Where do you get your motivation from?

It sounds like maybe it just isn't important enough to you right now.

So you want to be thinner, but you don't want to put in the hard work. Welcome to the club, haha :P

Might I suggest that rather than focusing on the long-term goal, maybe just take it one day at a time? Figure out a way you can reward yourself for reaching small milestones, for example if If I log under my calorie goal every day for a week, I can go see a movie or something. Even just today, make it your goal that you will just last one day staying at your goal. Then focus on tomorrow when it comes. You can take reassurance in the fact that if you are doing it right (ie logging accurately and consistently with a food scale) it WILL work. Eventually the results will be reward and motivation enough to keep going.

I'm not sure where you're at with your logging accuracy, but if you've just started you might want to read some of the linked posts about logging and using a food scale at the top of the forum (here). A lot of people lose motivation in at the beginning simply because they are logging wrong, and give up because it's 'not working' when in fact they just need to make a few adjustments.

ETA: +1 to Lis' suggestion of pre-logging. Maybe when you do this you can work a serve of ice cream into your daily calories. Many of us have ice cream, chocolate or cake every day and still lose.

When you're ready to lose, you won't eat a bunch of ice cream, because you'll want to lose more than you want to pig out. You'll be like, "Yeah, that ice cream would taste good, but I don't want those calories. I want to lose weight." Until you get to that point, stop kidding yourself and beating yourself up for failing to do something you didn't really want to do, anyway.

"I want to be thin" is very different than "I want to do the hard work of losing weight."

When you're ready to do it, nothing will stop you! So just wait for that.

I can tell you what I did to get motivated.

I am a 57 year old male, 5 ft. 9 in., and weighed 225 pounds.

About 6 months ago or so, I got an activity tracker. I thought it was just a gimmick at first, but it turned out to be the best thing (IMO) for being more active and losing weight.

I get my 10,000 steps in per day, and I scan my food in MFP. I set it to lose 1 pound a week, and that is exactly what I have been loosing. I am down to about 196 pound (29 pounds lighter) now, so I'm about half way to my goal of 170 pounds. I also bought a bicycle, and ride anywhere between 5 and 10 miles at least 3 times a week. It automatically does all the math for me so all I have to do is log my food, and stay below my calories remaining.

If I want to eat some pizza or a cheese steak, I walk a couple miles, or ride my bike 5 miles. It is so easy, I don't know why everyone does not do it.

Hope this helps.

kayva91011 wrote: »

I don't know what it is but I can't seem to find the motivation to stick to a diet. I HATE how overweight I am and feel totally and completely unattractive but it seems to not be enough.

For instance I ate decent all day at work... Came home and binge ate on a 1/2 carton of ice cream. -.-

I work in Labor and Delivery, 12 hour shifts and with 2 kids and I just feel so emotionally/physically drained so I turn to food.

Where do you find the motivation???

I see all these people who lose all this weight and it's so awesome! Why can't I find that?

Are you restricting yourself too much? One big predictor of someone giving up on a weight loss plan is going into it with an all-or-nothing mindset (i.e. "I will eat to this plan exactly, and if I mess up it's all over"). Adding unnecessarily strict restrictions in amount or types of food makes the "mess up" event highly likely.

Take a moment and think carefully how you approach it. If your weight loss goal is too aggressive for your stats, you are probably giving yourself too few calories/day. You may be able to relax your target so you have room for a reasonable serving of ice cream or some other treat from time to time.

I hope this helps you move forward. Best of luck.

I found if I have a tub of ice cream I will eat it so I buy the ice cream sandwiches because then I will only eat one. When it comes to chips I buy a bag of chips and zip lock bags when I get home I portion the chips out. My husband and daughter do laugh at me but if you are a mindless eater this helps. I like to also log my meals at the beginning of the day too it helps me realize for this I need to give up that. Hope this helps you just remember we all have been there and struggled it helps if you can find someone to encourage you even with my family laughing they still help me count stuff out.

Most of us think of motivation as a feeling - we are ready, energized, and strong to do whatever weight loss plan we decide. But these feelings and emotions will come and they will go. We will wake up and not feel ready or energized or strong. We will feel tired, teary, defeated and weak. Those feelings, too, will come and go.

For weight loss, it comes down to habits, I believe, and those small things you do every day no matter how you feel. Like showering and brushing your teeth for example. I do those whether or not I'm having a good day or bad day. Same with weighing my food, if it's a habit, I do it no matter how I feel.

It can also be too overwhelming to start to weigh and log everything at once. So start with the ice cream after work. I had to do this with peanut butter. I told myself I'm still going to eat it, but I will at least weigh and log it. Take it one food, one hour, and one day at a time.

