I don't know, I really want to lose weight, but I have no motivation and it's getting hard for me to keep doing this. I've already binged everyday this week and I skipped today's workout. I just feel miserable.

You have come to the right place first, a big hug! I am sorry you are feeling frustrated. Sometimes this just seems like such a long journey. I was so intimidated that mostly I just never even started. But you have to take it one day - sometimes one minute - at a time. Tomorrow is a new day. Promise yourself one healthy thing you will do tomorrow. Just one. You don't have to be perfect. Then keep going. You can do this.

Think about it this way, 6 months, a year, 2 years, its gunna go by no matter what, and you can either try and be the person you want to be or you could give up and be just as bad off, if not worse then you are now. so dont give up, if you fall off track start over the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. you can do it, you want it. try making a list of pros and cons. good luck.

Thanks for the advice, but the thing is, healthy eating and exercise just makes me so sad. Sugary foods make me smile. I've gone through a tough depression, and to be honest, I'm not out of it yet. I don't like feeling sad because I have tendencies to self-harm. I haven't self-harmed since July and I'm trying to keep the good work up.

I'd be willing to bet they make you sad because it sort of forces you to face the reality of things. Yes, you will have to make sacrifices to get what you want. No, they won't have the instantaneous burst of hormonal joy that sugary stuff gives you, but you obviously are displeased with some aspect of your physical state if you are here in the first place.

Sugary food will ALWAYS be around. Changing a few of your habits could mean that you get to enjoy your life sooner, and probably even get over your depression the way that I did.

I always start out with a bright attitude when I begin new diets, but the longer I stay on the diets, the sadder I become. I don't even understand why. I looove the taste of healthy food but something about sugary food just makes me happy, even if it is for a split second.

It sounds like you are depressed right now, and you said you have binged every day this week. It seems to me that sugary foods really don't make you feel good, or you would be happy right now. Know what I mean? Sugar may give you a quick "high", but it's not gonna fix any problems. Do you have someone you can talk to? A counselor, a pastor, or a mentor? Hang in there.

Every day. I want to give up every day. Every day gives me a reason to give up. Every day gives me a reason to continue....to try again. So, I take it day by day. I am new to this journey, this time, I've been around the diet block, but this time, I'm new. Its a new program I'm following. I have new reasons for following it. I have the same old reasons for wanting to give up. Its to hard. I'm too lazy. It takes too much effort. Its easier to eat whatever is handy and quick and....bad for me. It isn't happening quick enough. I'm old...why can't i just be fat? I could go on and on. You know the drill. You've said many of the same exact things to yourself that I'm saying to me. Here's the thing tho. I DESERVE health. So do you. I deserve nice(r) clothes. You too. I deserve to be fashionable. How about you? My daughter deserves her mother to stick around as long as she can. Do you have family/friends who'll miss you? I bet you do. I deserve to like what I see when I look in the mirror. Don't you?

I'm nice to a lot of people...sure is time I be nice to myself. Be nice to yourself.

So, you say you LIKE the healthy food, but the sugary food makes you happy. Why can't you, for now, have the best of both worlds? Eat healthfully for breakfast, lunch, dinner and one snack. For the 2nd snack, make yourself something decadent. I bet you, allowing yourself that 2nd "cheat" snack, that treat to look forward to, would more than make up for the balance of eating healthfully, and wouldn't throw your plan off so far that it would make the worst of a difference.

If you stopped whatever "diet" your following right now, and just ate whatever, willy nilly, without any consideration and regard...you'd do a lot more damage than eating healthfully 95 percent of the time and allowing yourself that 5 percent sugary snack daily.

The real question would be, could you stop at one snack portion of the thing that brings you joy? If you think you can, you can. If having that treat, once a day, whatever it is, can keep you on track the rest of the time, I see it as a win-win.

Now I have to share something with you. I make myself a smoothie every day, sometimes 2x a day. One for breakfast Mon through Fri--its just an easy breakfast and it keeps me full till 10 a.m. Always, a half banana, 1/4 to 1/2 cup of milk, vanilla extract as a base. I add another half fruit (peach is my favorite). Either it comes out like icecream, or a shake, depending on how much ice I add and whether or not my fruit was frozen to start with. Last night, I added fresh cherries that I painstakingly sliced in half and removed the pit, but it was worth it because I also added 1 teas. of real sugar for a treat, and 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder (very few calories there). Do you know what it tasted like? LIKE CHERRY AND CHOCOLATE ITALIAN ICE mixed together. Like chocolate covered cherry ice cream. Tasted like a little bit of heaven. It satisfied my sweet tooth, certainly. It was downright decadent. Also, it made a lot...I got a 2 cup serving out of it, and I didn't even share it. It took a long time to eat. I enjoyed every drop.

