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Old 08-24-2011, 07:17 PM   #1  
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Angry Will the battle ever end?

Hi everybody! 1st time posting Loooooooooooooooong time lurker. You guys have been a great resource for keeping myself on track.

I have been dieting for the last 5 months and have lost 32lbs (so gotta get one of those ticker things) and as I start to near goal- another 10-15 lbs- I am getting absolutely terrified.

I am terrified that this is going to be an onging battle EVERYDAY for the rest of my life. At this point I am practically obsessed with calories and pounds. From Morning till I close my eyes it is on my mind-

Will there never be a day when I can eat like a "normal" person without beating myself up? Or is being skinny worth the torture?
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Old 08-24-2011, 07:53 PM   #2  
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Welcome out of lurk mode! Oh, I think some day we'll be able to think about it less. It will take a considerable amount of time, first.

I know how you feel. It seems like as soon as I'm done dieting, and keeping track of everything, then I go right back to gaining again. The cycle. And I do the healthy way too!

I'd like to be "normal"..... but do you think all of these "normal" skinny people are tracking too? They probably are.
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Old 08-24-2011, 08:04 PM   #3  
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I don't know how you're dieting, but maybe there are ways you can tweak your plan so its less of a battle. For example (if you're calorie counting) I eat 1900 calories a day (to lose 1.5lb a week) instead of 1600 a day (to lose 2lb) a week because those 300 calories make a HUGE difference in how well and easily I stay on plan.

I would also say that I'm aware with calories and I think that's fine and even healthy. So maybe you just have to hop back over the mental line from obsessed to aware.
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Old 08-24-2011, 08:31 PM   #4  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by akazee View Post
I am terrified that this is going to be an onging battle EVERYDAY for the rest of my life...

Will there never be a day when I can eat like a "normal" person without beating myself up? Or is being skinny worth the torture?

Personally, I don't think that being skinny (or anything else) is worth torturing myself over, and yet I also believe that yes, it is going to be an ongoing battle EVERYDAY for the rest of my life...


I can choose to buck up and be a soldier in this war, or I can be a victim, lying dead on the battlefield. I don't have to hate my job, but I don't have to torture myself over it either.


Compared to 30 years of failed diet attempts, the last 5 have yielded unprecedented (even if much slower) success. All because I realized that I had to do "this" every day, but I didn't have to torture myself doing it.


Weight maintenance is a "job" and there is no retirement benefit. If you give up the job, you give up the results.

I will never be able to eat like a normal person, without becoming a normal person (and since 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese, for most of us that means, being normal means being fat).

If I don't want normal (fat) results, I can't accept normal (fat-inducing) behavior.

I don't have to torture myself or beat myself up or say even one unkind thing to myself (not even when I make mistakes), I just have to live for the life I want.

My dentist has a sign that says "you don't have to brush and floss all of your teeth - just the ones you want to keep."


If I want to keep my teeth, I have to take care of them, every day. If I miss a day, I don't have to beat myself up or hate myself, I just have to get back to brushing the ones I want to keep (all of them).

If I want to keep losing, and when I'm at goal if I want to keep a healthy weight, I'm going to have to keep maintaining it - whatever that entails.

I don't need to be obsessed. I don't need to think of calories/food/dieting/weight loss/maintenance every moment, but I do have to think of it every time I choose to put food in my mouth. Every choice has to be a conscious one, but it doesn't have to be a miserable or torturous one.

I can even choose to make this a job I enjoy. It doesn't have to be miserable, I may not be able to choose "normal" but I can choose something better.

You can choose to be normal, or you can choose to be extraordinary. Extraordinary is better, but it does require some sacrifices and trade offs.

Last edited by kaplods; 08-24-2011 at 08:32 PM.
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Old 08-24-2011, 09:15 PM   #5  
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kaplods, right on!!! I could not have written a better and more inpiring post ever. Your words ring so true.

This is going to be a forever deal, but we can certainly make it as enjoyable as we can. And look at what we get when we reach the finish line (goal weight): A healthy body to be proud of! So, for me, I chose to keep that healthy body by watching my caloric intake and getting in at least 3-4 days of exercise a week...forever! Much like your dentist's sign, which cracked me up.

Like the saying goes: If you don't use it, you lose it.

