I've been trying to figure out why I give up and start eating wrong again. I've been feeling that way this past weekend. I knew my wife had friends over and ordered pizza Friday night. She said she would save me some. So I figured that would be my treat night. I then stopped at the store and got a sub and a 8oz brick of cheese to eat on the way home before the pizza smart move right. I also knew we were invited to a cook out the next day that was supposed to be our treat day because we were having steak. I gave into that aslo plus after the fireworks that night we got a cheesburger and fries.

I don't know why I did it but I know that is what happens when I throw in towl. It's kind of like Barb said I allow my self something and then it goes down hill form there. I start thinking why did you do that. What's the use your never going to make it anyway. I want to be able to be normal. I want to be able to have a burger and fries with friends and know that it's not going to make me go crazzy and gain it all back. But I don't know how.

I did so so yesterday. Went over the calories but not with bad food. Today I am back on track. I know though that this weekend could have been it for me and I'm scared. I did the same thing last weekend. I'm scared that next weekend will be the same and that will be it. I hope not but that is how it seems to go. I have to beat this thing I can't let it happen but it never seems like I do let it happen it just does.

Howie...were we separated at birth?? I could easily put my name at the bottom of your post 'cause it's my story, too. When you said you long to be "normal"--perhaps what's "abnormal" is the idea we're on a wagon to begin with. I have a hard time reconciling myself to the concept of a lifestyle change. Unless I'm following somebody else's rules, I feel like I'm in freefall foodwise.
Argh! I remember when my daughter was a baby and her pediatrician told me not to fixate on what she ate at every meal but to look at things over the course of several days. I tend to fixate on things minute to minute with myself and lose sight of the bigger picture. In short I need to quit obsessing about whether I'm "on" or "off" and take the focus off food. Just my ramblings..congratulations if this made any sense to you!

It does make since. We do need take the focus off food. I just don't know how. When you are counting calories doing Atkins, southbeach, weight watchers whatever. It does not matter what plan I do I still find myself planing what and when I can eat next. It consumes me. I would love to be one of these people that just eat because they have to stay alive. I have a brother inlaw like that. That is not my life though so I have to deal with what I was dealt and what I have made myself.

<sigh> I'm right there with ya, Howie. I don't know about you but after being on diets for the last 30 years, I've adopted the idea that the diet dictates what/when I eat...not my natural responses. I do have to say that this morning I was going to eat breakfast because of the time on the clock--and then realized I wasn't even hungry. But I still ate. That makes me so crazy. I feel like I"m gonna miss out on something if I don't eat then and there.
Barb

Dito for me.

Wow. This is a great thread.

Scuttle - that was very brave of you to tell your whole story. I am really sure you can do it (whatever it is!) this time. I love to travel and change my life around too......but why can't you go to Iraq as a big person? My last job I travelled 60% of the time (African, Asia, Latin America)....it was great....I try very hard to make sure my size doesn't stop me doing things...(well, there is the water-skiing and surfing, LOL, which I am looking forward to when I am a lot fitter and smaller!)

Barb/Howie - thanks so much for being so honest. The mood in this group is so up-beat, that sometimes it feels like everyone just floats along doing great, no struggles at all......

As for me, well this healthy eating thing is mainly new to me, and so far so good, more-or-less. I did lose some weight a few years ago - I was off sick work for a couple of months, really quite ill, and I was eating healthily to give my body a chance to heal. I found, once I got back to work, that I struggled to stick with the healthy eating - basically, I took a long work trip, and then came back to the bad old habits. I think it was something to do with change in routine, and I guess not wanting it enough.

Howie / Barb - I'm right there with you!

The thing with dieting is that it makes us constantly think about FOOD! I bet each one of us can recite the calories or 'points' to every known food on the universe - and I bet most slim people couldn't. I was very sad to realise recently that I started out this 'dieting' lark at aged 17, weighing around 155lb - i am now 31 and weigh 256lb - so you do the math! I have spent the last 14 years 'dieting' and have gained 100lb!

I think the people who have successfully lost weight (and kept it off) on this forum are those who have stopped dieting and have changed their lifestyle and way of thinking. I really feel this is an addiction we are fighting - our minds have been hardwired to use food as instant gratification and that is what we need to change.

