Why do give up after three months?

Have you tried mini goals? Maybe that can get you motivated to keep you going. I know how you feel. I have dieted many times in my life and have given up. But you can't think of this as a diet. This has to be a lifestyle change. And changing anything takes time and commitment. You really can do anything you set your mind too. And this is a great site for support. Don't give up.

I need some advice on this as well... I've now been on this site almost 3 months... haven't hit the 90 day mark yet... but for the last couple weeks I've been exercising less and not eating as healthy as I was at the beginning. And like you I am a happier person when I'm exercising every day and eating healthier... and I don't know what's bringing me down... but believe you will make your goal and you will! I agree with other posters on making mini goals... but am also looking for more help and motivation and excited to see the replies! good job on all you have accomplished already, you will do it!

Mini goals,the support of everybody on here, logging your calories daily, exercise (whatever kind you like at first then moving up from there) you will succeed!! Stay on MFP, this site is awesome; we know you can do this!!

I'd really like to see you succeed and I love the long term goal of joining the USMC. I don't really know you so I can't give you the advice you really need right now. But here are my thoughts after reading what you've typed:

1. It seems like after 3 months you see yourself making progress and then decide to sabotage yourself for whatever reason. Maybe you feel like you deserve a break for being so good or you go through a rough patch and turn to food. You will need to figure out why you do that in order to succeed in the future. If it's the overwhelming thought of reaching your goal weight then you should try mini goals like others have suggested. If it's due to emotional stuff then you will need to work through things in your own way. And if it's because you spiral off course after seeing some positive results then I think you need a better support group.

2. It sounds like you're being really tough on yourself with calorie intake and exercise. 1500 calories a day for a big guy is no where near enough. When I joined MFP 3 months ago my daily intake was 1910 calories at 282 pounds and a sedentary lifestyle. If you set your weekly weight loss goal to 2 pounds and follow what it says you will lose the weight. And you will lose more than 2 pounds per week in the beginning. But don't try to speed things up by eating too few calories - it will burn you out. As for the exercise, it's great to be motivated and to want to get healthier. But start off slow. Don't force yourself to hit the gym for an hour a day / 6 days a week. You have to work up to that kind of thing. Let your diet do the work for you in the beginning and go for a 30 minute walk every day.

That's all I have right now. Feel free to add me if you want. I'm not going to tell you what to do or anything, but I will support you along the way.

It sounds like you let your head get in the way of your goals. I am not judging you at all, because I self-sabotage myself all the time, so I know where you are coming from. I feel better when I eat better and exercise also and I struggle with keeping up with it all. Seems for me that I kick *kitten* in the summer, but Halloween and Thanksgiving followed by the holidays make me add what I like to call “my winter layer”. It is easy to get burnt out, tired of eating the same foods, tired of telling friends you can’t go out to eat, craving what you use to enjoy, or wanting to skip the gym. It takes a lot of energy to plan meals, cook healthy, and move more and sometimes I just want to eat easy and veg out. I know what I need to do to lose the weight, but I get to a point that I give up and go back to old bad habits. For me I am an all or nothing dieter. An all veggie lunch and then salad and fresh fish for dinner every night for months and all I want is a cheeseburger and fries, and once I do eat that burger I feel so bad about it that I don’t get back on track the next day.
I would suggest that you try to cut yourself some slack. Losing weight is really hard and it takes a lot of time and dedication. Try to make healthier choices, but don’t get down on yourself if you do slip up. The other thing that comes to mind is eating more calories. If you exercise everyday and eat 1500 calories you might be making your body work much harder than it should be. Maybe only workout 3 days a week and have a high calorie meal once a week that you really enjoy. For me it is a burrito, healthy stuff but really high in calories. I’m not saying to go to McDonalds and order 3 big Mac meals, but have a nice meal that is more calories than your typical meal and plan on eating it so your body doesn’t feel deprived of everything you love. That way you don’t feel like you have been living on rabbit food for months but you will still have success.
I think quite a few of us have the same issue. I know that once I get to a certain weight I sabotage myself. I have lost over 100 lbs so far, the problem is that it is the same 20 over and over again that I gain lose, gain lose.
Good luck to you.

