FFS - The never-ending cycle of self sabotage

It's hard to change all one's life habit in just a few days. Remember this! You made a great start pushing yourself to eleven days of change. Keep going on and try to establish a new daily habit out of healthy food and movement. We all fail from day to day and it's mostly a struggle (for me, as I like chocolate, cookies and so on...)

Fortunately, a single day off doesn't ruin 11 days of activity. Try not to be too hard on yourself, and to bear in mind that things will get better and easier with time.

11 days of activity win on a day of "laziness", you have won 11 times and "lost" 1, you are ahead

Mrsteapot80 We all face different challenges and experience them at various degrees but NO ONE is without a struggle so you're definitely not alone. Even the feeling of I'm in this alone is universal. I've experienced depression and nothing feels more lonely than in that state of mind. It's super hard to get the ball rolling but momentum is on your side. When you feel like getting back to bed, do jumping jacks instead. When you feel like eating something unhealthy, do jumping jacks instead. When you feel like doing nothing, do jumping jacks instead. Feelings will fluctuate, but keep one thing constant and you will experience something new. Stay focus, stay active, stay strong. You got this!

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm - Winston Churchill

Mrsteapot80 as you can see the self-sabotage thing is something everyone is familiar with here What I will add now I am adding for the benefit of everyone who comes across this thread. Psychologists define this type of behavior as: "...as an accumulation of dysfunctional and distorted beliefs that lead people to underestimate their capabilities, suppress their feelings, or lash out at those around them." neurobiologically however we are programmed for this because in the distant past it helped our survival.

Consider that “The source of self-sabotage is part of a common ancestral and evolutionary adaptation that has allowed us to persevere as a species in the first place. To understand how self-sabotage is tied to our human existence, we need to take a look at the two simple principles that drive our survival: attaining rewards and avoiding threats.” This is known as the Familiarity heuristic. It leads us to leads us to overvalue the things we know and undervalue things that are unfamiliar. So, when faced with something new and different that will lead us to our long-term goals we tend to choose the easy and familiar that will satisfy our short-term goals even when, cognitively, we know this is wrong. This is an admission that what we are doing is hard and uncertain while going back to the familiar way of behaving is something that is easy to do and may even be comforting in the short term.

Negative self-talk that undermines our self worth and limits our capabilities by underestimating what we can do is also another example of this. At this point therapists suggest we learn to understand what it is we do and find ways to get out of our own way: "When it comes to self-sabotage, the best thing you can do is understand where those feelings are coming from — and fight back against the tendency to spend a lot of time in your head, making a case against change. Learn to tune out those excuses and keep on moving right through them no matter how much your present self-fights against your future self."

In DAREBEE, of course, we put things a little more succinctly: https://darebee.com/posters/what-it-feels-like.html

In order to get past this self-destructive dialogue where we undermine ourselves and then we spend endless hours blaming ourselves for being weak and unworthy and then end up half-believing that it is too much, it is not for us and we should just give up I will suggest three things used by Special Forces all over the world:

1. Accept you will stumble. We all do. When this happens, acknowledge it, analyze it, Learn from it. Move on.
2. Seek support. Surround yourself with friends and peers who root for you (like we do here). We all stumble at some point. It is important to have a cheer squad telling us that we can get up and go on.
3. Define yourself differently. One key aspect of negative self-talk and self-sabotaging behavior is that we listen to it as though it defines us. Do not fall into that trap. Be a warrior in your mentality and attitude. Warriors are not necessarily the strongest, fastest or smartest but they are the ones who will not give up. Let the effort be who you are. Let the determination you feel be your identity. Failure is only an instance. Nothing more.

I really hope all this helps. I am rooting for you.

Thank you everyone for your support, it really does mean a lot 😁.

I think I should have mentioned in my OP that I have suffered with depression in the past, and still do to a lesser extent, which sometimes makes a bad day seem a whole worse. But thankfully the good days far outweigh the bad nowadays

Damer I am really trying hard to change my perspective and outlook. Recently read a few books by Stephen Guise on building habits