I'm back on plan and have been on plan for almost a week. My food quality is ok my food quantity needs some work. I am working on being willing to eat less. I am working on walking away from the food when I am actually full. When I first notice I am full, even if I see more stuff in my bowl or on my plate. I know that I m often full waaaayyyyyyy before my plate is empty. It's just that I can still *feel* that edge of just-being-hungry or the thought crosses my mind that I will be hungry again soon... PANIC I have not been able to maintain eating until "just full"
(I say it like it means nothing this "just full" notion -- I guess this is vs feeling "really full" = overfull/pain-full even). For my weight to begin to truly drop I need the willingness to live on the edge of hunger/hungry. I need to go there. I can do it one meal at a time. Like everything else, with practice and constistence it is no longer strange but becomes the new normal. I'm all about that these days. The New Normal. Ok will plan to eat to the edge of full for lunch today. and will check in. then do it again at dinner. and check in again.
In addition I am clearing off shelves and cleaning/straightening them up all over the house today. I see that I am capable of getting Box Mountain cleaned up and this is one key to getting that done --besides simply getting rid of stuff via donations and the trashman.
*credit* for the willingness to move ahead a step at a time overandoverandoveradinfinitum
The evenings that follow days of DH and I working seem to pass in a blur. I'd picked up a basket of a variety of small tomatoes - absolutely gorgeous and flavorful. I just cut them each in half, added a little salt and some balsamic vinegar and that was half of our dinner, along with grilled lemon chicken. I planned a treat of a dessert from an Amish stand at the farmer's market - a palm-sized apple pie with a 1/2 cup of light vanilla ice cream that DH and I split - a few spoons for each of us and it was enough/wonderful. I love that we can split and not need our own.
Our trip comes up next week. It still seems so far away because of the piles of work yet to slog through.
I'm on Day 5 of my challenge, and while it's not been perfect, I'm trying to work in reasonable portions of a treat now and then, and not view it as being off track. Scale isn't reflecting the choices yet, but I know that's my hormones kicking in and will be back to normal soon.
Plan is to write out a few response cards at lunch today, for the camping trip. Even if I just see them when I'm fishing for money somewhere, it's better than never. I don't logically fear being hungry, but clearly it's in my subconscious as I snack too much when camping. I've packed some 100 calorie almond bags (which says something because I HATE paying extra for small packaging and the waste) ... and will pick up fruit there. My other pitfall is thinking, oh, we hiked 5-6 miles; I get extra food tonight instead of I will eat a reasonable portion and hopefully the extra activity will help me lose weight.
I'm having a great trip. Breakfast and lunch were fine today--but I overate at lunch yesterday to the point of being uncomfortably full--it was not a good feeling. I oversnacked this afternoon (Mom's peanut butter cookies), though.
Exercise has been good. Yesterday it was a hike in the Cleveland Forest and today was a walk along the beach.
I know I'm eating more than weight loss portions and choices, but the travel scale shows I'm about the same. I feel pleased about that--and it's hard to lie to myself when there's a travel scale!
Diet Coaches/Buddies – At gym, CREDIT moi, I finally made tiny progress by increasing weight in one exercise. I had begun to feel doomed to zero improvements. Goodbye negative thinking.
Food was only OK. One more night of dinner on the patio savoring the pleasant evening. Two Blue Jays were squawking ferociously, non-stop. It was kinda funny at first, then became grating. I felt silly yelling, "Get a room" since that most likely wasn't the issue. Not to mention that they don't speak English, LOL.
onebyone – Kudos, indeed, for "overandoverandoveradinfinitum." Thanks for the reminder of the distorted thinking, "I will be hungry again soon."
Joy (gardenerjoy) – I've heard some sad stories about the food at hospital cafeterias. Hope you have a better experience. Best wishes for your MIL's knee operation.
nationalparker – Yay for splitting a dessert with your DH. My brain is capable of thinking, It's Amish, so it's OK to eat this, LOL.
Beth (bethFromDayton) – "Mom's cookies" is an even better Sabotaging Thought than It's Amish. Kudos for all that exercise.
