I don't want to fail at this again!
 

Hi Ladies,

I need some help in knowing how all of you stick with this! I really want to make lifestyle changes, but sticking with them is difficult for me. I live in downtown Seattle, so I try to walk more often than drive, and I do have a gym membership that I am trying to fit in more often – but that is a mental challenge more than a physical one!

Here is what I have going now. I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch almost every day, and I try to keep the calorie consumption right around the 1,500 mark give or take a splurge with dinner. My current plan is to hit the gym after work 3 days a week (I am a student as well and have night classes that keep me from going every day).

My husband doesn’t sabotage my efforts, but he isn’t particularly supportive – possibly because I’ve gone hard core about wanting to make changes before, and never really stuck with them for more than a week or two. I have serious weaknesses for desserts in the evenings, and find it difficult to pass up happy hour out at the pubs with friends but I know I will eat greasy foods and drink way too many empty calories. (I love good dark beer and a really good sidecar or vodka gimlet)

Nothing is impossible, and changes can be made – but I’d love to know what has worked for you! One thing that I haven’t tried before is reaching out to others for help. Thanks in advance for anything you can pass on :)

Hi and welcome to the board! Perhaps the weight watchers point centered diet may help you make some choices in your lifestyle change. I have not gone that route but I have a couple friends on it and they love it.. one drinks also and refused to give up her alcohol and because she can figure it in her daily point allowance, she manages to do it to a satisfactory compromise.

The place you will find the most support and encouragement here is the thread for 100 lbs to lose .. this month it is called October Ovations.. check it out and post there and I am sure some others will be willing to help. :D

Hello and welcome:)

I am kind of like you where I would get started then it would fail for some reason or another, looking back I think the biggest reasons it would fail are:

1) I got bored of eating the same food everyday
2) I enjoy a good beer or whisky sour when the day is done (not everyday, but somedays)

It took me a bit of time to figure out a way to deal with it but I have come up with a system that works for me and I have managed to stick with it.

One afternoon when I didn't have much going on I sat down and I made out a list of all of the things that I like to eat and things that I think that I should eat, I then figured out the caloric value for each of those items. ( I included beer and drinks in there as well). So now I have a list of all the things I love and in the morning I can quickly look at the list, look at what I have in the house, figure out what my plans are for the day and then sort of plan my meals accordinly. For example I usually eat around 350 or 400 calories for breakfast but if I know I am going out for drinks at night I will have a yogurt for 75 calories and a couple of cups of fruit ( strawberries,raspberries etc) for another 75 calories and I have automatically freed up 200-250 calories for my drink that night. It takes a bit of work to set up the system but it really works for me.

I guess it's similar to the WW system but it is only foods I like to eat and when I look a t the list there is always something that appeals to me.

Hope that helps

Andrea

I try my hardest to stick with it all the time, but I also have my bad days. My husband is also not the best supporter. But I just have to eat different than he does. It's hard. The way I stick with it is if I have a bad meal, make sure the next 1 is a good one. I try not to make it an all day event of eating bad. And if it's something in the house I will probably throw it away. And as you continue to eat healthy it gets easier. And you will be more aware of what you order while you are out. I also recommend cooking extras so you always have leftovers for a quick snack or lunch. I use to eat bad every other day now I'm down to about 1 time a week. Hope this helps, it will get better!!

I'm a fan of "zig zagging" calories, kinda similar to going easy on breakfast and lunch when you know you're going out to dinner but it takes the whole week into play. If I'm more strict on weekdays (when I'm feeding just myself for breakfast and dinner instead of everybody) then I've got more room on weekends to have bacon and eggs with the family. I've also been to the websites of our favorite restaurants and made notes of what the "better" menu options are (FWIW, Olive Garden really is the worst for anyone watching their diet, and we now go there a lot less than we used to).

For me it's easier to focus on one thing at a time. Right now I'm focusing on not eating my way through the stress in my life. Work, medical, and family drama all up on top of one another.....luckily for me I have a wonderful husband who does get on my last nerve about little stuff (like leaving the empty milk jug that doesn't fit in the trash can on top of the lid instead of emptying it, seriosly?!) but when it's big stuff he's always got my back.

I'm pretty much in line with lizzycritter, I work pretty hard at this M-F and give myself a little slack on F & S, by Sunday I'm hoisting myself back into the saddle (hopefully). Now that does not mean that I eat whatever I want on F-S, I do breakfast and lunch on plan, but if I want a larger portion for dinner and/or a drink, I have it and don't let myself feel guilty over it, the occasional cheat helps keep me on track since I'm not "on a diet", this is a "lifestyle" change for the better. My husband is fairly supportive, he's about 70 pounds lighter than he was the day we got married, although he lost most of that years ago. He has high cholesterol and a heart condition, the kids have food allergies, so for a long time the diet in our house has been "healthier than average".

