Are you struggling?

24th January 2015

It is perfectly okay to admit that you're not okay.

 

Thursday according to the experts was the day that four out of five people who started a 'diet' for the new year will have given up by, a survey of 2,00 adults also showed that one in five failed to continue with a new year resolution on healthy eating within days.  The main diet-breaking foods were, chocolate, bread and crisps.

That's because they're looking at it all wrong "DIETS" don't work!  Weight Watchers is all about changing your relationship with food for good with a plan that's designed for weight loss, then maintenance once that goal weight is achieved.  Now that's the easy part!  Well it's easy to write and say out loud, doing it however.......

is not so easy, it just isn't - WHY? Because we're emotional human beings with a life time of habits that we've created and changing those is so very difficult, it's even harder to change them permanently.  We sometimes think we have, then something happens and BAM we're suddenly stuffing our face with whatever we can get our hands on.

This could be caused by external problems such as another person causes problems for you or money worries, oh there's so many reasons.  Or it could be caused by internal problems, the main one I think being 'pain', there's nothing worse than being in pain and that pain may not even be a physical one, it could be an emotional one.

Now in the past most people with a weight problem have turned to food as a comfort or a distraction at times like this and unfortunately most will always do it at one time or another, not always maybe, but....

How do you stop it?  I'm sorry I just don't think you do, I'm 45 now and I've been trying to get my weight under control since I was 18, I can do it for so long then I slip, the longest time has been over the last ten years, for 9 of them I've stayed within the realms of my goal weight, still going up and down a bit but not a lot, yet the last year I've struggled - a lot! 

Even this morning I woke up and my first thought was "Right today me and Lynne are both going to track and get back on this, I'll message her in a bit!"  It was probably the first thing I thought because she was talking to me yesterday about how she's off track again. I was great last week and the week before but this week started with my birthday and apparently it's decided to be a 5 day event!  It ends today though!

The fact is 'struggling' is part of the weight loss journey, people think a successful weight loss journey looks like the top line, but the truth is the bottom one is more appropriate, 

It's like life, you have up and downs, good times and bad times and your mood changes throughout, the same goes for your weight loss journey because that is part of your life and it's affected by everything in your life.

Your task is to cope with balancing it all the best you can, it's also to accept your behaviour when you can't (not give in completely though) and move on as soon as possible.  Don't beat yourself up, don't give yourself a hard time, forgive yourself for what you do. 

Because a huge problem out there seems to be - you don't want to eat, but you do and when you do, you hate yourself a little!

That is the worst thing you can do, it's why most people fall off the weight loss wagon completely because they have such high expectations of themselves!  They are very unforgiving of themselves and because of this, they're very all or nothing. 

That's the biggest change I've made over the last ten years and it's why despite my struggling with eating too much because it tastes good and is a pleasure to me, and also my emotional eating, I haven't gone back to where I started.  Because when I do have a bad day, or a bad week, I don't beat myself up, I understand myself, I take on board my reasons for my behaviour, I accept what I've done and I move forward.  I also try to work out what I can do to try and stop it happening again.

Some people might think I'm weird but I'm thankful for my weight struggle because it's made me the person I am, it's made me a kinder more compassionate person, it's given me empathy for others in similar situations, it's given me a job I love and it's helped me meet amazing people on a daily basis, it's also been the route to meeting the people I love most in the world after my family, I have some really great, true friends and all of them I've met through Weight Watchers. 

Enjoying food and emotional eating is part of who I am, it's part of my personality, and I love me completely so I've accepted those traits, I refuse to accept that it means I have to be overweight because it doesn't which is why every day when I get up, I think about what I'm going to eat and how I'm going to keep my weight under control and I've got Weight Watchers to thank for helping me learn all about how to do that and for introducing me to people who can help and support me on this journey.

Have a forgiving day BeYOUtiful, embrace the struggle and love yourself completely. xx