Greetings from Northwest Arkansas! Which I promise will turn out more exciting than it sounds.
On road trips, I love packing a lunch and eating it in a rest area. It's such a great way to start an adventure. I can't believe I wasted so many on-the-road lunches in boring McDonald's. I followed DH's lead and ate about half at our lunch stop and the other half at the next rest area, 127 miles down the road. So I got that adventurous pleasure twice! Credit for making it a priority to pack that lunch.
Today's plan: eat lightly and walk lots
HaleyJu: I find it useful to have some sort of plan, even when I have little control. For family potlucks, my plan is usually "focus on veggies, tiny portions of anything else I want to taste."
BillBlueEyes: I'd go on the Spice Diet. I'd also enjoy the distraction of all the exotic places the spices come from.
Today my decluttering tasks and my foodplan veer into one head-on Beck suggested task: Clean up your environment.
Today, this means: clean out the pantry and the cupboards and the freezer
Specifically:
1) box up food that is unopened for a foodbank donation done
2) toss out the rest and done. "Food" here means anything I would not serve DH.
Right now it is easier for me to make a foodplan and to clean up my kitchen based on the needs of my DH than on my own. I feel defeated. I feel stuck and uninspired. In unenlightened moments I see him as a dieting success and a genius and me as a dieting failure. He "simply gets it" and I am some kind of idiot. I'm just being honest here. And when I get over myself cause it's so counter-productive to stay in the woe is me pot I can use DH as an example to follow. When I put myself aside, I see him progressing and I think "swallow your pride and do what he does, he's doing something right". Maybe the brain (my brain) gets changed by decades of futzing around with food/foodplans/rules of eating/years of oaths sworn to stay away from food X. Maybe I really can't see the forest for the trees. I just see DH's butt and gut getting smaller and he is getting younger right in front of my eyes. It's inpsiring and I want that too. Even more so as a Big Birthday is breathing down my neck. Not this year but next year. I sure would like to meet that day 50+ lbs lighter.
All these thoughts have been swirling in my head for a few days. It all got clearer yesterday. When we were coming back from being out, I noticed that DH is now even smaller. The jacket he had to pull over his gut last year now hangs loose all over. His pants really need to be replaced. They are that loose. He had to buy a belt and easily found one. He is a tall man-6'4", and his excess weight made him look shorter. He's back to looking long again. He still eschews all white carbs 95% of the time, including fruit (but he wasn't a big fruit eater ever). He still cuts up veggies and makes sure there is some kind of (uninspiring) salad to go with dinner. Still walking 3-5x a week over lunch.
*credit* for posting here
*credit* for maintaining my weight at 252 +/-
*credit* for planning my day today
*credit* for the willingness to make a plan today
BTW that's Key West in my avatar. I wish I was there. Bye.
update: I am now free of all food DH no longer eats. I alos have a big box full of food to donate to the foodbank which is a good thing. Will drop it off tomorrow. I must say, doing this has already simplified my food choices. Interesting. Bye again.
Hi beckies... I have had five healthy days... very grateful. I've been doing my journalling of daily tasks, planning/measuring/logging food, exercise, trying to eat slower/mindfully, trying to remember to taste the food, reading arc/rc/beck the past two days, and rewriting resistence techniques as reinforcement. I do have it all memorized.... just need to always find the willingness.
I learned is takes alot of time and energy to not eat. Not fair... oh, well.
The next few days I won't have internet access unless I go to the library. My computer is at Best Buy getting fixed.
I got some things to put in the goodie bags for the neighborhood kids on Halloween.... stickers, Halloween pencils, temp tatoos, spider rings, etc. I might get some candy I don't like (Nerds) to put in their bags. DH thinks it's against the law to give anything but candy.
However, ever since I went to see the registered dietician.... he has not brought any candy into the house. Hmmm. Maybe it was a 'wake up call' to how I need to get this figured out. At least for now.
Have a great week. Treat yourself as kindly as you would a good friend.
Running a little late with today's tip. Sorry about that.............
Quote:
October 22, 2012 - Monday Motivation
If you think, “Everyone else gets to eat normally, why can’t I?” Remind yourself that you ARE eating normally for someone trying to lose weight (or keep it off)! It’s important to change your definition of ‘normal’ eating and remember that your eating is 100% normal for someone with your goals.
