Am I skinny Yet? Am I skinny Yet? How 'bout now? Am I skinny Yet?
Patience is a virtue I do not possess. I seem to get frustrated every other day.
How do you cope with it without taking an Ice Cream scoop to your bum or attaching the shop vac to your thighs?
The "it's a journey" thing really just makes me more frustrated, so I need some coping mechanisms when I am having a scale up day or I try on something that still does not yet fit.
I try to think of the positive. You have lost 20 Pounds, that's great ! I find nothing more motivating than to step on the scale and see that the figure is down or in some cases has stayed the same. 20 pounds ! Tha's great. Think about it ! 20 pounds ! I'm sure you don't want it back..
I tell myself that every little bit helps, ask myself, would I rather have lost that half pound (or less) this week? or gained it, because it is so small and insignificant?
Generally I find I'm glad to have lost even the tiniest amount of weight. Several weeks of .5 lb or less accumulates into five or ten pounds every couple months.
Edit***
Um, I guess that wasn't really what you were talking about. The topic is about being patient, not frustration with tiny increments of loss. My bad.
As far as the actual topic goes: when I get weary of how looooooong I know it's going to take to lose the 100 lbs I still have to get off my frame, I remember a (former) friend of mine. I met her when she was in her thirties and she was slim, but not healthy... that is, not huge, but not toned or supple or particularly well-nourished-looking, I think I've heard it called "skinny-fat." She told me many many times that in her late twenties, she was bigger than I was and that after having her baby at age 26, she cracked down and lost all the weight (about 95 lbs) in about six months. She never said so, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn there was another kind of "crack"ing down going on. Losing the weight so fast and in such an unhealthy manner left her body looking deflated, and at age 33, she had the body of a 50 y/o who'd been ridden hard and put up wet.
My point being, when I get a little daunted by the enormity of the task, I remember that slow and steady gives my body it's best chance to look it's best when the journey is done. If I lose it all too fast with crash diets and pills and insisting on losing six lbs/week, I risk loose, hangy skin where I don't want it, and I DON'T WANT THAT.
Last edited by freshmanweightorbust; 05-05-2009 at 09:20 AM.
I remind myself that time is passing anyway. In six months, I can be the same weight, or lighter, or heavier, and it depends on the choices I make today.
Give yourself little rewards when you pass milestones...spa pedicure with each five-pound loss, for example. If you work out five days in a row and no cheating, you can buy the X you've been wanting.
Don't give up... and remember... its better than gaining weight!
I like your vacuum reference... I used to wish I could cut off all the 'bad' parts of my body.. then finally I realized that though I cant cut it off, I can sweat it out...
I don't really have a way of coping, except that I just try to put it aside and remind myself that it doesn't matter because this is my life now. That might sound more grim than I mean it to be. I guess I just tell myself the things I told myself in the beginning, that this time it isn't going to matter when motivations/rewards fail to incite. Because I don't need to remember all my reasons, I just need to keep keepin' on.
I'd like to say, don't think about what you want to see tomorrow on the scale -- think about what you want to see by say, August on the scale. For me, thinking of how thin I can be by thanksgiving, etc.
This helps me with focus but I admit, even though I only weighed weekly at first I have in fact become somewhat obsessed with what I'll see tomorrow on the scale. And I just grumbled and rambled about my day-to-day scaling mere minutes ago in the Chat thread!
Much like JayEll, I just tell myself that in a year I can either be skinnier, the same weight, or heavier and that's all up to me.
For me, I really just have to take things one day at a time. If I had started out thinking about how long it was going to take me to lose all of my excess weight, I would have been very depressed and might have given up. You just have to remember that time passes quicker than you think.
Now that I am older, the weight is soooooooo slow coming off. But instead of obsessing about it, I have become really interested about the details of my program ... logging foods, reading info online, posting here, exercising, listening to motivational tapes. All these activities seem worthwhile in themselves and have kept me from getting too frustrated.
I was reading an article about acts of faith (as in ... I believe I will lose weight). How do we begin when we don't know where or how it will end? The author then quotes E.L. Doctorow about the act of faith involved in writing fiction.
He once remarked that writing a novel was like driving alone at night: You could only see as far as your headlights. But you could go the whole way like that.
Hang in there, the feeling will pass. And, I'm one of those annoying "this is a journey" people (see my avatar for confirmation).
I gotta tell you - I felt like I was a snail, and I compared myself to the tortoise on this journey.
But, Jay is spot on - stick with it, and once you reach goal it will not matter one iota how long it took you to get there.
It took me 53 weeks. Now, almost a year later - it makes no difference WHEN I hit my goal - only that I stuck with my plan and continued my journey until I did.
[INDENT]He once remarked that writing a novel was like driving alone at night: You could only see as far as your headlights. But you could go the whole way like that.
Wow, I love that quote. It's perfect, not only for weight loss, but for live itself. Thanks for sharing that.
Am I skinny Yet? Am I skinny Yet? How 'bout now? Am I skinny Yet?
