Life’s Little Hills, Ditches & Quagmires

 Last Ten Pounds, Things to try  No Responses »
Nov 152011
 
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The “what would happen if I don’t eat this” question is proving to be one of the best motivational tools I’ve ever dreamed up! Chuffed is the local word.

Of course, as with any other weight loss tool, it only works if you work it and I’ve let life get in the way for a couple of days. And, of course again, you don’t have to tell me that life will always always always get in the the way of weight loss if that’s how I want to play it. Always.

If I want to take off these last 10 pounds (and I do) then hills, ditches and quagmires are for navigating over, around and through – not for providing excuses to lie down and quit.

So what if my hormones are now providing non-stop entertainment for a full two weeks per month.

So what that it’s 11:30 am and I’ve already been up for 7 hours.

So what that I’ve got to bake sweet things for company and for a funeral tea.

So what that this is akin to handing matches and some dry kindling to an arsonist.

Did I mention the hormones?

So what to all of it!

I need a plan:

I will probably not be in any “losing mode” as far as calories go today but, when faced with whether or not to put food in my mouth, I will keep asking, “What would happen if you didn’t eat this?”

I will be kind to myself but not by soothing my stress with food.

I will drink plenty of fluids and eat little and often.

I will think about what I want to be wearing and how I want to be feeling on Christmas day.

 

 

 

 Posted by Millie at 4:52 am  Tagged with:

“Secrets” of Maintaining Weight Loss

 Keeping Going, Last Ten Pounds, Thoughts on the Process  No Responses »
Nov 102011
 
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So here’s some new research that I think any long term dieter could have written – but in plainer language.

Purpose: Weight loss is critical in the fight against obesity yet only about 20% of individuals maintain weight loss long term. This review examines the psychological factors influencing weight loss maintenance….

Conclusion: Evidence indicated avoiding dichotomous thinking, eating to regulate mood, and disinhibited eating were associated with weight loss maintenance. Increased dietary restraint, perceived benefits outweighing costs, lower/stable levels of depression, and more positive body image were also associated with weight loss maintenance. …

And it all means?

If you want to maintain a weight loss (and I would add, lose it in the first place), get rid of the following behaviours:

  • dichotomous thinking = All or Nothing, On or Off Programme, On or Off the Wagon
  • eating to regulate mood = Ice-cream* or Cheese* Therapy (insert applicable food.)
  • disinhibited eating  = “I eat because it’s there.”

And add the following behaviours:

  • increased dietary restraint = too big for a one-liner. This is the whole lifelong commitment to a new and better way of eating.
  • perceived benefits outweighing cost = “I’d rather wear that dress than eat that doughnut.” (I know there’s a better deeper reason but it didn’t just pop into my mind the way the dress image did.)
  • lower/stable levels of depression = (in my case) keep talking it off and keep moving.
  • having better body image = being motivated to make big changes out of love rather than loathing for my body.

If these really are the secrets to success  – and they ring true to me – then I’m going to work with them for a while.  I know an awful lot about dieting. I know what to eat. I know how much to move. But I’m not getting the results I want – because I’m not being consistent with the things above.

So from this point till I’m bored (can’t promise a timeline), I will notice and work through these things on a daily basis.

 Posted by Millie at 6:00 am  Tagged with: , ,

Coping With Curve Balls

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Oct 262011
 
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After 17 years in this baseball free country, sometimes only a baseball analogy will do. (Out in left field is the other one.)

So. Saturday morning, while packing for the weekend, I was thinking how lovely it was to be heading towards Christmas with no operations/hospital visits/scans/waiting for results looming on the horizon. Five minutes after I had that thought, the mail dropped through the slot, (yes, we still have Saturday post), and there was a letter from the breast clinic saying that I needed to come back on Tuesday (yesterday) for further investigations following my mammogram.

Have I mentioned that was going to be my first Christmas since 2007 which didn’t include medical stress? 2007!

The ending is happy. My work on Tuesday got cancelled, allowing me to keep the appointment. The appointment went great and they aren’t concerned any more. So – normal levels of life stress have resumed.

The point of writing this is that this is what life is really like. If I want to lose weight and keep it off, I need to be prepared to work through the extra stressful times as well as the normally stressful day to day living.

I sort of managed it. I had a wonderful relaxing weekend and made consistently good choices with food – considering that I have no expectations of losing weight this week. I didn’t actually fall apart until after I got home from the appointment yesterday and had a bit of a “post trauma” rest of day – just needing to feel full all the time and eating when I wasn’t hungry. This is my final frontier in disordered eating and, though it happens less and less, it certainly happens.

On the positive side, I walked 6.5 miles yesterday – 2.5 just commuting to the hospital and back and 4 at a good clip with a friend in the evening.

Anyway – life goes on. I want to be slim, fit and healthy so I’d better be ready to push through the muck of life and take care of myself along the way. And by take care of myself, I don’t mean giving myself permission to overeat just because it soothes my nerves for a while.