Just my thoughts on the subject, although I wish i had the answers!

Love Amanda x

Boy I feel old now Amanda. Your post got me thinking how long I have been dieting and I can rember going to the doctors when I was 12 years old to see what they could do for me. So I have been dieting for 25 years now. I do agree with you that it needs to be a lifestyle change but I think that has just become another catch phrase to get rid of the word diet. I mean face it what ever we do to lose it is what we have to do to keep it off and yes it is a lifestyle change but it is also a basic diet change. I don't see the point in all the words we come up with to hide the old words because someone did not like them. It still becomes just another discription and soon lifestyle change will have the same bad meaning that diet now has.

I do know what you are saying though and I do agree. Forgive my rant.

I have struggles too.. I guess I am just not an outward person about it. I try to be positive so that I can keep myself going.. If I would talk about my struggles as much as I encounter them, I know me, I would dwell on them and set myself up to fail--worrying and dwelling is such a trigger for me and this is why I HAVE to be positive for most of the time-- for my own sake! But since were sharing... I'll tell you my struggles. I struggle with exercise at times, I struggle with my husband eating an entire pizza right in front of my eyes while I eat a salad with no dressing, I struggle with all my friends having a drink at happy hour while I drink a diet soda as they tease me about being boring! I struggle with the scary thought of some day waking up being 50 lbs more than when I started.. I struggle with the thought of not being able to maintain once I do reach my goal. I know I can do it but I also am being realistic in knowing it will be a challenge for the rest of my life.

I know that being ultra-positive ALL-of-the-time is annoying (my husband tells me it is, so its ok if some of you feel that way about my positivity too ) I know that in reality life is not perfect. Being positive sometimes gets associated with being fake. I am not a fake person at all.. I do have my miserable moments. But I really try to be happy and positive because it pulls me right out of my misery and makes the move on happen quicker!

I don't want to give off the impression that I am non-human or don't experience negative things during this journey, we all experience negativity and encounter struggles. I just choose to not focus on them. I tend to take the negative and quickly turn it into a positive.. skip right on over the negative stuff, keep rolling right along. This works for ME. So when my hubby eats his pizza, I'll take a nibble off the end and be satisfied with it, When my friends offer that drink, I say.. I'm the DD-- someone has to be responsible! When I have a day of not wanting to exercise, I'll go ahead and skip it but you better believe the next day will be double work!

I love hearing about the great stuff that happens to people. And the good thing about hearing the negative is that we as a group have an opportunity to add some encouragement and share ideas on how to change/improve something. Collaboration is a great great thing and I think it works well for this group. I still think we are all doing a great job, struggles or not. Even with all the struggles this group encounters,--somehow, some way eventually turns out pretty ok. I really enjoy this group, I love the honesty, the debate, the encouragement, the joys, sorrows and most of all the people who make all these contributions possible! There's my two cents for the day!

Howie - i understand what you are saying about 'diet' being a dirty word, and new 'buzz' words replacing what is essentially the same thing! hey, I am a social worker, the supposed ultra PC profession - i've been in jobs where they send round regular memo's telling us what words we are no longer allowed to use ('black eye', deaf, blind etc) and telling us the new politically correct versions!

Gretchen - I your positive attitude! Sometimes when I am feeling low or negative about my weight or diet (there's that word again!), I say to myself 'how would Gretchen look at this?'. It helps me to try be more positive about things! But it is good to know that you struggle like the rest of us!

Love Amanda x

Gretchen, I swear we are sharing a brain. You spoke for me (and my wife! ) I must say that I'm truly saddened when something causes me to remember that some folks associate positivity with fakeness or simplicity (read, simplemindedness.) It just makes the saddest statement about our society, and how skewed our collective perspective has become. When I encounter this personally, it's just so clear to me that someone else's issue with my positive outlook or approach is just that.....their issue. But that's an entirely separate rant!

I really love this thread. And I'm impressed as **** with all the contributors. The reality is that this is an amazingly hard thing that we're doing, and most of us are bound to stumble. It's a process, an ongoing process, and it's fraught with triggers and landmines. The key is that we relearn our responses to them, and that's not an overnight exercise for any of us.

