How to deal with all or nothing thinking and anxiety over missing a workout?

This is something that you might want to consider therapy for. Many of us have seen it. It's on the order of an ED. I 'm handling it by telling myself that it doesn't matter how much or how long I exercise, but just do one thing a day. It helps me.

Watching your diet will help you lose much more. Exercising is good for your body and health if not pushed to extremes. Change up your exercise. Try new things. I do: yoga, swimming, acquagym, powerwalking, gym, stretching, regular walking, and tai chi.

Are you exercising with the hopes of losing weight faster? Because, like snowflake said - it's more about the food quantities.

As far as all-or-nothing thinking and anxiety, there are tons of free resources online. Read an article every day on something that is bothering you. Write in a journal. There are YouTube videos too but be careful on those, some people are pretty wacky. Anxiety is a horrible thing to let get out of control and I know you can get a handle on it.

Keep searching!

sugarfreesquirrel wrote: »

I have trouble finding a healthy life balance. And I can't afford therapy, do you know of any self help books that address this?

You might want to take a look around in the "Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness" part of the MFP Community.

There's even a thread there about self-help resources for anxiety.

Maybe you can get some ideas there?

The anxiety is I'll run out of calories to eat or I'll gain weight. I think.

The hardest thing for me to wrap my brain around after weight loss is just how few calories I really need to Maintain that weight loss. That means I had to figure out how to be happy on fewer than 2000 calories after having eaten whatever-I-wanted for over a decade. It is a big adjustment.

I really think the only way I could have continued to maintain for nearly 15 years is to have learned ways to eat that allow me to stay at a healthy weight, and that means that sometimes I am injured or sick and cannot exercise at all. For me exercise is more for health; my 90 minute walks only burn about 300 calories and that's just enough for a piece of toast with peanut butter and a tiny glass of milk. I don't use exercise as a weight-loss necessity because I know I could easily eat a lot more than I could ever exercise off.

I have to eat mostly whole foods, a minimum of 25g of fiber, enough protein and fat, and lots of whole vegetables and/or fruit. I shoot for 800g a day of whole fruit or vegetables (I include potatoes and beans in that.) I'm definitely not always hitting that, usually I'm at 600-700 grams but that's the goal!

I simply cannot eat the way I used to eat. It was an entire overhaul of my food, but it didn't happen overnight, it took quite a while - like one to two years.

Be gentle with yourself. Grace is a very valuable concept when considering food and body image.

I had a workout friend. Exercise was a self-competition for them. I didn't go as far as I did the other day. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. I told them that exercise should be enjoyable and not something to dread. It didn't matter, so I couldn't let them ruin everything for me. I'd rather be alone than listen to that kind of blowback, every step of the way.

sugarfreesquirrel wrote: »

Please help me. If I can't exercise I feel like my day is ruined.

Exercise has such a profound beneficial affect on my mind, body, spirit, and sleep, that while I wouldn't call my day "ruined" I would say that not exercising does indeed negatively affect my day.

Therefore, I make fitting exercise into my day a priority.

One of my volunteer jobs has a 20 minute zoom at the beginning of each shift. I make sure my video is not on and do Tai Chi during this. I often have lots of pauses once I am able to start this job. I do seated yoga or Tai Chi warmups during this.

Those are examples of how I work exercise in to other activities.

I also dedicate time for exercise. I get Classical Stretch and Tai Chi videos from the library. If I do 23-30 minutes of this a few hours before bedtime, I sleep better and wake up pain free.

During the day, health depending (I've had some challenges lately) I do yard work, gardening, trail maintenance, etc.