Effort, Motivation, and People

So I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep and I'm writing this blog post in my head and obviously not falling asleep.  So I decided to just get up and write it so I can get it out of my head and not worry about trying to remember it tomorrow.

Three things I have been thinking about over the past few days.  So someone says to me today "just don't gain any weight."  What the heck kind of crap comment is that anyway?  Thanks for that motivational jibe, what is wrong with people anyway?  I'll tell you what is wrong, that comment came from someone who has never been overweight in their life.  They don't know what it is like, they don't know the mindset, the problems, the terrible cycle, the warped logic, the feelings of desperation and depression.  That is part of why this is so hard for me.  I am the only one in my family who has struggled with weight issues, no one else knows what it is like.  Not my parents, siblings, husband, or in-laws. So they see me now struggling after doing so well and they don't know what to say, they don't know how to react.  Being thin is natural, expected.  Abusing food is a foreign concept to them, and being fat has always been a threat ever since I was young.  "Don't eat that, you will get fat, if you keep eating that way you will get fat, you need to exercise more because you're getting fat."  Pish, skinny people.  They just don't get it.

Anyway, along that note though it made me realize that motivation for me has always been internal.  I am the only person that can motivate myself.  I have always been internally motivated, which is why I have been able to experience success when I am doing it all on my own.  Recently I haven't been feeling very motivated and that's because I've been trying to do things that other people want me to do.  I'm not staying true to myself, true to the things I love doing, true to the exercise I love, true to the way I like to eat and I've let all the outside stress rule over me and allowed myself to turn to food.  Along that line is effort.  I realized that I'm not putting in much effort anymore, and I feel like I can spare some more effort.  I realized this when I was eating breakfast with an old friend who was in town for the holidays and he congratulated me on my weight loss (hasn't seen me since before I lost the weight), and told a story about how he started getting into weight lifting but then got really stressed at school and work and stopped exercising and his weight went right back up to where he began.  That story is so similar so many others but as I thought about it, the thought entered my mind "If you don't make time for it, and if you don't make it a priority it won't get done.  When things get stressful often the first thing to go is your exercise and healthy eating habits.  It is possible to keep those things going, they just have to be important enough to you to keep them going. "  I didn't say that to my friend because I didn't think of it at the time (that and right after he told me the story Lily drug me off to the bathroom because she needed to go).  But it definitely applies to me now.  I haven't been making healthy living much of a priority, and I think it is about time I start to do that again.

As I was wrestling with my brother over a broom to sweep my parent's kitchen this evening I realized how weak I have gotten.  Granted he is a man and I am a woman, but I have lost a lot of the strength I had worked hard to get at the beginning of the year, and if I had kept working on that aspect I probably wouldn't have lost that fight so miserably.........maybe.  Anyway, I've really become bent out of shape and I need to light my own internal fire and do things because I choose to do them, not because someone else tells me it would be a good idea to do them.  I do the best when it is my idea, and my choice.

On a completely unrelated note, I have of course been thinking about food over the past two days since we just had the biggest food consuming holiday probably in the whole world.  I realized something very important about myself which is this: I enjoy the eating experience so much that I do almost everything I can to prolong it.  And by everything I can I mean eat more food.  One of the biggest reasons why I overeat is because I don't want the eating experience to come to an end.  Since I have always been a fast eater, this has always meant eating more food.  There are only two ways to lengthen the eating experience: 1. eat more food (my historical method) and 2. slow down your eating pace.  If you eat slower, you will be eating longer.  It's the same desired effect but you don't eat as much as method 1.  I am going to be working really hard from here on out to slow my eating.  I know I like eating, and I want to eat longer, so therefore if I can just slow down enough so that by the time I finish I feel like I have been eating long enough, that would be a huge help.  Hopefully that will give my hunger signals time to catch up to my brain, and also psychologically satisfy my need to eat and prolong the eating experience.

Oh yes and I've decided to do another round of Chalean Extreme weight lifting at home before going to the gym.  I've gotten so weak, I am driving myself nuts. 

