Totally lost motivation and hope

Gather yourself and restart again.

I agree don't use it as an excuse to keep it up. Pick yourself up and stick with it.

Get back to it again. BTW it is hard for us to help if we can't see your food diary.

If you dont keep trying you will never do what you have set out to do. So get back up and try again!

Everyone falls off a horse at one point or another, its never stopped anyone from horseback riding after a quick break. Get back on that horse and continue on that goal.

For me, the motivation came when I saw the results. Like you, I was going to the gym, eating well (or so I thought), but my scale was not budging. Started P90X, learned a lot about my nutrition, made changes little by little, and have lost 28 pounds.

You just need to find what works for you. I credit my weight loss to great workout programs AND better nutritional habits.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you want more details.

Tomorrow is another day and another chance to start all over again. Take a moment, step back and remember why you joined up and wanted to lose the weight in the first place; just get those thoughts into your head and hopefully, it will help you. A bad time will pass if you let it go. Good luck and all the best.

So I was doing really well. I was going to gym 6 days a week and having two personal training sessions and eating pretty well. I also quit smoking and eased right back on drinking. With all this hard work my weight wasn't shifting so I stopped going to gym so much, started smoking again and am drinking on a nightly basis again. I feel like crap and now I'm sick which is another excuse why I can't go to gym. I really badly want to lose weight but desperately need some motivation Does anyone have any tips for when they fall off the wagon?

What do you find fun or entertaining? You like music, right? What about that song you're trying to teach yourself on guitar? can't get it out of your head? If you have an iPod or mp3 player you could go for a short jog while listening to the song. You could use the workouts as a reward for something. Or use the completeion of the workout as the reward. Not too long ago, humans were capable of running antelope to death (google "humans running antelope to death"). At the end of the hunt, humans got dinner and a sense of self-accomplishment because they brought home food for the whole tribe. The hunters that chased the antelope down were 'heroes' because they kept the tribe fed for another few days. This feeling of happiness and accomplishment has been engrained into our DNA and almost everyone who goes to the gym feels a sens of accomplishment afterwards.

Get yourself up out of your house and go do something! Find something fun and just go do it! go for a jog around the neighborhood and see all the people who live close to you. Go for a hike up a trail somewhere nearby and enjoy nature. If you have mountains nearby, go climb them! If you have lakes or ocean nearby, go for a swim. After you're done with a hard workout, treat yourself to a massage or simply a protein shake or maybe just a rental from the local movie store or netflix... that little bit of sacrifice you made to beat your body up deserves a little bit of reward!

before long, the workout itsself will be it's own reward!

*Focus on how far you've come!

*Focus on the non-scale victories (compliments from people noticing, clothes fitting differently, etc)

*Take this slump as a time to learn about new foods, new exercises, and new daily strategies. Instead of going to the bar one night, you could spend that time learning

*Give yourself a reward goal

*Give yourself a little "pet project," e.g. substituting in one healthier, low-cal food per day, taking the stairs, etc)

*Build exercise into your daily routine so that you can't avoid it and it feels off to do something else (I drive to the pool every day at the same time) Meet up with a workout friend to keep yourself to a commitment.

*If you don't feel like exercising, tell yourself that you'll only do it for twenty minutes (or ten, or x amount of pushups, or whatever). Chances are in that time you'll start to like it and keep doing it. If not, then you've at least done the twenty minutes!

*Make new friends on here and keep yourself accountable

*Make little changes at a time that you can actually achieve so that you have achievable goals ahead of you and a sense of accomplishment when you do achieve them.

*Instead of feeling demotivated because of slips, use the slips to learn about yourself -how can you do it differently next time, what triggered the problem, etc. Planning your "slips" will make you feel much more in control.

Good luck!

I just went through a similar situation myself... I'd been doing well with Power 90 then moving onto P90X for several months now.
The last two weeks I took off was a big mistake. It's been hard to get back in the swing of things, but I'm trying, even if it's a little bit at a time.

Take it one day at a time and do your best on that given day. Relax and make your next meal the best meal of your day. Exercise can be done anywhere if you get up and move around a bit. Do some squats while waiting on dinner to cook, or bust out some push-ups on the counter in the ladies room.. I sneak in little exercises where I can thorughout the day so I can remind myself to stay active.

here's what my dad has told me time and time again that has helped me before; one simple little phrase: JUST DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING! Forget starting over tomorrow, start over right now! Focus on your next bite of food. I mean literally - the next thing you pop in your mouth. Is it going to be a healthy bite of food? The next time you get a craving for a cig (I've quit too)......whatever you do, do not put one in your mouth! Chew on a piece of sugar free gum instead. whatever your next move is, just make sure that it's the right thing to do towards your goal. It will suck for a while, because it will have to be a conscious effort every stinkin' time. But trust me, it gets a LOT easier the more and more you do it! One liiiitle itty bitty baby step at a time. that's what forms habits good luck!!!

Get back into it You can do it!

Hi Carly

The mind is sure a funny thing. I'm in a phase where the whole losing weight thing is currently easy. Yet on many occasions in the recent past I've tried and failed. FWIW I'll outline two things seem to be critical to me. For reasons related to my family I ended up at a psychologist. So he was helpful to us but in the end he said "I want to see you on your own" So i went back. He diagnosed me as severeley/ extremely depressed. The only positive thing I had going was that I had no intention of topping myself. I covered it with extremes of exercise and work. He finally persuaded me that i should take a very low dose anti-depressant just to give myself a break which then allowed us to work on the problems. I would never have thought I was depressed. I guess i'd been that way a long time and didn't know the difference. However a few sessions later the sun came out. I started to feel good; gave up the nightly wine; joined MFP (for the second time) and the weight more or less just falls away.

The second thing a (sort of) counsellor told me years ago was to do a meditation type exercise and then visualise yourself as you want to be. He had some theory that willpower alone cannot work and cannot overcome the mind. So get your photo of how you are, then visualise the person you want to be. Discard the old image and continually bring up the image you want to be. Eventually you see yourself as the new person and that is who you become.

One last thing re exercise. I only do what I enjoy. I don't push myself hard. If I want to stop after 1200M swim instead of 2.5K I do. If I feel like stopping after 100M and have a spell I do. I try to make my aim to enjoy every moment and to feel good. Not exhaust myself.
So no need to go to the gym and work out insanely...just go...or maybe first...just go for an enjoyable walk...do something, anything! It really doesn't matter. Just take a small step forward no matter how small.
I hope something here helps.
As I said...all FWIW and hope you find

Hi Carly...one more thing I did. In the B&F photos threads you can find great photos of what people here have achieved and it shows you what is possible. I got a good one of those and put it on my desktop and look at it every few days.

Quit beating yourself up over what happened today and remember that everyday is a new beginning. Instead of trying to do it all, set a small goal for yourself (drinking 8 glasses of water tomorrow, or getting more active by taking a nice walk) and achieve it. Small victories will lead to real progress. Don't overwhelm yourself by trying to do it all, just take one step at a time.