Motivation for the ones who can't even get started!

Can you figure out where the mental block is? Have you thought about a psychologist to help you look at your mind in a different light?

Have you tried setting small goals? It seems to help me. Also, I start studying nutrition to feed my mind with healthy stuff.

Start moving. make little goals every day. When faced with a choice, try to make the healthier one. If you did choose the unhealthy one, don't let that lead to another bad choice. (i.e. I have had one oreo, so I might as well finish the bag so I am not tempted.

You will be surprised at how quickly your motivation picks up. Good luck to you!:drinker:

Same w/me until almost a mth ago. It just clicked for me. I was just tired of saying tomorrow or the next day. That day has come and gone for me many of times. I have to remind myself everyday or you can lose your way. If not today, then when??? When your knees hurt, when you have to start buying new bigger clothes, when your put on blood pressure meds, people giving you that look.....You just get to a certain point in your life and your tired of making excuses. Just do it and take it day by day. Decide to do it and don't look back. It can only get better from here!

For me it was a similar story, and it's an issue that I feel can be applied to many problems. Perhaps the best example is a drug addict overcoming addiction. They may want to stop, but yet a lot of the time they will try and fail. They'll try again and they may fail again. But one day they'll reach a point so low, it will give them all the motivation they need to make the changes stick.

I think that when you're truly ready to make the big change and stick with it, you'll find the strength to make it happen. Nothing anyone says will make that happen for you, but you will find it in yourself at some point.

i was exactly the same! i have all sorts of gym equiptment at home and a gym membership and all sorts of stuff to help me but i never did anything! So i invtested some money in a trainer who comes to me, and cos i pay him in advance he has to come and see me otherwise i would just keep cancelling sessions and get shouted at for wasting money.

i also recently had homeopathic treatment for food intollerance and the woman really opened up my eyes to the start of my weight gain and the reasons behind it and turns out that its a lot more in depth than just "because i let myself get fat". That was enough to encourage me to stop thinking about the fat me, but to start thinking about the slim me and how mentally and physically happy i was and how i will be again, this is amazing motivation on its own.

and finally, this site is extreamly encouraging. seeing other peoples sucess stories makes me want to post my own one day (soon hopefully). There are a lot of people here and all with the same goal to lose weight and look and feel better.

start slow and youll soon build yourself up to the point where you miss exercising if you dont do it for a couple days! dont work yourself too hard at the beginning because it will just put you off.

good luck )

Getting started is such a hard hurdle to overcome. When I started, I just started. I didn't over think it. When you think about it, you start finding excellent excuses not to start. JUST START. Start entering your intake now, forget about what you had this morning. If you're not at work, put on some shorts, a tshirt, and some tennis and go to the gym. Don't pause to think about it. JUST DO IT. If you give yourself time to think it through, you'll find awesome excuses not to do it and then say "I'll start tomorrow." JUST DO IT.

Keep in mind that the same part of the brain -- the hypothalamus -- controls emotions, satiation (i.e. hunger & thirst) and metabolism, broad hormonal function, and many other things...basically, it should be unsurprising that motivation plays such a big role in the process of weight loss and that eating itself is so inherently emotional. In the end, motivation needs to be deeply and profoundly personal for it to be effective. I found my motivation in my kids and a trip to the ER last summer for out of control hypertension. I'll note that it's been a year since my ER trip but I only really started in earnest 2 1/2 months ago. Ultimately I had to play a protracted game of connect the dots with myself. I had kids late...I'm currently 37 and my boys are 2 and 4...men in my family don't typically live much past 72...if I want to see my boys grow up and get to know any grandchildren, I need to improve my health now. This realization was the motivation I needed, but it took me time to figure this out. My best advice to you is to look deep inside and look in places you haven't looked yet. And if you can't find it, consider talking to a therapist (as suggested above) as we all need help from time-to-time to get to the bottoms of ourselves. (Above all, remember what you said in your post: you know you have the tools to succeed. This is so important! Once you tap into your motivation to USE those tools, the sky is the limit!)

For most of my life, I've used my size (height & weight) as a way to isolate myself from people. I didn't want to get hurt. Sure, that worked for a long time. I had very few friends, which meant few people who got close enough to hurt me. It's taken a long time for me to realize that there's more to being ME than just being the tall, chubby, quirky, funny girl. It's taken a long time, a few ups and a lot of serious downs, for me to realize that I'm ALLOWED to be happy, that I'm ALLOWED to be beautiful and feel beautiful.

I had to allow myself to be happy, to be healthy, and to live up to my potential.

I'm a procrastinator. I put things off so I can rush them at the end. Not because I don't want to do the task, but because I don't want to seem like I put a lot of effort into something. If I rush it or halfass it and it's terrible, then I can blame it on not having enough time - not because I failed. It's been the same way with losing weight. I haven't let myself actually TRY until now. I didn't want to try, because trying means that the results are a show of real effort.

It took a while for me to get to know myself. I'm still learning about who I am.

Allow yourself to try. Give yourself permission to be happy and healthy.

It is pretty overwhelming to look at loosing 70-80 lbs. Then if you have tried & failed several times, that certain decreases ones motivation to try again. Have you tried to just look at doing this one day at a time. Yesterday is gone. Why think about the last 5 years. Just take each day, one day at a time. Think that you do not know what you are going to do tomorrow, but today you are going to exercise and stay on the program. If you made a mistake one day, forgive yourself, move on & think about today. Start by just taking a walk today. Keep it simple. For awhile don't think of the 70-80 lbs. Then as you are taking each day one at a time & you are successful, use that success to build your confidence & keep it rolling. It's all about today. Good luck!