[GlamourGirl827]

I have had my entire life a very difficult time NOT thinking black and white, all or nothing, on the wagon or off.

Now for me this mentality doesn't work and it lead to up and down of my weight for many years, or basically it was my starve and binge cycles...

I have to workout daily and I have to eat perfectly daily. And if I fell off the gym wagon, then I gave up with my healthier eating and plowed through all types of garbage, like cookies etc.

OR if I ate a particularly crumby meal/snack...I'd give up on working out because I felt fat and gross. This does not work long term.

I'm really struggling with this because being pregnant, I do deal with a LOT of cravings, and they are much harder to ignore then when not pregnant. So I find myself eating more stuff I wouldn't normally eat. But then I don't want to workout!!

I just ate the last of the cookies, 3 of them (that's another post I'll be posting shortly, that whole debacle) and now I feel like why bother working out in the morning, I'm just gross" Last night hubby bought Doritos, normally I wouldn't even care if I have them, but I ate them, not a ton but enough to feel disappointed and figured why bother to get up early to exercise, I'm just going to gain a ton of weight this pregnancy just like the rest....

My self control is awful when pregnant. I know this. It is likely I will "slip up" or indulge more now than when not pregnant, but its making me feel like working out is futile...

Does anyone else have a hard time separating the two? I don't know what to do...

[Streudel]

Does anyone else have a hard time separating the two? I don't know what to do...

I totally get what you're saying because I used to think like this too. I struggled with perfectionism, disordered eating and exercise bulimia for years.

What helped me was learning to treat every mistake as an opportunity to learn. I stopped beating myself up and learned to feel good about my imperfect efforts. Because at least if I'm making mistakes, I'm trying.

I know it's hard to believe this, but self-control or willpower aren't what you're lacking. A routine of self care driven by self love will take you where willpower won't.

By that I mean make small individual improvements to your lifestyle. Praise yourself for every time you do them until they become a routine. Don't beat yourself up for missing days because EVERYONE slips up. Me, you, everyone. Don't let lapses become a self fulfilling prophesy of failure.

Try to focus on the long term. When you don't allow every choice to be make or break but just a part of a long term trend, you'll find yourself making better choices overall.

Hope this helps.

[Palestrina]

Oh yes I used to suffer from that a lot. I was either good or bad. I was either on track or off track. Any little "mistake" would derail me altogether. It's all part of the diet mentality.

It happens when you assign morality to your choices. Sure, it's nice to pat yourself on the back when you eat a "good" salad or do a "good" workout. But then you run the risk of berating yourself when you choose to eat a "bad" food or make a "bad" decision to skip a workout. Disordered eating can't handle the morality we attach to our decisions.

When I started doing intuitive eating I stopped exercising altogether. Exercising was like a trigger, it put me in the diet mind set too quickly. In order to stop feeling bad about my poor choices I also had to stop feeling good about my good choices. It's a ying and yang thing for me, the more "good" I felt about doing something the more potential for feeling bad later when the pendulum swung the other way. So I stopped exercising until I felt like I could incorporate it into my life independently from what I was eating.

It's really important (for me) that exercise makes me feel energized and happy. But as long as I was thinking about calories burned and working out in conjunction with a diet plan I was always failing at both. I don't know how I did it, but I've managed to completely separate exercise from food. I only exercise because i want to, and it has nothing to do with what I eat or don't eat. I don't know if that helps.