When you're plugging along, eating healthy and excercising, what does you in and knocks you off the weagon for a week, a month or more? and how do you stop it in the future?

For me, it's the scale.

Once it hasn't budged for 2 months I start eating poorly again.

Right now we don't have a working scale and the battery charger thing for the wii fit is broken.

I think I'm not going to buy a new scale. I think I'm just going to focus on eating healthy, exercising and taking it one day at a time. I think I'm beyond needing that scale reinforcement (that usually is a discouragement anyhow!) I know people say it's important to keep track but....it tears me down. My mom has a scale, and I visit her every few months. I will probably just use her scale when I see her sometime this summer.

I actually feel pretty liberated! I can just focus on the important parts and let the weight loss be a 'side effect' as someone else on here mentioned recently.

What is it for you guys, and how can you change it?

Yea, for me it is probably weighing too. I get frustrated when I don't see progress and I am working hard... or when I workout and just keep gaining weight. I, however, do need to weigh in daily. If I am not weighing it is because I am eatng poorly. I guess I just need to try to focus more on how I feel and measuring and such... and not so much the number.

The scale. And I have analyzed myself into a solution that works great for me. I can now say with confidence that this is THE last time I will do this because I have finally saved me from myself.

1.) First and most importantly, I committed to this for one year. That way, no matter what the scale says, it doesn't matter. I want to see where I'll be one year later. My first day here I read in a signature, "A year from now you'll be glad you started today" and it really resonated with me. So here I am, 5.5 months in, on plan day after day after day, and stall after stall because I committed to it. And my weight DOES eventually drop. I just have a lot of stalls.

2) I started weighing daily. I know that sounds counter intuitive. It took me quite by surprise! I thought I should go to monthly weighing, not daily weighing! But by allowing myself to weigh whenever I want, but always in the morning, I have seen normal fluctuations and I have a really good sense of what my body does. Little one pound or even two pound gains really don't bother me. I find them amusing, actually. It's the stalls that still bug me!

The scale sucks. Sometimes I break up with it for a while if it doesn't treat me right. Other times I'm able to treat it with a distant objectivity, however.

But I don't let the scale throw me off. There are bigger things in my life that I am worried might throw me off--for example, my mom's advanced pancreatic cancer. But we have been living with that for a year now, and I have been OK. I think that I will probably remain able to cope throughout the progress of her illness and eventual, inevitable death. I'm not sure why that is, except that I know very strongly, deep in my soul, that putting junk food in my body doesn't make anything better.

These days nothing really "does me in" because my plan is to write everything down no matter what, so if I overeat, it doesn't send me off plan, it just makes me have a very high calorie day.

But what makes me have a high calorie day? A large container of nuts (any kind). For some reason, if I grab chips, I will weigh a portion, but nuts for some reason I just can't keep my hand out of them.

That's been my problem, too. And yet, I hear it over and over again, all over this board and in other boards and throughout the Web world... "How do I get over this stall?"

I am slowly coming to believe that we don't "have a lot of stalls". It's pretty obvious to me that that's just how our bodies lose weight. It adjusts. It shifts. It settles in for a bit to see if this level of food/exercise is going to continue. It's doing this to PROTECT me. And when the time is right, so long as I stay on plan, it will give up the next pound. And the next. And the next.

I think your idea of going for time, rather than pounds, is a very good one. I'm thinking of backing off the scale, and doing a monthly weighing/measuring/picture/journaling thing, rather than worrying about the scale on a weekly basis. Now that I'm more focused on keeping my blood glucose level and counting calories, the weight-loss results are not as prominent in my mind (what a change!).

Now, what throws me completely off plan, I've found, is overdrinking. I can have one or two glasses of wine or bourbon and soda. But if I have more than that, even if I have the "calorie budget" for it, I find myself mindlessly shoving food into my mouth without even realizing it.

What does me in? When I don't PLAN. When I don't think ahead. When I "just wing it"!

Stress. I used to think I handled stress great. Part of my job in the summers was very busy and stressful but that changed about 6 years ago when they reshuffled the departments. My job is pretty laid back. My life has always just coasted along and I thought things were great, I got stress a lot about my son and now with marriage stuff and my family stuff, it's been horrible. I've lost sleep and my memory and put on weight the last 6 or so months.

I'm not sure what to do. Being upbeat and positive takes a lot of energy and I didn't realize that. Being strong only lasted so many months and then I was plain wore out. It's been almost 9 months since my world was turned upside down but things are getting better, I'm building my trust for my husband again, I go to a counselor, we have visits with his daughter in our home, the boy really love her and I've taken to her but there are moments when I wish she were my daughter or more that I had a daughter.

I have lot's of expectations right now from my parents and brother and financial and work obligations and dealing with the issues of 3 of my sons and lot's of juggling. I don't think I could do this on my own.

I've made no plans though and I know that I should because I need to learn how to deal with the stress. Walking and yoga seem to be the best thing but I have to learn other ways to deal with it. But I have started exercising and taking the mona vie acai berry juice and I'm more regular and sleeping good.

Not having a plan for the week will do me in.
Lack of planning a tentative dinner and lunch menu for the week and then letting myself get too hungry before making a meal. I can't think of making something healthy if my blood sugar has me looking to eat my own face off. McDonald's is less than 1/2 mile from my house and right on my way home from work.

I have stocked my fridge and pantry with easy, healthy, whole foods. I make a plan in my head for the week of lunches and dinners. I also do a lot of pre-cooking (chicken breast, boiling eggs) and prepping baggies of vegetables for an easy to grab lunch.

Surprise food and social events are my two biggest issues.

I am great on a day to day basis, I have my healthy breakfast, I pack a lunch, snack, I make healthy dinners every night. It's the "suprise - here's some birthday cake!" or trying to stay out of the bread basket in a restaurant that get to me. Luckily, my weight is pretty steady (maintenance) because I eat so well 95% of the time.

Stress and the scale, neither make me want to eat but i get so frustrated that i want to sit down and have a big cry.

Bingo lol

physical pain

I haven't found anything for me yet - I have been staying straight and strong mostly! Hope that I dont either!

Ugh, failing to plan!!!! I totally messed up just a bit ago here. I failed ot bring food with me to class, and I ended up buying, and consuming almost an entire bag of tortilla chips. Feel pretty disgusted and disgusting at the moment. But I am not giving into failure. I will drink lots of ater. Eat light tonight, (no "oh well, today's shot might as well make the whole day a bad day" mentality) and pick myself up NOW and keep going. I don't know why it is so difficult for me to make healthy decisions when I stop at the store hungry. Plan plan plan plan plan. This I think is paramount to me. (I threw the remaining tortilla chips away)