Loving myself

I am tired of despising myself.  Tired of comparing myself to others, tired of trying to look like certain people at the gym, and tired of chasing the worlds idea of beautiful and "the perfect body".  You see I binge eat because I don't like myself and I try to escape from my reality in various ways.  I stuff myself full of food because I can't face the stress of trying to be something I am not, of trying to look like someone I don't, and trying to do things I hate.  You know what.  I'm so over it now.  I'm not saying that I don't want to improve myself, or that I am not going to be setting any goals or that I don't want to continue progressing.  I do want to continue to be the best person I can be and keep working on becoming a better person.  Continue making choices every day to live like who I want to be, but who I want to be is not who society tells me I should be.  THAT was the disconnect.  I am tired of hating my body and wishing I looked like someone else.  I am tired of depriving myself of things I like to eat.  That was a huge fear that was holding me back from progressing and getting back on track.  I figured that once I got back on track I wouldn't be able to eat what I wanted anymore so I just kept overeating and overeating telling myself I would start tomorrow or next week. 

Well I'm through with that.  I am just going to let it be for now, love my body for what it can do, congratulate myself for the progress I've made, do the exercise I love, and eat what I love.  After a few months we will see where that leads me and then re assess the situation

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Live like who you want to be

Last week was a tough week for me.  I've been struggling and after much thinking, I believe it's due to stress.  Since my younger daughter is growing up some and getting bigger, she can now fight back, and it seems there is naught but constant screaming, fighting, yelling, and crying coming from my girls.  They do great when they are separate but they have been terrible the past several weeks when they are together.  I can pinpoint it to one event: daylight savings.  Oh how I hate daylight savings.  The kids now get up at 6am instead of 7am and they go to bed at the same time, so they get less sleep at night now, and I can tell that it has taken a toll.  It has been incredibly stressful and I have not adapted well since I am also getting less sleep and then dealing with more stress during the day.  My emotional eating has been way out of control and I have been avoiding the scale (which always happens when I get off track).  In my mind I had gained a ton of weight and I thought everything was lost.  I decided to face reality this morning and step on the scale, I decided it was time to get back to work, and take charge again instead of letting myself drift and be defeated by my own kids and my own mind.  This morning I braced myself for the scale to flash as high as 160, but it seems our minds are good at exaggerating and blowing things totally out of proportion.  My weight was 150.4, a whole ten pounds less than I thought it was.  I wasn't seeing straight that is for sure, and I didn't know what to write about or how to write it when I was floundering and my own thoughts were twisted and confused.  Maybe though those are the times I should be writing because those are the most critical times.  But it is always easier to write about it after the fact than when you are living through it.

This past week I made another realization.  I was thinking back on my weight loss a year ago, thinking about how I was living.  It was hard for me to choose to be active with the kids.  I would have much rather put on a movie in the evening or stayed inside during the summer instead of playing in the pool.  It was hard for me to choose to do activities that benefited them.  I'm not talking about taking them out to the park, or taking them to the zoo.  I'm talking about the nitty gritty day in and day out everyday activities.  What do you do EVERY single night?  What do you do EVERY single afternoon?  You can plan on day trips, morning trips, activities and events.  Those are easy, its every other moment that is hard.  But I chose to fill those moments by playing with the kids, dancing to music, and being as active as I could.  It was hard then, and guess what, It's still hard now.  I had hoped it would get easier as time went on, but it hasn't yet and I hit a wall and I stopped doing those things.  I started giving into my natural lazy self, and letting the kids watch more tv and play more games so I could go do something else.  But that isn't who I wanted to be.  I don't want to be a lazy person who is consumed by food, and always chooses to be sedentary over being active.  This is definitely a prime example of "fake it till you make it".  I'm not who I want to be yet, but every day is filled with choices.  I see the person I naturally am now, the things I naturally desire to do, or maybe a better way to describe it is the things my body want to do.  Because mentally I want to be that person who lives a active, healthy lifestyle, among other things, but physically I want to sleep, be lazy and eat food.  There are two halves of me that are constantly battling and every day I make hundreds of choices, but they are my choices and I can choose to live like the person I want to be or I can choose to live like the person I was.  It will not be easy to make the choices to live like the person I want to be, because that requires effort, work, change, and most importantly time.  The hardest thing for me to accept is that I will not be perfect.  We are only human and we can't be perfect all the time.

