're going to do for a certain amount of time, but rather it is a new way of living. When you stopped worrying about what you ate, you switched ways of living from healthy to unhealthy, and you will pay the price by feeling bad, mentally and physically. You may never just automatically choose good food and exercise as second nature. It may be something you have to consciously and willfully do for the rest of your life. But you have to make it WHAT YOU DO. Like someone else said, it's like brushing your teeth or showering. OF COURSE you eat healthy and exercise. You'd never say "I'm really stressed this week, so I'm not gonna worry about brushing my hair, or washing my face."

You know what to do and how to do it, so do it! You've got this!!