 Posted by Millie at 12:32 am  Tagged with: ,

Keeping It Up

 Keeping Going, Last Ten Pounds, Thoughts on the Process  No Responses »
Oct 222011
 
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I need to write something here that sticks with me through the next 5 days.

  • 3 days of motorways, hotels and lovely socialising.

Followed, without time for a breath, by

  • 2 days of trains, long long work days and exhaustion.
I’m almost 3 pounds lighter than I was a couple of weeks ago. I want to be a full 3 pounds lighter by this time next week. That’s a loss of a few ounces – not 2 pounds or even 1 pound lighter. I know my limits.
So what recurring thought is going to keep me headed in that direction? It’s got to be positive. It could be about health or fitness but I’m pretty sure that vanity is really my most effective short term motivator.

Here’s the thought:

I want to feel at ease and confident in my body. I know that feeling is a few pounds away and I want to go in that direction. I won’t be counting calories for the next 5 days, just asking myself:

Is what I’m doing right now taking me towards that feeling of being completely at ease in my body?
I won’t be blogging – just asking that question.
Looks like Twitter is going to be the tool of choice this week. Follow along if you’d like. @talkingitoff

 

 Posted by Millie at 2:10 am  Tagged with: ,

Tweet Update

 Last Ten Pounds, Twitter & Weight Loss  No Responses »
Oct 112011
 
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So far so good on the tweet front.  There’s no doubt that I am more motivated to keep on with good weight loss behaviour when I have an easy way to write about it.  I’ve been doing the introspective stuff for years now and it’s fun to be able to just spew out the one-liners.

I also seem to be meeting others with a similar mindset.  Good stuff.

 Posted by Millie at 1:27 am

Tweet Tweet Tweet

 Last Ten Pounds, Twitter & Weight Loss  No Responses »
Oct 052011
 
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Yesterday, after writing an annual report and getting various other work-related burdens off my to do list ,
I sorted out my clothes for the season.

The verdict? There’s nothing wrong with my fall wardrobe that losing 7lbs won’t fix.
So that’s what I’m going to do.

I am SO BORED with myself and weight loss but, when I put it out of my mind, I gain weight.

The problem (well one of many problems) is that I need a new twist to keep me interested but I utterly reject the idea of a new diet.

SO…I’m going to tweet my way through the next couple of weeks and see how it goes.  I won’t have time for loads of  blogging but I’m hoping that I can just pretend that I’m accountable to the Twitter world and see what happens.

@talkingitoff

Let’s get tweeting……..

 Posted by Millie at 1:07 am

Meandering ~ not what I had in mind

 Last Ten Pounds, Slow Dieting  No Responses »
Jul 172011
 
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The first three weeks of “meandering” on this slow journey to a smaller, healthier and saner self have not been what I expected.

I thought I’d make progress towards where I want to be.

Instead, I’ve found myself sat down in a muddy puddle, eating and drinking to excess and feeling listless and unhealthy.

I don’t really feel like stopping but I also don’t like how I’m feeling and I can’t have it both ways.  Life’s like that, isn’t it?

Where I am now:

My clothes are ever so slightly more snug – not a disaster but not the direction I want to be going.

My stomach is not functioning as it should which adds to the overall sluggishness and desire to curl up in a comfy chair and eat and drink and read.

I haven’t been moving so I feel listless.

I KNOW I don’t have any excuse.  I have not been tied to a chair, prevented from moving and force-fed food and alcohol,

BUT

the husband and I seem to have formed a very unhealthy and enabling alliance in this and it’s tough for one to make a change when the other isn’t in that place.

Bad news/Good news.

I going to be away from the love of my life for six weeks starting Wednesday. That does suck and I’m hoping for a financial miracle which will allow him to join me for a bit.  However, I’ve already got my healthy shopping list in my head and I’ve mentally rehearsed how good it’s going to feel to get back to eating greens and protein and not eating so much sugar.

More good:  The battery in my Canadian scale is dead and I’m going to leave it that way, thus forcing me to get to grips with eating in a way that doesn’t make the clothes tighter.  I’ll have my jeans and my belts with me to keep track of my waist measurement.

So where do I plan to be?

I plan to feel good and energetic and healthy and I’m going to journal the path to that state.  (I think that was a commitment to this blog.)

It all starts Thursday, a few thousand miles to the west of here.

 

 

 

 Posted by Millie at 4:14 am  Tagged with:

Long Term Weight Loss Goals

 Last Ten Pounds, Slow Dieting  No Responses »
Jun 232011
 
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Although I can talk “goal weights” with the best of them, my fantasy weight loss goal is actually having food be a complete non-issue.  You know – like when they ask a celebrity or a chef what they ate on a “normal” day and the answer is something like:

For breakfast I had a cup of espresso and a slice of mango.  Lunch was a a couple of biscuits with a chunk of really strong cheddar and a cup of tea.  Dinner was grilled salmon with new potatoes and green beans from my garden and a glass of white wine.

Yeah sure – and a packet of 40 cigarettes.

I KNOW it’s not true but it’s still my fantasy to have healthy eating “just happen”.

But how do I balance that goal with my long and sordidly unbalanced history with food?

  • Step One: Remove as many “diet trappings” as possible.