Readers -
Quote:
day 6Find a Diet Coach
Here's what your diet coach can do: . . . Keep you accountable. Knowing that you have to report on your progress to someone can motivate you to stick to your plan. THIS IS A CRUCIAL COMPONENT OF THE PROGRAM. Dieters I've counseled have told me time and time again, "I didn't overeat because I knew I'd have to tell you about it." You'll keep yourself in line better if you know you're going to have to report to your diet coach. Make sure you're completely honest!
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Beck Diet Solution (Pink book), pg 85.
With our trip looming, free time is close to nil. Made a poor choice to make a lower calorie banana split to split with DH last night - it ended up under 400 calories total, but still - not something we needed even if my portion was about 150... I realize that I'm thwarting his plans. Who turns down a ready made banana split? Trying to figure out WHY I did that on the heels of the last split dessert the night before.
SO looking forward to the camping I enjoy that a great deal - but figure the older I get the less I'll enjoy it on my hips. I had a great sleeping pad, but changed to a different one last year and it made all the difference in comfort, so that was a big help.
OneByOne - thank you for pointing out the I will be hungry again SOON thought and that I'm not the only one on here who thinks that at times. That is an overriding thought to me when I'm traveling. Seriously - HOW many flights are stuck on the tarmac for 12 hours? Not enough to worry about it being ours
Bill - Continued credits for your gym and for zapping that negative thinking on not seeing progress. Still have to laugh at your line about disappointment in no 6-pack abs soon after starting
Beth - Great job on checking in on your trip! I'll be at my sister's where there is a scale at the end of our trip, but I'm going to skip it as I KNOW if it reads lower, I'll indulge more! Keep up the good work.
ForMyGirls - Great job on the 5Kg down! That is wonderful! And major credits for seeing down the line to maintenance and what you might have then - who knows if you'd even want it then, but good way to divert attention now!
GardenerJoy - Good luck with your MILs surgery and all that surrounds that. My dad jokes that my mom is the only one who gains weight when hospitalized. She actually LIKES the food they serve there (to the patients). I've never been to the cafeteria though.
Maryann - Join on into a personal challenge - i'm not doing it publicly on Becks because it's certainly not organized, but I'm on day 6 ... challenging myself with staying focused on beck principles and to not keep doing a day 1! We have 70 days until Halloween now! Actually i think with my math that includes Halloween, but that'll get me gung ho on the next one to get to the New Year Want to get to where i'm including flexibility, cardio and strength work, but don't want to feel a failure right off the bat with not doing everything from the start. I can sense you're READY!
MiL went through the surgery fine and was resting comfortably and eating some supper when we left last night. We'll go over again this afternoon to visit.
I stuck to my plan and even skipped a snack when the timing didn't work out for my planned snack. The hospital cafeteria did, indeed, have a salad bar and fresh fruit. I ignored the other offerings -- that's the beauty of having a plan!
Today's challenge is dinner out. We're taking a nephew and his fiance out to a nice seafood place to celebrate their new "jobs." They are doing their student teaching this semester. I should see if the menu is on-line....Okay -- grilled sockeye salmon with apple-celery root slaw and zucchini, corn & tomato basil ragout. I'm going to be fully prepared to eat about a third of the fish and take 2/3 home to make into salmon salad sandwiches for my lunches this weekend.
WI: -0.65 kg, Exercise: +35 1000/1500 minutes for August, Food: 100%op, Read my Advantages and Responses: yes
Hi Beck Buddies! Head cold is gone, and I'm ready to jump back on the Beck bandwagon. I'll need to build my skill set so that next time I have a health setback, I don't have a Beck setback, as well! BillBlueEyes Thank you for consistently posting personals. It's amazing how much just a few words can help! Maryann and BethFromDayton - it's nice to know that there are others here with ties to Tucson! I notice some folks have posted their weight goals in kg, so I'm thinking this is a pretty global group all things considered!
onebyone: thanks for the reminder to "walk away" when I am full.
Good Morning, Coaches.
Day off today and I am very grateful. I am off to Nordstrom's. I signed up for a free makeup makeover with Bobbi Brown cosmetics. Fun. Yesterday was much better because I planned for candy rather that just scooped it up by the handfuls. I think I will follow that procedure for awhile. When I lost my fifteen pounds with Beck, I ate a Reese's pb cup and cheesestick every night for dinner.
nationalparker: I think I am ready to challenge myself. Fall is my favorite time of year. I think I will keep a calendar on the fridge and mark OP days. Shooting for "days in a row" record.
bethfromDayton: I spent three years bringing my travel scale. It really helped with maintenance while away.