So let's start choosing today to live our lives like the person we want to be.  If you want to be more generous, then make choices that lead you to be generous.  If you want to be more active, then make choices that lead down the path to becoming a more active person.  Every day, hundreds of choices, and not all of them easy.  It's hard to change, there will be setbacks, challenges, mood swings, but if you persevere then you will eventually arrive at your destination.  It might take a lifetime, but that is the greatest test of all isn't it.  Endure to the end, hold on and enjoy the ride.

   P.S. thank you to anonymous who left a comment on one of my last blog posts and pulled me out of my anti-blogging streak. (I wrote this blog post within an hour of seeing that comment!)  I am glad that I can help others and inspire others and motivate others.  When I struggle I tend to forget about blogging, and it does help to get my thoughts all out there so they aren't so jumbled up in my head.

Not an Emergency

Today marks four days of being binge free and I am going to do absolutely everything I can to keep it that way.  I have been having a lot of success with the rule "no sweets until after dinner".  By the time dinnertime comes around and I've eaten the urge to binge is usually gone.  Yesterday I took the kids to the splash and play pool at the gym and they absolutely loved it.  I took them one at a time so we were there for a looooong time.  We had lunch at the cafe and I would put one in the daycare there and take the other to the pool.  By the time Chloe had her turn though she was super tired, but she still managed to play for a whole hour.  Next time thought I will take Chloe first.

I've been working on managing my hunger over the past several days and I've had a realization.  Hunger is just another form of discomfort, like having to pee or getting a papercut.  If you have to pee you know it, it's uncomfortable but most of the time it's not an emergency (unless you ignore it too long).  Same thing with hunger.  If you are hungry you know it, it is uncomfortable but it's not an emergency (unless you ignore it too long).  We are use to all sorts of discomfort in our lives, but for some reason can't stand the discomfort of being hungry.  So that is what I have been working on over the past several days is realizing that yes, I'm hungry but I'm not going to die if I don't eat now.  In fact I'm not going to die if I don't eat for an hour or so.  Stick to the plan and don't go crazy.

This is one of the best pieces of advice (or at least the piece that has really stuck out to me) in the book "The Beck Diet Solution".  Every time I think of the phrase "Not an emergency" I think of that scene in Tinkerbell- Secret of the Wings when the visit the healing talent fairy and the receptionist says "Oh! Snapdragon right?  Not an Emergency, Plant it over there".  Now everyone who has young girls is laughing and everyone who doesn't has a blank look on their face and is going "okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay".

Focus on eating food to live life, not living life to eat food.  Every time I start thinking about eating food when I'm not really hungry, eating junk food, or eating sweets I go and involve myself in something else.  Either playing with the girls, doing a craft, something proactive.  Anything to get my mind off of food and on my life.  I'm tired of living for food, always waiting for the next meal or the next opportunity to eat.  Food needs to be in its proper place, fuel so that I can live my life.  This morning instead of lounging on the couch watching TV I played with the kids all morning, we spent time together as a family instead of me making pancakes and cleaning the kitchen and then sleeping on the couch.  I ate oatmeal for breakfast and I feel really good right now. 

Easier Said than Done

When I realized I was a binge eater about six months ago and I declared my war on binge eating and trying to nix that behavior I had no idea what was in store for me.  I had no idea it would be so incredibly difficult.  Over the past several days I have really been down in the dumps.  I eat just to have something to do, I eat to distract myself, I get "in the zone" and I go from one bad food choice to the next, plundering the kids Halloween candy, and countless other sources of food.  I thought I was making progress, addressing my emotional issues, which I honestly feel I have resolved.

1. I made peace with my 6th grade self, and decided to just let the past go.  My parents love me and were trying to help me when they put me on the Slim Fast diet and had me run the treadmill.  They were trying to prevent exactly what I am going through right now, only I was too stubborn to just go along with everything, I had to lash out and resist.  But I have made peace with that past.
2. I have made peace with my present.  Ever since deciding to be a stay at home mom and giving up the "dream" of being successful in the workplace (doctor, teacher, dental hygienist, physical therapist... I bounced around a lot of different professions), I have been kicking at the pricks.  I had to overcome my own feelings of uselessness because I wasn't contributing to the household income.  I had to overcome my feelings of inadequacy, maybe even a little bit of resentment.  I have finally humbled myself enough to accept the fact that THIS is where I am needed, THIS is where I am supposed to be.  My kids need ME to raise them, not a daycare. And the value of my soul is not measured by how much money I can make.
3. I relieve stress through exercise, or by going to find a quiet place for a few minutes where I can decompress instead of going to find a cookie.

