What can I do to actually get motivated?

Losing x # of pounds a week is far from being a SMART goal. The OP should be setting attainable goals, not just choosing an arbitrary weight loss goal.

In addition, "you can't outrun a bad diet." Meaning that exercise goals and weight goals should be kept separate. Exercise is awesome for physical and cognitive function and health, but diet is where it's at for weight loss.

The OP would be well-served by setting SMART goals for exercise, but these should be things that actually relate to exercise. Like "walk 10000 steps a day" or "increase 1-rep max weight by x" or "flexibility training three days a week."

Adding in a workout partner just to have someone to compete against is also pretty crummy. The only person the OP should be competing against is herself. "Comparison is the thief of joy." Competing against someone else for health-based goals is an astoundingly flawed suggestion.

3lb in a week is NOT realistic, even for someone who's had bariatric surgery.

Do you have any personal experience struggling with your weight?

Until I hit 30, I was never a sweater. But then it was like my body just caved and now just thinking about exercise makes me sweat. THAT SAID if I 'm going to make this whole "life style change" thing work, I need to get over my sweaty self :) I generally don't change before or after I exercise at the office, although my exercise is in the form of biking in, and walking during the day. On days I have important meetings I might wear a exercise shirt in, and change into a dress top once I've cooled off. I keep a "Chilly Pad" cooling towel at the office to help drop my body temp back down after I work out. It really works great and I just rinse it out in the bathroom sink every couple of days, and wa**** on weekends. I also keep a micro- towel on hand to dry myself as needed, and I got my hair cut and THINNED so it dries faster after I remove my bike helmet - but otherwise I just pretend that I'm not a sweaty mess!

I'm motivating myself in a few ways...

1. Workout Buddy- My sister-in-law and I both get up at 6am on Tuesdays and Thursdays and go to swim laps. We don't swim at the same pool, but we both get up and check in with each other at six or shortly thereafter to make sure we're DOING IT.
2. Green footprint - I'm not all that environmentally friendly, but I do know that as an American, I account for an awful lot of green house gases. I can bike to the office in the same time it takes me to drive in, so I work hard to remind myself that this is an environmentally smart choice to make. The city where I work has bike racks on all the buses - so I keep $2 bus fair on me and if weather or other issues come up I can always bike to the closest bus stop and catch a ride. Now I'm working on figuring out how to do this into the winter months... Same goes for walking to places that are within a 15 or 20 minute walk - I use Googlemaps "walking" or "biking" mapping option to get an estimate of the time it will take me to get places.
3. Setting Fitness Goals here on OH- I've been setting fitness related goals here on OH and trying to make sure I can check a few off each month! I set a goal to run a mile without stopping by my birthday (8/22) back in April, and breezed right by it in late June :) Then I set a goal to run a 5K without stopping and hit that one too! Now I'm working on running a 10K (distance wise, I haven't actually been in a real race).
4. Mental Health - [Edited to add words in caps] IN MY OPINION, BASED ON AVAILABLE READING AND STUDIES BOTH OF DEPRESSION AND QUALITY OF LIFE, Regular cardio exercise is a better cure for depression and anxiety than prescription drugs. I can't use this to START my exercise process but OMG it works as a GREAT motivator to keep me on track. Once I feel the results of regular floods of happy endorphins and I use a mood tracker that really shows how much better I feel... I am motivated to go today so that I'll feel this good tomorrow.
5. Posting my Plan - I have been trying to post my weekly exercise plan just like I post my daily menus, here on OH. I include my exercise in my menu posts, and I include it on MyFitnessPal even allowing the deduction of calories. I don't necessarily EAT the exercise calories, but I like to see the increase I get from exercising as it shows the additional gap between my intake and what is getting burned. Just like I try to make sure I error on the over estimate of food calories, I try to assume only a fraction of the estimated calories are actually burned - but I find this whole process of posting and seeing my available calories increase very motivating.

>> Regular cardio is a better cure for depression and anxiety than any medication on the market - like literally performs far better than drugs.

Citations please? The meta-analyses I've found say this is not true. For some patients, exercise may be more effective than SSRI's, but I see nothing to support your claim that it's "far better." (Source)

Oh Sparklekitty - Weren't you the one who said you didn't have time to go look up sources for me when I asked you for your sources in an earlier discussion? (yes, actually, you were). But while I'm clearly a petty person who holds grudges, I also admire your desire for facts and sources - a trait I truly wished everyone shared!

