Please help! I've been gone a long time. Long post, but I ne

51 yr. old post secondary instructor. Have always been rather healthy and active (runner, biker, biathlon, marathoner, tennis, basketball, etc.). In my early 40's (175) I started a new job that took away from my exercise time, and I started getting sports-related injuries when I did exercise.

Then I started smoking again and couch potato syndrome kicked in. Metabolism slowed down and gained about 5 lbs. per yr. until 47 (210 lbs.) when I got married, had a baby girl a yr. later and was now gaining 10 lbs. per year until 51 (250 lbs.) and diagnosed with diabetes. Time to get serious. I want to lose about 30-40 lbs. before my follow-up doctors visit in mid-March. Have tried exercise programs in the past, but never followed the diet portion of the plan. A student of mine turned me on to MFP. First month - lost 18 lbs. I'm on target to satisfy my Doctor, but I'm really out to please myself and my wife.
SW--Dec. 12 247
IW--Jan. 26 222.2
IG--Jan. 31 220 - DONE
IW--Feb. 9 216.6
IG--Feb. 29 210-DONE
CW-205
GW--Jun. 30 175

I'm not diabetic anymore, my triglycerides are down 70 pts. My BP is normal 116/64, my cholesterol is 156, still working on the LDL of 91. Plan to be off my meds by summer.

A lot of this has been covered, but I'll highlight it. For me, the goal is not to be perfect out of the gate. Start making small sustainable changes. If you can't eliminate sweets, limit them. If you still want a beer, have one (one) and add in some exercise or trim back somewhere else. Read labels and make decisions based on what you learn. Eating is a lot like a household budget - you just have to decide where to best spend the calories you have. But you also have the option of extra exercise if you need to go over.

But don't expect to be perfect. Eight months into this and I am still finding better foods to try and better exercises to do. Just try to get a little better everyday.

I would suggest some kind of therapy. It sounds like you have deeper psychological issues that need to be addressed before that you can move on and feel good enough about yourself to understand that YOU deserve to be happy and lose weight.

I was thinking the same thing as this poster - my gut feeling is there is something buried deep within from your childhood which is not allowing you to succeed in this area and I wonder if it has something to do with your mother's death. You have already proven to yourself that you can achieve so much in so many areas of your life so there should be no reason why you can't succeed in losing the weight and keeping it off. It seems to me that you are 'punishing' yourself on a very deep level and perhaps some form of therapy might finally help you get to the bottom of it. You have amazing strength but sometimes we have to go really deep within ourselves and confront certain issues we may think we have dealt with years ago in order to move on. Whatever the case, I wish you all the very best xx
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I can sympathise with your dilemma, because like so many people on here, I have been in the same place. I spent 14 years of my life being a yo-yo dieter. I could have iron will to take the weight off, but as soon as I stopped dieting, the weight would pile back on - and I always put on more than I took off. So eventually I was swinging 70 lbs.

However, I was about your age when I made a really important discovery and I will share it with you - STOP DIETING. Diets make you fat because they are unrealistic ways of eating. You've said it yourself - you stick with the diet but as soon as you come 'off the diet' then things go wrong. When you are on a diet then you are restricting your intake and the foods you eat. You are denying yourself things you like and often your calorie intake can be very low. The human body was designed to cope with feasts and famines because food was sometimes scarce. So when a famine came along, the body goes into famine mode - and when the famine ends then the body pushes you very very strongly to replenish those fat stores so there is a reserve for the next famine. The harder you diet, the more you push yourself into this diet-binge cycle.

What you need to do is CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK. I have put these points in capitals because it really is the most important thing I can say to you. If you 'diet', then you can 'come off the diet'. So think about it this way:

Every day you have choices about what you eat. You can choose a healthy choice or an indulgent choice.

There is NO food out there that is denied to you. You can have absolutely any food that you like. There is a plentiful and bountiful supply. You have to persuade your body that there is never going to be a 'famine' again, which pushes you to binge eat to store fat for the next famine.

What you do is when faced with a choice, you try to choose the healthier choice. But sometimes you won't - sometimes you'll want pizza. That's ok - eat the pizza. But over the week try to make it that 80% of the time you choose the healthy option and 20% of the time you choose the indulgent one.If 80% of your calorie intake comes from fruit, vegetables, lean meat and vegetable protein like beans, pulses and carbohydrate from whole grains, then you can eat 20% of other more indulgent stuff. The 80/20 rule is sustainable. You can keep it up for the rest of your life. I have been following it for 10 years now and my weight has remained pretty stable.