I almost never make a different meal for me than what I feed to the rest of the family, what's good for the goose is good for the gander and the goslings. It also helps me stay on track if the table isn't laden with "off plan" foods, and it's teaching our children to eat healthy as well. Since obesity runs on both sides of the family, it's really for the best they learn about nutrition, exercise and calories now.

To keep from getting bored I don't eat the same foods everyday, and there are times where I don't eat a certain type of food for a while. For example I've gotten a little burned out on salad. We grow a big garden and believe me I ate salad after salad this past summer. Starting about the end of August I just couldn't face another plate of lettuce, so I've put them on the back burner for a while and probably about mid-November I'll be hungry for it again, greens always taste crazy good to me when I'm months away from having them fresh from the garden. Lately I've been into soup, stew, squash, sweet potatoes and sandwiches, good fall foods. And when I get a craving for something I've been resisting for caloric reasons, I poke around on-line or in the kitchen until I find a way to make an "on-plan" version. That has been particularly good for me, because I'm one of those people that can't resist "taboo" food.

I never cared for the points system (I found I cheated with foods that were low in enough in points but still not super healthy), but I do like the idea of planning more ahead - thank you for the ideas!

I am thankful that it's just my husband and I (no kids), but the lifestyle changes are difficult for me. Did everyone jump in head first, or did you work your way into it? Before now, I never ate breakfast regularly, I never drank enough water (I feel like i'm almost swimming in it now), lunch was usually super fat, although dinners were decent as long as we were eating at home. I feel good that i'm making my own breakfast and lunch each day, and I am more aware of my calories as i'm logging it all in. Couple that with now going to the gym 3 days a week, I feel like it is a lot. Is there anything you did to keep from getting overwhealmed?

I guess i'm just looking for some motivation when in a week or two and I get home from work and look at the gym shoes or look at the couch and a hour of quality napping time... I choose the gym shoes!

I tackled one bad habit at a time, first I went to diet pop, then I limited that to one a day, then went caffeine free, and now I have diet root beer maybe once or twice a week when I'm having a "sweet" craving but don't want the calories. I still drink coffee, which isn't bad in itself but I put a lot of crap (flavored creamer) into it. I limit myself to 2 cups a day, thinking about taking it down to one a day but I'm having a breast lump removed next week, so I'm thinking for now I'll just hold steady where I'm at. If I do too much too fast, I end up getting frustrated and chucking it all, usually that involves a jar of peanut butter and a spoon :o.

BTW, the lump is very small and well defined, probably benign, but why take any chances? I'll feel a lot better when it's out.

Lizzycritter - how scary! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, and speedy recovery!

I broke down last night and ended up eating an entire box of macaroni and cheese, and half a dozen cookies since my husband decided he wanted to make cookies for his D&D game tomorrow (we are super nerds). I felt like crud after, and I wanted to go crawl into a hole. I also feel like that right now, as I add the food to my log for yesterday... UGH. No lie, nearly 1k calories more than I should have eaten.

Why is it I just dump any good plan as soon as I am out of a structured environment? Do I have to pre-make lunch and dinner too for the weekends to stay on track? (Sorry, i'm just ranting here more at myself for making such bad choices). booo.

I'm happy that I got up and made my fruit smoothie this morning (even added some veggies to it), and I am going to go to the gym today. Today has to be better than yesterday, right?

Again I'm like lizzy on this. I spent 3-4 days in the very beginning just logging my intake, what I ate, where I ate it and what I was feeling when I ate. This was on the advice of a nutritionist friend that basically said "it's hard to move forward unless you know where you are". So I wrote everything down and then looked for ways to make small improvements one at a time. For example I used to eat breakfast 3-4 times every morning. None of it particularly bad for me, just way too many calories overall, routinely 1,500-2,000 before lunch! So the first thing I did was cut to 1 breakfast. That was really hard because I'm a very early riser (4:00-5:00am), and I wake up starving. Then I switched my morning diet coke to coffee, which wasn't a good move until I switched creamer to light almond milk, sugar to Truvia and copious amounts of chocolate syrup to 1 scoop of chocolate protein powder. Then I tackled afternoon snacking. I used to have hot dogs occasionally for a snack, we were a wheat free house for a long time, so I'd gotten used to eating them without a bun. So I would take 3 hot dogs, put a piece of cheese on each one and zap them in the microwave. That little snack has 840 calories and I don't even know how many grams of fat. Needless to say, I don't buy hot dogs anymore. I switched the whole family over to 35 calorie/slice whole grain bread. We switched from sour cream to Greek yogurt. We switched bologna to fat free turkey slices. Regular cheese to reduced fat cheese etc etc etc.

