What motivates you to be better

I want to be healthy. Not saying a larger person can’t be healthy, but I couldn’t be healthy at the weight I was. I have autoimmune issues, digestive issues, and usually need surgery every two years. I did not want to add heart disease and diabetes on top of that.

What motivates me to stay the course is my desire to keep my current lifestyle and freedom of movement/finding clothes/going places without considering seating and so on. I have experienced having high blood sugar and blood pressure, gasping for air on stairs, having to pay attention to the kinds of seats I sit in because I may not fit into the "wrong" kind...etc. and I don't want to go back to that. It's mostly about blood sugar for me, though. If I have blood sugar I will have to limit my food choice, I would hate that very much. I'm maintaining a slightly overweight weight, and I'm satisfied with my life right now, so nothing is motivating me to lose any more weight, but maintaining my current weight? Yes, I'm very motivated. If at some point my blood sugar starts creeping back up, I will for sure be motivated to lose even more weight.

If you're currently healthy and satisfied with your life, I don't think there is much you do to motivate yourself other than find alternative goals that may interest you, like running a race or achieving a certain fitness goal. If that doesn't interest you, yeah, there isn't much you can do.

ChaoticMoira wrote: »

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

I motivate me.

Since 2015. Every pound I've lost has been for ME. all 189 of them. Not for my kids. Not for my ex. Not for my current husband. for ME.

Because THIS body, is the one I have to live in for the rest of my life.

This is my goal. I want to feel this.

I find it hysterical that someone "disagreed" with what motivates you, lol. Someone was like, "for yoooouuu, pffft, I don't think so.." Hahahaha

i decided a long time ago, some people disagree just to disagree. i dont pay it any mind LOL

I have found that while motivation and will-power may fade, or at best be hit-or-miss, good habits don't. It takes self-discipline to develop good habits. Perhaps you need to do some soul searching to find out why your own body, your own peace with yourself, isn't worth the effort for you to treat yourself better.

For me, it was negative feelings about myself. I had to actually have my husband, and a few close friends, write down what they thought my good and bad qualities were, compared it to my own pitiful list, and then my husband helped me by listening to me express my thoughts and helped me see where I was being way to hard on myself. He is one special guy.

That was 2 years ago. I had been on here 2-3 months when I had heart trouble crop up. But now I'm back, logging my meals every day, drinking the water, trying to move at least 20-30 minutes a day. Do I like it all the time? NO. But I AM WORTH THE EFFORT .

You are too, you just don't know it yet!

mom22dogs wrote: »

I have a lot of self-motivation. I'm disabled, and walk on crutches, and want to continue to be able to, so I have to manage my weight and keep myself strong.

My mother is another motivating factor. She has been extremely lazy and sedentary her whole adult life, and now she is severely disabled from having several strokes due to high blood pressure and diabetes because she is obese. She also has congestive heart failure, COPD because she smoked for 40+ years, chronic kidney disease and AFIB. Because of the strokes, she has vascular dementia and can't get around well at all anymore. She is 74 years old. I DO NOT want to be like her in any way, shape or form. She has refused to exercise, even a little, refused to change her diet, and refused to lose even a little weight. So now she's significantly more disabled than I am. All because she chose to be lazy.

Same here. It was sobering. My mom had gotten so lazy, she enjoyed being bedridden and having others care for her. I think dementia got all tangled up with her frequent wish that “One day people will wait on me hand and foot”. She thought she was the Queen of the world from that bed.

I loved her, but ye gods, no way did I want to be her.

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

mom22dogs wrote: »

I have a lot of self-motivation. I'm disabled, and walk on crutches, and want to continue to be able to, so I have to manage my weight and keep myself strong.

My mother is another motivating factor. She has been extremely lazy and sedentary her whole adult life, and now she is severely disabled from having several strokes due to high blood pressure and diabetes because she is obese. She also has congestive heart failure, COPD because she smoked for 40+ years, chronic kidney disease and AFIB. Because of the strokes, she has vascular dementia and can't get around well at all anymore. She is 74 years old. I DO NOT want to be like her in any way, shape or form. She has refused to exercise, even a little, refused to change her diet, and refused to lose even a little weight. So now she's significantly more disabled than I am. All because she chose to be lazy.

my mother (who i do not have much of a relationship with) is much the same in many ways and about the same age. while she is not overweight, she is one of the laziest people I know, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, alcoholic, probably has or on the way to having cirrhosis of the liver, breathing problems of some kind (lifelong smoker), and mostly eats high sodium microwave meals. She says because its easy and fast but honestly i think its because she LIKES them, as when she lived with us for about 6 months last year, and I cooked dinner every night ... she STILL almost always ate that garbage for dinner. But I nearly always make fairly healthy well balanced meals that tend to be heavy on the vegetable side and not mashed potatoes and fried chicken so...... whatever...

Shes one of my motivations as to why I dont DRINK on a regular basis (LOL) but not for why I lost weight

I'm also eternally grateful that she pawned me off on my grandparents to raise and didn't attempt to do it herself...But that is another story entirely ...

Your post reminded me, my mom had been an alcoholic also. She would never admit it, but when you have 5 triple/quadruple strength Vodka 7's between 5 pm and 9 pm and pass out, you have a problem. Thankfully, she doesn't drink anymore.

I'm a full-bore aging hippie hedonist. I like pleasurable things very much, such as eating and drinking yummy stuff, or having fun in various ways.

At some point, it finally sunk in to me that being inactive and overweight (class 1 obese) was not maximizing my total life pleasure, and it was only going to get worse. I was already middle-aged, and people my age or a bit older who were further along on that same lifestyle track were not able to enjoy life nearly as much as healthy-weight active people of similar age, on average.

