Losing weight in spite of myself.

I began this blog in February 2011 as a way to help me not quit trying to lose weight, and to learn a few things. It's been an interesting and powerful experience. It certainly confirms what I've long suspected--that although I am a genuinely happy cheery person in the main, I am NOT a happy cheery dieter. I DETEST losing weight. I resent being overweight in the first place and I am a virtuoso in the art of self-sabotage. And YET--I'm doing it! I'm fighting and kicking and EATING all the way down, but the weight is finally going down. The plan I was following in February was a half-baked one largely based on wishful thinking. I gained a little weight and decided to get real. I knew I couldn't just join weightwatchers or count calories or do any one plan and expect to be successful. I decided if I was going to bother to make the effort to lose weight I was going to throw everything I could think of at the problem. And so I do. My real "Day One" for this blog is April 1, 2011. I joined weight watchers, I joined caloriecount.com (awesome website), I read the blog losingweighteveryday.blogspot.com religiously, I keep this blog faithfully, I joined the health programs sponsored by my insurance, I use the principles from overeater's anonymous, I use my church's 12 step program as well, I subscribe--and use--Healthy Cooking Magazine.



The result of all this? Painfully slow progress (About 20 lbs in 10 months). But it IS progress and like the little engine that could I keep on trying in my rebellious way. I have no intention of quitting. This is by far the longest sustained weight loss effort I've ever made in my life. Successful I think, because for the first in my life I've done this MY way--which I've discovered, involves a lot of pizza and restaraunt food. I'm convinced this is the only way to lose weight. For me it must be MY way. For you it MUST be YOUR way. Not weight watcher's way, not your doctor's way, but YOUR way. Any plan or idea I use is only a tool.

The latest plan to lose weight my way began on Oct 29, 2013. It really is my own crazy plan. As you'll see if you read that post. I've implemented the best ideas of all sorts of eating plans and thrown out the scale. A couple of months in and I'm definitely healthier. I'm actually enjoying myself. I won't weigh until April 1, 2014, so I'll see then if this works the way I hope it will.

There is no magic weight loss bullet. But there IS a great deal of magic in the discovery of what I can happily live with (very different from what weight watchers tells me I can happily live with) and still have the body and health I want.

Good luck to all of us on this journey. It's quite a trip!







Tuesday, July 10, 2012

465 A comment

What's the deal with no paragraphs in a blog??? Sorry for the huge dense post with no breaks! I've tried both leaving spaces and indents. No luck. YAY Stephonie for leaving a comment! An insightful one too. Two things---I like what she said about not battling our bodies. AMEN to that!!! Who would want to? That's really why weight watchers fails for me. It always feels like a battle against my will. What I really want is for my will to change so that I don't have this problem! I think I'm making some progress here---as in it's genuinely no harder to maintain this weight now than it was to maintain a weight 45 pounds heavier. I believe there's a balance--to lose weight I must change my habits, change is uncomfortable--there has to be enough experimentation and effort to enable change to happen, but not so much that I blow up in a fit of deprivation and quit. It's not easy to tell the difference between making excuses for poor behavior--and wisely moving slowly and preserving my will to keep trying. I'm sure I'm in the excuse camp much more than I ought to be. She also mentioned the book, Intuitive Eating I really need to buy this one. I've read it before and it is my goal to live the life of that book. To work WITH my body and eat whatever I want and not worry. I did this perfectly and easily when I was pregnant and lost over 30 pounds. The catch there was that if I ever ate more than my body wanted when I was pregnant, I became sick. That's not the case now. I can merrily eat much much more than my body needs and feel just great. I usually don't even realize when I've crossed that threshold. But even still.....and this is why weight loss is so annoying!!! At the very beginning of this latest journey, when I was trying the Lean and Free plan (see very first entries of this blog). I learned that if I just let myself eat whatever I want at home, that I will eat between 2,200 and 2,400 calories a day with surprising accuracy. Amazingly this is EXACTLY the amount that a moderatley active woman of my height should be eating. So WHAT IS THE PROBLEM???? Why am I not the perfect weight??? On one level anyway the answer is simple---I live in America and I have a weakness for food. What really happens is this: I eat my through my day in perfect accordance with what my body needs--about 2,300 of reasonably well balanced food. I do this without effort. THEN I go to the movies and ALSO eat 1,500 cal of movie popcorn. And the next day (today) there is a potluck at work and I can't resist all the goodies so I ALSO eat 4 extra cookies, AND chips, AND pizza bites, AND extra hummus and pita bread--this on top of what would normally be my lunch. And then tonight there is Relief Society activity with dinner--that means it's either mediocre food--so I might not eat huge amounts, but guaranteed what is served is high fat/carb/sugar. OR it's really good--and I won't have the will power to say no to whatever goodie is there. THEN tomorrow there is the BBQ lunch at work---good food, lots of it, and again high in all the wrong things. This will be followed up with dinner at my sister's house--complete with high stress family issues and high fat foods. Thursday should be normal, but Friday I go to Montana---vacaction mood and restaurants and or parties all the way. It's just plain TOO MUCH. Instead of averaging 2,300 cal a day in a given week, my actual intake is more like 3,500 cal and I simply can't metabolize that much. I remain fat. I've learned that my body is actually quite forgiving. If I had a day like today once a week or so I would be FINE. But it isn't once a week---it's literally almost every day! The temptations override my natural systems and I simply haven't learned to appropriately cope. It doeesn't help that it's 103 degrees out there either so I will not be walking anywhere outside today. Anyway---I still think for now I need a crutch--whether it be weight watchers or calorie counting or whatever, it helps me to at least not overeat on days when there is no particular reason to overeat, and it also helps over time to modify behavior. I really do eat a lot more veggies now than I used to, and drink more water and move around more. I've become perfectly happy with normal sized breakfasts, reasonably happy with normal sized lunches, tolerating healthy snacks, and stil struggle with dinners and normal sized desserts---but I'm working on that. In short there's hope, but no guarantees that I'll actually overcome this problem in this life-time. I hope I will.

2 comments:

  1. It's definitely possible for you to overcome this problem in this lifetime--heck, I'd say even this month. :)

    Acknowledging the disconnect between what you know you need to do and what you wind up doing is important. Understanding why we fall into the bad habits that make us mess up is really critical to keeping weight off. Take a look at the video in my link; it goes over how we get in these habits and how to break them.

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  2. Thanks!! I will look at the video for sure. I totally agree with you--I'm aware of many of my disconnects, but I'm sure there are many that I'm not aware of and breaking those habits is something else. I'll take all the help I can get!

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