I've gone to the gym 1-2x week for years now, but I was getting no where with it. So I had to look for ways to add more exercise, we bought an elliptical, but at first I could only go like 8-9 minutes, gradually I increased that by 1-2 minutes at a time. Now I routinely go an hour and when I skip it for a few days I hurt all over. I also put more movement into my average day. I walk the kids to school, I get up early on Sunday mornings and walk down to the grocery store to buy the paper, I walk to the gym etc etc. The gym bit was hilarious because at one point it occurred to me that I was driving 3.1 miles to run 5K on the treadmill. Seriously, how silly was that? My kids love to ride their bikes at the park, so now if they get their chores and homework done quickly we all go down to the park and play for a little while. I started walking my oldest DD to soccer practice (it's a mile each way), and now we run (she dribbles her ball the whole way), it's good for both of us and has improved her game quite a bit. She really has to control the ball, on one side is the road and the other a river, and if that isn't bad enough her obnoxious mother is trying to steal it from her. And while she's practicing, I power walk around the field. I've taken all of it in baby steps over the course of the last year, and plan to keep taking them for the rest of my life. The largest room is the room for improvement.

I am not sure how to explain how my change began :confused:

It really started about 2 yrs ago when I had to go into the hospital for what turned into a 2 weeks stay and then a 6 month recoup. time at home where I could barely walk to the bathroom, let alone do anything else.

So let me back up.. I was a 3 pack a day smoker for over 30 years and originally when I agreed to go into the hospital I was told it would be for 3 days max and that if I absolutely needed to smoke, some nurse would take me outside.

Well :rolleyes: when I got in there and after the surgery... not only wasnt I able to get out of bed but was in ICU with a totally different problem and no one was about to let me smoke lol! So I was on a patch and then inhalers etc and after about a week, I realized since I quit this long, I may as well just totally quit. So I told my friend to get rid of all ciggys, ashtrays, lighters etc because I already knew I couldnt go outside for at least a month.

Well during those 6 months basically in bed... my friend made my dinners etc along with the visiting nurse constantly harping about getting enough protien so my body could heal... and I lost 40 lbs. ( Unfortunately I gained them all back later). I also, since I couldnt go out and buy my own soda ( which I drank exclusively), my friend started me on flavored carbonated water. We finally found a flavor I liked and I have stuck with it, for the most part, but I do occasionally have diet A & W rootbeer.

Fast forward another year or so ( after I was back to eating my old ways)and I was tired of being sick and out of breath and back and knees killing me and so I heard about cardiac rehab and asked my doc's if I qualified and I did. So I started that 3 days a week @ 1hr each. And I started seeing inches disappear. And that motivated me to think about eating healthier. It was a mental 'feeling'. It was like I was suddenly psyched to do this. So I went from eating one meal a day @ probably 3500 a day to starting to eat things I just never thought to eat before ( except maybe out at a restaurant) like salads and soups, yogurt etc and started thinking about calories etc. And that worked OK for a while but then I was diagnosed about 6 months ago as Type 2 diabetic. So that meant I really had to start watching sugars, carbs, fats etc. I fail a lot. But the key is I try.

I then found out, after looking high and low for an aquatic program for almost a year, there was one at our community college and so I took 1 class over this last summer. I loved it. And so this fall, I took 2 and also signed up to join the gym at the college. I still fail a lot, but I get right back up most times and start over. And the only thing I can say is, I do well when my 'psyched' mind set is there, but when I get discouraged or apathetic about it, I slide back and fail. So I am not sure how I got 'psyched' up about it, but I think its a real necessary ingredient in the process.

Here I go Again
 

I swear I have done this million of times! I can eat right but the exercise is where I go wrong. I don't even do it. I have a condition where sweat actually makes me itch and its crazy! I however now I have to get pass it or I would be the fat chick forever. Now I have not always been overweight. Even after having my three kids I did not gain a lot of weight. The highest weight was 130 and now I am 282lbs oh I forgot I lost 2lbs. I am 280lbs!!!! Not much but going in the right direction. Good Luck Ladies!!!!

Savina

By no means am I celebrating that other people fail, but I’m glad I’m not the only one that struggles.

Right now, I think my real challenge is going to be going to the gym when I want to just veg out on the couch, and to stay away from comfort food. (I did really well at the grocery store this week, yet somehow I still managed to talk myself into a box of pasta for dinner one night!) Do you keep a regular schedule of when you exercise, or is it something you fit in when you can?