Thanks, this has probably got me thinking the most. I know that 1500 calories is a bit low for me as my BMR is something like 4200 by my last calculations. I suppose that its possible I was getting discouraged with my results. I figured that burning 1000 calories a day and ending each day with a 3500 calorie deficit was going to show better results than about 15lbs a month. I realize that that's the kind of lifestyle that you ease into, but after being very consistent for three months straight I really feel like I could keep it going. I know I didn't stop because I wanted to eat. I felt satisfied with each meal and generally didn't get really hungry. I would have one day a week where I would give myself about 2500-3000 calories to work with and that would be my reward for getting through the week. Maybe if I do away with that kind of thinking I can get better results. My stress levels are also extremely high from day to day and I know that is impacting me immensely; this stress exists whether I'm living a healthy lifestyle or not and I'm convinced my stress levels wouldn't be that much different even if I were at my ideal weight. I don't know how much this is effecting my goals and if I should devote time, money and energy to investigating it medically.

As far as exercise techniques go, I've been told very different things regarding weight training and cardio. One person will tell me that, for my weight, weight training is the way to go because it gets muscles to use fat as energy to rebuild. I was on a weight training regiment with a friend a few years ago and after about six months I found that I was gaining weight. I realize that muscle is heavier than fat, but what it seemed like is I was gaining muscle faster than I was losing fat -- making me look even bigger than when I started; this is not what I want. I've been told that weight training is a waste of time and I should focus on cardio. Cardio was my main method of exercise for my last two attempts. It seemed to be effective, but it left me absolutely drained. I think this might be a contributing factor as to why I feel like I'm running out of energy. I'm going back to the gym starting tomorrow, it looks like and will be doing a weigh-in. I'm hoping I haven't regained too much since January. I'm considering doing a couple weeks of straight weight training and see where that gets me. I'm not sure that my first attempts with weight training was coupled with a proper diet. It should be kept in mind that I am overall a larger person than most. I'm 6'1" and even at this weight, I know that a good deal of my body consists of muscle -- I'm pretty strong. I want to capitalize on that with weight training.

Well I want to let you know up front that I'm not a professional at this stuff - I am just explaining things how I understand them after doing a lot of personal research. I'm not trying to tell you the way you do things is wrong and my way is right. The point I'm trying to make is that losing weight can involve a lot of trial and error. If you've tried things in the past that haven't worked long term, maybe it's time to try something slightly different.

Personally, if I were in your position, I would start off slow. I know you want to see big results fast but it's important to lose the weight gradually. So your BMR is around 4200 - but that doesn't include your daily activity level. Let's say you burn an additional 500 calories a day just by getting out of bed and doing daily activities. That would put your daily calorie goal at 4700 in order to stay the exact same weight that you are now. The largest allowed deficit on MFP is 2 pounds per week which works out to about 1000 calories a day. That brings you down to daily goal of 3700 calories without any exercise. Since you have a lot of weight to lose, your body can withstand larger deficits. That means you can get away with not eating your exercise calories for now. So let's say you burn another 1,000 calories from exercise every day. That means you should be shooting for 2,500 - 2,700 calories per day from food. The problem is it's hard to reach 2,500 calories a day from healthy foods. You would have to eat 3 meals and 3 snacks a day just to get all of those calories in....and eat healthy foods that are high in calories. But I imagine if you stuck with this plan you would see the same results you were seeing before (50 pounds in 3 months) but you wouldn't feel like eating healthy was a major effort. It shouldn't add to your stress levels....eating healthy and losing weight should make you feel better and reduce your stress levels. I don't think all of it will go away when you reach your goal weight, but you might be in a better mindset to deal with the things life throws at you.

On to exercise. Weight training is not a waste of time. When you have a lot of weight to lose you are going to lose muscle as well as fat. Weight training will help you keep some of that muscle which in turn will help you burn more calories through the day. You might have seen weight gain from lifting because: 1) lifting causes your muscles to retain water which can temporarily increase your weight 2) lifting causes you to get hungry and eat more throughout the day 3) the estimated calorie burn you used when lifting weights was too high or low throwing off your daily estimates. Either way it's important to include both weight training and cardio in your workout routine. What you don't want to do though is burn yourself out so you feel drained and then give up. I would spend no more than 30-45 minutes at the gym. I would just walk on the treadmill and take it easy. You can work your way up to the harder workouts.

So that's my advice or opinion. Again if I can support you in any way I will be more than happy to do it. Some of my suggestions might work for you, some of them might not. The most important thing is that you stick with it and eventually post a success story on here.