I keep sabotaging myself ☹️ HELP...

Well being a person who has started and stopped so many times I can only say that it takes something within yourself to snap I guess.

I am 51yo and to this point in my life I have been pretty healthy although overweight by society standards. Then back in August this year I was out with family walking on a trail that was paved. Half way back to the car I stopped to use the porta potty and when I came out and started walking I had a weird feeling. Before I could say anything I passed out and my face broke my fall on the pavement. When I came to shortly after I realized what happened then two missing teeth and a hole in my bottom lip. A trip to the ER and they said it was Vasal Vagal Syncope or simply put the blood drained out of my head. The next month or so I also had a head concussion from the whole thing and could not remember some simple words and phrases. thank goodness it was temporary.

So for me I got the crap scared out of me. I am now going to the gym regularly and doing some strength training. I know building muscle will help me burn more calories. I started going back to the gym Oct 1st and for me I have gotten to the point where I like the way I feel. I also have started to notice and maybe I am just weird, but when I am shopping I look around and I see and say "holy cow look how much crap they try to sell us"

I guess there is no magic way and I have just come to say I am not going to work that hard in the gym and logging my foods to jeopardize my success that way this time. It does not matter take it one day at a time. no one is perfect and we all have bad days. Just pick yourself back up and start over.

I hope that you can overcome the temptations

Like pogoguy05, I found fear provided certain energy to concentrate.

But let's stick to the face of your post. On track? What track are you on? If you are on a "diet" track, it's a bad place to start from. Looking for moderate, livable lifestyle changes is a better position to start from. Work on developing good habits. A food diary, where you record everything no matter what, is a good place to start.

Weigh and measure what you eat and drink at home. Study NI to make good faith calculations when out. A carefully monitored modest calorie deficit over time will get you what you want. Figure out how you will cope with the time issue. It wrecks a lot of people.

Cookies. Are you feeling deprived? I fought cookies, and sweet treats in general with this- ice cream. I calculated a satisfying portion of LF ice cream that I could eat everyday. About 100 cals was enough. But, eat the cookie at the office- no ice cream. I can gulp down 100cals in cookies in the blink of an eye. The ice cream was a much more rewarding experience.

Cookies part 2. I've put a lot of thought into the cookie and find it a particular problem. For me they are like potato chips, no such thing as 1. But a single chip is a couple of calories. 3,4 cookies can be 100s of calories. I just wasn't going to get to goal eating more than a rare cookie.

Urges. You didn't make the cookies, you didn't bring them to work or whatever. They are not part of your plan. Let's go back to your plan. WL is a process. Invest in the process. When you have some time and effort on the line, you may not want to give it up to someone else who decided it was cookie day. Yeah, I know they were trying to be nice, but it's not helpful to your goals. You deserve to get what you want for yourself.

Sorry this is so long. WL is complex.

There will be SO MANY COOKIES in life. I get to decide how many of them I eat (I do eat cookies). If food doesn't fit into my day/week, (usually because I'm having other treats), I ask myself what I would enjoy more, having that treat or having a solid loss this week.

I calorie count, so I know whether I have lost weight before I get on the scale.

I have to abstain from having cookies in the house. Or candy. Or ice cream. Or chips of any sort. Even crackers. If they are in the house, even prepackaged into single servings, even hidden away from view, even hidden in places I don't store my every day food ... they will send their potent waves directly to the shadow brain and become a constant nag ... 'eat me, eat me; just one, eat me' .... However I can be out of my house, say at a party, ... and as long as I don't start on one of those before I've had my event meal I can usually stop at 3 or 4 before it's time to go home.

I agree, with most. Certain things in the house = out of control. For me it is peanut butter, crackers, chips, and ice cream. Oh sure I am very good when in public. But come late night by myself it could be trouble. What I have found is that acknowledge what happened and understand how you feel just after, guilty and bloated mostly. I think the part that will go the longest for me is realizing this is a marathon not a sprint, and a lifestyle change to last forever and not an end goal.

I pre-set my calories for the day, It helps having a "menu" to refer to. When something unexpected pops up (like last night hubby asking me if I want the last cinnamon roll) I give it a quick thought (do I have room in my calories for this? Do I really NEED it??) and usually turn it down. Side note: I already had a cinnamon roll as part of my dessert last night, so having a second one really wasn't wanted. The only thing that made me hesitate was the fear of missing out. Well, I "missed out" and nothing bad happened!