I don’t get what happened

Sometimes the mind is our worst ennemy. Everyone knows we should eat healthy, exercise more, that cigarette and/or alcool is simply put together poison for your body, yet all of us are more often than not guilty of doing thing that are really bad for ourselves.

What worked for me over the years is sitting down by myself and making a realistic plan for ME and not society. I was ALWAYS overweight and even at my lowest weight my BMI was considered overweight. But I got to a point, after loosing 75 pounds, where I was okay with the result I was at.
Ask yourself what would make you happier: Is it being the weight that you are now or going to the gym 60 minutes a day? If 60 minutes a day is unrealistic for you, then maybe 30 minutes a day. If 30 minutes a day is still unrealistic, then maybe once a week for X minutes. Just start somewhere, as small as it is, that will make you happier than your current state. Maybe the gym is too much of a concession and ask yourself if you would be happier with your current weight or with eating X amount of calories instead.

And to make sure you stick to it, everyday when you wake up and when you go to bed, ask yourself the questions again. Put a post-it of those questions on your bathroom mirror or a reminder in your phone, just make sure that you reassess your goals and adjust them as needed.

When I started my journey I was eating 1200 calories a day, if even, and that made me miserable. I would fall of the wagon times and times again, and when I sticked to it I would be the grumpiest person ever. Eventually I decided to eat more calories and and loose weight more slowly. And that worked. Every day when I saw results that wasn't going down as fast as I wanted, I asked myself my own happinest questions and I made a choice based on that.


Good luck!!

OP sound just like me!....hell I thought I had written that post myself when I read it! 5 times in the last few years I purchased a £40 monthly pass for my gym only to go once on the day of purchase. There are no words!!

Only today I went out in the freezing cold to a sports field near where I live, found an old tractor tire and spent the best part of 2 hours flipping it over and over. This was my first heavy physical workout in years and this is my first day back on this site that I signed up to in 2014.

I can honestly say that flipping that tire today made me feel so damn good, it's nearly midnight now but I'm still buzzing and can't wait to get back out there again and repeat tomorrow. Worked just about every muscle in my body and hit me aerobically as well. Best of all it didn't cost me a dime!

I really got into this today; more that I ever would have if I'd have gone running, jumped rope or even gone to the gym. This led me to come to the conclusion that I think it's very important to find an exercise (or preferably more than one exercise) that you don't find tedious in a psychological sense, rather, try to find something as mentally stimulating and fun as possible. Running, free-bar squatting and deadlifts used to do this for me in my 20s/30's, but at my present low levels of fitness (and painful knees) no longer allow for me to run for long enough or lift enough weight to get into that 'zone' where all those buzzy happy endorphins are being released to the point where I would really start enjoying actually doing the exercises themselves (as they once did). But today, with tire flipping, it was a totally different story. I loved it!

My thoughts on motivation is that, for me at least, it is largely driven by results. By this I mean that, in my personal experience, my own motivation levels only increase when I start to see physical changes in the mirror and on the scale. At the age now of 48 with many many failed attempts to get in shape behind me, I know enough about myself to know that for the first month or so I will need to apply maximum mental discipline to get into the swing a new exercise regime because every day I will dread the thought of doing it.....UNTIL I start to see positive physical changes in my own body. But what follows on from that is a revelation...when the day comes when suddenly I have that eureka moment when I can look in the mirror and say to myself, "Hell, this is starting to actually WORK!".....There's my motivation right there!...a month or so after I began my routine that I dreaded doing so much every day...the day I began to actually SEE the fruits of my labors!

For the first month, the toughest thing in any new exercise regime is getting my trainers on and getting out my front door! Once actually out there, I can get through it. If I can repeat this process 30 times to the point where I am starting to see results, my motivation skyrockets!

Obviously, all this is my own personal take on it. Everyone's likely to be different in their mental outlook towards exercise and plenty may find the process of becoming motivated much easier than I do. But for me (and I'm sure many others, too), motivation is more result-driven than something one can simply summon at will whenever required. It is only when I realize I am having success at something I am applying myself to that I start to feel even the slightest bit motivated to keep it going. From then on, more subsequent success breeds more subsequent motivation.

But....for the first month (until results are noticeable)....it's absolute torture. you just have to make yourself do it, however mentally arduous it feels to be more physically proactive in the early days of a new regime.