Getting discouraged

OK, this may be wrong, but I'm going to come in kind of "tough love granny" here.

It sounds like you're making eating choices, and not liking the results.

Who can help you change that? You.

You can take the reins, make decisions that get you moving toward your long term goals, but you're choosing not to do that. Be honest with yourself.

If you're not ready psychologically to lose weight, then work on that. Seek out counseling, read self-help books (some people recommend The Beck Diet Solution, sort of a self-therapy thing), meditate, pray, journal, whatever it takes for you to give your future self better odds of a good life, because that's the person you're seriously shooting in the foot now, probably.

You can do this, but you have to want to, and you have to mean it. It's that hard, and that simple.

I've been there, I get it. I was in denial, or not ready, or whatever, for years. Decades. Finally, the health consequences were getting stark enough that the switch in my head flipped to "I'm doing this" and I meant it. The actual skills needed were surprisingly straightforward . . . once I meant it.

If I knew how to flip that switch in other people's heads, I'd bottle it, sell it, be a rich woman . . . but I don't even know for sure how to flip the switch in my own head, I just know it was a thing that needed to happen.

All I can tell you is that IMO the results are so worth the effort. I've been at a healthy weight for around 7 years now, and my quality of life is so. Much. Better. Let alone my health status, which is greatly improved. Kind of excellent for a granny-ager, honestly.

If I'd started sooner, I could've avoided a bunch of bad health consequences, but I didn't start sooner. The soonest time any of us can start a new track is now, y'know? That power is in your hands.

By the way: The "in 5 weeks" is kind of dumb. It's "if every day is like today". Every day isn't like today, no matter how hard we try. We have more chores, or we need more rest, or there's a birthday, or we have the flu, or whatever.

Try to find new routine habits that help you stay in a reasonable zone - calories, nutrition, activity - on average, over a few days or a week, the overwhelming majority of the time.

You don't need crazy-extreme food restrictions, you don't need punitively intense exercise programs, you just need to get your average calorie intake below your maintenance calorie needs, and you'll lose weight. Yeah, we all want to lose weight fast, but give it a thought: It's really more important to lose weight successfully, and keep it off long term. Think about how to make weight loss relatively easy, instead of fast. It can work.

You don't have to be perfect every day. You just need to be good enough most of the time to make progress. It's the majority of our days that determine the majority of our results. Focus on that.

Wishing you excellent outcomes - you've got it in you. We all do.