Depression

Stick with it and you'll get there! It definitely takes time and like you, many of us wish the process went faster, easier. If we believed all the advertising then it should, shouldn't it? But you've done great so far, so please don't give up and lose hope! Make small goals, like 5# at a time, don't think long-term. It can feel overwhelming and if you're like me, feel like it'll never happen so why bother. BUT it does happen so hang in there!!!

I'm a professional dog trainer and a dog sports competitor -- stick with me, I have a point.

One of the big principals in dog training is basically about laying a strong foundation, and only increasing the difficulty when you have success 80+ percent of the time. Another one is that you make getting it right as obvious and easy as you possibly can; you set the dog up in a way that makes it almost impossible for the dog to get it wrong.

In weight loss, I am the dog.

There is no big motivation or mindset change for me, really. I started with a very simple, easy, foundation behavior that I built upon. For me that was tracking my food before I ate it. No restriction, nothing else. Just inputting what I ate into MFP. Everything else - getting enough protein, getting used to a ceiling on my calories (at maintenance first), creating a deficit - built upon the previous steps and habits, a lot of which are individual to me and my psychology.

The basics are universal though, and they are still 'lay a foundation of easy behaviors, increase difficulty slowly, add new things only when successful at the previous'.

Everyone wants to results now - in weight loss and dogs, actually - but that old 'slow is fast' saying is accurate. You can go slow and lay a really good foundation - or you can rush ahead to try to get the results you want right now, and spend the next several years or decades fixing problems that result from the holes in your foundation.

Breathe. Relax. Look and think about what things you'd like to see your life look like in the future, and then take the smallest, easiest step toward that. Get that step ingrained. Then add another one. Troubleshoot how to make things easier if you find things getting hard.

LAY A FOUNDATION before you start building.

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This is a copy and paste. I wrote the original. It applies. TL: DR: You're doing fine, and I know it's frustrating and feels like the mental decision to do the thing makes it feel like it should be rewarded immediately, but unfortunately nothing in life really works that way.

Slow is fast.