It's amazing how smart you can be when you make excuses for not losing weight.. i hear myself saying them to people.. and then they agree with me, and im like.. oh come on.. im making excuses here.. .. but, i must admit i can sound pretty convincing.. i have had loads of practice.. years even....
i do have obsticals.. dont we all.. but i buy into them, and let them be the 'reason' i cant diet ... the worst part is i REALIZE this and still havnt stopped.. how sad is that? if i use half the energy to diet as i do to make excuses for NOT dieting, i would be a toothpick by now lol... why do i do this?? anyone else have this issue?

Of course. I think ultimately, body and mind fights change, even positive change, but we humans have a need to understand why we don't make changes we want to make, so we tell ourselves a little story, so that our actions or failure to take action make sense. Of course, most excuses have at least a grain of truth to them, which only makes us more comfortable with the stories.

The line between unhealthy excuses and healthy acceptance of limitations is very thin.

My husband and I are helping our neighbor get help for domestic violence, and she says very much the same thing about her situation, feeling like an idiot for letting "this" happen to her again and again. And even knowing from a psychosocial perspective why these cycles occur, as someone who has never been in an abusive relationship, I ultimately still wonder why is it so difficult for her or really for any of us to see the forest for the trees. In a sense each of our forests just contain different trees.

I think we have to practice new stories, or at least work at editing them to add happy endings. It's easy to say to ourselves "yes, but I can't because ....." It's harder to add "that may be true, but I can because...."

Practice, it's what makes change doable. "Just do it," as Nike advertises, and yet that doesn't automatically make change easy or fast. How much practice it takes to succeed, and how quickly we make those changes (even if we're relatively excuse-free) varies from person to person and change to change. Being patient and understanding (because self-loathing and self-punishment is the quickest way back to old patterns), while being persistant and consistant - that is the challenge, isn't it?

I still fall for my own old excuses sometimes. I'm better now at saying "HA! So what? Get to it! " But, not perfect. It takes practice. The more we say "So what? Get to it!" the easier it is to say again and again.

Old me: "I can't exercise. It makes me tired." New me: "And? It also makes you feel wonderful afterwards. So, get off the bum and get to walking."

And don't always assume people are agreeing because they agree If they don't know you that well, or don't wish to be contrary they may just agree to be polite.

That 'excuse' voice is incredibly strong because we have spent our whole lives flexing it and working it. Giving it tons of power.

You need to start working on the 'just do it' muscle, the more you work it, the stronger it will get and the weaker the excuse voice will become.

I keep believing myself when I tell myself things like: "You've already lost some weight; what's one bite/piece/entire box of cheesecake going to hurt?" NO NO NO NO NO!! AHHHH!!! NO!!! ::fights temptation::

THis mentality alone, the "you're had some success, CELEBRATE!" mentality, is I think, more than anything else, responsible for my being stuck between 190 - 180 lbs for the last 3 years. I achieved JUST enough success to let myself go a bit. I can feel it sort of happening already, this time around. I bought a few size Medium / size 12 tops -- bring on the fudge!

EDIT: I just wanted to say that, of course, losing and regaining the same 10lbs is better than regaining all 75lbs. I've been more or less maintaining, but still... My advice to all is: DO NOT CELEBRATE YOUR WEIGHTLOSS SUCCESS WITH FOOD!! EVER. No matter what you brain tells you; food is NOT a reward! Food is food! Learn from my mistakes!

That inner voice just won't shut up sometimes! There is always a handy excuse for not staying on-plan, but you do have the power to ignore the voice and stay on course. Keep going!

I totally agree with this. My "excuse voice" sometimes starts up when it's time to get out and exercise . . . I drown it out by chanting "JUST DO IT" to myself while I put on my walking shoes and get out the door. My rational mind has decided that I want to lose weight and that I need to exercise in order to do that, so there is simply nothing to "discuss" with myself - I just need to shut down the excuse voice and get out the door.