So why then do I still still struggle so much with binging?  Perhaps because it's habit.  I've noticed that the worst comes in the afternoon.  We have been busy all morning and around 1:30-3:00 we have some down time.  Chloe is taking a nap and there is a lull in the day.  I get tired, so I want to eat.  Lily still need attention but I'm tired so I try to get a break by eating.

Maybe what I really need is to plan a nap for myself.  When Chloe gets to bed maybe Lily can watch a move and I can relax.

One thing I have learned about tackling the problem of binge eating... It's definitely easier said than done.

I managed to get through yesterday without binging, although I did overeat.  Today has been promising, and I have my plan in place to prevent myself from binging and I will be out this evening so I won't be home to stuff all the food in my face.  I am sticking to my no desserts until after dinner rule, and it has been difficult.  The afternoon is prime baking time, but it is more important to me to stop stuffing myself with food to the point of feeling sick and to become healthier, and happier. 

Overcome Cravings

There is a whole section in "The Beck Diet Solution" that tackles the issue of overcoming cravings, or to go along with the theme I've had this week: making weak things become strong, and mastering yourself.  Just because you are searching for self mastery and trying to gain self control doesn't mean you can't get as much help as you can find.  Cravings are a normal part of dieting and we have to learn to overcome them.  There are a few key points that Dr. Beck makes in her section about overcoming cravings

• "To weaken the intensity and reduce the frequency of cravings you have to stop giving into them" page 127
• "Cravings don't usually go away by trying to satisfy them with just a taste." page 127
• "Waiting out a craving increases your ability to tolerate cravings and also increases your confidence that you can do so.  The more often you wait out your cravings, the less intense and less frequent they'll be in the future." page 127
• "Once I stop giving into cravings and they become much weaker and less frequent, dieting will be easier." page 134

Then Dr. Beck gives you some different techniques to try and help you deal with cravings.  She details many mindfulness techniques.

1. Label it (tell yourself it is a craving, it is not an emergency, and you can overcome it)
2. Stand Firm (decide immediately that you will not give into it)
3. Don't give yourself a choice 
4. Imagine the aftermath of giving in (the sick feeling in your stomach and the low self esteem)
5. Remind yourself you want to learn to withstand cravings

After you run through these five points then it is time to take action:

1. Distance yourself from the food you crave (for me it's leaving the kitchen)
2. Drink some water or a no calorie beverage 
3. Relax- meditate? 
4. Distract yourself

That last one is huge.  Distracting yourself is key to overcoming a craving.  You have to get your mind off of the craving.  My cravings and mindless eating always comes in the afternoon around 3:00 so from now on 3:00-4:30 is movie time, and I am going to be working on my cross stitch.  Get involved in some sort of activity to take your mind off food.

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Overcoming cravings also goes right along with stopping unplanned eating.  Making a food plan the night before and sticking to it and making a rule that you have no choice to deviate from your food plan will help when you are feeling indecisive.  You remember that you have no choice, and stick to your food plan.  Dr. Beck suggests making a few rules that you can live with that will help, these are going to be specific for you and your needs.  I have been really wish washy about desserts over the past year.  I have tried to take them out completely, tried to eat them in moderation all to no avail.  I know I don't want to give them up forever, and every time I cut them out it backfires on me.  But I know that sweets trigger binges, so the rule I came up with for myself is this:

No desserts until after dinner.

That will prevent binges during my most vulnerable time: the early afternoon before dinner.  Plus I won't be hungry from not having eaten anything for the past three or four hours so I am going to give this a try and see how it works.  Hopefully I will be back to making progress!