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Old 08-24-2011, 09:53 PM   #6  
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I guess the sooner I accept it the sooner I can get on with it. THanks for the encouragement! It's just what I needed to heard. Hope I won't need to be reminded every couple of months on the maintenance boards, LOL. Something to look forward to!
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Old 08-25-2011, 10:30 PM   #7  
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Originally Posted by akazee View Post
I guess the sooner I accept it the sooner I can get on with it. THanks for the encouragement! It's just what I needed to heard. Hope I won't need to be reminded every couple of months on the maintenance boards, LOL. Something to look forward to!

You may need to be reminded - and that's ok too.

It's really hard to not need the reminding, because our culture (especially when it comes to social pressure, and images in the media).

We're constantly bombarded with messages and enticements to live and eat the way "everyone else does," and/or to feel bad about it if we don't.

We go to lunch with friends, family, or coworkers and they make sad, sympathetic faces if they notice that our choices are health conscious. They may even try to persuade us to indulge, telling us that we need to enjoy ourselves and it won't hurt, "just this once" (but it never is just once, is it?)

We're taught to diet in ineffective ways, because "everyone does it," and when "everyone does it," it becomes really hard to convince people (even and sometimes especially ourselves) that the odd way isn't the wrong way.

When everyone else seems to be going in the other direction, it's really hard to stay on our path without thinking we should be (or deserve to be) going along with everyone else.

That's why I think weight loss and weight maintenance support groups are so important, because peer pressure is an incredible force, and the best way to counteract negative peer pressure, is with positive peer pressure.

Most of the time we don't even realize the pressure is there. People usually aren't trying to bully us into being normal (though a few may try), and most try to be supportive, but there's always that knowledge that you're "not like normal people."

Coming here makes us realize that we may not be normal, but we're something better - we're making choices that should be the norm. Maybe (hopefully) one day, we will be recognized as the visionaries and trend-setters. Well, we personally probably won't be recognizsed, but I still very much hope that we're just "ahead of our times," that one day everyone will be conscious of their diet - not just for weight and vanity's sake, but for overall health and well-being.

In some ways, I feel sorry for the folks who don't watch what they eat, because they don't think they have to. We tend to think of those folks as lucky, but many of them are going to die young, from lifestyle diseases we think of as being associated with obesity. Thin folks who eat crap get high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other lifestyle issues, and yet even their doctors may not think to warn them of the risks because they "look healthy."

Even before I had health problems, my doctor warned me that I was at risk for them. If I had looked fit and healthy, I wouldn't have gotten those warnings (or may not have listened to them, because I looked and felt all right).

Change has been hard, even though I listened and took the risks seriously. I wonder how much harder it would have been to change, if I didn't look like I needed to, or if I hadn't had the health problems that made it a life or death choice.

And STILL I have to remind myself of it constantly, or I get swept up into "normal," and normal for me is deadly. "Normal" is my kryptonite.

Normal probably will always be my auto-pilot. I think we're genetically programmed for it, and when we're stressed, "blending in" seems even more important (because genetically that's usually the "safest" thing to do - when in doubt, follow the crowd).

If I stop coming here, stop attending my TOPS group, and stop talking and interacting with other people who are trying to make healthy changes normal, I will drift back into whatever is normal for the group I'm hanging with. For weight loss and health to be my normal, I need to hang out with people for whom it's normal too. It's why I'm so obsessed with this place, because when I'm out in the "real world" I start feeling the pull toward "their" normal.

I want our normal to become THE normal, but that probably won't happen in our lifetime, so spending time here and with other like-minded people is the only way to remind myself that this is the normal I want.

Last edited by kaplods; 08-25-2011 at 10:40 PM.
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Old 08-25-2011, 10:52 PM   #8  
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At your height, anything under 150lbs is in the healthy range. Judging by your start weight (187) and what you said you lost, I'm guessing you're there. So maybe, right now, it's not worth your sanity to keep going. A lot of people are happy and sexy at that weight, maybe you should sit with it a while and find out if your nerves calm down. Then, when you've given yourself a breather, if you decide you want to go on, you can.

If you do this, just keep in mind that you'll have to make some effort to maintain. This may mean counting calories at maintenance level for a while.

I would highly recommend not letting yourself get burned out, because I did this last time after losing 120lbs, and gained 100 of it back. So be aware of how important your mental wellbeing is in this scenario, and do what you need to to take care of it.
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