Further to this ...

I've done some thinking about motivation in recent months while I've been here.

What is it that suddenly motivates me to lose weight ... and stick with it until I reach my goal? I've done this a few times over the past 6 or 8 years. Prior to that, I had no trouble at all keeping the weight off because my activity level was high enough, but then my activity level dropped and I put some weight on. But 3 times, I've called a halt to the gain and have lost weight (including this time). And I'd have to say, it is the number on the scale. I hit a certain number, and that's it ... I must lose. Then it is fascinating to me to track all the calories consumed and calories burned and watch that number go down.

One particularly fascinating little experiment for me was this ... I had to drink 500 ml of water before a CT scan about a month ago. So I got up in the morning, went to the toilet, and then weighed myself. Then I drank the 500 ml of water, return to the scale, and weighed myself again. I had gained 500 grams. I "knew" that would be the result ... I've read it, I've been told it ... but it was fascinating to me to see it happen.

I don't know, maybe being intrigued by that sort of thing is silly ... but it is how I am wired.

And it's the same thing for me when it comes to my sport. I'm a long distance cyclist, and I have done some incredibly long distance events. Ultimately, they all come down to numbers for me. When I'm cycling 400 km, I do mathematically calculations all along the way ... half is 200 km, a quarter is 100 km, an eighth is 50 km, a sixteenth is 25 km ... and I have little personal celebrations, "Yay!" every time I reach one of those mini-milestones.

I even do the same sort of thing when it comes to further education. I just wrote my final for my first course of four courses for the graduate certificate I'm working on. I'm 1/4 of the way through. A mini-milestone.

I think it comes down to something like this ... if I can ride 25 km and still feel OK, then I should be able to ride the next 25 km. I don't think of the 400 km as one ride, I just think ahead to the next 25 km. Same with my education. If I have finished one course, and my world didn't end ... then I should be able to do another one. And the same with weight loss ... if I have lost 5 kg, and it was a bit challenging but nothing too extreme, then I should be able to lose another 5 kg. And if I've lost 10 kg and I'm still functioning all right, then should be able to lose another 5 kg.

Anyway, all this probably explains why I work and have education in areas like database admin, accounting, engineering tech, etc. etc.

I have a whiteboard on my fridge. It lists some of the things I want to be able to do when I'm at a more normal weight, things I am physically not capable of right now. I read it at least once a day.

Pre-logging my day's food also helps tremendously to keep me on track.

Looking at myself naked in the mirror. Now that I'm getting smaller, I'm looking better so that motivates me even more.

I have seen a few die from the fork.

You get treated differently as a fat person. Ask any single fat person.

At a point I wanted to get the life I always wanted before it was too late!

The time is now. My life is now.

Each day is a decision to eat right and exercise! So now I look at being 10-15 lbs from target back when it was so very far away.

If you grit your teeth and just do it. In a month you will have some success. In two months that much more, in three months a habit and a good feeling

Nobody can give you the desire

This is a save your own butt sort of thing.

I spent my 30s sick, weak, in pain and steadily getting bigger. I hit bottom when the scale read 190lbs. Nothing else mattered but getting stronger and getting smaller. The stronger and smaller I got, the better I felt, not just physically but emotionally as well. I only focussed on the next pound and didn't look beyond that because the only pound I could ever tackle was the next one. I recognized that this was going to be a long-term endeavor. I work 12h shifts also OP in an ICU setting. It was like a switch went off for me and I just got down to doing the work. I never cancelled a pt session and I quickly stopped balking at weighing my food when the scale started moving downwards. It quickly turned into a new way of life. That was over two years and 48lbs ago.

kayva91011 wrote: »

I HATE how overweight I am and feel totally and completely unattractive but it seems to not be enough.

That should literally be your motivation right there. I also like looking through the success stories forum and seeing other peoples success, it makes me excited for when I get there lol. Setting reachable goals and obtaining them is motivating too!

I have less motivation to lose some weight that I regained than I did when I lost most of my weight.

I think the best antidote is good planning / prep - stocking up on foods that help, and avoiding foods that tempt you (at least for now).

My motivations are vanity and health, same as last time. But what kept me going last time was the fitness side. I used to get a lot out of it on multiple levels. But I can't do a lot of those activities, and the ones I can, not to the degree I did before.

So my progress is way more reliant on the diet side, which is the part I hate. I'm having to figure out some ways around it. I'm going to try reducing carbs and upping fats so I can feel fuller on fewer cals.