Random thought.......... Whoever started packaging baby carrots is my hero. I'm not sure I would make it through the snacking times of the day without them. Thank heavens for that crunch and the slightly sweet taste.
Thank you to all who contributed ideas of how to deal with ice cream. I had the presence of mind to keep a list of all of your suggestions...I now have a nice list of options to think about and choose between. I actually haven't been tempted for several nights. Of course, yesterday I was at an (extended) family function, and boy were there food pushers! I left with "only" two care packages--I was able to dispose of most of the dessert after nibbling on it part of the way home. This morning I made a plan for the day--good idea, huh?
Diet Coaches/Buddies - Snacks, at last, were on plan as well as meals, CREDIT moi. I stared down an urge to go grab a bowl of something to snack on in the afternoon.
Exercise was gym, CREDIT moi, then a session of helping plant some trees at a volunteer site. Digging holes and hauling five gallon buckets of dirt works the muscles. I learned that when you plant a tree, you add some Mycorrhizal fungi to give the roots a head start. Apparently everybody else knows this since you can buy it on Amazon as well as from any tree nursery. Yay for Mycorrhizal fungi in a silent symbiotic relationship with tree roots to make nature work. They do send up mushrooms now and then to spread themselves, otherwise we'd never know they existed.
onebyone – The male body has such an exasperating ease at shedding weight and adding muscle. I've experienced it when I'm on track - much to the dismay of female friends. Kudos for seeing that you could clear your house of food that's off your's and your DH's plans. Your avatar reminds me that I want to visit Key West.
Joy (gardenerjoy) – Love the vacation plan: "Today's plan: eat lightly and walk lots." Are you in the vicinity of the famous Arkansas Art Trail?
Debbie (Lexxiss) – Yay for cod - even if fried - since I presume you get it in Colorado from our local Atlantic fishermen who need the business. Kudos for keeping your sampling of readily available food at work to such a minimum over the past year.
Nature Girl – Extended family functions have all the clues to eat for emotional and comfort reasons. Not to mention expectations. Kudos for surviving and getting rid of some of the forced take away.
Beverlyjoy – Your DH is right! It is against the law to give out anything but candy on Halloween. At least, according to my grown children who were mortified to learn that I'd given out little boxes of raisins one year. Kudos for those five days in a row - beginning to look like a way of life.
HaleyJu - I second your nomination as hero for packaging baby carrots. They save me when I'm driving and need to replace the cookies I traditionally ate by the bag.
Readers -
Quote:
chapter 8Stage 5The Motivation-for-Life Plan
Daily Motivation Plan
at the end of a day
Take a moment when you're feeling relaxed and calm to think about your day and then do the following: . . .Add to your Memory Box. Mentally review your day. Did you have any meaningful weight-loss or maintenance experiences? For example, Margaret wrote each of the following on a separate card:
I walked up the long flight of stairs at the library without feeling winded.
The nurse said my blood pressure is lower.
My jeans are too big to wear.
My neighbor says I'm shrinking.
Continue to add to your Memory Box for the rest of your life.
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), pg 191.
We're traveling after I return from work...GWS Hot Springs, yay! I've weighed today and have a plan for work. Yesterday I did well at work resisting two very tempting offerings (usually I'm not offered anymore). credit. When my co-worker said "just one piece won't hurt", I just said it probably wouldn't BUT that often one leads to more. It's about resistance, I said. She then said maybe she should start resisting.
BBE, I did not know about the fungi and transplanting of trees. thx. Yay for resistance w/snacks! (now I was thinkin' the Cod was Pacific...caught by my Alaskan fishermen friends...will check)
onebyone, I was thinking the same as BBE...guys drop much easier than gals but I agree w/you that purging things DH can't eat WILL help you too! Great job in the pantry!
Am 3rd day OP! Credit there. However, I do have a request for information about stopping late night snacking. I always count the calories and take it out of my snack budget but I am aware it is a habit I'd be much better off without. These days I mostly limit what I have, say one bag of lo-fat crisps instead of 3 regular ones, but I would feel much freer if I didn't do it at all.
Has anyone else overcome this problem?
Meanwhile,
Gardenerjoy--hope you're loving Arkansas! I haven't been there for nearly 25 years. My grandparents lived in Jonesboro, and my dad was a rice farmer there before he and my mom moved to California (where I was born). Always thought the people in Arkansas were so lovely.
