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Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Wausau, WI
Posts: 13,383
S/C/G: SW:394/310/180
Height: 5'6"
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For me, I had to realize that I hadn't failed all of those times before, because I was lazy, crazy, or stupid. I failed because I did what I was supposed to. I followed all the rules, the rules were just wrong.
What I mean by following the rules - is at I dieted the way I saw everyone else diet. I didn't do what I was told to do, I did what I saw everyone else doing (the "real" social rules are always what we do - not what we say we should do. It's why parents saying "do as I say, not as I do - is ludicrous advice. We learn by example even if the example is hurtful).
People "say" they should do a lot of things, and don't follow through (like saving and investing, like going to school, traveling, changing jobs).
We learn not to follow through, because it's what we see everyone doing. The successful models for weight loss are relatively scarce. So we follow along, just like sheep to slaughter.
For example I learned the answers to these questions by doing what I saw every other dieter I met (and saw on tv) do.
What do you do if you eat off plan on Monday afternoon?
Why stuff myself and start fresh on Tuesday morning of course.
And if I eat off plan on Thursday?
Why stuff myself all weekend and start fresh on Monday.
And if eat off plan after October 31?
Why stuff myself for the rest of the year, and start fresh January 1.
When I realized that I wasn't lazy, crazy, or stupid - that I had learned all the ineffective weight loss habits, I was able to start creating new habits - but I had to do so from the standpoint that everything I had learned was wrong.
For me, reducing carbs was especially important.
I always believed the "calorie is a calorie" mantra - but for me that's not true. Not only do I lose more weight on 1800 calories of low-carb than on 1800 calories of high-carb, but low-carb control my hunger much better.
With high-carb foods, the more I eat, the hungrier I get. Which also blew out of the water, another weight loss myth I had believed - that if you don't indulge cravings, you'll only overeat later (which was true when I believed it - because I acted it out. Convinced that I would binge as a result of unfulfilled cravings became a self-fufilling prophecy because I believed it).
Not everyone is "carb sensitive" so you'll have to experiment to find out what works psychologically and physically, but the first step really is believing that you have the strength and wisdom to do it (even, especially if you make mistakes).
The biggest "difference" this time, is refusing to judge myself as irredeemable after a mistake. We're taught to do that too. A mistake isn't a failure, unless we give up.
If we treated mountain climbing as we do weight loss, no one would survive it, because at the first stumble we'd throw ourselves off the cliff to "start fresh."
For me, I also had to look at progress differently too. I had to stop seeing no-losses and small-losses on the scale as failure. Because when I did - whether I weighed weekly or daily, I still experienced failure a lot more than success.
And when you experience more failure than success, the logical course of action (the smart course of action) is to eventually give up. If you went to work every day, put in a full day's work, and never got paid - you'ld eventually quit. So with weight loss, you have to give yourself regular pay days.
For me, that meant defining weight maintenance as success (in fact, my primary goal). When I started, I didn't focus on needing to lose 250 lbs. I decided to work at maintaining my weight and "maybe losing just one more pound."
That way, almost every day was success. And success makes you so excited you want to put in more effort to have even more success.
I also had to stop seeing it as an all-or-nothing endeavor (which we're also taught to do with weight loss. If we can't lose every ounce we want to, we think the whole deal is pointless. Which is pure insanity, because amazing health benefits come with losing only 10% of your body weight - and yet we don't see that as success. We think "if we can't be thin, we should at least get to eat what we want).
I know I've kind of rambled, but if there's one thing to take away from all my ramblings is that failure is not inevitable. I've been trying to lose weight since I was 5 years old, and until 7 years ago, all I had to show for it was steady weight gain. In a real sense, I "dieted my way" to nearly 400 lbs.
So for 31 of the past 38 years, my efforts didn't yield the results I wanted.
There was no "magic" in the last 7 years, except redefining success. It's taken me 7 years to lose 98 lbs, but before this attempt, I never had more than 3 years at a stable or declining weight. I was always either rapidly losing, rapidly gaining, or maintaining my highest-ever weight.
This time I'm not afraid of relapse, because I haven't made a single change that I didn't decide I was willing to make even if no weight loss at all resulted (I picked changes that would be "healthier" even if they didn't result in weight loss).
Since every change is "forever, even if I don't lose weight" I haven't had the desire to turn back (especially when I've seen so many health improvements - even if I don't lose another ounce, I'm not backsliding into old habits - because I don't want my "old health" back.
You can do this, even if you make lots and lots of mistakes along the way. By my old definition of failure, I've failed off every one of my 98 lbs - because I've lost it slower than I was losing when I quit every one of my previous weight loss attempts. I always quit when losing slowed to less than 2 lbs a week - and my average this time was less than 1 lb a month when I started, and even now is only about 3 lbs a month.
Failure isn't losing slowly. Failure is giving up, and regaining.
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I just need to snap out of this funk IV been in & just do it already! My main problem is I let negativety,EXTREMLY low confidence & all my past failures really beat me down where I feel so worthless & think What's The Point? And this mindset has kept me handicapped for way too long now. 