So yes, if one Googles this the first source that comes up tends to be the one from the UK written in 2012 which is a meta study (a study of other studies for those reading this who aren't used to the terminology). Two important points in this study is that the act of simply prescribing exercise is not helpful to a depressed patient (because seriously - you're already depressed, being told you need to go do the exact opposite of what every cell of your body desires, sleeeeeep generally, often cruelly combined with insomnia, isn't exactly helpful) and the fact that you can't perform a double blind test with exercise because most of us can't be duped into "pretend" exercise where we (the patient) and they (the testers) are both unable to know if we were randomly placed in a group that actually performs "real" cardio exercise or a group that isn't actually achieving cardio effort. Valid points for sure! But there is more to my admittedly causally offered comment than the prescribing part or the validity of the scientifically constructed study.

There are reasons that non-profit, patient focused wellness dollars are being invested in exercise programs designed to combat depression and anxiety, mostly the finding of studies that show a correlation between cardio activity and Quality of Life improvements. In studies where one can't perform a double blind side to side analysis this is often as good as it's going to get.

The phrase I used was intended to relate this to pharmaceutical studies, which as I'm sure you are aware, require only a slight improvement in a few patients to be considered a general success. If a tested drug shows a perceived improvement that is just slightly better than a placebo, it's considered a viable option for treatment.

None the less, I will go back and edit my original post to clear up this travesty, because you did well in calling me out!

Here's a nice source that might motivate a reader to exercise - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0160589

Look into the SMILE study (Standard Medical Intervention versus Long-term Exercise) which appropriately combined exercise only, medication only, or both. They also did a semi-placebo by assigning exercise at home to a later group, rather than supervised cardio. Researchers assessed LEVEL of depressive symptoms, in addition to relapse probability.

Believe me, if I could drop my meds and just go running, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Mental illness doesn't work that way.

You lost serious cred in your implication that ANY cure would work for all of a population. Seriously? If you need meds then that means that depression medication works better than exercise period? REALLY? You aren't familiar with a bell curve? With means, modes, outliers?

Up until a few weeks ago I was taking medication for depression, I'm getting talk therapy (CBT primarily) biweekly for depression, I'm exercising as one piece of my fight against depression, I use light therapy for depression, I have aroma therapy tools that help maybe more with focus but still a little with depression, I use meditation for anxiety and depression, I make myself spend time in green space for depression (and ADD)... These are all tools. Nothing is 100% I'm very confident I will be on medication for my depression again, as far as I can tell this is going to be a lifetime battle. I will seek out and use all the tools I can find that might help me through this hell.

My explaining that I am motivated to exercise by the benefits that exercise provides to my fight against depression is not a personal attack on your use of antidepressant medications. My god.

Per my initial reply, I take issue with the "exercise is better than meds" line. None of the articles you linked to back that assertion up. As far as I see, they say that "exercise is good for depression," but none directly compare exercise to medication. :)

I have seen people who gave up their antidepressants for running end up in the hospital after having attempted suicide, some of whom did so after having attempted that advice after reading memes and posts on the internet about it. Depression and bipolar disorder are serious mental illnesses with fatal consequences. Telling people to not take their medication is dangerous at best, and lethal at worst.

Happiness in research refers more to a personality trait than to depression vs. non-depression, particularly in social psychology. It's not referring to a mood or mood disorder, typically. Unfortunately none of the articles you link provide empirical proof about clinical disorders. Don't get me wrong - some antidepressants are little better than placebo in some cases. However, many are exceptionally effective, particularly those that have come out in the past 10-15 years, and many give a majority of individuals a reasonable chance at being functional human beings with their use. Having said that, I'd be happy to consider any research that is empirical and peer-reviewed, as that is stuff I can pass along to clients if it has adequate validity.

Can exercise help mental health? Abso-freaking-lutely. It is very good especially for anxiety and ADHD. However, everyone I have treated with mental illness was never able to cease their medications.

The problem is that telling someone with clinical depression or bipolar disorder running and exercise will fix them is dismissive. That's like telling the obese women losing weight will make her pretty or fix her thyroid - it's fundamentally wrong. it's like saying to someone with cancer, hey, jog more and your cancer will go away. Mental illness is often caused by structural changes in the brain which alter how it uses neurotransmitters. In many cases, fitness and diet changes *can* cause drastic improvements, however they cannot often cure true depression. Additionally, more people than you might imagine have survived trauma, and no exercise can fix trauma because it's complex and has life-long consequences.

Can some people come off antidepressants with exercise and diet? Rare, but it happens. There have been captivating studies out of Israel about ketogenic diets and bipolar lability, however I would still not suggest people cease medications randomly, or that diet can prevent mental illness for everyone.

So absolutely, exercise. It's superb for the brain and body, but it is not a panacea that means you can give up antidepressants. A whole variety of factors cause that when it's able to occur.

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