My exercise time is 4:45am - 6:30am M-F (sometimes I take F off), I do whatever I'm in the mood for (or whatever I can talk myself into). On Sat I run up to the gym at 7:30, lift weights from 8:00-8:45 and run home. On Sun I walk to the grocery store around 7:00am to get my news paper, then walk home. During soccer season I lap the field while the kids have practice and during the swim season I workout at least one extra night a week while the kids are in the pool. I don't have it written down anywhere, it is what it is and this is how I wedge working out into my already nutty busy life.

I am in awe of your motivation and it makes my complants of a busy schedule sound like the pathetic excuses they are! (I have no kids and my gym is literally less than 3 blocks away from home)

Currently, I work 8a - 4:30p M-F, and I take night classes M & W evenings, and two online courses. My plan was to go to the gym T,TH and Saturdays after work / saturday morning. I have tried going to the gym before work and I don't think I've made it past day 3 when I give up and hit the snooze alarm until I have to get on the road to work!

I like the idea of walking to the store though. My husband and I have been in the habit of going out for breakfast on Sunday mornings (with nothing healthy on the menu in the best dives of Seattle), but maybe we will walk up the hill instead for some coffee. I have started walking to work (but it's only a little more than 1/2 a mile each way). Maybe i'll try walking up the 4 flights of stairs when I get home from work.

I have found that 'joining a gym' so I can go 'after work' or 'sometime wednesdays' doesn't work for me. I am not sure why, but I am one of those ppl who need a set time. I either have to have a class ( which has a set time) or I know some people can just pick a time and stick to it.. I am not one of those people because I would much rather sleep in, or run this errand or do this n that at that time and then ooops! it got too late and the gym is now closing.

I dont know what kind of person you are... but maybe if you pick or set a time and stick with it, it will work for you :)

I struggle some days with getting my workout started. It's sooo much easier to make a pot of coffee and watch the news than it is to workout, but I've found that if I do certain things it makes it easier to get started. Firstly I set out workout clothes every night before I got to sleep. That way I can't excuse myself from working out because I didn't want to rummage around in the closet and wake up DH. Secondly I set the coffee pot up the night before and I make sure the MP3 player has been charged. I also put a bottle of water in the fridge, and get a clean towel hung over the end of the elliptical. In the morning when the alarm goes off I do not hit the snooze button, my clock is old if I hit the button there is only a 50/50 chance it will go off again. Then I get dressed and head downstairs, before I do anything else I put my headphones on and turn the music up. This helps me tremendously, because the music makes me my body move even if my head is still out cold. Then I weigh in on the Wii Fit Plus, and head to the kitchen, where I eat a banana or an orange and grab my very cold water from the fridge. Then I hop on the elliptical or pop in a DVD or go back to the Wii Fit Plus, it varies day to day. It took me months to train my brain and body to go along with this plan, but now that I have it down pat, it's golden.

I like the idea of setting clothes out in the morning... I was thinking of taking a bag of gym clothes with me to work, so I had no reason to even go home before hitting the gym.

There have been so many times that i've talked myself out of going to the gym because there is just too much to do that night, and yet I always find time to sit on the couch and avoid doing the work!

When I find myself not wanting to exercise, I tell myself to go for ten minutes and that if I'm not really "feeling it," I can stop. Ten minutes in, though, the endorphins are going and I don't want to "waste" the time I've put in, so I've never stopped once I've actualy started. Getting started is the worst for me; once I can get past the initial hurdle, I'm good to go. Maybe because there's always something else to do?

Visualizing success helps. Great music on the iPod helps, too...if I'm stalling, sometimes getting an extra song or two can motivate me to get going.

I also keep a binder with all my exercise info in it. The first page is a blank calendar I printed off; I fill in the exercises I did for each day, or designate it a "rest" day. I also put details (how far, how long, etc.). Watching that fill up over time is really motivating. Sometimes I fill it in ahead of time just to plan for the week and be accountable.

The hardest part is getting started. I keep telling myself,"Just five more minutes, just one more song" and pretty soon, I've done a half hour on the elliptical. A good mp3 player is essential to my workouts.

Hi Megan,

I'm in the same boat, I don't want to do this again. I lost 50 pounds and kept them off for 4.5 years and then just gave up and put on 55 pounds in 2.

I don't know why I did this to myself, but I finally got the same wake-up call I got 6 years ago. My health started to fail.

I think the thing that really works for me is tapping into some of my core values.

Last time I had extremely good luck with self hypnosis too.