I need help, I am stuck starting over again and again, I'm just sad

It happened, accept that it happened and start again. You lost 16 lbs! You've done this, so that means you can totally do it again! Beating yourself up, mentally kicking your own *kitten* is only going to make it harder to get back on a healthy track. Weight loss is a long journey with ups and downs, strides and failures. You have to accept that sometimes you're going to fail but get back up, dust yourself off and have what you want to do back in focus.

I know it really sucks to fall off the wagon, but it will only make it worse the longer you prolong starting over. Try not to beat yourself up over slipping up. You lost 16 pounds!! That proves that you are capable of losing weight, you just have to try a bit more to not mess up again. What works for me is to view every mistake as a leaning lesson, whether it be at school, work, or losing weight. If it was your vacation that threw you off course, next time you go on vacation think about what mistakes you made that made you gain the weight back and try not to make them again. Best of luck!!!! You can do it!

Hi rmahj78,

I have a similar experience. Over the passed few years I steadily gained to become more overweight than I had ever been before, despite constantly worrying, and also going through cycles of "dieting well" and then going back to old habits.

I don't know exactly how you are going about "dieting" or "eating and/or exercising well", but I feel as someone who has gone through these cycles a lot before, I think it might have something to do with excess, especially since you say you feel very down on yourself. Do you for example go through phases of living almost an exemplary lifestyle and then ease back into old habits which really conflict with this? I for example would go from regularly binging on sweet and savoury snacky junk foods to then having no snacks at all, and eating mostly salads, soups, and low-fat protein options for breakfast/dinner and only fruit for sweet-meats. I think the key is to start small, even if you know in the past you have been capable of much better.

The way I broke the cycle was to accept my then habits - I liked to drink beer or wine every evening, I liked chips and fried food, I loved cakes, biscuits and pastries, and whenever I felt peckish, I would grab a snack, regardless of calorie content. I think I was regularly consuming 3000 calories in a day, which was definitely too much for my level of activity and body size. And also accept that weightloss might not come fast and impressive if new good habits were going to stay for good.

The next step was to make a plan which would allow me to very gradually move away from my old habits and develop new ones. So the first week I started, I limited myself to 2500 calories - for most people far too many to lose weight with unless you are a muscle beast, which I am not (and I am a woman). I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted to get those 2500 calories, but also aimed to eat 5 portions of fresh fruit and/or vegetables each day. I kept a little record - not of everything I ate, but of how successful my calorie count was, and how successful the fruit/veg aim went. If after one week I managed to stay under my calorie goal at least 5/7 days, then I would aim for 100 calories less the next week. So the following week, I was aiming for 2400 each day. This very gradual change made everything far less stressful and easier on the old soul - I was working WITH myself for improvement, rather than against myself for the end-goal. When I reached 2000, I struggled and spent maybe two or three weeks trying to get it right - having to think hard about new healthy habits I could start. And the same happened when I reached 1800, and then 1500. But whenever I was struggling to adapt to the new mini-goal, it never felt like a failure or like I had been bad, nor did anytime I ever decided to have a "treat" since it was very important to GRADUALLY move away from habits I wanted to lose. So if I used to always have a chocolate cookie (of around 400 calories - they are the best cookies in the world) at lunch, then once a week letting myself still do that, but working it into the daily or weekly plan was no drama. I still occasionally have one of those cookies (freshly baked in the cafeteria of my workplace. Let's just say the staff know me well... haha) even though I have completely let go of the terrible sweet-snack binging habit I used to engage in. This kind of very personal success is what keeps you motivated when trying to achieve a better lifestyle - because the goal is formed by yourself and it is achievable.

With this kind of approach, set-backs are not only permissable, but they are no longer seen as set-backs. While reading advice on superfoods, and the dangers of carbs or bananas or goodness knows what is good for increasing awareness of nutrition, changing to an exemplary diet/lifestyle is something which I believe takes years of practising these smaller improvements. My Dad used to make me play golf with him when I was a kid, and he always used to criticise me for looking at the flag rather than the ball when I took a shot. While I don't like golf - there was a life lesson there which I feel is crucial to breaking yoyo dieting cycles - look at your starting point, more so in fact than your end-goal, and work with what you have got, not what you want. And any advice you get, or any apps or programmes you use should be adapted to these things - these elements of YOU otherwise they are useless.

The other great thing about this kind of relaxed plan is that it also gives you plenty of headspace for other things in your life. Since set-backs no longer exist, no drama over food/exercise really exists, and after practising it for a while, I felt actually very free, and my weightloss objectives no longer dominated my thoughts. This was in fact very motivating in itself. I no longer defined myself by my need to lose weight, while I was in fact actually losing weight. Before, during my intense healthy-sprints, so to speak, I usually felt out of touch with my work or my studies, or like I had disconnected from the details of my friends/familes lives, or general news. The "chilled" approach got me results like nothing had before, while also giving me space and time to still be me, a person developing in so many other ways besides the lifestyle improvement-plan.

Alongside myfitnesspal, I used the nhs (UK) weightloss 12 week plan - which I adapted to my specifics. I recommend it because it takes the emphasis off numbers (myfitnesspal is a bit obsessed with numbers, imo) and it is very gentle. Here is a link - if you want to take a look.

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/loseweight/Pages/Loseweighthome.aspx

I really wish you all the best - I feel I really understand what you are going through, and I believe you can make it. I only hope my "advice" has not sounded too obvious or dictatorial!

Hugs and love,

Gatarubia

I lost 18lb, and put most of it back on. I am convinced though that new weight is easier to lose than old weight. Has to be....

Sometimes you just have to put the past behind you--learn from it, and start over. If you've learned something you'll do better this time. All successful people have failed at one time, but they just keep going. Be one of them. Best.