At what point in your weight loss journey do you "slack off"

I'm 3 lbs from my (original; reconsidering) goal and it's happening right now. Anyone who can figure out a way to kick my *kitten* into putting the fork down and picking the weights up, please do so! For me its when I start feeling like I'm doing really well (and therefore have some room to slack). And/or when something (lately, work) is just so exhausting that picking up the glass of wine at the end of the day is about all the energy I have left, lol.

I think for me it's emotional binge eating. If I stress out I turn to high fat food. Or if I'm with great company, i lose track and eat up, In the past one bad day often derailed me. However now that I track through MFP, have learned to not let one bad day (or even a week) get to me. There was one day where I binged on 8 slices if pizza. I didn't give up, I followed up with a strict week of diet and more exercise. That was last week btw. Now I'm on goal again, another 0.5 down!

It is possible that I always believed that being healthy was a temporary thing, something with a beginning and an end. If I started being healthy, it was a magic switch that I could turn on when I needed to slim down, then turn off when I was done (rinse, repeat). My views have really flip flopped, and I now recognize that being healthy is the constant, and the unhealthy bits are the moments that I control. I hope that makes sense, ha!

For me, its a combination of things. About 5 years ago, I started a program at a place called Metabolic Weight Loss Center. They took measurements and prescribed a specific diet for me, etc. I lost about 10 pounds and was doing really well. Then, Christmas came along, and my family is big on getting together for big family meals. I just couldn't resist anymore and thought if I had to eat one more sprig of raw broccoli I would barf. (Sorry for the graphics). I kept telling myself, I'd get back on my diet, but I never did. I just kept slowly gaining. My girls started girl scouts and every winter/spring there would be boxes and boxes of cookies in my house. I had to self-control. Finally I reached 209.5, almost 10 pounds heavier than I was at full term pregnancy with my 2nd daughter. I felt horrible about myself. At the beginning of this summer in June I started Insanity and found MFP. I hope I've change my life for good now. But with starting back to working (I'm a teacher at high school) I'm wavering. I want to binge on calories soooo bad when I get home. I'm on my last three days of Insanity. It's about to kill me to get my workouts in in the afternoons, but I'm determined to do it. My ticker says I'm down 13 pounds. And this was without a drastic diet or paying for someone to help me! I think I'm down a few more pounds thought so maybe it's closer to 15 pounds now, but I won't officially weigh in until Monday.

Wish me luck!

Using when I hit a plateau, I start getting frustrated. That happened to me at the start of my summer vacation (also a teacher) and I just found it easy to let life and my frustration get in the way. July was a right-off in terms of my diet. (Of course, our time at an all-inclusive resort for our honeymoon didn't help)

But August is different. I realized I was going back to work in a month and I didn't want to be heavier or the same weight I was when school ended. I've now lost the vacation and derailment weight and am back to where I started. Now I'm determined to lose at least 5 more pounds before school starts.

Basically, I just gotta accept that plateaus happen and work my way out of them.

honestly.... for me, i just give up. nothing happens to make me suddenly change. i just give up. my finace is one of those people that can LITERALLY eat two large pizzas by himself everyday and not gain one ounce. he's roughly 6'1" and weighs 118. he's severely under weight and can't gain anything. i however think about eating a whole pizza and gain 5 lbs. so he likes to have tons of yummy junk food in the house and it's hard to maintain a healthy diet when it's cheaper to buy two meals worth of junk then one of healthy food.[ for example: two frozen pizzas $5 (<guestamite the one's we just bought were like $2.30 something a piece) but the stuff i bought for 2 chicken meals (because i bought a giant container of chicken breast and divided it in half) {chicken $10, $1.50 worth of lime juice, tomato$3, salad mix $4, $1 worth of dried fruit, $5 tortillas, $1 worth of cheese} comes to $12.75 per meal.] so money gets tight and i just buy cheap stuff, OR he goes to the store and just gets what sounds good to him... leaving us with just junk, so i give up and eat it and fall back into old habits.

All it took for me was not losing anything for about a week, then I'd give up. It amazes me that I have been able to push through a month of not losing this time! I'm so glad I didn't give up! I give a lot of credit to my wonderful MFP friends! They are the BEST!

Just the thought of following a 'diet plan' filled me with dread - even the types with 40+ main meals - all I would think is 'I am limited to these foods for the rest of my life??' so MFP Is the first time I have successfully lost weight purely because you can still eat whatever you like (within reason obviously) but your choice is not compramised. I have been doing this for over 3 months now and my enthusiasm hasn't declined at all. I'm only 4lbs away from maintenance which I've heard is a new 'challange' but I'm up for it!

Okay so this is only my second attempt in my life to lose weight. The first time was in 2009 for about 2 months and I was super strict about it. Back then, when I got off course, I went away on a trip (to Boston) for my birthday for a weekend. I allowed myself to "have fun and not worry about my eating habits" for that weekend. When I got back, I got used (just in those 3 days) to eating bad that I didn't get back into my healthy habits. I think I remember working out for a week after I came back, and then stopped completely. And back to the over-eating.

This time, the difference is that I originally allowed myself 1 day a week to go over my calories without any guilt; although I don't do that anymore, it helped me out for the first 2-3 months, sooo much. Another thing I didn't do before was drink much water. Now, I drink 2-3 cups of water anytime I'm hungry before I eat a meal or snack to fill my stomach up. If I start to see myself crave (and eat) bad food for more than 2-3 days in a row, I'll fast for 24 hours, and the next day my cravings are completely gone for a few weeks. And last but most certainly not least, the MFP forums have helped me out TREMENDOUSLY! You have no idea. I had no idea! I didn't realize how helpful, supportive, and important the forums were until I started reading and posting more, a couple months ago. Just visiting at least once a day (I do more, haha) and posting a few times, keeps me in the weight loss/healthy-eating frame of mind because someone is either offering advice, asking for it, or posting their awesome before/after pics.

I'll never forget the times when I was down and out during my "journey" (gosh that sounds cheesy, lol) and I posted on here that I felt like giving up. Once, I was upset because I realized my weight was higher than my scale at home and another time I was depressed because I didn't see a difference after 25 pounds loss. From the replies I received, you'd think they knew me for years, because I received some of the most helpful advice and encouraging words and got right back on track the next day! Okay, I'm gonna stop before it seems as if I'm a MFP spokesperson.:laugh:

All in all, I know that even though this is only my second attempt at losing, it's my last. And I have no one to thank more (besides myself:happy:) than MFP and the people on here. I know you can do it too. Good luck on your goals. :-)