There have been a few threads and posts lately that got me to thinking...

How do you prepare mentally for this journey? Did you have an attitude adjustment? What was(is) your mindset? Where is your head at? What do you say to yourself?

What is your focus - the BIG goal, the small goals, just getting through the day, the reward for attaining goals?

Is there anything new or different this time?

I think I had the "I'M SICK OF THIS!" attitude and just did it. My mindset was I HAVE TO get this weight off so I am healthy for my husband and future children, for myself, and I want to look & feel better about myself! I was sick of being on the verge of tears after trying on clothes and hating the way I looked. I would get so upset that I didn't even want my husband to show any sort of affection towards me sometimes because I hated the way I looked.

I focus on both big and small goals and I do plan on rewarding myself for reaching them! I think it's good to set an ultimate goal and break it up into smaller goals. For me, losing 10 pounds four times seems less intimidating than losing 40 pounds.

I think this time it's different because my husband told me how my weight affects him and it just made my heart sink. He is very active and wants me to be involved in activities and I couldn't before. He was concerned about my health and self-esteem. I thought, he's right (for once! )! So, why not do it? What have I got to lose, besides the pounds? So I just did it.

Hope that helps!

Good thought provoking questions.. but I'm not sure I have any answers...lol

Well, I hit a "magic" number on a scale. And it all just clicked.

I have lost and gained and lost and gained before but this time it just clicked as a lifestyle choice. I got sick of being sick and acting and thinking like a victim.

I was stuck in the whole "well I am just made to be big" that is BS. Seriously, I call BS on that right now. And I did it on myself. So I got up after Labor Day and trashed everything in my kitchen that was not conducive of a lifestyle change and put my whole family into "shock mode". All told the entire family has lost almost 100lbs in the last two and a half months. It has made me move forward and not give up. This is really a complete LIFESTYLE overhaul. As long as I remember that, I am good to go.

I had a terribly embarrasing thing happen to me. I had been flirting with someone for 2 years, we constantly said we wanted to "hook up", but of course just never really had the opportunity cuz I was so busy and it had to be hush hush as my ex husband hated him and would go crazy if he ever thought him and I were together. Well we finally found time a few months ago, and he could not stay arroused. It was god awful. It was the worst feeling ever in my life. I've never had something like that happen to me. And I know it had to be my fault cuz he had been with 3 other people I knew, and 2 of them specifically told me how awsome he was yadda yadda. I won't ever date again unless I lose the weight.

The other thing that triggered me this time is my daughter is in Gymnastics, and it's a toddler class where parents help and I can't even do the excersizes cuz my dang fat belly is in the way.

Nothing I can really put my finger on, except maybe that I stuck with it longer than a month and gave my body time enough that the new changes have become habit. That, and my calorie limit and food choices are realistic ones that I can live with, forever. And I finally found an exercise that I really enjoy.

I didn't prepare mentally. For me, talking about mental preparation would be an excuse to procrastinate:

"Oh ... I don't have the brain space to think about that now ... I'll do it when I'm ready ... after I settle into the new job ... after my first deadline passes ... after the High Holidays ... etc."

If I waited until I was mentally prepared, I don't think I'd ever start.

What happened for me, this time, was I changed one thing and a bunch of other things started to click into place. I went back to weightlifting to impress my girlfriend, who had gently scolded me for not getting enough exercise. Once I was hitting the gym, almost immediately I wanted to clean up my eating. I started off simply not being a pig - exercising portion control - but as the weight started coming off, I wanted to keep it coming off, and so I started counting calories more closely.

I guess the punchline for me is, no thinking - just doing. It's not about mental preparation - I know what to do, I just have to execute.

About a month ago my husband came home with this book, (Are we allowed to talk about books and stuff? I'm not trying to advertise or anything) It's called the Younger Thinner you diet. It basically talks about fixing your brain chemistry. A lot of what I read made so much sense. I'm not specifically following the diet in the book, but I am definitely following the guidelines. Now that I'm eating right I'm less tired, I'm less moody, I feel generally happier, and I think clearer. The link to what we put in our bodies effecting our brain chemistry is just there. The longer I eat right the less I crave junk, that's part of our brain chemistry as well. It's why when we do eat something we shouldn't after not doing so for a while, we feel down and guilty and sluggist and sometimes even sick.


Basically for me I finally got it when I decided to think different. And now that I'm not in a sugar and fat cloud anymore I can see what I really want, and now I REALLY want it.

