Where did you find that self belief?

[u/scoobedeth]

I'll try make this short!

Struggled with weight my entire life. Had some success about ten years ago only to regain it all and some. Ive lost count of the attempts to lose weight since and subsequently failed. I'm now 31 with a 50+ bmi, super uncomfortable and every aspect of my life negatively impacted. I have no choice now but address this but I simply have no belief in myself that I can do it.

I'm so frustrated, there's so much information and advice out there regarding diet and exercise. I know how to create a calorie deficit. It's the mental stuff I need help with. How can I trust myself to be consistent? How do you change an entire life of these habits? How else am I suppose to self soothe? What do I do when I feel sad, low energy and just want to binge eat?

I guess I'm just wanting to hear from people who needed to lose as much weight as I do, have been successful and how they approached it mentally? This feels impossible.

[u/Strategic_Sage]

I didn't get to over 50 BMI, but I've spent decades over 40 and was nearly 43 BMI until last July when I decided not to be. I chose to make long-term fitness and health my 'second job' until such time as a I reach as high a level as I reasonably can in both, and not to accept failure as an option until I reached those goals. I still have a long way to go, but I've moved significantly in that direction.

I would suggest a few points:

- Feels impossible and is impossible are two different things. Don't trust what it feels like. You are capable of more than you think you are.

- Don't concern yourself with trusting yourself to be consistent. Concern yourself with today at most, and sometimes just the next five minutes. Even if tomorrow is horrible, you will still be healthier and better off than if you made bad decisions now. There is no version of you that isn't better off for making healthy choices right now, this minute, as compared to not doing that.

"How else am I suppose to self soothe? What do I do when I feel sad, low energy and just want to binge eat?"

Embrace The Suck. I'm not joking. Lean into the pain. Accept it. One of my weak points used to be this kind of thing, I would buy junk food when feeling down, I told myself I 'deserved' it after a tough day at work, etc. What a crock of unmitigated hogwash that was. I didn't deserve, ever, to temporarily make myself feel better at the cost of sabotaging my future health and wasting money. That was never a reward. It was always a self-sabotage, a punishment directed at future me.

There are times when I was almost in tears over wanting to eat crap. It is hard at first. It also can be done - not because I've done it, but because neurologically we all have the capability to discipline ourselves. We do not *have* to do what feels good immediately. We *can* make changes.

The thing is, we have trained ourselves to behave this way. We have told our body that if it whines we will give it what it wants. What it needs in those moments is not to be soothed. It needs to be told 'this is what you are getting because it is what you really need, and you can whine and cry all you want but I'm not going to change my mind about this and give in'. When we do that regularly, the complaining diminishes.