Will someone please explain to me like I'm a 6 year old...
....why I eat like I *want* to be fat?
Seriously. This sucks.
I want melty cheese and potato oles and GIRL SCOUT COOKIES. All. The. Time.
I now realize it was too soon for me to bring girl scout cookies into the house. I really believed at the time that I had been on plan long enough that I could eat two cookies as a snack (140 calories) and be satisfied.
770 calories of cookies later, I realize I can't.
I have a plan. I have benchmarks. I am going to Seattle at the end of the month and had hopes of being able to wear these cute pinstripe pants that I had ordered for myself years ago that when they came in, they were too small. I've never been able to wear them. I tried them on they're at least 15 pounds away from fitting. I don't think I can make it and it makes me sad.
I am going to Mexico in May and want to wear my cute skirts that I wore after my divorce in 2005. If I can't fit into the Seattle pants, I'm scared I won't be able to make it into my divorce skirts.
I want to go to a costume party in October dressed as an old west dance hall girl with the long skirt and bustier and look like a brick sh!t house. If I can't meet my first two benchmarks, what makes me think I can do this one?
So what do I do? Fill my pie hole with cheese pizza and turtle truffles.
Readiness means believing (mentally and emotionally) that the price of continuing with the status quo is HIGHER than the price of giving up these large amounts of comfort foods. Once you reach that stage, everything becomes much easier.
I'm 55 years old and I've yo-yoed many times in my life. This time feels different for me. I think I was truly ready when I lost 50 pounds last year. Maintaining the loss for the past few months has not been a struggle because I understand and accept the tradeoff.
Perhaps if you make a list of all the benefits of being slimmer and healthier (the longer the better) you can nudge yourself toward the readiness stage.
I feel your pain. What works for me is to make sure the temptations aren't there in the first place. Even though I'm doing well, if I had a box of Thin Mints in the house, I would sit down and eat an entire sleeve in a very weak moment (usually late at night) and hate myself the next day or two. Sugar is very addicting, as is all processed foods, and once I weaned myself off sugar, 95% of the cravings go away. It's not easy, but try to wean yourself off sugar and sugar substitutes except for Stevia, and I think you'll start to see success. good luck!
Ok... So back before civilization really took off and we had more specialized jobs and people who's lives were purposely devoted to agriculture and farming animals ...we had to hunt or forage for our own food. That was HARD *** **** and even up to around 50-60 years ago, we didn't have supermarkets with readily available, prepackaged, precooked, predigestedfortifiedfriedbaked bullshit that is now so accessible now.
So our bodies, these amazing amazing machines, adapted to best function in these dire situations of famine. Keep in mind, you may be only so many decades old but your DNA is THOUSANDS of years in the making. Again, modern civilization and conveniences did not come about until your mother or grandmothers time.
So back to our bodies... The ones who were best at storing food were also the best at knowing what was the *best* food. You know why you like fatty, sugary things? Because back when humans were smashing rocks on rocks we needed the fat and protein to develop our brains. You know why you like sugar? Because poison is usually bitter tasting. You are the result of millions of years of evolution, a perfectly complex system of organic chemistry designed to ... Well we don't really know. But what we do know is that we are good at eating.
So you may think, "Well crap... I have all of this going against me." But you would be mistaken. Our bodies are incredible and amazing (did I say amazing?) We are capable of building societies, of communicating complex ideas to other brains, of making art, building bridges, going to the moon, and breaking the physical limitations of our selves. We are all of these things and more. You think you can't lose a few pounds? Think again.
You want to know why you're eating like you want to be fat? Because you don't want to change. I know, it's rough to hear but losing weight takes a little bit of discipline and hard work and a little bit of tough love. You want to lose weight? Well, start researching what it takes. What makes it hard? What makes it easy? How does your body even work!?
Time to put down the cookies and the excuses and pull up your big girl pinstripe pants that you've been dying to fit into. I promise you, there isn't a single piece of food out there that is going to bring you more or lasting satisfaction than being healthy brings. Today, make goals. You want to lose 15 pounds? Well that means you need to start. And it also means that you need to stop punishing yourself when you don't meet you timebound goals.
