OMG... so yesterday was really off plan. I've struggled with staying OP since the holidays as well.
Last night I had a dream that I was weighing myself and it registered a 42lb gain. The scale said 197. It scared me so much, and the fact that I was so scared bothered me. I was almost in tears by the time I woke up and had to talk myself into believing there was no way I gained 42lbs overnight.
Am I losing my mind?! LOL I know realistically that I am not going to put on another 42lbs. I know that I have days where I struggle and slip up, but that's not going to totally undo all of my hard work. So why, OH WHY is this dream messing with my head so much? It was so realistic too. Ugh!!!!!!
Those little worries build up in the mind and come out in dreams. When I had super long hair I would dream about waking up and it being all cut off. When I had short hair I dreamed it was long again. I have often dreamed that I was thin again and so glad I had lost the weight, but could not remember when or how I lost it. I would look in the mirror and admire my thin body, only to find out it was someone else in the mirror!
I also had the dreams about having my long hair back when I cut it short, and for weeks after finals were over last year I had nightmares that I'd show up after the final was over, or that I hadn't gone to class once before the final, or that I hadn't studied ever, or that I just failed. I would constantly wake up in a cold sweat with a pounding heart. It's not hard to imagine that the same exact thing will happen if I can ever peel these awful pounds away.
I would say it's pretty normal. You're not losing your mind (at least not over this. )
Before my wedding, I had the weirdest dreams ever. In one of them, I happened to be getting married in front of a trailer (classy, right?) and was looking at all the pics afterwards and found that I was pretty close to being as big as the trailer. Yep, gained several hundred pounds before my wedding.
Woke up with the strangest feelings about my body.
I now fairly regularly dream that I'm pretty slim. It's a nice refresher that my subconscious is giving me rather than my waking consciousness being so down on my weight.
You're doing great. All you can do is laugh at your dreams. ... and I'm sure there's a few people out there that may even have some insight as to whether there could be a meaning behind it -- if you're interested.
Weight-gain dreams and body-conscious dreams are totally normal for people who are focusing on that subject. I've had a couple myself, and they are horrifying at the time--but kind of awesome too, because when I wake up I realize that I am still on track.
As a former heavy smoker, I also sometimes have smoking dreams, and even in the dreams I have this shrieking, gibbering voice yelling, "What are you doing, what are you doing, you're going to ruin everything, put that thing down!" I wake up crying a couple of times from those too.
One of these nights I'm going to combine the two and dream of stuffing cheeseburgers in my face and following them up with double-fisted Marlboros and wake up screaming out loud. The awesome thing about nightmares, though, is that we get to wake up from them.
i had one last night, too! i saw myself in the mirror and i looked the way i used to. and my friend was saying to me, that's great that you are down to 163 pounds, and i kept thinking, but i'm really 147! but when i saw myself, i was so wide, like i was in a funhouse mirror. i was thinking, but i KNOW i lost weight, didn't i?
in another part of my dream i was on a space shuttle.
I keep dreaming about binge -eating and then wake up almost in tears until I realize that I am still on plan -it's such a feeling of relief that I use the memory from time to time when I feel weak - it's a positive way to make good use of a bad experience!
I always have those dreams before something major like my wedding, the birth of my children, starting my new job, taking a vacation. I also have them about my husband cheating on my and they seem so real that I may be crying when I wake up and I punch him in his sleep...poor husband! I realize what I did and then quickly apologize or sometimes I'm still angry and I just roll over and go back to sleep and then apologize in the morning for him I go out with my friends and students (I teach adults from around the world English) ALL the time! So I have no idea why I do that to him! But it's really funny later
I'd say that is really normal. My subconscious likes to play out scenarios on both sides of reality - good and bad. So I may have a dream about being thin, and the next night I'm dreaming about being insecure and fat. It's all very normal and I agree it can leave me more unsettled than refreshed, at times!
Dreams have a tendency to bring out our inner worries and fears sometimes. When you go quite a distance in a goal, you worry about losing your footing.
I always try and remember this, I won't be going back, I put too much hard work to let myself go back. I think, that you probably feel the same, and would be able to catch and stop yourself long before something like a 47 pound gain could even remotely happen.
Weight gain NIGHTMARES!!
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