Feeling like you're ready to give up?

Are you tired of "being on a diet"?

Are you waiting anxiously for the day when you can "go back to eating normally"?

Are you feeling like you're never going to reach your goal of, say, losing 10lbs by Christmas, 40lbs by next summer, or 100lbs "someday"?

Don't give up. If you give up now then you're 100% certain to fail to reach any goals you had.

I know it can be hard, but if any of the above is similar to the way you're thinking right now then you really need to try and turn that thinking around. If you always think of this as "a diet" then you WILL get tired of it pretty quick, and you'll always be thinking about when you can get back to "eating normally".

I have bad news for you. You can't.

If the way you used to eat has made you overweight, you can't go back to that way of eating or this whole thing will be a pointless exercise and a waste of your time.

But I'm not telling you to give up! I'm telling you to find a way to think differently about getting to a healthy weight and staying there, because you CAN do it. You can still have the foods you like, too... you just can't have them all the time, or as much as you might want of them, but you don't have to give them up completely unless you really can't control yourself. (I'm in the "all things in moderation" camp myself, but I know some people find it much easier to remove certain foods from their life completely. Can you have just one scoop of ice cream, or will you want the whole pint? Can you be happy with one cookie, or will it set you off on a wild cookie-eating frenzy that ends in a pile of crumbs and a lot of guilt and sobbing on the kitchen floor? We each need to find what works best for us as an individual.)

Weight loss shouldn't be about misery, hunger and deprivation. That's the kind of thinking that kept me fat, and MFP has shown me that it's false. It took me a little while to wrap my mind around the new way of thinking, but once I realised that I don't need to deny myself anything it freed me from the "dieting" mindset. I've learned to enjoy the food I like in appropriate portions, and to get used to eating less. The results are worth it!

People come here to this part of the forums looking for motivation to keep going - and I get it; it's hard some days. You're tired of weighing and counting and resisting, and some days you just want to eat all the things. It's okay. You're human. One day, one weekend, even one fortnight of eating too much isn't necessarily going to ruin all your work to this point, as long as you get back on that horse again. (I highly recommend taking regular breaks from restricting your calories, and just eating at maintenance levels for a couple of weeks or so, if you find yourself getting tired of the process... a deliberate and planned break is much different mentally and emotionally than an unplanned binge week!)

But it's down to you, at the end of the day... none of us here can make you do this. How much do YOU really want to lose your extra weight? Find all the reasons YOU want to do it, for yourself and no one else, and write them down. Pin them somewhere you can see them, and read them every time you feel like giving up. Motivation comes and goes, and it only lasts for so long; you need to find your determination to do this for yourself.

Or not. It's up to you. But every pound you drop from now on is a pound closer to your goal - even if you don't actually reach it - that you won't be if you give up now.

As I've heard other people say, the time will pass whether you do this or not. You can be a few (or a lot of!) pounds down this time next year, even if you're not at the weight you hoped to reach, or you can be the same or heavier than you currently are and wishing you'd stuck with it just a bit longer.

Stick with it. Don't give up. Even if you can only crawl, you're still moving forward.

You can do this. I believe in you.



(Make sure to check out the Success Stories forum for inspiration! Yes, many people have lost a ton of weight and you might feel you could never do that, but don't feel inadequate! There are also people who took years to lose a relatively small amount of weight; who only lost a few pounds but look and feel much better; who have loose skin but don't let it get them down or dissuade them from losing more... you'll find someone like you in there somewhere. This thread is very helpful for tracking down those who had similar goals. )