It has been a MONTH since I exercised. The scale this morning - OMG.

I was on a roll all summer and fall. Then one day I don't exercise, turns into a week, suddenly a month, egad. . . Why? I guess it got in the way of my eating left-over Halloween candy.

Does this happen to you? Anyone can fall off the wagon a bit, but I keep rolling until I have undone months of work.

So far I have never let exercise go past a week and that's usually if I have been sick or something. I just can't. I don't have time to screw around anymore with my weight, I'm getting too old now. There are times I literally have to force myself to get back up and do it and then I am on a roll again in no time.

I haven't exercised in three weeks because of a back issue and doctor orders
remember, it's also about what you're eating and not just your exercise level. Good luck! once you go back to exercising, you'll pick it up again and it'll be a habit.

For me it's sooo easy to not exercise. I can come up with an excuse not to go no problem especially once I miss one day.

Right now I have a pulled muscle or something so I have stopped strength training but I am still doing cardio at least 3x a week.

I also fell off the wagon around halloween. I got a cold... then we had so much left over candy... bleh. :k

Just gotta get back on the wagon. I did put some weight back on but it's going back down now + I am still down from where I started in August.

Thanks Novangel. I admire your discipline! Thinking when I slide I focus on workouts I missed and it snowballs. Stupid! Going to focus instead on just looking forward positively.

Back on plan as of Thurs.

Amazing. I know it's more about diet but for it's easier for me to eat well when I'm exercising too - maybe the endorphins help or I just feel better. But then sadly the reverse is true.

Are those your pix in the avatar? You look amazing. 160 lbs lost?! Wow congrats.

Halloween candy - the start of the Dangerous Season! My weakness.
75 lbs lost since Aug? That's wonderful.

What a great thread! Sometimes you have to simply confess your felonies to clear your conscience a little.

Yesterday I ate and drank 2800kcal because of a special occasion. I planned on eating a little more than I should (I prepared and ate only 650kcal the day before to even it out in advance), but not that much. I lost it for a day for the fourth time in my two-month diet.

I went 5.5 years rarely missing a day of exercise. I racked up 3000 minutes every month. I even walked hospital circuits (5 floors) when my partner was in the hospital for weeks.Then last summer I missed a day, and another day and another day, and well now I've lost the habit and have been struggling for months to re-establish it. In the process I regained 30+ lbs. So yes, it happens and you are not the only one. On the bright side, we are in the minority. We lost ground and regained some but we are back and working to get back on track. We are beating the odds

We can do it!

That's pretty much exactly what I did from November till last week. I went a few days (less than 10) in 3 months. It sucked.

It was the story of my life until this time around. I finally developed some discipline (or maybe resolve) in my mid-fifties. For the past two years I've been rock-solid with exercise. As another poster said, I can't afford to screw around anymore. But it sure took me a long time to get it.

F.

this week has been the longest that I've gone without exercising in over 2-3 years....we went to the village and we've been gone for 6 days and I haven't done any exercise because of being too busy with the burial arrangements...I doubt i'm doing any tomorrow either because I will be slammed busy at work and i'm completely wiped out tonight just coming home

MEA CULPA here too:
I have been surfing on the fact that my antidepressants have suppressed my appetite. So I hardly eat and therefore I'm still losing the weight.
So here's my plan. One day by body is going to get used to the antidepressants and the appetite will come back running. Then I'll resume exercising as a NEW way of whipping fat. It will surely work, because I'd be giving my body something different.
All this came from the fact that, since on antidepressant I don't eat much (because I honestly never get hungry) I don't want to strain my body burning too much and faint or get some illness.

Yes and that's why exercise is no longer the mainstay of my weight loss program.

ON the other hand, if i got to the point of eating leftover sweets i wouldn't be on my weightloss journey at all anymore. Sweets are verboten for me now. I like it like that. I want to be and stay slim more than i want to eat sweet things.

I am treating sweets like i do cigarettes. And i feel good about that. It took a while to feel this committed.

Yes, in the past. I used to have a huge issue with maintaining exercise when diet is less than ideal or maintain a healthy diet when I go somedays without exercise. I still struggle with this. Like if I miss a workout as I did yesterday (good reason though, we decided to paint the living room!) I then want to eat out of control, like order pizza since we don't keep unhealthy non whole food in the house. But I didn't, I actually skipped dinner because I just wasn't hungry...then was hungry at like 9pm and ate something sensible, which is also hard for me to do with late night eating.

This is a very destructive thinking and it has been the root of my undoing many times in my life. I made the effort to stop doing this the last time I lost weight, and I was much more successful.

Oh also, like you said one day turns into two then three....that was the other very bad thought process that needed to stop. If I have a bad day, and I'm talk really bad, like 1,000,000,000 calories of complete crap, zero exercise...I used to think "well I will never be able to do this" (loss weight) and just give up and the next day eat poorly/not exercise and so on, until I felt like I was ready to "try again". I had to stop doing this and start thinking like healthy eating/exercise were my normal life, and off days were just off days. Meaning no matter how bad, its done, no restricting the next day, no "giving up", just back to the grind stone then next day...or even the next meal! A huge huge sugary breakfast, donuts etc, is no longer a green light for me to eat a poor lunch and poor dinner and dessert and not exercise. That change in my thinking is also how I hit goal (I've since changed it but 145 was my old goal before my last baby).
HTH