You can do this. Time to have an up day and be awesome.
I don't know what potato oles are, but I would suggest if you feel helpless in the face of carbs, you consider reading The Paleo Solution or The Primal Blueprint or even Wheat Belly. People often talk about sugar addiction, and it's certainly valid, but giving up grains altogether (all of them, even the 'whole' ones) has cured me of sugar cravings better than giving up sugar ever did.
I can actually eat one portion of dark chocolate now and not go off the rails with the entire bag. That is a bona fide miracle.
Of course we can all only speak from our own experience, and you have to find what works best for you. But if you really feel powerless against carbs, paleo/primal might be the right plan for you. I know it's helped me feel a lot more in control of my weight loss, and I'm losing faster than I ever have before as well.
PS: I love that you have names for your goal clothes. I do the same thing! Right now my 'Paris cafe' skirt is hanging on my bedroom door, waiting for my ample rear to shrink enough to fit in it again. The New York City dress is hanging on my office door. (I often describe my house as a thrift store showroom these days.)
I had an off night and ate a half box of special k crackers!! For me though I can't even have sweets in the house anymore because I just can't resist. Maybe donate the rest of the cookies and go to the gym or workout today, that always makes me feel better. I hope you have an up day too!!
FIRST... have you been checked for insulin resistance?
I know I'm IR and I have some of that type stuff and BAM! Sets off a blood sugar roller coaster that I have a hard time bouncing back from.
It may be a real medical issue hiding under there causing this.
SECOND... stop adding all this extra pressure on yourself about clothes! You are going to lose at the speed your body can heal itself. No faster. There's body biochemistry stuff going in there!
It is NOT going to be at the speed you decide in your mind. You don't fuss at your arm when you cut yourself with "Heal faster! I need to wear party clothes by X!"
Make peace with that, keep working on the fitness thing, and enjoy yourself at the party even if you have to wear something else. Nobody is saying you will NEVER wear the pinstripe pants or the divorce skirt. You will get there when your body is ready to go there!
Try to treat yourself a bit more kindly rather than piling on extra stress you don't need though.
Weight loss is challenge enough without adding extra emotional burden.
Thanks you guys. I've already lost 50 pounds. I can see and feel the difference. So many people remark on how I'm looking great. I feel great. I've been doing this for six months, which is far longer than I've ever been able to keep on plan.
I know that there will be road bumps. I guess I'm just at one.
Get ride of those cookies! If they are throwing you off, they do not need to be in your house! (and that applies to anything) You might feel bad about throwing away perfectly good food, but you worth the couple of bucks? Also, it would be great to meet you mini goals on time, and I certainly hope you do, but the important thing is that you are heading in the right direction so that one day you can wear the pants and then the skirt, even if it is after Seattle or Mexico (it doesn't mean you have failed or done poorly if you miss these deadlines as long as you get there eventually).
And I defiantly agree with Thistoo, that its import to experiment a little and fine out what works for YOU.
Get rid of those cookies! If they are throwing you off, they do not need to be in your house!
YES!! Get rid of them. I can PM you my address and you can just send them to me. I'll take one for the team.
Seriously, if you can't regulate your intake of them, you need to get rid of them. You've lost 50 pounds. You know what you need to do to lose the rest. Why do you want to sabotage your progress? I understand people get worn out with "dieting". That's ok, have your treats, then get back on plan. Failure isn't falling down, it's not getting back up. Get back up.
If you've already lost 50 pounds, you know how to lose weight. Eat less/move more. And while I agree that food additions (particularly sugar in my case) are a real issue and hard to deal with, I think the mental part of weight loss is the hardest piece to work through.
When I quit smoking, I was over the physical addition within a couple of weeks. The mental addition (or the Habit) took almost a year. And I was a smoker for only 17 years. How long have you been eating? How early were your current eating habits established? For some of us, since infancy. That can be quite a big Habit to break. With quitting smoking, I can completely abstain. We can't abstain from eating.
