“When you think about quitting,

think about why you started”

-unknown

There are a lot of ways for your diet/fitness/resolution can get derailed. Too many to count. Other people, eating the wrong kinds of food, having unrealistic expectations, etc etc. The list is endless. This post is address just a few of the big ones–the ones I definitely struggled with when I tried to lose 100 pounds. These are universal experiences! I know that every one of my readers can relate to at least one of these. So how do you resist? Or how do you recover?

Hunger

I think this is a common problem with newbie dieters…severe restriction! You wake up one day and decide that’s the day the diet starts so you stop eating or skip meals or severely restrict your food “I’ll just eat salad today!” and then all of a sudden your body rebels because it thinks you’re starving it. Then you binge eat…then you restrict…and the unhealthy cycle continues. Instead, eating WHOLE FOODS and including healthy fats in there will help stretch those calories through the day. Also, eating smaller portions and more frequent meals can help curb those hunger pains that can become overwhelming when not attended to. The reality is, if we starve our bodies, they fight against us and we stop losing weight.

Lazy Tracking

I know I sound like a broken record on this but it’s so key to losing weight and keeping it off…track what you eat, be honest and be ACCOUNTABLE to yourself. It’s easy to over-eat when you don’t really know what you’re eating. That awareness really opens up your eyes. Derailing the diet by not tracking is a big one. I call it food creep. The bites, the nibbles, lying to myself about portion sizes, not accurately tracking what I eat…all those calories add up fast and if you stop losing weight, this is the first place to look. Are you being HONEST in your tracking? Check out some of these posts to help inspire you:

Maintenance 101: Beware of Food Creep

How to Lose Weight – Week Four

How Do You Track?

How I Maintain 110 Pounds Lost

How I Get Back On Track

Boredom

Eating the same foods every single day and doing the same exercises every single day will get old quick. When I was trying to lose 100 pounds I pretty much ate the same thing every day. I had these “egg McMuffin” things I made at home with egg beaters (lower in calories than real eggs), an English muffin and half a slice of cheese.  Lunch was a turkey sandwich with a serving of Wheat Thins. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine and a salad or side dish vegetable. I ate that for like a year. Too much! Now the idea of a turkey sandwich is just revolting to me. So spice up your diet and change up your exercise routine when you start to feel like you are in a rut! And read this post: Married to My Workout.

Giving Up

This journey is going to be a hard one. The weight doesn’t just melt off with zero effort. It takes time, it takes patience–there will be frustrating plateaus and temptations EVERYWHERE. Don’t give up. Don’t get discouraged. If you keep at it, it WILL work. If you don’t believe me, look at this post: Weight Loss Log. It shows my weight loss journey and clearly illustrates just how long it took and how many plateaus I experienced! Here are some more posts:

P is for Plateaus

Busting that Plateau

When The Diet Stops Working

Weekend Binge

Ugh, this is a hard one! You do SO WELL all week long, then the weekend comes and there’s temptation everywhere. BBQ’s, parties, exhaustion that leads to eating fast food…This is probably the biggest issue for most people trying to lose weight. I have several friends who vow every Monday that they are going to REALLY DO IT THIS TIME. But then the weekend comes and the cycle starts over. Read these two posts for some ideas on how to avoid this trap:

The Weekend Eater

An Excuse to Eat

Final Thoughts

It’s easy for me to say some of these tips and it’s a whole lot harder to actually do them. I definitely struggle with each one of these traps at some point. The thing to focus on is that one screw up doesn’t COMPLETELY DERAIL all your efforts–if you catch it in time. One slip up doesn’t mean I have to give up entirely. One slip up can be fixed the next day with getting back on track. Set backs are natural and (currently experiencing one) it can be so discouraging. Check out these two posts about stopping the set-back cycle:

Yo-Yo Dieting

Stop Dieting!

I hope some of these older posts can inspire some of my readers who might be thinking of quitting. Don’t quit. It will get better. You might be struggling right now, you might be angry with the slow progress or set-backs, but don’t quit. Remember where you started from and why you started this journey. INSPIRE YOURSELF. Be your own success story!