4th February 2014
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship
is a slow ripening fruit. Aristotl
I just want to stay in bed the last few days, it’s so warm
and cosy and I actually could carry on sleeping I reckon especially as Alfie
spent most of the night being fidgety and moving about! I’m dreaming lots too, not so keen on that to
be honest, think it disturbs my sleep, because I have to wake myself up totally
so I don’t go back into the same dream if it isn’t a very nice one!
Anyways in real life, it’s 5.15am, dark outside, cold inside
because the heating hasn’t been turned on yet and I’m sat in a hoody thinking
what to write! I’ve noticed the last few
weeks that people are getting disheartened because their weight loss has slowed
down, or even stopped, that honeymoon period of the first few weeks has worn
off and reality has kicked in, oh I remember that feeling well – it sucked! I’d start a fresh diet and feel really
motivated, be sure I’d found the ‘cure’ so to speak, then the normality set
back in, because the ‘diet’ I was following was artificial, it wasn’t a diet
that I could live with for the rest of my life.
I’ve since realised I will always be on a diet as a diet is by
definition ‘what you eat’ not what you DON’T EAT, it includes everything you
eat, and it’s not a case of whether you’re ‘on’ or ‘off’ a weight loss diet, it
is more the case that you are either on a gaining, losing or maintenance diet
and once I realised that it’s okay for that pattern to fluctuate I had better
success.
As difficult as it was to accept, I realised what I weighed,
how much I ate, and what my body looked like was my responsibility, my Weight
Watcher leader gave me direction, but I was the one who made the decisions and
changed my ways. No one else can eat for
you and not one else can make you a better or different person – but you
can!
Accepting that the reality of successful weight loss is
actually SLOW, permanent weight loss is anyway, as the ‘diet’ needs to resemble
the way you eat when you don’t consider yourself to be ‘dieting’, it has to fit
in with your lifestyle and food preferences.
This is easier to do if it’s done slowly, making gradual changes a bit
at a time. This is why support helps
massively, and not just the sort where you all sit round and clap each other’s
weight loss, that for me soon gets boring, I don’t care that Tracy or Stacey
has lost weight if I’m having a bad week, it’s even been known to send me to the cake shop
to be honest, I want real support that acknowledges
success takes time and I’m likely to find situations where I struggle and
decide to overeat instead. We all know
that motivation at the beginning is high and we’re excited and hopeful of
success, but that fades so then I want support to keep me focused on the healthy
and happy (I hope that’s what I provide to my members in my meetings). The truth is you’re not going to get a great
weight loss every week, you are likely to hit plateaus and for me the biggest
opposition you will have is HUNGER, sometime real hunger, sometimes emotional
hunger, but hunger is the dieters enemy and why so many of us fail because we
try to fight it instead of feeding it!
We can make the mistake of thinking hunger is a good thing,
if we’re hungry – we’ll lose weight. Mmm
your body and mind are cleverer than you, they know how to get you to eat when
hungry – don’t believe me, go look in the mirror! You may be able to control it for so long but
eventually you’ll cave, it may result in a bit of a binge or you may eat a
massive meal despite having been able to resist for days, maybe even weeks!
My one piece of advice today would be to never ignore hunger
– FEED IT! If you’re hungry – eat, and
if you’re thinking that’s what got me this size in the first place, that’s not
true honest, it was more likely to have been your choices of what to eat that
got you where you are now, and also the fact that you tried to ‘resist’ so
often too! So rather than trying not to
eat, use your effort to decide ‘what to eat’ that’s far more important. No one ever joined Weight Watchers with a
fruit problem!
Focus on the healthy & happy, Eat Gorgeous, learn to
love yourself and trust me, you’ll lose weight slowly but healthily and you won’t
feel like you’re on an emotional weight loss roller coaster.
My goal for 2014 is to end it lighter than I started it and
to continue to focus on the healthy and happy!
I don’t care if I only end it 2lb lighter because I’ve managed to keep
off 3 stone for 10 years with that attitude, I may not be what’s considered a ‘healthy’
bmi, that’s BMI25 by the way, but I am emotionally healthier than I have been
in years, I believe I’m physically healthier also as when I was a BMI 25 or
below my eating habits weren’t the best!
Anyway I leave you with that thought, what’s the rush – the time
will pass anyway, how much weight have you lost and KEPT OFF over the last 10,
15, 20 years? If it’s plenty – great,
keep doing what you’re doing, if it isn’t and you feel like if you’d kept every
pound off you’d ever lost you’d be a key charm, then maybe this slow approach might
not be a bad idea. Xx
Have a great day BeYOUtiful. xx
I may be going grey but I'm still smiling!
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