That Your Weaknesses May Become Strengths

“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27)

I suppose I should mention here that this quote comes from a set of scriptures called "The Book Of Mormon".  And since I know you are going to ask: Yes I am Mormon, Yes I read and believe in the Book of Mormon, Yes I also read and believe in The Bible, No I do not believe that all Non-Mormons are going to Hell, and Yes I believe in Jesus Christ and that he is our Savior and our Redeemer.  Now that we have that out of the way we can get onto the point.

 At its heart, isn't this the root of what we are trying to achieve?  Here we are, overweight, lethargic, addicted to food, emotional eaters, and lacking self control.  Take away all the fancy names, all the fancy programs and what do you have left?  We have a weakness, and that weakness is food.  It is something we struggle with, something that has been causing us distress, discomfort, discouragement.  It is one of our (okay: MY) greatest weaknesses.  And what exactly is this journey all about?  It's about learning to eat healthy, become more active, and break our food addiction.  In essence it's about turning our weakness into a strength.  Look at anyone who has succeeded in this journey, and more specifically those who have succeeded in maintenance.  They are able to control with mastery their food intake, their exercise, food preparation and planning, they can navigate the buffet table, the holiday desserts, and the party trays with finesse.  Their weakness has become one of their greatest strengths.

That is what I think about when I think about self mastery around food.  It is hard now, it is hard to resist the extra food, it is hard to make and then eat healthier food when what you are craving is a pizza, or burgers and fries, or whatever it is you are craving.  It's HARD!  But the more you work on it, the less you give in the easier it becomes, your desires may start to change, your palate may start to change, your thoughts may start to change, and whether you rely on God or not to help you change, your weakness, slowly, over time can and will be turned into your strength as you allow your spirit to control your body instead of your body to control your spirit.  By admitting your weakness and becoming willing to work, becoming teachable, becoming open to suggestions and change you are humbling yourself.  If you believe you can change, if you believe in a better future for yourself then you have faith.  I know I can beat this.  I know there will be setback, missteps, and pitfalls.  Goodness knows I have had hundreds of them already.  But I keep picking myself, try to learn something, try to change, and move on facing forward.  

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Self Mastery

Well, I didn't even make it one week tracking.  I fell back into old habits of tracking and doing really well for one week, and then the two days after that were definitely sub par, and yesterday was almost a free for all.  I really thought I could make it work this time around but obviously I was wrong.  I am just not in the same place now that I was almost two years ago.  If I want to progress from here, I have to do something differently, and it isn't going to be tracking.  Tracking makes me freak out, I get really nervous when my available points or calories get really low, I immediately develop that whole "diet mentality" and it's not helping. 

In light of my realization a few days ago that so much of my problem is simply a matter of impulse eating and eating from boredom I have decided to focus on something that has become stigmatized in the weight loss community: self control.  I have read many diet books, blogs, and articles and so many of them start off by bashing self control.  We start a diet (many of them restrictive) and then blame ourselves for not having enough self control to stay on it, then the literature goes on to tell us that it's not our fault that we can't stay on these diets.  To an extent that is true.  Going on a crash diet or a highly restrictive diet is not a good choice, and leads to severe deprivation and your body goes into starvation mode and who would have the self control to stay on that long term?  However, there is something that needs to be said for self control.  If you don't have any self control, how are you going to stay on any plan?  If you have no self control how will you continue making healthy choices, how will you make any changes at all?  This is an area that I have ignored long enough.  It's time to start controlling my impulses, and mastering myself.  I once heard self mastery explained like this:

We are made up of our spirit and our bodies.  You have heard it said "mind over matter" but phrased a little differently we can create "spirit over body".  Self mastery is the process of making the body subject to the spirit.  In other words, we can control our thoughts, actions, desires, and passions.

And I heard addiction explained like this:
 
When we are entangled in the treads of addiction our spirit is trapped and enslaved to the body.  The passions of the body are allowed to run wild.  Our spirit has become subject to the body.

I feel like this a lot when I am around food and can't control myself.  That is exactly it, my spirit which is saying "I shouldn't be doing this" is trapped, completely controlled by the demands of my body "eating this tastes so good and I want to eat more and more of this".  When really I need to be doing the exact opposite and saying "I am in command of my body, and I know that eating that food is not going to help me in any way, so I am going to show mastery of my body and my passions and show some self control."