Ummm...I guess I just faked it till I maked it, really. I saw photos of myself that really woke me up as to how fat I really was (236 isn't my starting number, it's the first number I saw after making some changes), so I made some little changes: no more "treats", MUCH more activity, etc. Once the scale started moving, it got easier and THEN the little "click" went off and now it's just habit to eat well and keep my body moving.

I do think that weight loss is near impossible WITHOUT that "click".

If anything, I'm less motivated than I've ever been in nearly 40 years of dieting. I don't have the mental or physical energy to go "full-speed ahead."

Maybe it's helped me put less importance on the scale, so I didn't feel so horribly upset/depressed when the weight didn't come off as quickly as I wanted to.

There were also a couple physiological changes that I can't dismiss entirely (birth control that kept TOM hunger under better control, and discovering that I lose better on fewer carbohydrates).

But I really credit mainly one change. I realized (with some help from a very understanding doctor) that I never gave up dieiting in the past because I was failing. I gave up because I felt like I was failing because I wasn't succeeding fast enough. I realized that even weight maintenance was success. So even when I felt like there was no way for me to lose another pound, it wasn't reason to give up, because all of the pounds I've lost so far counted. In the past, I always felt that only "goal weight" counted for anything, and anything less than that was failure. "This time" from the very first 10 pound loss (which I lost without trying after being prescribed a cpap), I decided that even if I couldn't lose any more weight, I could always keep off what I've lost so far. It took me two years to lose any more than those 10 pounds, but I kept those 10 pounds off (and then started seeing my current doctor who suggested I try low-carb, which I never gave serious thought to because I thought I "knew" that it was unhealthy and unsustainable).

Only "not giving up," it sounds so simple I don't know why I didn't do it earlier, except the overwhelming sense of failure "not losing" had over me. And while I was initially pretty hard on myself, I also realized it's how we're taught to view dieting. It's the way we see everyone else do it, giving up because "it's too hard, and what's the use anyway, I'll never lose all the weight I want to."

When I think those things now, I tell myself "so what - maybe you won't lose another stinkin' pound, but you can keep off what you've lost so far, and hey maybe you can lose just 1 more pound.

One pound at a time, even if it takes a month to lose that stinkin' pound, is better than giving up and regaining.

I did prepare mentally. I knew that whatever changes I made would HAVE to be for the rest of my life. That was hard to do; recognizing this was not another diet that I would complete and then return to the old ways and weight gain.

No, I just woke up one day and said I don't want to be this fat glob anymore. I had done all this research on nutrition the month before (I have a form of autism known for its obsessions so this isn't unusual for me to research something with no extensions into my own life) so I knew what I had to do. I've never even dieted before (I'm using diet in the looser sense here).

I've had some substantial diets and a few false starts, and always ended up worse off than I started. I spent most of my first 45 years or so stressing out about food.

Around 2006 or so, I decided to stop worrying about food for a while. I decided that yo-yoing and worrying was probably worse for me than being obese. I did gain some more weight, but it's possible that letting go of the worrying and stress set the stage for my subsequent lifestyle change.

At the end of 2008, against all logic and previous experience, I decided that I Was Ready. I decided that I had enough data about what did and didn't work for me to make an informed decision about an eating plan. I had resolved some of my emotional issues that used to lead to emotional eating. I decided that I was ready to commit to eating better and incorporating some exercise into my routine for the long term (though I didn't start exercising until a few months in).

This might sound funny, but one way I could tell this time was "different" was that I actually started the diet on December 29, 2008, rather than starting on January 1 and using the last few days of 2008 as an excuse to binge. I was excited to get started.

I've been doing essentially the same thing for 1 year and 10 months--the main change was to reduce my daily calories from 1500 to 1400 earlier this year. It doesn't feel like a burden and I'm hardly ever hungry, so (fingers crossed) I think I'm in for the duration. I'm 49 years old and I have a new lease on life!

My first "adjustment" was with my partner. I wanted to have more energy when I was with him, (not just physically) and I didn't. My weight has been getting in the way of me being more open to him, and not being self-conscious around him. I think he feels I don't trust him. He has never said that, but I can see that it affects him.

So First, I 'fessed up and told him "the number"
Then, I took him with me to the doctor, so he could hear the news with me
(I have never taken ANYONE in with me, not even my parents...S-t-u-b-b-o-r-n)

Finally, my doctor threatened to put me on more medications. I have been fighting with him about that for a while now,and begged for one more chance. We compromised, and that is what started the first 25 lbs. With my guy now fully aware, he supports me and my incentive is to make him proud.