They couldn't eat and drink what they wanted (because of chronic diseases their lifestyle had brought on, or because of contraindications from the medications they took for those diseases). They couldn't do fun things like art fairs or music festivals or stadium events, because they couldn't do the walking/stairs involved in those. As compared with otherwise similar healthy-weight active people, they were sick more often, stayed sick longer, needed more surgeries, recovered more slowly from surgeries they did have. They had less discretionary income for fun stuff even at the same income level, because they had to pay so many medical co-pays, and pay people to do required chores they could no longer manage to do themselves (some kinds of yard work, seasonal cleaning, that sort of thing). They also tended to die younger, but after extended periods of pain, disability, unpleasant drug side-effect interactions, etc.

I could see that I was on that track. I'd already had a cancer that's more common in people who are obese (quite advanced stage cancer, too). Surgery/chemo/radiation/post-cancer drugs was not enjoyable, to say the least. I was lucky to have lived past age 50, frankly, though.

After cancer treatment, I found fun ways to be active, and that was good. I felt better, had more fun, had some health improvements. I tried to convince myself that it was OK to be obese, if reasonably fit . . . and I *was* pretty much the near-mythical kinda fit fat person, by then. But it wasn't true that fitness was enough. More negative health things happened. I decided to lose weight.

Much to my surprise, it was less difficult than I'd ever imagined. It wasn't fun every single second, or always easy, but it was so simple. It didn't require punitive, arbitrary eating restrictions (no treat foods, eat only superfoods kind of things). I just needed to eat foods I like in portions/proportions/frequencies that added up to the proper number of calories to lose weight while staying generally full and happy. I could kick myself for not doing it decades earlier!

I'm now 65, slim, active - have been both for over 5 years now, after just under a year of weight loss several years back. Life is great. Calorie counting lets me eat every delicious calorie I can now, while still laying the foundation for future Ann to be happy and healthy, too . . . and maybe live longer and with more of those years active/healthy besides.

The hedonist in me likes this *a lot*. Current and future happiness balance!

Recently, I did one of those health quizzes that predict lifespan. I answered the questions twice, once for 45-year-old me's lifestyle, once for 65-year-old me's lifestyle. It said former-me would live to be 67. It said current-me would live to be 102. While I don't believe either one of those estimates specifically, I like what that suggests: Hedonism win!

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I'm a full-bore aging hippie hedonist. I like pleasurable things very much, such as eating and drinking yummy stuff, or having fun in various ways.

At some point, it finally sunk in to me that being inactive and overweight (class 1 obese) was not maximizing my total life pleasure, and it was only going to get worse. I was already middle-aged, and people my age or a bit older who were further along on that same lifestyle track were not able to enjoy life nearly as much as healthy-weight active people of similar age, on average.

They couldn't eat and drink what they wanted (because of chronic diseases their lifestyle had brought on, or because of contraindications from the medications they took for those diseases). They couldn't do fun things like art fairs or music festivals or stadium events, because they couldn't do the walking/stairs involved in those. As compared with otherwise similar healthy-weight active people, they were sick more often, stayed sick longer, needed more surgeries, recovered more slowly from surgeries they did have. They had less discretionary income for fun stuff even at the same income level, because they had to pay so many medical co-pays, and pay people to do required chores they could no longer manage to do themselves (some kinds of yard work, seasonal cleaning, that sort of thing). They also tended to die younger, but after extended periods of pain, disability, unpleasant drug side-effect interactions, etc.

I could see that I was on that track. I'd already had a cancer that's more common in people who are obese (quite advanced stage cancer, too). Surgery/chemo/radiation/post-cancer drugs was not enjoyable, to say the least. I was lucky to have lived past age 50, frankly, though.

After cancer treatment, I found fun ways to be active, and that was good. I felt better, had more fun, had some health improvements. I tried to convince myself that it was OK to be obese, if reasonably fit . . . and I *was* pretty much the near-mythical kinda fit fat person, by then. But it wasn't true that fitness was enough. More negative health things happened. I decided to lose weight.

Much to my surprise, it was less difficult than I'd ever imagined. It wasn't fun every single second, or always easy, but it was so simple. It didn't require punitive, arbitrary eating restrictions (no treat foods, eat only superfoods kind of things). I just needed to eat foods I like in portions/proportions/frequencies that added up to the proper number of calories to lose weight while staying generally full and happy. I could kick myself for not doing it decades earlier!

I'm now 65, slim, active - have been both for over 5 years now, after just under a year of weight loss several years back. Life is great. Calorie counting lets me eat every delicious calorie I can now, while still laying the foundation for future Ann to be happy and healthy, too . . . and maybe live longer and with more of those years active/healthy besides.

The hedonist in me likes this *a lot*. Current and future happiness balance!

Recently, I did one of those health quizzes that predict lifespan. I answered the questions twice, once for 45-year-old me's lifestyle, once for 65-year-old me's lifestyle. It said former-me would live to be 67. It said current-me would live to be 102. While I don't believe either one of those estimates specifically, I like what that suggests: Hedonism win!

You are amazing! I’ve followed some of your other posts and you always seem to have the answers and opinions that I want and need to hear. I had a somewhat similar experience… being on a trip in Europe and watching women 10+ years older and heavier (or just as heavy) scurrying up a mountain, leaving me on the trail panting. It was embarrassing and demoralizing. I wanted to be so much better than that. It’s only taken me 5 years to act on it. I am in training to climb Maryland Heights with my son this fall and feel I am better prepared to take on the side trips offered during our cruise next year (fingers crossed it will happen).

Thanks Ann for being the hedonist that you are! You are an inspiration.