Self Control, Self Mastery, whatever you want to call it, I think that is where my path now lies.  I have the reasons, I have the desire, I have the knowledge, I have the motivation, but all that seems to fly out the window when I get cravings.  Learning to endure and overcome cravings is essential for me to progress on this path.  And no matter how you word it, learning to overcome and endure cravings and talk yourself out of them.... that is self control no matter what spin you put on it or what way you look at it.  If you want to lose weight, if you want to progress, you have to have self control.  That is what I am going to focus on now.  Controlling myself: stopping when I am satisfied, not overeating my desserts, not binging.  I feel like I have addressed many of the issues that lead me to eat, and now its time for one more very important step.  It's time to bridle my passions, and stop giving in.  In the book "The beck diet solution" she calls it strengthening your resistance muscle, and it's something I have been avoiding for a long time. 

Impulse Eating

I have solved another piece of the puzzle.  I realized today that I am an impulse eater.  Or in other words, I am very much a part of the whole instant gratification mindset that plagues our world today.  Tonight as I was in the middle of a mini binge (it could have been much worse) I was asking myself why I couldn't wait to eat more sweets until tomorrow, or until a few days from now.  I didn't want to stop, I wanted sugar, and I didn't want to argue with myself.  (It's very hard to talk yourself out of a situation when you don't want to be talked out of it).  The answer I gave myself in that moment was "Because I want it now!"  Which was revelatory for me.  I can be a very impulsive person, and I get very strong impulses (usually around shopping or when I want something new, like a dog, or computer game, or whatever the new thing is) and not only are they very hard to resist but I actually have no desire to resist them.  Of course that means that most of the time I end up giving into my impulses, and hence another eating issue has emerged.  Realizing that; no amount of self talk is going to get me off the ledge when I don't want to come down from it.  And so I have been approaching this particular part of eating the wrong way.  I know about eating when I'm bored, or stressed: emotional eating, I have been trying to find better coping mechanisms, but solving my impulse eating and my instant gratification mindset is a whole other animal. 

This is something I need to work on as a whole.  I need to recognize my impulses, label them as impulses and the hard part is to not give into them.  When I have an impulse the draw is incredibly strong, it's time to start exercising some self control.  I do have a few ideas.  For eating, allow myself two treats a week, and these are going to be planned in advance.  It's not Thanksgiving DAY or your birthDAY or Christmas DAY that causes trouble, it's all the other days in-between.  I need to shake off this instant gratification mindset, become more selfless, more humble........ Maybe I should think up some service projects to do, start thinking about others, become less of a consumer and draw closer to God.  For the longest time I figured that when my weight loss journey was done, I could work on other things like spirituality.  But now I realize that I can't continue on in my weight loss journey until I start taking care of my spirituality.  I am too obsessed with food, thinking about weight loss and food and exercise all the time.  I don't want to be obsessed with it.  If I can change my focus, stop thinking about it so much then I will have made a significant step towards living a life free from my crippling addiction to food.

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Tuesday Weigh In

As promised I am doing an official weigh in today now that I know all the sodium is out of my system.  I was hoping to be around 146 so you can imagine my surprise when I stepped on the scale this morning and it said this:

Woo Hoo!  Down 1.2 pounds from my previous lowest of 146 and down 2.2 pounds from my Friday weigh in of 147.  That my friends is the power of tracking.  I didn't change a single thing with my workouts, I have continued to do Zumba, and work on my triathlon training.  I did make progress doing intuitive eating, I have to give myself credit because I did pull myself out of a really bad mess I had created when my weight went all the way up to 153, and I was able to get back down to about 146.5, but so many times when I am not tracking I think I can cheat, and I start snacking a lot.  Tracking helps me to be more aware of what I am putting in my mouth.

