Cheating on the diet. How to stop?
 

For 5 months I lost 1.5 to 2 pounds a week and never exceeded my carb or fat allowance. Then all of a sudden I just started to cheat on either high fat foods or high carb foods up to once per day. I'm not losing weight and I'm not gaining weight. I'm on a plateau that could stop if I behaved myself. But my mood is preventing it. I start to dream of "lobster ravioli with pink sauce" or 2 slices of low carb dessert and I must have it. I'm only 10 lbs from my goal and yet I don't think I'll ever get there. I've been increasing my exercise a bit, but its not enough.

Any words of advice?

"Words of Advice?" - knuckle down and get back to it. You've done it before, now do it again.

I don't want to sound mean-spirited because I'm really not, but there are times when we don't need advice; we just need a kick in the ass to do what we know needs to be done.

We've all been there, and today's your turn.

Good luck

I gotta agree with Geoffers--get back on plan and git-r-done!

I take one day a month "off" and that seems to be OK. Taking one meal a day "off" isn't going to get you where you want to go.

Regards,
Michael

With 10 pounds to go you should be starting to look at how you want to eat for the rest of your life. If you can lose that weight slowly as you move into maintenance your chances of keeping it off are greatest. Maybe it's time to tweek your diet to meet your needs.

I second Kumochi's thoughts. If you are in the mindset of being too restrictive, you are more vulnerable to sliding off plan. Plan some healthy, not-too-bad enjoyable treats for yourself so you don't feel so deprived. Maybe do that for a week or two, just stay below your maintenance level by 250 calories or so, then when you get past it, you can buckle down to the tough stuff again.

You gotta get back on the game before it's too late. I have been there I know. just do it.
Mai

I'm in the same boat. In my case, I think it's because all these years I've been telling myself that nobody wants me because I'm overweight, but now that I'm not carrying the extra weight, I have to face the fact that nobody wants me because nobody wants me. That's depressing, so I feel like "Who cares if I'm fat?" Obviously, The work needed (in my case)is on the inside, not the outside. Can't believe I'm "putting this out there".

I can soooo feel your pain on this issue, because I'm right there with you. I lost very steadily from 12/26 thru 7/4 this past year. Then I sort of let myself get less strict, we had a couple of vacations planned, the garden was rolling in and my metabolism and exercise had picked up to the point where I really do get hungrier than I did at my heaviest. Then we headed into the holiday season, and I just never got hold of the reins really well from Thanksgiving thru Christmas. This week is the first one in a long time where I feel really confident that I'm getting back on track. And do you know what helped me? I tackled a nagging project, today I finally got the elliptical fixed. I know that sounds dorky, but it broke the first week in November, and none of the other workouts I do burn quite as many calories/minute as that thing. In a way it was really good for me to change things up, but now I need to get serious and behave myself, because I really want to reach my goal, and so do you. So get busy, focus on the positives (not the "I can't have this and that" negatives) and lose those last 10 pesky pounds. Don't make me pull out the can of whip ass.

You're a very brave woman to put all that out there. But I think you're wrong. It could be that you're alone because so far nobody you've met has been your soul mate. Did you ever think of that? Uh? Sometimes soul mates take their own sweet time in showing up.

Thank you for sharing and being so open and brave! I honestly thought I was too fat, ugly, weird, etc. to never get married b/c I never went on dates at all. I had kind of resigned myself to never getting married, but then of course I met my husband, a very unlikely match, different race and background and 19 years older than me, but now we are going on 7 years!