How do you MAINTAIN motivation??
spencervannette104
Posts: 6 Member
Hello! I have used mfp for years off and on. After a bad relationship and finally a good breakup I was very motivated to find myself again and get rid of the depression weight I had gained. I used mfp and lost 30 lbs and looked and felt great. I have gained that weight back over the last few years (happy weight this time) and am now engaged. The ring was a great motivation and I got back in the gym and back to a healthy diet. The problem is after three weeks of that I was obviously much less bloated and had lost a few pounds and was feeling great. I felt that I deserved to treat myself and fell right back off the wagon again and have yet to get back on. How does everyone maintain their motivation?? My wedding is now a little over eight months away and I really want this 30 lbs off. But seeing it go quickly in the beginning I think makes me subconsciously feel like I can wait until the last minute. How do I adjust my way of thinking and make this a more permanent thing?
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Replies
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There is no wagon. If losing weight is the motivation for your change in eating and exercise habits, it's not going to last when you reach your goal, maybe not even until you reach your goal /as your have noticed). Then there is the "what-the-hell effect", that usually comes after you've had it with the deprivation/restriction and feel that you deserve a reward for a "job well done".
Instead, find a way to live a happy and healthy life. You can enjoy good food in moderation, and you don't have to exhaust yourself with exercise. If you want to have a stable, normal weight, and have a healthy relationship with food, this is actually your only option.17 -
My motivation is the scale! When I know I've been eating like crap, I get on the scale to see how I've done. If it shows gain, I get back to the program I know works for me. Your wedding dress should be a motivator in and of itself. I know that it's hard to keep up any kind of diet, but my motivation is the way I feel as well. I always find a challenge to go to, and it sucks to be motivated when the weather is crappy, but I joined classes, and have my sister working out as well. The things that drive you will motivate you. I tend to look at food as fuel, and then try to burn all the fuel. If I want crap to eat, I figure out how long it will take me to burn those calories. So here's 3 easy steps to take.
1. Make goals for this week.
2. Make goals for this month.
3. Kill both steps one and two.
Long terms goals are useful, but start focusing on short term ones to fill the gap. examples: I will lose 5 lbs this month or drop a pant size. Weekly goal could be focused 30 minute workout 3 times this week, or as little as 30 second plank a day.
Small steps still lead to large end results.5 -
Maintain good habits, and you won't need motivation.5
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Sent you a friend request because I'm also losing weight for my wedding! I have a lil mantra. When I start to think "Why am I doing this?" I tell myself, "To look my best on the happiest and most photographed day of my life!"
I think the others are on to something - of course, the goal is to build healthy habits. Rewards work, but the rewards need not be food. Reward yourself with a manicure, or a new toy, or a trip somewhere. Aim for those things. Challenges can be fun - challenge yourself to an extra workout this week, an exercise you've been hesitating to try, or making a new healthy recipe! Feeling accomplished can help you push forward.
Planning ahead also helps lots of people keep from impulsively indulging. "I'll have cookies on Sunday, so I don't need cookies now" got me through a week of really wanting cookies
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This is kinda cheezy, but I will go to the store and grab a Muscle & Fitness magazine. Seeing everyone in shape makes me want to be in shape too. They have M&F Hers or you could try Oxygen... I imagine like Playboy, there are good articles too!! lol2
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A couple people above have already said what I would have. Motivation, willpower, whatever word you want to use ... it only lasts so long, and everybody only has so much. Even a powerful motivator like wanting to look badass in your wedding dress is likely to only get you so far. A different way of looking at it is to concentrate on staying motivated until your fitness habits are, well, a habit.
We like to think we're complicated creatures, with complex motivations, blah blah blah. As Frank Zappa once said, "You are what you is." If you're somebody who has developed a habit of getting up and going to the gym, or running at lunch, or doing Zumba after work, you will be that person. If you develop the habit of getting a side salad instead of fries, you will be that person. It's much easier to just be what you is, once you've shaped what you is.
(My sincerest apologies to any teachers or aficionados of the English language. That was a nod to the late great Mr. Zappa.)7 -
How do you MAINTAIN motivation??
You don't.