I am making sure that this time I use everything I have learned over the past few months so as not to let myself feel deprived, or starved.  I really want to make this a real lifestyle change, a liveable lifestyle change.  Get food back into its proper place, stop obsessing over it so much.  Seriously I used to think about food every waking moment, always living for the next meal, or the next snack.  Food is something to be used to fuel your body so you can do everything else you want to do!  I needed to stop living for the food.  I'm making sure my snacks are balanced and filling, I'm making sure my meals are the same.  I'm making sure to eat until I'm satisfied, and listen to my body.  What does my body want?  Not what does my head think my body wants.  I am tired of feeling sick from overeating, tired of feeling sick from eating too much sugar.  I have discovered that my tolerance for sugar is actually much lower now, after I cut it out for three weeks (that's all I lasted but I think it was enough).  Sugar gives me a raging headache and popcorn has lately been giving me stomach aches.  I am also working on the thought side of it.  Instead of saying "I wish I could eat those five cookies like my husband"  I tell myself "I am glad I am not eating those five cookies, because they would make me feel sick, give me a headache and hinder my weight loss."  Another thing mentioned in "The Beck Diet Solution" about thinking was hunger and saying "I recognize I'm a little hungry right now, but it's okay, I'm going to have dinner (or my next meal or a snack) in just a little bit.  My meal is only an hour a way, I can wait"  And then you go get involved in something else and before you know it it's time to eat.  Life isn't about food, it's about being active, participating, living.  And food is the fuel that allows you to do other things. 

In other news, I figured out why I have been having such a hard time drinking my water over the past month.  My tumbler I was using broke, so I bought a new one:

I drink so much more water when it is in something like this.  I just have a hard time remembering and drinking my water when it is in a water bottle or a cup.  Another thing that has really been helping me lately comes out of "The Beck Diet Solution" where she says (and it's nothing new, I've heard it before, I just haven't taken it to heart until now) "Sit Down EVERY time you eat."  That means that if you are preparing food, you cannot mindlessly snack on the food you are preparing because you are standing, so it eliminates snacking while cooking.  It eliminates rummaging through the pantry or fridge and popping things into your mouth, it makes you focus and be more aware of what you are eating and actually make the decision "yes I am eating this".  It has helped me a lot to stop the mindless snacking and all the food sneaking that I was doing throughout the day previously, it is a very good habit to develop and keep for the rest of my life.  I don't really need to be standing up when I eat, it's not necessary so I think this is a very good habit to have and implement for the long term.  Right now I am on one of the highs of this roller coaster ride, and I hope that this high can last a while because goodness knows I've been in a low long enough. 

Sunday Ruminations

I know I'm supposed to weigh in today, but Matt wanted Vietnamese food yesterday and that means Pho.  I have learned not to weight myself for two days after I eat Pho because I am always up a pound and a half or so because of the high sodium content.  So I will do my official weigh in on Tuesday instead, and I will give you my Friday weight: 147

Yesterday went really well, I used exactly the number of points I was supposed to and I used all of my activity points, but then again, the first day always goes really well.  We have the missionaries coming over for dinner tonight and that means hamburgers!  We always feed the missionaries hamburgers.  They say they don't get those very often, and they are fed a lot of Mexican food and casseroles.  I bought the smaller hamburger buns that have 140 calories per bun which I figured was better than the 210 calorie buns.  There will be chips and guacamole, home made french fries and I'm making up the asparagus I found in the fridge this morning.  I had completely forgotten about the asparagus and they need to be cooked pronto!  I will probably end up going into my weekly points today but I am planning on eating as much zero point food before dinner as possible to save as many points as I can for dinner.  I'm not exercising today so I don't have that to give me more points.  Ah, yes back to tracking, no wonder why I stopped doing it.  It can get stressful.  But it keep you aware of how much you are eating and prevents me from overeating.

This morning I unintentionally reorganized the pantry.  I was looking for potatoes for tonight and after pulling everything out of the bottom of the pantry I ended up doing a complete makeover:

I didn't take a before photo because I wasn't originally planning on reorganizing the pantry

A little higher up are the nuts and all the baking and sweets are up at the very top in a box.  I tried to put the healthier stuff at eye level, but we don't have a lot of packaged snacks, so I've got the quinoa and chia seeds there and the croutons are to remind me to eat more salads.  I always forget about the raisins, and the kids love raisins.  I took out all the kitchen towels and moved them to a different location along with my mess of cookbooks.  I think I am going to get a box to put the cookbooks in and put them next to the baking box, then when it's time to menu plan and I want a cookbook I can take the box down.  That could backfire though if the box is too heavy. 