I bet, if you gave it time and experimented some, you'd find a sweet treat that not only satisfied you, but was kind of healthy too.

Look, no one can convince you to do what you don't want to do...but the notion that you're posting here tells me that you'd really like to continue and you need some suggestions. I have not looked around the recipe section much myself, but I'm sure there are some treats there that could get you through when you feel the need for a sweet. I hope the answers you get here give you some inspiration and support.

You can do it.

@Lori Bell: I hate counselors. I hate telling people about what's bothering me because it never helps me. The more I address what's wrong, the worse I feel.

@124chicksinger: I have no self control, trust me. If I let myself eat one sweet, I'll be shoving 20 more sweets down my throat seconds later. I really doubt I can lose weight, I've been trying for years. I should have known not to believe in myself, I only let myself down.

I'm not sure what you're looking for tonight.

A hug? We've got plenty of those.

Or maybe just what we see from the outside.

[Tough Love] And you can skip this if it's not what you want:

I see excuses.

You don't like counselors, you don't want to talk about how you feel. You think they make it worse. Well, a lot of the times things do get worse before they get better.

You just want to give up. You want to eat sugar and binge. But, you know that's not enough, because next week you'll just want that fix again. You'll just want to eat more sugar and binge.

As a brief comparison - when a drug addict goes into rehab... they get worse. There's pain, and misery, and discomfort, and they're out of their element, and they are forced to deal with situations and emotions that normally they would merely get high about and forget. They go to counseling for a long time. And there are days when it's still a struggle.

They still do it. You know why? There's no other choice. They can either live in their fantasy world where their brief high is fleeting and causing a worse low. Or they can clean themselves up, take a head-on view of their REAL problems and truly live.

You're binging, because it makes you feel good momentarily. How does it make you feel after?

How does avoiding the problems -really- make you feel? Because they don't go away. They add up. They add up, and then you need more food and more binging to drown them.

Talk to someone. A therapist. A counselor. A mentor. You're going through things that this forum is not going to be able to walk you through individually. Dealing with the problems is a lot better than burying them. They just get worse.

[/end tough love]

Tough love really helps sometimes, you know.

If it's seeming huge and unmanageable, sometimes planning to change just one thing at a time, and keep going one day at a time, is a good approach. Kaplods, for instance, has lost 100lb at the rate of about 0.5lb a month, by just taking it one day at a time.

Can you think of one thing that would be reasonably easy to change? Replace one sugary drink a day with a glass of water? Have one piece of fruit a day, if you're not already eating fruit? Change that one thing, keep going for a while, and then when you feel ready, change a second thing.

Sympathy on the mental health stuff, I know it's hard, and well done for how well you're doing with the self-harming side of things. Are you getting medical support?

I'm not getting any medical support right now.

And I can't really just change only one thing, you know. I need to change everything at once because otherwise I'll procrastinate too much.

Speaking to a doctor/counselor may help you. Getting your eating, sleeping and activity under control can make you feel so much better. But I understand that sometimes it's more than that...

If you're clinically depressed, sometimes the right medication can give you the push you need to get going... (speaking from experience here). Not saying medicine is right for everyone- it's not- or that it fixes everything - it sure as heck doesn't. But my medication makes it so I CAN make the choices I want to make and I CAN control my behavior. Hope that makes sense...

There's a great depression support forum here on 3FC. Maybe that would be a good resource.

I wish you nothing but the best as you keep working on your goals. Just remember that it IS worth it to take care of yourself.

I think procrastination is a much worse problem when you need to change everything at once, because it's much more overwhelming and you end up not trying at all. If you don't have the motivation to change one thing, then you certainly won't have the motivation to change everything at once, which is far harder.

Why don't you start with changing one thing at a time at the moment, and start with something today that you think of as easy? There are often a few things around which are so easy they feel like cheating and thus not worth doing, but they can still be very much worth it, and once you've started, the other things get less intimidating. Is there one thing you can think of which you could start with, and promise to keep up?