I should have read this book years ago! And as usual: great work summarizing the chapter, Meg!
I’m still trying to find my way through losing weight for good, but I definitely do things differently this time. Before I started losing weight I knew I had to find a way to lose the weight slowly, so I needed to eat in a way I could keep up for a long time.
I had been keeping food journals before, but this time I calculated calories too (and was shocked to see that on my earlier “good days” I ate around 2000-2200! No wonder I didn’t lose any weight!). So the first step was to figure out how I could eat well and keep within 1500 calories a day – it’s an ongoing process to figure out what I need to cut out, what to reduce, and what to keep in. For instance: I did cut sugar and raisins from my morning oatmeal – and left the cinnamon, banana, and milk – and I still have days I miss the raisins. These days I’m maintaining at 1800-1900 calories and can eat the damn raisins if I want to – but I didn’t want to spend calories on them while losing weight.
I do have numerous emotional issues around having been fat most of my life, and I also have had some really bad experiences - being out of control - when I lost a lot of weight, so I knew I needed to lose weight in stages. And to spend time getting used to my body at each stage. I did feel thin at this weight when I reached it last summer, but after 5 months I feel fat, normal, and like myself again. I’m also slowly getting to a point where I want to lose more weight.
As for “Thin for life”, I think chapter 3 is one of my favorites – and I love Fletcher’s emphasis on finding our own way, finding out what works for us, and use our past history as very useful information to base our choices on. Probably because that’s what I did this time – and it worked for me.
And do I feel like I can live this way for the rest of my life?
When I started out I thought that I could use maintenance as a measure of my goal weight – when maintaining at a weight becomes too hard: it means I’m too thin. Find the weight where maintenance is easy!
But I’m not sure maintenance is ever easy: I have been struggling with it anyway – on some days I really don’t like the idea of living (and eating) with the limitations (yeah, I know: grow up!
) – on other days I’m OK living like this for the rest of my life. So yes - ongoing process I suppose.