Lastly I want to try to explain a little better why I decided to go back to tracking for a while and get out of the 140s.  I still believe in everything I've been doing up to this point, the mental progress I've made, the positive thoughts about myself and my body, learning body acceptance.  My father in law was down for Halloween and said "ok, so before Thanksgiving dinner we will swim a mile together and then go eat, nap and then eat dessert!"  He has really been cheering me on with training for the Triathlon and he has really helped motivate me to continue and to do better.  I am no where near close to being able to swim a mile and I know that I need to get a little more serious about eating right and training if this is something I am actually going to do.  So I have about four weeks to get up to being able to swim a mile, meaning I will be increasing my physical activity and I know that my current weight is hindering my athletic progress.  And my mindless eating is hindering my weight loss, therefore I need to implement tracking again to make sure I am eating food that will fuel my body for training and optimize my athletic progress, and allow me to shed some more fat so I can have more energy to swim longer, bike further, and run faster.  I'm going to shoot for 135 and see where that puts me in how I feel, and how my athletic ability has improved.  If I'm happy with that, I will switch to maintenance then (note: a whole 14 pounds above my original goal weight of 121).  I just want to be healthy, and happy and right now, the tool I need to get me there is tracking.

Tired of the 140s

As I have been changing things up over the past month or so, I feel like I have become better at eating more naturally, I haven't binged which is good, but I also feel like I have been stuck here in the high 140s for a long time and I for one am sick of it.  As you know I haven't been tracking.  I really think that I have reached the limits of what tracking can teach me.  I know how many calories are in the foods I eat and how many points, I know what foods are good and what foods I should avoid it is just a matter of doing what I am supposed to be doing.  Now, while I may not learn anything new from tracking, I do think that there are still things I could benefit from tracking.  First of all I know that I have not been eating as well as I should be.  I have been snacking a lot and I have been eating a lot of extra food. I feel like I have been doing an excellent job maintaining my weight, but that can be very frustrating when you are trying to lose weight.  I'm also hovering right outside my healthy weight range which is infuriating.  And so I am going to use the I Track Bites app to help me be more aware of exactly how much I am eating.  Also when I am tracking my food I tend to snack less as I don't like going over my points/calories.  The challenge comes when being persistent.  I need to make sure that I don't deprive myself, forbid any foods, and even if I go over for the day I need to write it down and not think I have blown my whole plan and throw away the day.  Every piece of food you put in your mouth counts and the best time to start fixing overeating is right after you have done it.  Just get right back on track and don't make things worse.  That is something I really need to get good at doing.

I've also just started reading a book that I absolutely love called "The Beck Diet Solution" by Judith S. Beck.  If "how to have your cake and your skinny jeans too" is about how to eat like a thin person and "food triggers" is about finding and fixing the emotional roots to why you emotionally eat, then this book is the third piece to the picture and is all about teaching you how to think like a thin person.  How to think about food and how to think about dieting.  It is retraining your brain to think differently about food.  Some of the examples given in the very beginning I just love.  It's about talking back to your self sabotaging thoughts.  Here is a great example "When you hear that little voice in your head say 'Oh, just eat it, it won't matter.' You will be able to tell yourself 'Yes, it does matter, I want to be thin, every time I eat something I'm not supposed to, it makes it more likely that I'll give in again in the future, it matters every single time,  I'm just trying to fool myself.  If I eat it, I'll get a few seconds of pleasure but then I'll feel bad, I can resist this, I want to lose weight much more than I want a few seconds of pleasure." page 18

Source

Talking back to your self sabotaging thoughts is one of the big things she talks about, but you also learn to change your thinking from "I wish I could eat that" to "I'm sure glad I didn't eat that!"  What an amazing mental transformation!  This book doesn't teach you how to eat but how to think, and that was a big missing piece of the puzzle for me.  I'm also just tired of spending every waking moment thinking about weight loss.  I need to start thinking about other things, and only think about food at appropriate times like when I'm food planning or hungry.  I'm ready to change, and ready to progress.  If you are not happy with where you are now or what you are doing then you need to change, and change I am.