I grew up physically active and eating healthily -- I was raised as a vegetarian, for pete's sake! -- and I grew into a physically active adult of normal weight, who honestly enjoyed eating healthy foods. Then at some point I began to struggle personally. Outwardly, I was ok, internally, I was in pain, finally dealing with unresolved childhood crap. Still the weight was ok. I travelled the world, living overseas for several years, and ending up in Kashmir. (India.) I was still mostly vegetarian, but now drinking too much wine, having learned to adore it in Italy. In India, I contracted dysentary and intestinal parasites, and when I returned to America, I came to realize that a lot of my staple vegetables were now off limits to me. I started eating meat, shortly after got into a life/work situation that required reliance on an automobile (instead of hoofing it, like I'd done for all of my adult life) and then it was downhill from there. It's still amazing to me that I could have been raised with healthy eating and behavioral habits and still ended up morbidly obese. My mother was, but she didn't raise me, and so I thought I'd managed to sidestep her toxic habits. Not so. She reached an arm up from the grave and just smacked my genetic a**. Then I just ran with that genetic predisposition, and successfully spearheaded my own physical destruction.

I alone created all my own self-destructive habits, and now I'm recreating all my own NEWLY healthy habits. As much as I own my failure to take care of and maintain my body's good health, I ABSOLUTELY own my reclaiming of my own physical well-being. I just remind myself that I wouldn't treat the body of one of my cats like I treated my own, and then I ask myself if I'm worthy of that protection and care as well. It's a constant struggle. Particularly when I'm doing it in the presence of a non-participating partner who wants my time and attention, doesn't want me to cook, would much rather order out, likes the IDEA of my exercising but would much rather I just sat and talked with her, and hates vegetables as much as I desperately want her to eat them! Rut roh, seems like I slipped into another rant there...... Don't get me wrong, I'm not trading her in but I just really have to stay attentive to meeting my commitments to myself, or I just don't.

That wagon is a constantly moving vehicle, and for those of us who fall off it, it won't be a single event. I just really believe that it's all about modifying our responses....and that takes time. Time, and repetition. This will be a lifelong process, and I'm very intentionally, and consciously, choosing to make caring decisions for myself, as I do for my animals. I pay more for decent food for them, and make a point of restricting their intake when necessary, and I consciously exercise with my dog, Louie, and my fat cat, Bughead.....because they need it to live healthy, happy lives. I do it because I love them, so can't I love myself in the same way? It's pretty damned simple, when I think in those terms. And I have to remind myself -- again consciously, like a mantra -- that I deserve to reap the benefits of the right decisions throughout each day. And then when I'm logging my day's eats in my Diet Power software in bed each night, I give myself lots of positive feedback for all those choices made throughout the day. (My office is a candy/bagels/cake/cookies/chips/soda/pizza sort of office, and my sweetie is at best reluctant to participate with me on this mission of mine, so I feel like I really need to own my successes!)

My struggle is less with the food than the exercise. That's still an effort for me, and I know that it's the reason I'm not losing more. I've made great progress, and I'm happy about it, but the next phase of my progression MUST be the exercise component. I do it in starts and fits. One week 6 times, the next week nothing, the next week 4 times, the following 3. I'll get there, I know it, I just have to work harder to convince myself that I can do anything I set my mind to, and that I deserve to be the person that I choose to be. I guess I just need to believe that I already am.

I love you guys, I really do.

Wow - what a great thread. It's 11:23 and I so need to go to bed, but I just needed to add some thoughts here.

Just a few weeks ago my mom said to me that I was too focused on food and she thought that was part of my problem. But how can I possibly succeed if I don't focus on the food. I've tried thinking the "I'll just eat to survive" technique. Doesn't work for me. I'll just eat whatever. I know I will need to count points or something forever. I am trying not to obses about being perfect this time. I am having loses and gains. Every day is a new day. Baby steps. I am just hopeful that in the long run that if I have enough goods days, I'll make some progress.

I am in awe of those of you who can start a plan and just stick with it no matter what. Really - it's just amazing.

