Weight loss SHOULD BE SLOW!

4^th 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

 BeYOUTiful! When you feel like quitting remember why you started! I learn't to love the skin I'm in! I will always be 'on a diet' like it or not because by definition a diet is what you eat and I'm on a healthy & happy diet where my weight fluctuates because I Eat Gorgeous!

 I may be going grey but I'm still smiling!