Lexxiss-- some parts of the day my resistance muscle is well-developed, and others it is weak and pathetic. I'll keep on working it! I think you may have inspired your co-worker!
Credit for eating breakfast in the hotel room with food from home. Credit for splitting a box lunch with DH. Credit for an afternoon snack in the room which included a salad (veggies were not included in the box lunch).
Credit for reasonable choices at a fancy restaurant for dinner, stretching the bounds a bit because of the rare nature of fancy restaurants. I started with a good greens salad. My entree was Wild Scottish Salmon arranged in a stack -- roast fingerling potatoes on the bottom, a cooked cabbage mix in the center layer, and the salmon on top encrusted with pecans. The whole thing was held together with a toothpick sandwiched between two potato chips with a cilantro leaf embedded between. And a cilantro sauce decorating the plate. I left a lot of the potatoes, some of the salmon and sauce, and only ate the part of the potato chip that had the cilantro leaf in it. I also followed the rule "wine or dessert, not both." I chose dessert, DH chose wine, so we both got tastes of each.
Credit for two hours of walking.
Our adventure yesterday was the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It hasn't even been open a year yet. The building, really a complex, was designed by architect Moshe Safdie (we went to Kansas City last year to see his Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts). Crystal Bridges is amazing -- built over and around ponds formed from a creek in an Ozark ravine -- suggestions of overturned boats or turtle shells -- glass and steel and concrete and wood. Even the photos don't do it justice so I don't stand a chance in words.
The grounds are as wonderful as the building, which is how we ended up walking for two hours. No penguins, BillBlueEyes, but we did see a black squirrel -- only because a native pointed it out to us, saying we had walked all the way back into the woods we might as well see the rare creature that lives here.
BillBlueEyes: I didn't know about the Arkansas Art Trail, but, yes, that's the area and some of those sites, like Crystal Bridges, are on my list. I may have to add some more...
TeachMe: I was surprised to be greeted verbally by everyone on the trails around Crystal Bridges -- including by the people who were dressed for exercise and probably locals while we were dressed as tourists. Very friendly here! It was pleasant.
I really need these daily tips and Bill's book excerpts. It's helps to keep my mind right
Quote:
October 23, 2012 - Tuesday Reality Check
In dieting, you can’t always stop sabotaging thoughts from occurring (after all, most of them are pretty automatic), but you can 100% control whether or not you give in and let them derail you. Remember, just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true.
gardenrjoy, I really like the wine or dessert but not both thought. I'll keep that in mind for my upcoming weekend of temptations.
HaleyJu -- Thank you for posting the daily tips. I found last Thursday's tip particularly poignant (about thinking I would feel great if only I wasn't restricting my eating, but actually feeling worse when I eat off-plan). I'm emailing myself the responses and tips and saving them with a Beck filter so I can easily pull them up on my phone.
gardenerjoy -- I just realized that it was YOUR goal story that brought me to the Beck forum in the first place! Thanks for being my inspiration!
Today, I'm going to give myself credit for not succumbing to a chocolate craving! I really want to get a candy bar from the snack machine, but I won't. And I have to say, the craving is indeed subsiding!
Super quick checkin here but I wanted to say the whole "would DH eat this?" approach to food has forced me to be very honest with my food choices. It ticks me off right now, being this rigorous, but I had to say no to coffee-associated baked goods. No to seconds. No to starchy add-ons. No to all those sugary things that my DH no longer eats but I CRAVE like a sugar-obsessed banchee CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT for saying no and flexing that resist muscle, even when it hurts. Credit for weighing in and seeing: 250.7lbs An immediate shedding of water for even one day of this new, more honest, approach to food and eating.
Whoa. Time flies when I have to work the weekend and then try to catch up with all the domestic chores. Also swimming in all the election news, political junkie that I am.
So just now surfacing to say I've been OP. I allowed myself a planned 'break' to eat some Teddy Grahams on Sunday. I had a small packet [while sitting down!], enjoyed the beejeebers out of them, then went my merry way. I'm OK with that and stayed OP since, so there it is.
One new thing I have noticed is that I haven't overeaten until it hurts during the last 3 weeks. That's a surprise. I often feel some odd need to be really full and am exploring what it's like to just be sufficiently full.