You make eating within a reasonable calorie limit a habit.7 -
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Don’t think about diets or weight loss
Just improve the way you eat, improve how you look after your body & improve the way you move.2 -
Be exaggeratedly proud of each small success at first so you will begin to crave that feeling of pride because the hardest steps are the first ones, especially when they aren’t part of everyday life yet! Successes don’t have to be big to celebrate them! Example; my goal next weekend is to shop and meal prep for a week of healthy eating, and throw away any junk food temptations in my house. Then go hit the salon to get a new hairstyle to celebrate and represent the changes that are in motion. Tell the stylist how proud you are to have taken those steps (partly to hear yourself say it out loud) and I’m sure they will have something encouraging or congratulatory to say; both will help your inner voice!! Getting the pace of your good habits running like a well oiled machine again takes work like running uphill at first, and don’t get so discouraged when you hit a plateau that you want to quit. Those are the times you do another detox, or shake up your diet or exercise, and constantly tell yourself your only goal at that time is continuing to make the healthy choices that have become a part of your life. Pounds last longer than flavor, and Re establishing habits is a whole lot harder than saying no to a momentary temptation. I love the point above about setting up preplanned rewards for your successes like pedicures, favorite pastimes, or things instead of food so that your subconscious is not tempted to reward with food. Thank you so much for posting this thread and everyone who has responded... we all can benefit from a lot of these responses no matter where we are in our goals.2
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I try not to rely on motivation. I focus on the process itself, so instead of losing weight my goal is to build a structure of habits that would allow me to happily live my life at a lower calorie level, and weight loss is a byproduct of that. What's good about this goal is that there is always something I can "improve". Every time I do something food or activity related that makes weight management even the tiniest bit easier and more pleasant I feel accomplished and it feels good and I want more, so in a sense it's a self-fueling motivation.6
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Keep treating food like a reward and you will lose motivation guaranteed. Aim to eat and behave like a person of healthy weight. Also wedding dresses don't do vanity sizing so don't be surprised if the number you need is bigger than your regular clothes3
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WildBill_CQ wrote: »This is kinda cheezy, but I will go to the store and grab a Muscle & Fitness magazine. Seeing everyone in shape makes me want to be in shape too. They have M&F Hers or you could try Oxygen... I imagine like Playboy, there are good articles too!! lol
I kind of like this actually.
I started putting more pictures and videos of me working out on my Instagram, inspired by the day I discovered I could do a pull up a few weeks ago.
I also changed who I follow, so there's now more fitness people and less of my real life friends (sorry guys, but I have you all on facebook!
).
It's horrendously millennial and all, but the likes I'm getting keep me going.
I want to lift more, look better, put that out there, and keep getting the positive reinforcement.
(I'm also well aware of the dangers of social media, and in no way *define* myself by the likes I get - I'm perfectly happy with how I am, am in a loving relationship with a wonderful guy, and have a job I find rewarding - but at the moment they are spurring me on to train just that little bit harder.)
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How do you MAINTAIN motivation??
You don't.
You make eating within a reasonable calorie limit a habit.
I can't second this enough.
I, too, am in the boat of recently engaged and getting married in 6 months. Around July, I hit a wall where I realized if I didn't do anything about it, I was going to look and weigh exactly what I did then at my wedding. And the photos of my engagement were none too forgiving!
I re-downloaded the MFP app; it'd been years since I last looked at it, and from that moment on, I just started logging everything I ate. I realized what was going to be a manageable amount of daily cals - 1860 for me - and tried to stay within it.
I definitely have had days where I ate way over. Specifically I went to another friend's wedding, ate everything and two cupcakes and probably two bottles of wine, and I remember being at this crossroads moment. Do I pretend it didn't happen? Is this me falling off the wagon? Do I log this excess? I decided that night after the wedding and eating too much food that it was better to keep logging and be honest with myself.
Three months later, I've lost 30 pounds. Maybe it's the wedding keeping me motivated. Maybe it's the enjoyment I get at the end of the day hitting 'Complete Diary' on the app and getting a clearer picture of where I'll be in five weeks - my favorite is days that I eat under my cals by 100-200 cals and that seeing that short-term attainable goal. Whatever it is, it's lit the fire under me that logging my foods and trying to stay under my cals is what I need to do to keep healthy.
Sorry if I rambled!3 -
This is what I struggle with the most. Eating healthy and working out never feels like second nature to me. Probably because I end up failing every two weeks. I haven't been doing anything extreme either. I do a low impact workout video for half an hour every morning, I count calories and still eat the food I like. I lost a decent amount of weight last month, but I still felt pretty stressed out. It's like I become hyper aware of time, and I just want the days to go by fast. It never feels "normal". I wish I could snap out of this mindset because it keeping me from staying consistent. *siiiiiiigh*2
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Though I agree with a lot that's been said, just adopting a healthy lifestyle wasn't that easy for me. I kept falling back into my bad habits and gaining and losing the same weight. I realized that I could either spend the rest of my life dieting or make permanent changes.
What I finally did was identify my bad habits. For example, I could eat healthy all week and then eat like a crazy person over the weekend, thus undoing all my hard work. To try to change that habit, now I plan my food for the weekend ahead of time and it helps me stay on track.
The other thing I did which has had the most impact is that I stopped being so hard on myself. If I wouldn't say it to a friend, I am not going to say or think it about myself. I am an imperfect human and I'm going to make mistakes. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't give me permission to eat poorly or skip a workout. But when I do, I move on and get back on track without judgement instead of getting discouraged, feeling like a failure and just giving up.