Hello coaches,
Finally the weekend! Was a long week last week with lots of meetings and some personal s*#t to deal with so I was knackered by last night and ended up asleep by 8pm. Had some lovely experiences yesterday though with a couple of professional relationships with people I really like taking a step closer to being friendships.
Stayed OP yesterday. Was in a very "I'm really hungry", "I really want X", "I really deserve it" frame of mind but kept saying "no choice" and got through to dinner which, fortunately, had heaps of yummy vegies so I could fill up while staying on plan :-) I was a bit slack on the eating without distraction yesterday so that might have contributed to the mindset. Shall make sure I do that right today :-)
BBE - such a cruel discovery that fruit (especially grapes) cannot be an unlimited food!
Gardener joy - kudos to you for all that planning for challenges
Onebyone - "need a willingness to live on the edge of hunger / hungry" is a really helpful statement for me. Thank you
National Parker - yay for delighting in th flavour of fresh tomatoes! Good tomatoes really are one of the tastiest things out I reckon.
Beth - well done you for being able to see both the positive achievements and the imperfections while you are away.
Reesuh - what a great reflection to plan for next step you are crook!
Maryann - thanks for the reminder about the importance of planning for snacks / indulgences. I have been tossing around the idea of giving myself a little more wriggle room for indulgences. At the moment I have 2 per week, which usually means one alcoholic drink and one "food treat" such as a small piece of cake, scoop of Icecream or small amount of chocolate. I am wondering whether I am being too restrictive and that I will make it too hard to sustain in the long run or whether changing it would just be caving to the cravings. How nice it would be to just be able to just think rationally about food!
I had a very successful first half (plus) of the day and less so later.
Breakfast was good, lunch was really good (choice and quantity). Exercise was walking at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park--lots of fun and great animals.
I ate too many sweets after the Friday night service, and then bought a candy treat for after our sushi dinner. It's hard for me to eat too much sushi--I was struggling with my chopsticks. We went to the store after dinner, though, and I "treated" myself to a box of 4 small chocolates. 2 of them were kinds I didn't like, so just had a bite of each of those, so I guess that's a good thing and serves me right!
I don't have control over food tomorrow at all--I'll just have to think about portion sizes and choices from what is made available, since I don't get to pick anything.
Good morning coaches,
I am looking forward to Labor Day and being back into a routine. We have had a busy summer and it seems to be getting busier. We are going to Wonderland next week and to a cottage and so on and so on and so on. It will nice to see friends we haven't seen all summer. Eating is mostly on plan. I had a slice of pizza yesterday that I had not planned for. After eating the pizza I had the thought that I screwed up and the rest of my eating didn't matter that day. I quickly realized that I still needed to stay on plan for the rest of the day. I notice when I am busy it takes more effort to find healthy food to take along. I also realized that if I take my food along I stay on plan.
I should probably go for a walk now as I am not sure when I will have time to walk today.
Have a great weekend.
Ann
Hi coaches!
This last week has been stressful for me because my hubby was having problems and work and considering changing to a new job. During that time I didn't read the book and to make it worse, I binged (on foods with lactose too, which I regret). I had lost 2kg while preparing to lose weight and now I've gained that 2kg back! I guess I really need to get back to reading the book and try not to stress out too much. Any tips for dealing with stressful situations like that?
Diet Coaches/Buddies – One busy day that, hopefully, finally resolved the puddles of water coming from under our fridge. Turns out that our fancy pancy, super pricey, auto-defrosting, ice-making, cold-water-making, fridge needed . . . to be manually defrosted. It tricked us for two years before this started. This thing is so self-contained that it doesn't even have a drip pan underneath. The drip pan is behind the evaporator coils behind the freezer compartment overflowing into the freezer bottom. Nowhere in the Operations Manual does it say, When water begins to accumulate in the freezer bottom and freeze, it's time to manually defrost. The good news it that we didn't pay for a service call. I didn't even pay for a site that charges between $15 and $45 to answer your question by email (because I didn't trust it to give a useful answer). I finally got the Jennair 1-800 number to answer where a bored voice told me to defrost it first then call a repair guy. Defrost it first only because that's what he would do anyway when he got here at mega-bucks per hour. CREDIT moi for doing what had to be done.
