Don't think you can keep motivation going long enough for long term weight loss. You have to keep doing your program even when you don't feel like it. That's determination.

It helps if you fill in the big part between the in the zone highs and the tough it out lows with good habits.

I try not to look at it as a fight but rather more of a set of trade-offs.

No one is forcing me to be smaller, to move better, to sleep better, to feel better or to have less likelihood of medical issues related to obesity. I can go back to the way I was anytime I choose. So far, one day at a time, I've chosen not to.

How do you keep the motivation going? Or do you depend on grit and determination to keep going ?

Motivation comes easy, there are many things that motivated me to lose weight, my health, the way I looked, buying clothes, my family's concerns for me...the list was/is LONG!

I think that the motivation to lose weight has never left me because I started so morbidly obese (376) that after losing 171# I'm still obese according to my BMI. (That WILL change to Overweight when I lose eight more pounds!)

Now as for discipline, grit, determination or what every It is that keeps me trying after four and. Half years, that is an internal muscle between my ears. The main thing that keeps me trying is knowing how easy weight can be gained compared to how hard it is to lose a 2.5# gain.

Knowing there is no Finish Line also helps me to keep going because I never ever plan to quit WW, I don't think about going back to my old bad eating habits knowing that's what I did every other time I lost weight on WWers.

I started this WLJ four years ago at age 65. I figure I had over thirty years of eating and drinking as much as I wanted,enough is enough.

@podkey has my proxy

Motivation vs. Discipline...

Somewhere in between or in addition to these two is willpower. I have learned over the last 6-7 years but more recently that motivation has been exhausted by the desire to eat things or eat too much. It's not that anything is off the table (off limits) to eat but rather eating more of certain items or too much of certain items in one day or in succession or too frequently raised my caloric content beyond the daily maximum goal. So is discipline the answer? where I must strictly stay on a regimented schedule or routine? or is motivated to hang in there by means of a reason to accomplish my goal the answer.

My thought with willpower is that when motivation wears thin and staying on the routine day after day becomes unsustainable something else has to kick in. I believe this is where willpower is my answer. For me motivation helps to kick start me but may not be the answer without action. Discipline is wonderful to stick to a routine or schedule but that can run thin for me when it get's interrupted or I lack the desire to make whatever I want to happen get sidetracked.

So the gut determination through the years to take action one step at the time takes what I consider to be willpower. Wanting the results deep down inside of me to take that first step then leading me to be motivated to lose more and to be determined to stay on schedule day after day or meal after meal and also be determined to keep up with a routine.

So again these past few weeks my willpower has faulted on a number of occasions and has led to a 25 +- gain. I have noticed that while being temporarily sidetracked and pushing toward getting back in or on a routine both have failed me in a sense. So it's now dawning on me as I have thought through these two questions that every time I have been successful with losing weight I have pulled from my willpower. In other words I have to pull from my deep desire to accomplish my goal and see it through to the end no matter what.