Last week started great for me ... hiking, hardcore cardio work out, waking up feeling great. I even was eating well.

Only to devolve into two days of stress induced comfort eating and skipping the gym to sleep. This weekend was marginally better but not great.

So I have absolved to look at this week as a fresh start and a chance to reset the tone and use exercise to attack the stress versus a pizza or ribs.

Jerimiah,
Your situation sounds familiar. I work so hard all week both at work and at the gym, I find myself "rewarding" myself on the weekends by skipping excersize. We can't beat ourselves up though. As you said, we can start the week fresh with new resolve.
LR

Keep at it man, we all have those weekends but its great to see that your not letting it discourage you. I guess the key is not to let the Bad Weekends become a habit.

Don't let the stress drag you in. I've had a lot of stress in my life lately and I've done my best to channel it into a positive environment for fitness. When I felt down this weekend I got off my ass and went for a hike for a couple hours. Being outside building up a good sweat really cleared my head. From a high of 212 lbs I finally hit 200 lbs today and it's only going to get better, stress and all.

Stick with it because you can do this. The best reward is success !!

Thank you guys for the encouraging words!! Learning to re-channel the stress is essential for my long term health.

I feel your struggle. I get mad at myself when I feel like I slacked off, even for a day. The best thing that I realized that I could do was to just step it up a notch the next day. You can't change what you did in the past. Don't beat yourself up over it. Just step it up tomorrow and take it one day at a time. I use two notebooks. One to record my eating habits, another to track my weight loss and gym routine. One week isn't going to kill you, it might throw you off your routine. Considering what I just said, Don't let it continue any longer than a week, because then your going to be in danger of seriously getting off track. When your off track, your not hurting me, or anyone else, your hurting yourself. I heard these words before and I think about them all the time "You cheat your body, your body will cheat you!" I think about that every day I think about quitting.
Keep up the hard work, don't quit, and always look ahead.

Jeremiah,

Stress is inevitable; bad eating habits are not. I'm with Warren--stick with it and kick some butt, amigo!

Ron