Exercise for the day was hauling ice chests of stuff to the basement (where it's cooler) and then back up again. The only good news is that hauling everything out item by item forces some reality choices about items unused for months.
Joy (gardenerjoy) – Congrats to your MIL for surviving knee surgery. Cold sockeye salmon sandwiches gotta be as good as it gets.
maryann - Congrats for having lost your weight using "a Reese's pb cup and cheesestick every night for dinner." There is no nutritional censorship on this forum, LOL.
Ann (Newlifestyle) - Yep, busy is an ally for avoiding eating out of boredom but a challenge for finding good foods.
nationalparker – Kudos for a split banana split even though you wish it'd been totally splitless. Good luck with your packing.
VioletDolphin83 – Seeing the situation is the first step; Kudos for being aware that stress leads to eating. Beck has some good stuff about responses to stress. It can work for me to close my eyes and have the thought that the stress will come to an end - and I don't have to eat about it. Good luck finding your strategies.
Beth (bethFromDayton) – Interesting thought, Asians are thin because it's not possible to overeat using chopsticks, LOL. The San Diego Zoo is just super - Kudos for your hiking there.
ForMyGirls - Super Kudos for going to bed at 8pm when that's what you needed to do. DW once gave me a hard time for conking out at 8:30pm. I fell asleep, immediately, but not before dreading the thought that I'd get a phone call and she'd tell.
reesuh - Goodbye head cold. Kudos for planning ahead to be prepared for the next health intervention.
Readers -
Quote:
day 6Find a Diet Coach
Here's what your diet coach can do: . . . Help you take a more useful perspective. Imagine your diet coach looking over your shoulder at times when your resolve is weak. When you consider straying from your food plan, think to yourself, What would my coach say to me now? Doing so can help you better stick to your plan.
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Beck Diet Solution (Pink book), pg 85.
All good today. Lots of spontaneous exercise cleaning the house today and on track for food. Tried a new recipe for braised Asian vegetables and it was so yummy! Made the most of a planned indulgence by eating at an outdoor cafe in some very welcome sunshine.
Beth - LOL on chopsticks controlling your sushi intake
Healthy lifestyle - yay to you for getting straight back on track. Well done.
VioletDolphin - well done for getting back on board after your stressful week. Tips for dealing with stressful situations without eating? I think probably the key will be working out what thoughts were going through your head just before you ate the things that were off plan. (For me it would probably be something like "this will be so much easier to deal with if I just eat X"). And then work out what response would counteract it (for me something like "OK then prove it - name one time that eating made something easier to deal with!")
BBE - auto defrost fridges need manual defrosting???? Just today we bought a new (auto defrosting) fridge because our 15+ year old one requires monthly defrosting (and within days the freezer section looks like the Antarctic again). I was soooo looking forward to not having to do that anymore!
I stuck to my plan for dinner except that I added a glass of wine. I probably would have written that on the plan had I thought about it. Oh well. The glass of wine made it easier to ignore the bread and, otherwise, follow the plan -- I didn't want to get farther off plan than I already was. It worked! I got a nice drop and met my weight loss goal for the month of August.
WI: -0.3kg, Exercise: +20 1020/1500 minutes for August, Food: 90%op, Read my Advantages and Responses: yes
VioletDolphin83: I eventually found things that worked better for me for stress than overeating: walking, a hot bath and a fun novel, anything that has some psychological or spiritual element that lets me think and feel deeper about things.
And, on a completely different note, I once had some success with this thought "Why should someone else's stress make me fat?" Which made me laugh because it sounds so mean, but, in the end, was actually better for all involved. I could get a bit of detachment and find my way to a calmer place which helped the other person as well.
BillBlueEyes: yikes! It never occurred to me that we might have to defrost our frost-free freezer. I'll keep that in mind if we have problems.
Back on plan
Friday
I enjoy that a great deal - but figure the older I get the less I'll enjoy it on my hips. I had a great sleeping pad, but changed to a different one last year and it made all the difference in comfort, so that was a big help. 