However...the Habit can be changed. It takes awareness, dedication, commitment, and perseverance. Notice I didn't say willpower. Set your environment up to succeed (get rid of the GS cookies!!!). Prepare food ahead of time if it helps to have ready to eat food. Put reminders around your house...be it the Mexico skirt hanging on the outside of your fridge or notes stuck to your mirror...whatever will help you remember why you're doing this. (BTW, I don't recommend set dates of events as goals. Rarely are they met. I agree with Astrophe...your body will decide the timeline.) Eat the same thing everyday for breakfast & lunch. Literally schedule time for exercise. Figure out what methods will best help you.
Then, when you've done all that, and TTOM rolls around and you just can't stay away from the chocolate (hem hem...speaking from experience here!), it's ok. I believe it's not the plan that makes you succeed, its how you handle the deviations from that plan. And there WILL be deviations.
No cookies will yield a pay off somewhere down the line, but certainly not in the moment.
It's way easier to take an action that yields results now (I want cookie, I have cookie) than to resists something you want right now for a payoff you won't feel for a while (I want cookie, I won't have cookie - I'll just miserably think about the cookie till something else gets my attention - and then one day far off in the future if I resist that cookie and a million others, I will see results).
The book "Then End of Overeating," and many of the anti-grain and paleo books, helped me realize that my lack of control with carbohydrates had nothing to do with my being lazy, crazy, or stupid - and everything to do with evolution.
Our bodies are built to protect us from starvation. They aren't built to prevent us from obesity, because in a "natural world" overpopulation occurs before widespread obesity. In a natural world, food (especially carbohydrates like starch and sugar) is in scarce supply and there's a lot of competition for it (you'ld rarely get to eat very ripe fruit in a natural world, because the fruit would only be in season for a short time, and there'd be a lot of competition for it. All the fruit-loving critters would get to it as soon as it was sweet enough to eat, and it would be gone before it got to a very sweet stage - if it ever did. Most of the fruit we eat today has been bred to be much higher in sugar and lower in fiber).
Because high-calorie carbs are so rare in a natural world, we have an instinctive drive to eat as much as wel can (because our "natural" bodies tell us these foods will prevent starvation. They're so "rare" in a natural world that "eat as much as you can, while you can" has survival value - but we're not in a natural world. But our bodies don't "know" that).
When I get rid of most of the sugars and starches, my hunger disappears and it's much easier to lose weight. When I eat these kinds of carbs, I get hungrier and hungrier.
"Outsmarting" the primitive brain (the instinctive part) isn't complicated but it is difficult in a culture that fills our foods with sugars.
The very instinct that would keep us alive in a natural world, is killing us in the world we've created.
Lots of good advice here, but I also wanted to add, it sounds like your benchmarks could be hindering you instead of motivating you. Last year, I had a mini-goal that I wanted to hit before a big vacation we took in May, at times I wasn't sure I'd make it, but it never made me sad, as you described. I just became more determined and I accepted that I might not make it, but I was just happy to be on track.
I had another vacation two months later, so another mini-goal - again, I worked towards the goal, but I knew that if I didn't hit it, I'd be happy just to stay on track and know that I did my best.
I have 20 lbs left and they are slooooooow. Not because my plan isn't working, but because I'm finding it harder to stay on track. I am taking another huge vacation this May and I had all these "goals" set up, but I realized that they were causing me more stress than motivation. Every time I would slip up, I would start berating myself because I wouldn't "hit my goal" - berating myself made the slip-ups worse.
So, I made a new goal - work out at least 5 days per week - contain the small binges - weigh-in once a week - stay accountable - no excuses. Since I stopped beating myself up for the slip-ups, I have to say, I am doing much better. I have $500 in gift cards for Macy's that I am saving so I could buy a bunch of new clothes for my Mediterranean vacation - didn't want to use them until I'd dropped that last 20...but I'm not gonna beat myself up if I don't get there. Macy's will be around when I do make it.
You've come a long way - stop letting goals become obesessions, because obsessions are never healthy. Do your best, stay on track and when you all off track, try to figure out why and move on!!
Will someone please explain to me like I'm a 6 year old...
You know what you need to do to lose the rest. Why do you want to sabotage your progress? I understand people get worn out with "dieting". That's ok, have your treats, then get back on plan. Failure isn't falling down, it's not getting back up. Get back up.
