I'm having trouble disciplining myself. I've treied everything I can think of.

[lizzie2011]

I've been overweight for the last 14 yrs. I've ranged from slightly overweight to really overweight. I am now the heaviest I have ever been. It seems like for the past 5 years I have gained ten pounds a year. What happened 5 yrs ago? I left school and started working. I gain weight proportionally and I am not short so most people are really surprised when they hear my actual weight .... which also made it easier t ignore what is obviously a problem. I have been going to they gym off and on for the entire period.

 

I work in a high stress demanding job and I hated my first job so I used lunch to escape the office. If you bring lunch you eat it there so I would always choose to go on the road and eat. There aren't alot of options in terms of food where I work. There is only one place that sells salads and it isn't really a healthy salad. Lots and lots of cars in the salad. When I had been working for about 4 months I realized that I had a problem and started going to the gym. everything was going well and I started to lose the weight. by 8 months I hated the job so much I quit and moved away to get another job some place I didn't know anyone. Then I used going out to meet people. Again with dinners lunches and drinks. I gained back the weight I lost. I bought a scale, joined another gym and started this high impact fitness regime. There was a place accross teh road from my office which would special order salads for me and I lost 30-40lbs. My metabolism was through the roof. But it was contract work and it ended. I moved back home and all kinds of new responsibilities came up. I gained back all the weight I lost. Every pound. i joined a gym and got a personal trainer. This guy pushed me so hard that within months I had terrible overuse injuries within 6 months. I could barely put pressure on my foot. I felt like aparaplegic. What was worse was that the diet was so restrictive that after the 6 months I went crazy on fried foods and ice cream and anything sweet I could get my hands on.

 

So my shin finally felt healed last year and I joined a new gym. My new trainer is much more qualified ... so I am paying alot more money which in my view I am wasting since I cant get going on the diet and I haven't been putting in as much time as I should. In reality I could probably squeeze another 4 hours and put it into training. Right now I am scheduled to do 2 hours a week with her and I am to do at least one more day of aerobics ... and sometimes I cancel on her once a week. I eat worse than I have ever eaten and I am getting older so you know how that goes. I have had 2 nutritionists so I have eating plans but carrying food isn't always practical. I move about in the day so I never know where I will be at lunch time. My stomach is now acting up whenever I skip meals but sometimes I get lost in work and forget to eat. I don't know how to get myself out of this funk. Its not just an aesthetic thing. I care about how I look, but I also don't want obesity related diseases and I am at risk for some of them. Any suggestions?

[itsallgrand]

My personal take on what you have wrote is that you do not have your health as a high priority.

What? You are thinking. I tried everything, and I worry about it all the time, and can't you see I am a busy busy woman?!

Sure I do. But from how you write, I can tell it isn't. It just isn't. That doesn't make you bad or undeserving. What it does do is make it nearly impossible for you to get on track to a healthy lifestyle long enough to make it habit. It makes it so you are working in fits and starts; super effort, burn out, go back to all your old habits, repeat.

 

When it is a high priority, you will not be saying "but carrying food is not practical". As one example. There are a million ways to make it work. And if you are a person on the go, like a lot of us, it is the most practical really.

 

The point is that it looks like you work it from backwards. You come up with the reasons why you can't, then throw in what you maybe can manage. Discipline is all in the mind. You retrain your brain to focus on what you do want. Look for ways to make those things happen instead of finding reasons for why you are being undisciplined. Bc there are a million reasons to be undisciplined. It's good to learn from them, but not dwell and use it as an excuse.

 

You sound like you could use stress management too. Healthy living isn't a chore to get done, a task. It's part of life. SO your goal should include incorporating small lifestyle changes that will last...rather than focusing on the task, think of the longer term outcomes. And stress really makes us eat, and get fat. Stress is one of the most dangerous things to our health. DO some research on this stuff, it's fascinating and you might see what I mean.

 

We could throw all the great ideas in the world out there to you, but until you really care enough about this to make it a high list priority, it won't mean a damn thing to you in real life.

 

I guess when I am in slumps with my health-exercise-eating, I usually start with looking at what my priorities are at the time. Usually my eating suffers because I'm prioritizing work or a relationship situation or something over it. Just looking at it and figuring out how I need my body and healthy TO work and be productive and enjoy all the things I do and work for, often helps me a lot. It's all about taking care of yourself, really.

 

good luck.

[Moontiger]

Your going to need to make a lot of small life style changes from what I see. To use myself as an example, I will NOT go down the chip aisle at the store because I know I have very little self control with chips. I also stop drinking soda in stage. First I cut out dark sodas and went to just sprite and other clear sodas and then slowly reduced that to water. Now I am trying to get up a half hour earlier then usually to go for a twenty minuet walk a few times a week. I would pick up a of "Eat This Not This" as a starting point.

 

Its not about doing a whole bunch of big things. Just small things over time to develop good habits over time.