Working on changing my behavior has helped me maintain my weight loss for over 2 years. I've conquered a lot of bad habits and I'm still working on others.5 -
Yes. No wagon. Just a new life style.
As above, I needed to identify my bad habits and figure out why I was overeating.
Over my adult lifetime, I had dieted for three or four months and then gone on holiday or participated in the event I had lost weight for. And that done, I was back to old habits of overeating and eating what I felt like, when I felt like it.
July of 2015 I had my come to J-moment.... when my doctor weighed me for upcoming vein surgery. Holy Hannah. I was embarrassed. I knew I’d let myself go again, but I finally realized no one else was to blame for my size. Just me and my habits. Thankfully I was still healthy but at this rate, it wouldn’t be too long and I’d start having health issues. 59 y.o. 5’9” 206 freaking pounds, on what later realized to be a small frame.
I began my journey on July 29, 2015.
Fast forward to today...... Summer and fall of 2016, I maintained around 141 to 143, but that’s too skinny for me.... I’m thinking my sweet weight is around 145. I had started running October 2016 and the low 140’s didn’t allow me enough gas to run any distance. Over last winter I gained to 151 and felt much better, but this summer my weight “ “blossomed” to 154/157 depending on my carb intake. THAT was not a good weight for me. So the past month, I’ve been monitoring my intake, cutting back on cereal and bread..... my triggers...... and I’m down to 151 again. I should be at my ideal weight again hopefully by the end of this month, when I run my second race, a 4 miler on the 29th.
Logging and being honest with myself and taking responsibility for what I eat and how much I move my body is what’s done it for me. I’ve still got bad habits, but thankfully overeating isn’t one of them any more.
I like what I see now when I walk past mirrors and plate glass windows and I don’t disappear during photo ops now.
I don’t want to be a fatty ever again.......2 -
I've been in your position, yo-yo dieting and losing and gaining the same 20-30lbs repeatedly. I also managed to drop before my wedding, but trust me, those 8 months will fly by so fast. If you don't start now, you will regret it. I lost a good deal in a few months (because I wasted time, thinking I'd be able to lose it later), but it was brutal. Everything gets very, very stressful as the wedding approaches and a strict diet makes it worse. Not to mention it will make it more likely for you to regain it right after your wedding. I think I managed to gain 10lbs in the month before my wedding just due to stress and family dinners. Ugh. All that to say, you think you have plenty of time, but you don't. Start now. Log everything you eat and drink, even if you "fall off the wagon," so that you can accurately judge your eating habits. As for more concrete motivation, short terms goals help, but also, go shopping - the fitting room usually scares me straight for a little while. Good luck!3
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Just a few observations from my years here...
People typically want to just flip a switch and make whole sale changes to their lives overnight. Changing the way you live your life and developing good habits and eliminating bad habits is a process, not an overnight kind of thing. People fail to embrace the process. This is typically coupled with an all or nothing mentality where one little hiccup is the end of the world...it's not remotely realistic to think you're going to change your life overnight or to think you're not going to have bad days and even bad weeks and even sometimes a bad month.
People seem to typically have a pretty myopic perception of "healthy" and end up eating very bland and boring things with little variety...salad after salad after salad...plain chicken and broccoli and more plain chicken and broccoli...endless cans of Tuna, etc. Very boring...I don't know too many people who can go on like that unless they're like my trainer and just aren't really into food at all. Healthy can be delicious and full of flavor...IDK if it's just a lack of nutritional knowledge or the art of cooking has been lost or what...but eating healthy can be very delicious. There's also nothing wrong with having an indulgence here and there...I went out this past weekend to get my pub grub fix...not the most nutritious stuff in the world, but hardly material to my diet on the whole.
People go bonkers with exercise. Going from nothing to all of the exercise everyday is pretty much a recipe for burnout...not to mention, completely unnecessary. You don't have to do hours upon hours of exercise everyday to be fit and healthy...and people ignore rest on top of that. Unless I'm specifically training for an event, my exercise rarely exceeds an hour 5x per week. The exception would be my weekend ride which is typically a bit longer...most of my weekday rides are 30-45 minutes at a conversational pace. I'm not jumping around like a crazy person to some DVD that I hate or droning away on some machine. Find something you enjoy doing and do it and maintain a sustainable fitness schedule.
Ultimately, motivation is just an emotion and it comes and goes. You have to develop healthy habits over time...habit and discipline will always trump motivation. Minding the process is important...losing weight and getting to some number isn't the end game...it's just the beginning...everything you learn during the weight loss process you have to take into the maintenance process which is why you have to look at your overall diet and fitness from a long term sustainability perspective.
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As they say, Motivation doesn't last. Discipline does. You need to accustom yourself to doing what is right.1
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