difficult

Try splitting it up into milestones.. If you have 70 to goal, break it up into five milestones for 14 pounds each. Give yourself some small treat with each milestone (new shoes, new shirt, etc) to help keep you motivated. Happy Scale application will do this natively for you, but there are any number of ways to do this.

I was in the same boat. I had over 70 pounds to lose. Make small changes - they can have big impact. I still have 40 pounds to go but am still on the right track. Logging and tracking your food is the most important place to start. Even if you just start with trying to eat at maintenance until you get comfortable (about a week). Then drop calories by 250 a day for a week then another 250 the next. Before you know it you are losing a pound a week.

It is and it isn't (difficult). By choosing a modest goal (1 lb/week), I've found meeting my calorie goal isn't particularly hard. Sure there's some days I really want to chuck it and eat however I want, but over time I've learned to make choices that for the most part make me happy and keep me satisfied. I've also really enjoyed finding exercise that works for me and get a lot of satisfaction from my new found fitness. However, this balanced, slower approach is a little harder mentally. I think weight loss is basically boring- you make a few good choices and then mostly it's just waiting around for something to happen! While you wait, you can really psych yourself out. A few weeks with no *noticeable* progress can be discouraging. But if you stick with it, with time you will really see the progress and it will make the waiting much easier to accept. I've often felt like I was spinning my wheels, but now I'm a year in and have lost close to 45 lbs. Not as much as some, maybe, but I haven't had to make great sacrifices either. And I don't doubt I can continue what I'm doing indefinitely. You can do it! Just adjust your expectations and try to stay relaxed and calm with the whole process. Literally a day at a time.

It's a slow process that is frustrating, espically when you have lot you need to lose. Setting smaller goals within the big one helps because you'll be seeing success along the way, not just at the end. And since you need to recalculate your calories every 10lbs or so, celebrating 10lbs lost by getting yourself a little something is a good way to remind yourself to recalculate.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you will make mistakes. All of us do. We all have off days, unexpected celebrations or dinners out, things like that. Remind yourself that one bad day isn't going to sabotage you or make you a failure. Just makes you human. Log it, learn from it, and move on. Learning to forgive yourself and keep going is a really hard lesson for most people, but to me, that's more important than 'willpower'. The only way you'll fail at this is if you give up. ^_^

gramarye wrote: »

Do one thing at a time. I started by tracking without restricting, and then tackled the easiest things first. I started by not drinking calories, and once that became routine, I jumped to something else.

That's a reasonable way to do things. I always feel bad when I read about people going from no restrictions to a 1200 calorie diet. That's not a recipe for success

try2again wrote: »

gramarye wrote: »

Do one thing at a time. I started by tracking without restricting, and then tackled the easiest things first. I started by not drinking calories, and once that became routine, I jumped to something else.

That's a reasonable way to do things. I always feel bad when I read about people going from no restrictions to a 1200 calorie diet. That's not a recipe for success

I hear you. I understand that for some people, the shock of the change works for them, and that they can learn from there how to eat sustainable. But I would have crashed and burned (and did, many times, when just trying to learn to eat 1500 calories, because that was the number I learned in high school) if I had just tried to restrict immediately. I had to know what was incorrect first, before I could learn to eat correctly for my needs and lifestyle.