Need motivation

I'm also having such a hard time losing weight. Is ee pepole losing 5-10 punds in a month and all i manage to lose (if I'm lucky is 2 lbs). I need all the motivation I can get as well. Please feel free to add me as a friend

How are they paying lots of money to lose weight? Most of the diets that are expensive like that are scams and don't work and if they do work then the weight will always come back when they get off the diet, and diet pills are soo bad for your heart.

Trust me, you're doing it right. Diet and exercise is the way to go to stay healthy and keep the weight off for good! When you feel unmotivated or feel like giving up, just think about that small pair of jeans in the back of your closet that you're just dying to fit into. Think about how good you will look and how great you will feel when you finally reach your goal weight. You're working hard to get where you want and that in itself is very rewarding. Good luck

10 lbs a week is not a heathly weight loss....the only way to do it, so it sticks is to change eating patters, eat well, get moving and eat enough so you are losing an average of about 2 lbs a week....if you still aren't losing you need to change something. for those that complained about not losing, what are you eating and have you incorporated some exercise? unless you are close to goal you would probably be losing at least something each week.

Hi Jocewar,

The first thing you need to remind yourself is that someone who is losing 10+ pounds per week is just setting themselves up for failure. Especially if they're paying $80 a week to do it. A realistic weight loss goal should be no more than 2 pounds per week (for the obese) or less depending on how close to your goal weight you are. I'll use myself as an example: I am currently 70 pounds over my goal weight of 185. To maintain my current weight at my current activity level, I need to consume roughly 2800 calories a day. A man my height and activity level at my goal weight of 185 needs to consume 2250 calories per day to maintain that 185. If I eat like that 185 pound man, I would consume a net shortage of 3850 calories a week which is equal to about 1 pound (1 lb = 3500 calories). As I get closer to my goal weight, the difference between what my body needs and what I'm consuming becomes smaller, thus the caloric deficit gets smaller, and the weight lost per week becomes less. When I reach 195 pounds, I will have be consuming a caloric deficit of 550 calories per week, so I'll be losing weight at a rate of 1 pound every 6.5 weeks. I will either need to eat much less or exercise much more to continue the same rate of weight loss as when I started.

Now, if someone is currently 200 pounds overweight, it is likely that they can lose 10 pounds per week just by eating like a person at their goal weight would and working out for hours each day, but that is definitely the extreme. To lose 10 pounds per week, you would need a net caloric deficit of 35,000 calories. That would mean some extreme dieting and extreme exercise that no one can possibly hope to maintain for long, let alone a lifetime. If you want to lose weight and keep it lost, you need to stop thinking in terms of "diets" and start thinking in terms of permanent lifestyle changes.

Simple changes in your eating habits and physical activity are easy to maintain and will shed the pounds in a manner that will ensure that they stay off. Try parking in the furthest spot you can find when you go to the store. Take stairs whenever possible. Stop drinking sodas and sugary beverages. Keep candy and junk food out of the house. Stock your fridge with fresh fruits and veggies and put them on a shelf, not in the drawers. This is what I've done, and it's definitely helped. Eventually, I began to feel more energized and started going for longer walks and using an elliptical several times per week. And since I want to keep my net calories the same each day (intake minus exercise), when I exercise I eat more. The first two weeks were the toughest, but even those weren't that bad. I'm a little over a month into it and I've just about effortlessly lost 10 pounds and it just gets easier each day.

In all of my past weight loss endeavors, I put my heart, soul, and sweat into it--full steam from the beginning. And every time, I just ended up trying too hard, burning myself out, and giving up. It took me over a decade to realize that I just wasn't going to get rid of the weight in 6 months like I wanted. Once I realized that, it was easy to accept the fact that it will take me a year or two to get to my goal weight. And now that I'm not in a hurry, I feel so much better. I know I can do it, and I know I'll be able to maintain this pace and these habits for the rest of my life. I feel better about myself and my weight loss each day.

Good luck, Jocewar--you can do it. Just remember the story of the tortoise and the hare, "Slow and steady winds the race." It really is true in this case.

Add me as a friend if you'd like. I can help work out the numbers for you (or show you how to do it yourself). Also, I am trying to start up a weight loss support website (www.thinmeout.com) to help out with just this sort of thing. It is literally in it's infancy (I'm basically the only person there for now) but I would like to see it grow in popularity and usefulness, and the only way to do that is get new members one at a time. I'm blogging my weight loss journey there with weekly updates (I try to do more, but I just plain forget), so check it out if you'd like to see more.

You'll do just fine!

Kevin

You should be excited! Watching people throw $80/week out the window when you can do it for $0?! AND have the opportunity to say "I told you so"?! WOW! Take this as a challenge and drop weight the RIGHT way by watching what you eat and exercising. If you do that - months or years down the line - you will still have your weight off and they will be back where they started +10lbs!