All you have to do is manage your intake over the week. You can do the 80/20 balance over a day or over a week. If you've had a couple of over-indulgent days then balance it with some predominately healthy days. I'd suggest that you focus on doing this as a priority, rather than aiming to lose weight. Eventually, once you are making 80% healthy choices then the weight will start to drop off anyway.

And the same goes for exercise. Going to the gym 6 days a week is a chore for most people. Build the exercise into your day.

When I go to work, I walk very briskly to and from the train station, I find an excuse to run up and down the 4 flights of stairs to my office at least 4 times - even if it's just to go down to the ground floor to fill my water bottle rather than fill it up on the cooler on my floor, and I walk briskly every where I can. In that way I burn over 300 extra calories in a day.

And finally, I would agree that there may be some deeper issue that is preventing you from staying at your target weight. I had an experience aged 14 when I was sexually assaulted. At the time I rationalised it and blamed myself for getting myself into the situation and thought I'd put it behind me. It wasn't until I was in my 40's that I revisited it and saw it again from an adult's perspective. I realised just how young and vulnerable I had been and that it hadn't been my fault. I hadn't told anyone at the time, because I thought I would get into trouble, so I'd just buried it. I realised that I had spent so much of my life hiding behind my fat. I realise that when I lost weight I felt much more attractive and I was scared that left me open to unwanted advances. I'd no sooner get to target weight than I'd want the comfort of my fat again. As an adult, I went back to that 14 year old self and gave her a big hug and told her it wasn't her fault at all and that I was now here to protect her. It finally allowed me to feel comfortable at a small weight.

You maybe need to question what your fat represents to you. If subconscioiusly you feel that your fat is protecting you from something, then it will be difficult to fight that. If you find out what it is and deal with it, then you may be able to move on.I agree with the prevous poster that just from the way you talk about it, there may be some link to your mother's early death.

Anyway, there are bucketloads of good advice on this thread. I hope that it helps you on your journey.

Best wishes xx

Only read the first half paragraph or so, dude watch this, he has a site 10 bucks a month well worth it! http://youtu.be/n2xn54Irp-o

My failures have ALWAYS been because I simply fall off the wagon. I track my eating diligently for months at a time, and gradually stop doing so. I work out 6 times a week for a couple months, then it becomes 5 days a week, then 4, and eventually only once or twice every couple weeks. I watch portion sizes carefully, measuring everything I eat or cook, for a few months, then stop doing so, and gradually go back to my huge portion sizes. I simply haven't been able to stick with anything.

I believe I will become more optimistic and motivated if I can figure out a way to stay on the wagon long term (like for the rest of my life), and this is where you all come in. The best thing about MFP when I used it last time was the community of support. I need advice on how to make the long term motivation a reality. While I will appreciate any and all advice, statements like "just stick with it" or "work on your will power" simply won't help. I need tangible ideas.

Hi, I have a question for you. Why do you equate a lifestyle change with being on the wagon? It sounds as if you are expecting this to be a miserable long term battle, Maybe one of the steps you need to take is to re examine why being fit and healthy and happy would be so much more work than being unfit, unhealthy and unhappy.

I know for myself, that I hit a wall when I hit 50, but if I look at this as a life sentence I am never going to succeed, i will sabotage myself every time. I have made a conscious decision to make this a new life for myself, a good one and I will work hard at being successful, but I am also going to have fun doing it.

Find the fun in getting fitter, go for a walk or a bike ride with that lovely little girl of yours,take your wife for a romantic ride in a rowboat - try something new - I tried snowboarding for the first time this winter with my 12 and 16 year old god children!!! Boy is that a workout, but I was laughing so hard most of the time that I didn't notice.

You Can Do This!
Feel free to add me as a friend.

Jillian

I will say this. The key to losing and maintaining the loss is a full-on lifestyle change. You have to find foods you can be happy with eating at least weekly for the rest of your life. I say weekly because you don't want the same meal for every meal on a daily basis. Find what you like though, and stick with that. High protein foods. Low (er) carbs. Over 64 ounces of water every day. The biggest thing is that even when you find yourself slipping, to never give up on your goal and to reach out to your support system for help when you are lacking in your own personal motivation. It's not easy, but it can be done.