I so agree with you, and it sounds like my story, too! And we feel even more guilty because despite of what we feel we cannot make ourselves go the distance. On the other hand, it might be exactly BECAUSE of those bad feelings we cannot lose weight. They stick to bad food habits like glue. Losing a lot of weight is a self-improvement and self-loving process, and motivation does not come from bad feelings but from good ones. Many dieting-books teach us deprivation and how hard it is, that we are not allowed to eat all the delicious food, etc.

I learned an exercise on my way to weight loss by Julia Havey that I can so recommend, but you are not allowed to cheat and read this all in one go. Her program is about so much more, but this is a starting exercise, and it was an eye-opener for me. Write down ten adjectives that describe yourself. Only when you are finished, read the P.S. at the bottom of the page.

Losing weight is not about deprivation at all. It is learning how to treat your body respectfully and lovingly and make it live a little bit longer than with many surplus pounds. And it is about taking power away from people who want to tell you that healthy food is boring and tasteless, and that you only get fun out of life eating fast food, pizza, etc. They might want our power, but they do not want our responsibility, too, they do not take care of us. They take care about themselves and their company – and their bank accounts. I do not want to start a movement against fast food producers here, but I think their basic message is not about health and not about taking care.

And it is about replacing unhealthy food with healthier options who are just as delicious in the end, and either self-made or by producers who DO take care. The actual maths of weight-loss might be quite simple, but we all know it is not just about that.

I also have a lot of weight to lose yet, so I am definitely not a guru about this, but there is a great motivation exercise (also by Julia Havey) I am doing if it is really bad. I write down pros and cons of weight-loss. You read correctly, there are also cons in our minds, and they might be a huge block. But if you write them down on one side of a piece of paper and the pros on the other, you can easily see that there are more pros, and seeing them makes it easier than just playing a mind game.

Another block that might be there is that we are not patient enough, or that we do not face our feelings, especially the bad ones who eat US up and make us stay away from actually doing it. When I read Roni’s story and how she insisted how fat and ugly she was until her husband actually agreed with her because he could not stand her complaints anymore, I realized how much positive energy we waste by thinking that way about ourselves. I also told my mother a thousand times how much I hated myself for being overweight and how disgusted I am by myself, and she just wondered how I could learn to hate herself so much.

We also waste so much knowledge, as we are all experts of weight-loss one way or another. And I think we could fuel at least one full power plant with that energy! If we all got together instead of feeling isolated and fat, imagine what could happen. We need to surround ourselves with positive people and things, otherwise we cannot change anything about ourselves, let alone other people. Roni did it, and look how much good she is doing by her blogs and other activities.

Love,
Nina

P.S.: Here is the solution: How many of those adjectives are things like “fat”, “obese”, “big”, etc.? What you are describing here is not you, but your body. Being overweight is a physical condition, not a personality trait. Think again, and write down ten POSITIVE adjectives that describe what kind of person you are.

The point is that if we see surplus weight as a personality trait, we feel like losers, but it actually hinders us from really losing weight (bad pun, but I think it fits :)). It’s our feelings about ourselves that make us feel isolated and bad. I started to cry when I first did this exercise, and I will never forget the impact, even if I have not reached my goal weight yet.

I think a lot of times, its not about our body image, I believe its about getting out of our head.

Barb, stop thinking about your body all the time, go and volunteer with individuals who have lost their ability to walk, whether in war, or accident, and be with them, and appreciate your legs, regardless of their size, love the fact that you have two amazing legs that will take you anywhere.

Go visit people who are sick, adn be thankful for a working heart, liver, brain, organs.

I have always, and still am overweight. I am working on it, and losing weight is a process that has a lot more to do with mindset, than anything else. You need to see beyond the physical, and I am 5’2 and when I was at my heaviest i was 184.
Now I weight 157, feeling a million times better, but I did it by eating healthy, following a plan, for exercise walking with a friend 3-4 times a week, and spending my energy focusing outside myself.

Appreciate all the beauty that you have. The human body is an incredible, amazing machine, focus on that!!!

I’ve been starting my *new plan* for months now. After my WI/meeting I get super psyched and think, OK today is my last day to drink pop, have that frappucino, eat the chile relleno, etc. I mean I just weighed in, so I deserve a little break, right? Well, my “break” after WI runs into the next day, and the next day until I feel like I’ve blown it for the week. . . And here I sit, having gained back the 12 lbs I lost at the beginning of the year.

NO MORE! Start today, and a little at a time. Some days I know I will breeze through confidently. Some days I will have to take it one meal at a time. Now that I have stumbled on this site, I have LOTS of good ideas for breakfasts and lunches. Not to mention that that “break” I think I’m getting is really no break at all. That thinking just reinforces that “diet” mentality. MUST. GET. OFF. THIS. CRAZY. WHEEL!!!

You all ROCK!
Thank you so much.

Honestly, I’m not sure what got me motivated again. I spent most of the past winter binging and then bemoaning the fact that I was fat, not to mention out of shape. Then, in late May, I decided: if not now, then when? It turned out to be a good time to get motivated, because I got a health screening a few weeks later and found out that I had Type 2 diabetes. I knew it could very well happen someday–family history and having gestational diabetes with both pregnancies–but I didn’t know it would happen so soon! Later found out that 20-50% of women who have gestational diabetes will develop it within 5-10 years after pregnancy. I’d like to think that knowing that statistic would have motivated me, but impossible to say…I know that it sure as heck is motivating me now. And I always thought I was more motivated by the carrot than the stick. I’ve started exercising most days of the week, am planning to run in a 5K in October, and have lost 28 lbs so far…I’ve got a long way to go to get to my goal of 143, but it’s a good start.

So anyhow, if you have a family history, do take care and develop better lifestyle habits now. Reading blogs like this one can be powerfully motivating, too, to know that others *are* succeeding in spite of all the depressing statistics you read in the media.