What does that mean?  No more weighing of self.? No more journalling?  I guess it’s essential to decide which elements of the dieting trap are toxic and which are helpful.  This is purely personal; one woman’s help is another woman’s poison.

Toxic – Interesting exercise.  Turns out toxic is a state of mind.

thinking about food all the time.

ruining happy social times with thoughts of “I can’t eat that”.

tying my weight to any concept of success or failure of me as a person

behaviour that leads to guilt about eating

allowing myself to get carried away by short term results aka dieting euphoria

To sum up : negativity and obsessing of any kind.

Helpful – but only helpful if they don’t lead to the toxic stuff above

weighing self

measuring waist

weighing and measuring ingredients and portions

journalling food

How do I use those helpful tools in a non-toxic way? That’s the cruncher. I guess my question is my answer. To be non-toxic, these things have to be tools rather than obsessions. It will be a day by day assessment as to how I’m using them -or avoiding them, for that matter.

So here’s the plan:

For the first 3 weeks, I’m going to put away the weighing and measuring of food and trust what I’ve learned over the past 3 years about good ingredients and portion sizes.

I will weigh myself occasionally but only if it’s helpful to see if I’m not gaining.  Loss is going to be difficult to assess when I’m aiming to lose less than half a pound per week.  There will be no “weigh-in day” – just assuring that I’m headed in the right direction.

That’s enough to start.  I’m not sure if there’s a Step Two – I’ll think about that over the next couple of days.

Stay tuned.

 Posted by Millie at 11:55 pm  Tagged with: ,

Slow Dieting (reprise)

 Last Ten Pounds, Slow Dieting  No Responses »
Jun 222011
 
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It’s time to decide how I’m going to live in a permanent state of food/body sanity for the rest of my life.

I lost the first 25 pounds over two years with short bursts of “working hard” and long periods of learning to keep it off.  This year, for the first time in my adult life, I’ve unpacked my summer wardrobe and put it away without first trying it on to make sure it fit.  Amazing! It took a while to realise I had skipped the self-loathing that usually comes with the change of seasonal wardrobes.

I still want to weigh 10 pounds less than I do right now but, as discussed in my last post, I need to avoid the all-or-nothing-ness of dieting.

And I don’t want to exchange an obsession with dieting for an obsession with exercise.

In fact, I’ve decided to completely obliterate all “obligation phrases” like “I can’t”, and “I have to”  from my food/body vocabulary- whether spoken inside my head or out loud.

Instead, I want to walk the last part of this road at a steady pace: big picture, long-term goals, enjoying the journey.

This laid back picture keeps leading me back to the idea of “Slow Dieting”.

Slow Dieting by my definition means losing no more than half a pound per week. It’s what I end up doing when I’m “on a diet” but spending my time fluctuating on and off a plan. Such a waste of my emotional energy.

So I’m embarking on an experiment and I won’t know if it’s successful until I get to the end. And I won’t know it’s the end until I get there. This isn’t a weight loss programme or plan; it’s more of a weight loss meandering and I’m sure I’ll wander into a few dead ends along the way.

Step One: Goals

  • to be as healthy and active as possible at the age of 80
  • to feed myself out of love and respect and sometimes just because it tastes good
  • to start now, eating as though I’m already at the weight I want to be.

That’s enough for now.  Next post: I’ll expand on those goals.

 

 Posted by Millie at 7:54 am

In Recovery from Dieting

 Last Ten Pounds, Starting Again Again  No Responses »
Jun 192011
 
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OK.  I’ve got my answer about the 17 Day Diet.

1. It works.

2. I must never ever do it again because it’s leads to an all or nothing mindset that always leads somewhere dark and fat.

If I were a drinker rather than an eater these past two weeks would be called a bender.  I’ve abused food like I haven’t done for a long time.  And, stating the obvious, I’ve put back on the weight I lost during the diet. This is the very behaviour I vowed to give up forever when I started this blog.

So here’s the question:

Which would you choose?

Never diet again, possibly never reach “goal” and never endure the craziness of feeling out of control around food.

Keep on going back to dieting, experience the euphoria of losing and getting close to something you want and put up with the occasional weeks or months being of completely out of whack with food and your body.

The first is the obvious sensible choice but it’s hard to think of never dieting again. That’s why this journey is so long.

Here’s the good bit. After 2 weeks of crazy eating and no exercise, I feel awful. I’m headachy and tired and spotty. My hormones are out of whack and I feel spongey – in body and brain.

Good bit?  The point is that I can tell by how I feel all over that I’ve put on weight – and this feeling came to me after 3 pounds rather than the 15 that it used to take.  I’m more in touch with how I prefer to feel. I’m more in touch with what I look like and how my clothes fit. I’m hoping this means I will never again wake up and wonder how I gained 20 pounds without noticing.

So what am I going to do? Post this, go upstairs and put on my running gear. Then I’m going to head out for a 5 mile walk and see if I can’t jog a bit of it.

Starting again, again.

It beats quitting.

 

 Posted by Millie at 3:06 am  Tagged with: ,
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