[thejigsup]

Until I hit my late 40s, I was always naturally thin. I worked out several times per week, but that was for fitness and muscle tone, not weight. A few years after I met my late bf, who was a big food addict, I started putting on weight. I'm tall, also, so I look like I weigh about 40 lbs less than I actually do. Last April, my bf paid the price for putting everything else ahead of his health. He was always a big man in stature, but for several years he had come up with one excuse after another not to watch his food intake and exercise. He died of a massive heart attack. Please start to eat sensibly and exercise moderately, that way you can stick with it.

There are TONS of things besides salads you can eat to stay healthy, look them up. I eat salads sometimes, but not with dressing or anything fattening on them. Not all carbs are bad for you. Like fats, there are some your body needs' Fill that need or you will get those cravings that lead to overeating. Your body will get what it needs. If you give it NO carbs, it will want to carbo load because it is starved for carbs. If you eat NO fats, you will overeat in that department, too. I am never on a diet, I just want to be healthy so I try to live healthy. I try to take a walk every day and ride my exercise bike. I don't drink soda of any kind and do not eat much meat. I eat lots of fresh veggies and fish (I love sushi!), and NO SWEETS!. You can customize you food intake to suit you likes and dislikes, but please knock off any soda, that is the worst! If you don't change things, you may end up like my bf. His heart attack was entirely preventable but he just didn't want to stick to any diet or exercise program. Well, now he doesn't have to worry about that, does he?

[bulletproof]

I will say from experience that eating plans, diets, regimens, will probably never work. That is because they are nearly impossible to carry out long-term. What you really have to do is change your lifestyle for good. Since that is such a tremendous change, it needs to be done slowly and by incorporating new things in steps.

 

In my opinion (and many nutritionists), the best way to buy and eat food is to get things that are as close to their natural form as possible. This means processed foods need to go. A good way to start making changes is to focus on one meal at a time. Start by changing what you eat for breakfast. Then move on to lunch, and dinner. Trying to overhaul everything at once might set you up for failure. Research what a healthy meal actually is, and how much food it is. Learn how to cook simple stuff. This will also help you with the lunchtime issue. If you can make two big meals on a Sunday and freeze them in portions, then all you're doing is just grabbing it out of the freezer and going to work with a lunch.

 

It also really helps if you can find a way to exercise that you actually enjoy. For me, I took a part-time dog-walking job to get me out of the house once a day for an hour, since I work from home. You could get involved in a sport or even just decide you will walk/run once a day. It doesn't have to be a gym, with a trainer, or some hard-core regimented workout. You are way more likely to stick to doing something that you don't dread.

 

Right now you are just trying to fix the problem without actually understanding it or allowing change to happen slowly. I think this will continue to frustrate you more.

[rocio]

why are you spending all this money on personal trainers and nutritionists? Being in shape is so simple - eat sensibly and stay active. I think you need to let go of the idea that there's some sort of secret easy way to do this. nobody can tell you how to discipline yourself. you just have to do it.

[Thorshammer]

How about putting training in your own hands? Research yourself, it is an interesting hobby. You might develop a passion for it, and that can be a great motivator to continue to implement your new knowledge.

[agent1607307371]

Do you like the exercise you're doing? No, it's not always somethng you want to do, but it shouldn't feel like it's something you hate to do.

 

You need to reframe it. Instead of it being a punishment for putting on the weight, make eating healthy and getting exercise your reward for having a body to take care of. When it's something you feel good about, and are consistent with it, you'll get farther than if it's something you do resentfully and intermittently.

[pl3asehelp]

There's no magic trick to self discipline, it's the simplest thing in the world. You pick something you don't want to do and just don't do it. Any time you feel like you want to deviate from that course, remind yourself of what your goal is and decide if your goal is still important to you. I lost about 50 pounds many years ago and I did it by barely eating any food at all for about 3 months and working out every day. Calories in vs. calories burned is all there is to it. Focusing on carbs or fat or the type of calorie is not important and though there is *some* science to it, it's mostly just a marketing gimmick to sell you a diet or service. Eat a handful of oyster crackers, a couple pieces of fruit, and a steamed piece of fish and broccoli each day and some water - nothing else. Not more than like 600-800 calories. Not a healthy way to do it, but it took that weight off and I've kept it off for 10 years though simple maintenance exercise - I now eat whatever I want and just exercise 4 times a week.

[agent1607307371]

Oh, I have a note on my computer. It reads "Discipline is simply remembering what you want". That's it.

[pl3asehelp]

Oh, I have a note on my computer. It reads "Discipline is simply remembering what you want". That's it.

 

Are you being facetious? Do you think there's any other way to accomplish self discipline? It's not easy, but it is simple.

[agent1607307371]

Facetious how.

 

My point is that you can sit there and make yourself feel bad about what you're failing to do and never get there and feel worse. Or you can figure out what you want, and keep that as the focus point. The OP wants to lose weight, but she has it low on her list of priorities, so either she's scared of getting it, or she really just doesn't want it.

Discipline isn't punishment, it's working towards what you want (a good thing).