Artist - I think sometimes why you see less posts about the stuggles is because people tend not to post when they are doing badly. It's a defensive kind of thing. A "what could I possibly have to add" thought process. What most people don't realize is that when you aren't doing great is when you should come here the most. Read...Post...get the support that you need to get back on plan.

My whole weight loss situation has me so perplexed. I am smarter than this. I have a problem, I have the tools & knowledge to solve it. But I don't. I give it lots of lip service - but only small doses of action. The stakes are high - but I keep spinning the wheel. Logically my actions do not make sense.

Great thread!!!

Man this is a great thread. I love how positive you are Gretchen. You are a great inspiration.

Sarah the pet care you were talking about. You are so right. I am very picky what my pets eat. No table scraps natural pet food they go to the vet when ever they have any problems. Man I do take better care of my pets than I do myself. I would never let them become overweight. How do I do it to myself? I have often wished I had a care taker like my pets do. Who would only give me the food I need.

Oh Howie - you have hit the nail on the head! Only YOU can take care of you! It's that whole self love thing that eludes most of us! We are often our own worst enemy - we criticise and berate our best efforts, beat ourselves up - and like you say, treat ourselves worse than we would a dog!

I would NEVER speak to ANYONE the way I speak to myself, and I also set myself impossibly high targets and critiicize myself when I can't meet them. I am a perfectionist - but my targets are too high, so I never meet them - then I slip into depression (oh look, I DID learn something in therapy! ).

It wouldn't suprise me if alot of us here are perfectionists - maybe we don't look it on the outside, but inside we''re all impossibly hard on ourselves, never feeling good enough.............or maybe thats just me!

Love Amanda x

PS- My cat is also overweight and the vet has instructed me to put him on a diet!

Hey, so much food (all calorie/fat/carb free) for thought on this thread. Thanks so much to all of you for sharing your thoughts, feelings and stories - it really really helps me a lot.

This theme of 'taking care of yourself' is something I have been working on a lot, the past 18 months or so. I had a really really difficult and traumatic time, and it hit me in a very stark way that if I didn't take care of myself, no-one else is going to do it for me....so that is how I started on this journey.....and like you Sarah, that is a constant theme for me when I am making healthy eating and exercise choices......(and by the way - a heretic thought - maybe its OK to hit the exercise really hard one week, and seriously ease off the next - I do that too - and if I listen to my body, sometimes that is what I seem to want/need....).

As to the being positive - I do understand and truly applaud your positive frame of mind, Gretchen, and how hard you work to make it positive. For me, 80% of the time I am feeling very positive, and I don't struggle - I am amazed at how much I prefer to eat healthy foods.....my main challenge, I think, is that I am losing very slowly, so sometimes, particularly when I see the fast rate of loss that some of you guys are accomplishing, it makes me wonder if I should change my approach....then I figure that this is working for me, and is something I am happy living with permanently, so why not just keep plodding on......

Sandi - I totally agree that one of the reasons this forum is so positive and upbeat is that people tend not to post when they are/have fallen off the wagon, and are struggling. I have been wondering how we can make that easier - maybe we should have a thread for 'challenging times' or something?

As to the caring more for our pets than ourselves......I think in the end it comes down to self-esteem. We have to feel that we are worth it, and that we have a right to be healthy, and fit. Its taken me quite a few years to claim those rights for myself, and to learn to look after myself well, but I am sooooo glad that I am getting there!

On the diet/lifestyle semantics. You're right, Howie, in a way we are at the mercy of a billion dollar diet (lifestyle!) industry, and I'm sure they will come up with a new marketing gimmick to replace 'healthy lifestyle' soon. I guess the important point for me is that I no longer thing that I will get the weight off, and then change my way of eating/exercising back to what it was 'before'......so my 'test' for whether I am taking the right approach for me is whether or not I can live with it for the rest of my life.....if I can't, then its a pointless exercise.......

And finally. I must say, it really scares me when I realise with how much effort, and for how long, many of you have been addressing your weight/size issues. I have been big for a long time too, most of my adult life, but I have never chosen to do anything about it before......and I really really really don't want to go the yo-yo route.......