TeachMe, I PLAN my 1 oz of very dark chocolate as my last food and activity of the day, often eating it in my pjs while reading a book. It doesn't take much really dark chocolate to satisfy, and I know it is the end of eating for the night.
I am having a lot of trouble with asthma and the related exhaustion of trying to function while coughing--not a good combination with 18 kindergarteners. Today's student/parent/teacher conferences had me talking all day... another trigger for coughing...so discouraging. 9 more conferences tomorrow.
I ate the last of the ice cream last night because it felt so good on my raw throat. Sometimes you just have to say Oh, well to calories.
Diet Coaches/Buddies - Eating was 100%, CREDIT moi - a needed stint tall in the saddle. Dinner was Atlantic Cod from Iceland (which I think of as local only when talking about fish, LOL). Had several urges to get a bowl of tree nuts to make feelings go away. Once I observed that the urge was about feelings not hunger, it was easier to conjure up Helpful Responses to put them in place and to go do something active as a distraction.
The best non-eating triumph of the day was at a political meeting at a friend's house with a speaker rallying support for a local ballot question. Such meetings draw folks on the same side of the question so that the passionate discussions were a comforting type of mutual reinforcement. There was, of course, a table of food to nourish commitment. I had exactly three (3.0) red seedless grapes, CREDIT moi, which I called my evening snack. I skipped wine, beer, sodas, top shelf cheeses and crackers, chips, various nibbles, and a bowl of peanuts. An extra CREDIT moi for skipping the bowl of peanuts because I had the reassuring thoughts that I'd only have a few, that it didn't matter, and that they were sooooo good. They were peanuts; they will grow more.
onebyone – Kudos for "doing it" especially when craving "like a sugar-obsessed banchee." (OK, so you made me waste time to google and learn more about banshees than I ever knew before, LOL.)
Joy (gardenerjoy) – Sounds like you guys really know how to absorb a new place. Kudos for thoughtfulness at a fancy restaurant and for thoroughly enjoying the experience. It's easier for me to find a way through a fancy restaurant meal than to find a way past a giant serving dish of mac and cheese where seconds (and thirds) are readily available.
Debbie (Lexxiss) – Kudos for standing down the insidious "just one piece won't hurt" from a well-meaning friend. Love your response, "It's about resistance." [DW assured me that there is Pacific Cod - we don't have a monopoly - "but it's different." Come visit and we'll introduce you to the Boston dish called 'scrod.']
Nature Girl – Yep, you gotta take care of your throat when you daily face 18 banshees, LOL. I like your 1 oz. of dark chocolate as the last food of the day. When I tried that once, the size of the ounce slowly grew, LOL.
spanky - "I've been OP" is worth Kudos for sure. Enjoying a small packet of Teddy Grahams sitting down seems like a better idea than the cookie woofing that was part of my overeating.
TeachMe - Late night snacking is a challenge as the defenses drop when the day slows down. It works for me to have planned a single piece of fruit that might normally be considered the dessert of dinner but eaten in that (seemingly loooong) period between dinner and bed. (I once had a doctor hand me a prescription with the directions to take "at least two hours after dinner and two hour before bedtime." Never had a four hour gap, LOL.)
HaleyJu - It's useful to me to be reminded that Sabotaging Thoughts are automatic. They're gonna continue to arrive as long as I live, but my responses will get faster and faster.
luxy - Yep, Kudos for standing down candy machine chocolate bars. I've done many of those when the tension was high at the office. I even considered buying boxes of them since the candy machine prices were relatively high - but the ludicrous thought of how long a box of chocolate would last in my desk kept me in check.
Readers -
Quote:
chapter 8Stage 5The Motivation-for-Life Plan
Re-Motivation Plan
I've found that long time dieters and maintainers go for a period of time (usually months) with little to no difficulty. Then, often without realizing it, they temporarily lose sight of what they have learned. They let some of their new eating behaviors slip. Then their weight goes up and their motivation goes down. They find themselves continually battling sabotaging thoughts, such as, This is just too hard . . . This isn't worth it . . . I can't keep this up. This happens to almost everyone from time to time. A dieter I counseled called it "maintainer's fatigue."
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), pg 191.
as we trudge the happy road of life
Tuesday
everyone else!
