Staying motivated

Faith

I've always struggled to an extent with my weight - my mother has huge weight issues, even though she's slim, and she passed them on to me. I've put on at least a stone in the 2.5 years since I started university. I manage to eat quite healthily, but my snacking spirals out of control when I'm stressed (which is a lot recently). I'm really determined now to lose that stone, and then hopefully slim down to my ideal weight.

However, I'm an instant gratification kind of girl. I get frustrated when I step on the scale and don't see a difference. I want physical proof that I'm losing weight, but I expect results too quickly. When I don't see them, I lose motivation and give up. I've been trapped in that cycle for years now and I want to break it. What do you find to be the best way to keep motivated? How do you stop yourself becoming disillusioned and giving up? I read somewhere recently where someone said something along the lines of: "People are perfectly happy to spend years eating themselves into being overweight, but expect to loose it all straight away when they want to", and that's really what I'm like!

ParkRunner

I saw this advertised, would do it myself but I cant do Tuesday evenings..
www.bootcampireland.com Might be worth a look!

g'em

First up Faith, major kudos on your honesty. I'm quite sure that there's a lot of people (myself included) who could empathise with what you wrote.

Let's face it, for the vast majority of us who are overweight, the reason for it is pure overeating. We try and eat less, bu then something goes wrong and we end up eating more, which leads to guilt and yet another feast to make us feel better. It's a never-ending cycle.

To a certain extent I (hesitantly) think I have it more or less under control. I still eat too much from time to time, but in the grand scheme of things this happens less and less frequently. I also try to read about healthy eating as much as possible. After reading about how bad junk food is for you for the 17 gazillionth time it's really quite hard to justify eating a packet of crisps

It's been a case of very gradually implementing little changes - drinking more water, cutting out chocolate and junk completely and realising that actually I can live without them just fine(!!), making the effort to cool more wholefoods for dinners and lunches, quit making excuses to "need" junk when I feel crap, and accept that if I can get my diet right 80% of the time I'm doing pretty damn well.

It's also a *CRAP* time of year for eating (we're all broke, feel guilty about the indulgences of Christmas, the days are short and dark and miserable ) so if it's any consolation at all you're not hte only one finding it difficult to stay motivated!!