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Originally Posted by SophieCormier
Kaplods... I think I love you! LOL! Thank you so much for all that!
I tried the Simple Diet during summer but with all the partying I was doing, I couldn't stick with it. Now that it's winter though, I could have another go. I was REALLY simple diet. My favorite diets were that one & the 17 Day Diet. I think I'm going to do that! I'm going to write it all down like you suggested and make it official. My three diets are going to be: Simple Diet, 17DD & counting calories.
I think this'll be good for me though since I can usually only follow a diet for a couple of days. Maybe this'll work best for me  |
LOL! Thanks, glad it helped. It took me more than three decades (almost four) to understand that I didn't have to let my inability to stick to a single plan hold me back. For more years than I'd like to recall, I followed a ritualistic tradition that I didn't even know had become ingrained. I just followed the pattern I'd seen set for me by almost everyone I ever knew who struggled with a weight issue:
When I realized a diet plan wasn't working for me, for whatever reason (whether I stopped losing the weight, couldn't stick to it, got bored with it, hated it, or whatever), I would take a "break" from the dieting while I looked for another plan. Inevitably I would gain most, all, or more weight back while I took this break.
And even if I didn't abandon the diet, I had other "rituals" that were counterproductive. Even if I was firmly committed to, and in love with a particular plan, and had no intention of abandoning it, if I had so much as an off-plan bite, I would binge for the rest of the day (after all I'd "blown it") and would start fresh the next day (or if it was midweek or later the next Monday, or it was at the end of the month, the beginning of the next Month).
When I came here, I realized that I wasn't alone in my weird, counterproductive weight loss rituals. Our culture really has ingrained these rituals in us. There are millions of people, even those who don't have weight or eating issues any other time of the year will start bingeing around Thanksgiving (if not Halloween) and won't stop until January 1. Then they all join the gym and go religiously until Valentine's Day....
We're not "stupid" we're just social animals, and if enough of us get together and do the same stupid thing, we pass it along to the next generation of people who will follow the same stupid patterns.
I once made nurses and doctors in a hospital quite aggravated with me when I was teaching recreational therapy classes in a psych ward and substance abuse ward, and in discussing "peer pressure" I mentioned a study I had read in college that showed that there was often no "pressure" involved at all - just an example to follow.
In the experiment, the researchers had a group of people stand in an elevator facing the rear (even though it's customary to face the door). If the majority of the group faced the back of the elevator, so did every new person who got on the elevator (they might have looks of confusion on their face, but they followed the example of what was set - often even if there was only one person in the elevator facing the back wall, virtuallyl everyone who got on after that person also faced the back).
Well a group of the guys on the substance abuse ward decided to try this little experiment on their own when they went down to the cafeteria, and they were all excited to tell me the next day that "it worked" just as I had predicted. They were especially excited that not just visitors, but Doctors and Nurses had done exactly as I said - faced the back of the elevator along with them.
Now the doctors and nurses weren't happy that they were manipulated by the patients, and I think the only thing that saved me from a formal reprimand was quick thinking (and a big mouth) when I said "Hey, this is what we WANT them to learn - that peer pressure is most difficult to avoid when you don't see or feel the pressure, you just follow the example you see in front of you, because 'everyone else is doing it.'"
Most of the time you don't even realize everyone else is doing it.
Even so I had to promise not to give any of the patients any more ideas like this without talking to staff first, which I thought was silly. I didn't know that the patients were going to try the experiment, but even if I did - informing the doctors and nurses of it, would have ruined it for the patients. Either the doctors and nurses wouldn't have played along, and would have faced the front of the elevator, or they would have faced the back, but their facial expression likely would have given away the fact that they were in on the experiment - either of which wouldn't have brung home the message to the patients.
What's funny is that I've known all of these things for a very long time, but I still had (and continue to have) trouble putting them into practice - because knowing better doesn't always translate into doing better when the behaviors are so ingrained that they've almost become instinctive.
Try not to be too hard on yourself when you struggle to do a "simple" task, because sometimes the simplest are the most difficult to control. There are just so many of our behaviors that are subject to autopilot.
Don't let the "tradition" of giving up after small mistakes get in the way of your success. The American "tradition" is to fail at weight loss, so you can't do what you've always done, because it's likely what everyone else has always done, and they've done it badly because that's been the example that's been set.
If we did mountain climbing like we do weight loss, no one would survive it, because after every stumble, you'd have to throw yourself over the nearest cliff face so that you could "start fresh" from the bottom.
I can't tell you how difficult it has been to prevent myself (even now) from throwing myself off that cliff face, just because on a gut level I still feel it's the "right" thing to do. I KNOW I'm not lazy, crazy, or stupid - and yet I feel that way (and that feeling is the "traditional" trigger to the ritual of the pre-re-committment binge).
It's as if I have a permanent recording in my brain that says "you ate a single bite off-plan, well now you've blown it. You're a worthless pig. You have no self-control. You're never going to get this weight off, so you might as well not even try. And if you're never going to be thin, at least you might as well get to eat whatever you want.
Of course by morning, or by Monday, or by the first of the month, or the first of the year, the rational Colleen is back who says "give it one more go. Start over, start fresh, and really buckle down this time."
But even these thoughts are counterproductive because they all assume perfection is part of the game. Because as soon as we make the next small misstep, we throw ourselves over the cliff again.
It's all about relearning what we've NEVER been taught and UNLEARNING what we don't even realize we's been taught.
Is it any wonder that permanent weight loss (especially the more weight is involved) has such a high failure rate? We're TAUGHT to fail by all the weight loss superstitions, traditions, and rituals we've developed.
The Healthy Way Diet
