In desperate need of motivation...
 

Hi all! It's been about a month since I have been on here and I guess I just really need some motivation at this point (or a nice kick in the butt!!!). I started my weight loss in February and up until last month I was making good progress. Then I hit a bump, not sure what it was, but I blamed it on my nursing finals to just have an excuse. Well I had lost 20 lbs at that point and even though I am still going to my weight watchers meetings, I've only lost 1.6 lbs this month and have pretty much given up. I really want to do this, but I feel like I have gotten myself so out of the weight loss deal so much that I won't be able to jump back on the wagon. I have once before gotten to this weight and once I hit it I gave up then too. I'm not sure if this is me sabatoging myself or what. If anyone has any advice or motivation I would seriously appreciate it!!!

The onyl advice I have is, you've admitted whats happened. The next step is to get past it. Easier said then done, eh? Well, we all fall off the train every once and a while. But you're down 20 lbs. Do you want to gain those back? No. Maybe you've only lost a pound (but hey! you lost right? you didn't gain it!), but thats no reason to give up. IN 6 MONTHS YOU'RE GOING TO WISH YOU STARTED TODAY.

I've been living by that line. Some days I feel like giving up, of course. Others I have enough motivation and determination to run through a brick wall. But either way, if you give up and gain it back, you'll have to do it all over again. Not all hope is lost, you've still lost 20 lbs! Congratulate yourself for that.

We have bad hair days right? Do we shave our heads every time we do? Of course not. You had a bad "diet" day, or week or month. You did it, it's done, its over with and tomorrow is a new day. Get back on that bandwagon and join the rest of us who will have a bad day/week/month too.

summer is comming and your SOOOOO close to onderland you know you can do it attack this like your grades depended on it !! :carrot:

I read somewhere, "Motivation doesn't last. Neither does showering, that's why we recommend it daily."

Motivation can come and go. My recommendation is to latch on to commitment. To me, commitment is the more powerful of the two. In the wise words of Nike, "Just do it!"

Instead of focusing on a big picture of "motivation" focus on making small habit changes over the course of a year. If you create new healthy habits, then you don't even have to think about it any more. Let me ask you this, every morning when you wake up, do you have to cheer yourself on and give yourself a motivational pep talk before you can brush your teeth? Probably not. It's because you have been brushing your teeth since you were very small and it has become a habit. You can turn exercise and healthy eating into a habit as well...

Pick one habit a month that you want to focus on. Only one. Changing or starting a new habit takes time and energy...so it's easiest to only focus on one at a time. Put all of your mental energy into just that one habit. Doing this will break the journey down into smaller, easier to manage steps. For instance, for the month of June, you could pick a habit of "I will eat at least two servings of vegetables a day" .. July could be, "I will exercise at least 30 minutes 3 times a week." By the time July rolls around, chances are, you don't even have to think about eating veggies, it will have become an automatic habit by then. And if it hasn't, just keep the same habit for July.

Progress might seem slow but it is much easier and a much safer (fool-proof) way of changing your life. And just think, in a year... you could have created 12 new, strong life changing habits.

Here are some great articles from the site that taught me about changing habits:

• A compact guide to creating the fitness habit
• Five things you need to know about effective habit change

Good luck!

Thanks Aidanqm! I really liked those articles!! And thank you every one else.

I tried my best today and followed WW without cheating at all, which is a step in the right direction. Now I just need to continue that trend!!