Discouraged but trying again.

I am a stress/emotional eater too. A trick that has been working for me is to take a minute and think before I eat anything, and ask myself if I'm hungry or stressed. When I'm particularly stressed I tend to err on the side of not eating enough for fear of over eating, but you could also try eating something healthier when you're stressed, like fruit.

Aww, we will be here to support you! This site makes it easy because it forces you to record what you eat and when you exercise, and it's easier to change when it's down on paper. Feel free to friend me if you'd like, ok? Good luck with everything.

I have been in your shoes I understand, I don't have kids. 2yrs ago, I lost 100lbs, and guess what? Last year I gained 80. haha sucks for me. I know how to lose it, that's not the issue, keeping it off is. I studied a lot of psychology, also. The reason I lost the 100lbs is because I wanted to be a Navy SEAL, I'd burn 4000 calories in one hour sometimes. That's just crazy intensity. I learned quiet a few things on my path. I'd like to share some things I learned along the way.

You're here at this webpage, that's good. A lot of people just "wish" or "hope" they lose weight some day, but you're taking action, so you're off to a good start. You're doing better than 90% of the overweight population.

Success at weight loss, I believe boils down to your psychology, everything boils down to psychology. Would anyone really try if they're discouraged? Not really, we get what we expect in life, not what we want. If you expect to fail, you probably will. If you expect to succeed you probably will.

The reason why I mentioned my failure at keeping off the weight is because it made me realize new things and new insights, which I am applying now. Your body can only cause so much pain before it breaks. If you try to lose 20lbs in a month, you would put tremendous stress on your body, and it will more than likely break down. I do know people who have lost 30lbs in a month and have kept it off. It is possible, but if you tried it, and it didn't work. Move on.

It's recommended to start off slow, make small changes, changes you can manage with out too much stress on your body. For example, eat a healthy breakfast and drink your required water untill it feels automatic. THATS ALL. Once you have that down, then work on a healthy lunch, untill you have that down, then a healthy dinner. Once you have all that down, work on improving it. Start out with 15min workouts, that's what i am currently doing right now. Just take it easy, what's the rush? The objective is to build a habit, that turns in to a life style that is "easy" to maintain.

Before I forget, it's all about taking action, if you hate to workout and eat right, or if you love to workout and eat right, if you do it, you will get results. Action is the key.

That the physical part, now for the psychological part. Since I said it boils down to action, what controls action? Emotions control action. For example, lets say you had a miserable day, and you had to workout or eat right, you probably won't do it, what if you had a great day and everything was flowing great, and you had to workout and eat right. You'd probably do it.
The only difference is your emotions. So the key here is to train your mind for positive emotions. I am pretty good at controlling my positive emotoins since I have been doing it for a while. For a beginner, what I would do is, find 10mins for myself. and close my eyes. Imagine how great it would be to achieve your goal, try to visualize is if it was real right now. That's what I am doing currently and it helps keep me motivated and focused, I feel unstoppable when I do it.

You might have difficulty with it, at first, An easier exercise is to "remember" when you felt totally confident and you can achieve anything, Bring that moment from your past back to life, imagine how you'd move, breathe, talk and what would be going on in your mind as you felt this. Once you see this ideal moment imagine stepping in to your body, be in that moement and feel it. Then you imagine going through your daily life, exercising, eating right etc... (while you feel these emotions). The purpose of this is to, train your mind to feel that way through your daily life.

When I mention some of these techniques to some people, they're like "okay whatever." I think to myself "exactly, winners do what failures won't." I hope this helps.

Good advice, asmcriminal