Can't get going and getting desper

So why do you have things in your house you don't want to eat? Why do they leave things laying around? You're the one who decides, not your children.

You neex some motivatinal friends thats it and keep it cool.

I can't help myself at my parents' house so I just make sure I get those calories back by going on my exercise bike at night when the kids are in bed. I watch telly while I'm doing it. Log everything. I had lots of things yesterday that pushed me over but I biked for an hour so don't feel so rubbish about it.

AlanTuring wrote: »

The trick is realizing it's never too late. You can be down to the last bite of an entire 3,000 calorie cake and make the healthier choice and refuse to eat that bite.

Excellent advice! I'll remember this one, next time I find myself nose deep in the biscuit tin.

OP, you remind me of myself, but this time around, I am taking the advice offered by the wisest people on MFP. If you have no health issues, calories in/calories will do the trick. Don't aim high, so you get a managable deficit. Eat your biscuits, logg them. Be as accurate as you can, be carefull to weigh definitely the higher-calorie foods. You get a (reverse) wallet of calories, once it is full for the day, it is full. Next bite is for tomorrow. One day at a time. I have been back less than a month, but the weight is coming off, very slowly, but at least I am not putting on 4 pounds a month anymore as I did the previous six months.
I am not eating 'healthily', I continue to eat my chocolate and chips (my biggest vices), but my main aim is now to get to my goal weight, slowly but surely. I have a slightly elevated bad cholesterol, but I can only fight one battle at the time. And it looks I am winning this one! I just need to learn patience!!

I find it helps to buy things for kids that they will eat but I don't like. For instance types of biscuits or whatever your problem food is. Making healthy choices will rub off on the kids, they will follow your lead as well.

I think there's some great advice above, try to keep at it, work out what works and what doesn't, keep tweaking until you've got something that works really well for you.

I found it really helpful to work out my approximate maintenance calories for the week (the amount of calories I can eat without gaining or losing weight) as well my calorie goal for weight loss. I try to stick to my calorie goal daily but also look at the week as a whole. Eating more than your goal calories every now and again is unlikely to push you over your maintenance for the week, so you're still on track to lose (just a bit slower). If you do find you eat up to or more than your maintenance calories it's a good opportunity to look over your diary and work out what you can change to prevent it in future. If you do this though remember to adjust your maintenance calories as your weight goes down.

Try not to compare yourself to others and don't give yourself such a hard time if you falter, for a lot of us it takes practice and that's fine.

nikkilawlez wrote: »

Last week I arranged a healthy menu and a healthy shop - one of my children who is sickly - and stubborn with tears and tantrums refused to eat for almost three days - it was heartbreaking. I am a single working parent on a tight budget with debts - I shopped for only what was on the menu and again it seems I have failed - yep looks like I am a complete soft sh#t and cannot be changed to a diamond !!!!

You may be trying to do too much.

You could stick to your calorie goal, but still be eating, say, chicken nuggets.

You could up your calorie goal -- maybe 2 lbs a week (I am guessing here) is not sustainable for you.

You could tell yourself you can't eat the kids' extras because you're on a tight budget with debts.

You could create a menu with a bit of flex to it, so they're eating some slightly different things (and that's "their" food, so you don't eat it). (Ex. Cook chicken nuggets for everyone. Whip up a side salad for yourself, nuke a small can of soup for the kids to split, and dunk their nuggets in. Or whatever, I don't know what you guys like.)

You could work on making healthier choices and not calorie count for awhile. (Many people can lose initially doing this, so if ALL the changes at once are overwhelming you, work on one thing at a time.)

Relax your definition of healthy. Start by comparing labels -- can you switch the kids' pb to one with say, more protein? Is there a lower sugar yoghurt? Maybe you start introducing fruit as an addition to each meal (which you can later use to help you cut down on the kids' consumption of other things, like, say, cookies or chips). Think about what you could ADD, not cut, and get creative. Try roasting veggies. Try chopping veggies finely or food processing them, and working them into sauces and things. Cut things slowly, like if everyone is on 3 cans of soda a day, move to 2.

You could view it all as a process. You do not switch from an "unhealthy" diet to a "healthy" diet overnight -- and kids are unlikely to accept that drastic of a change anyway. (And actually, you are not really accepting it either, since you keep swinging off it.) Go slow.

You can also change your perspective a bit. If you eat well for 3 days, then make some less healthy food choices and go over calorie goal, isn't that still progress, if you used to make unhealthy choices every day and always eat over calorie goal? Picture a calendar. Every day, you get either a yellow happy face sticker, or a black happy face sticker. (Yellow for a day you think you met your goals, more or less, black for definitely not.) Some yellow and some black is better than all black. And next month, maybe there'd be more yellow. And the month after. You will get better at this as you go. But even if not, it's still better than all black stickers.

Stop thinking "I did a wrong thing so now it's all ruined." Because that's actually just 100% wrong, and you're sabotaging yourself, and being unkind to yourself, which is absolutely going to get you nowhere and make you miserable. Make positive changes, treat yourself well, relax a bit. When you notice guilt/stress/etc then address it, because it's not good for you, don't think "well yeah, of course, I should be feeling guilty, I ate all that food". No.

Back way up. Identify some small steps you can take, that you can sustain for more than 2 days at a time. When that has been going well for awhile, take some new small steps. In no time, you'll be making great progress. It doesn't matter how slowly you start, it matters what you'll be doing 1, 5, 10, 30 years down the line.

AlanTuring wrote: »

One of the biggest problems for me comes down to beating myself up, just as you're doing. I feel myself starting to fail, I give in and eat trash, and then I eat more to make up for how miserable I feel about how much I'm eating.

The trick is realizing it's never too late. You can be down to the last bite of an entire 3,000 calorie cake and make the healthier choice and refuse to eat that bite. It's the long war that you're worried about. You can't be expected to win every single battle all the time, but don't let one failure feed the next failure.

This is helpful to me thanks!