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.

Weight-wise this year, I have accomplished nothing but a gain – which isn’t exactly where I wanted to be headed.

However, I have increased my list of things I simply will never do again. And they are?

• Weight Watchers.  I will happily direct others towards WW but I am completely over it myself.  I simply don’t need the crutch of points over just knowing what and how many calories I’m eating and expending.

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.

“Normal” these days for many many women is being on the non-stop pendulum of weight loss and weight gain.  I don’t know very many people who are overweight and happy with who they are.  I also don’t know many people who have taken weight off once and for all.

So abnormal- as in unhealthy – is the new normal.  And when you decide to stop being “normal”, people start to judge.

My friend BFG (Edit!  Ha ha – I mean BFP – not the Big Friendly Giant) has written about her recent experience:

Ok, here’s what I don’t get. When you’re fat, nobody tells you that you are. When you lose weight, people initially encourage you, but then as you succeed with that continued weight loss, they admonish you and feel that they have the right to tell, command, order you to stop. People tell you that your continued efforts to maintain a healthy weight, your new body, your new found passion for health and fitness by being wise about what you eat is tantamount to disordered eating and that you need to stop it.

And THEN those same people spend half an hour chewing your ear off about how fat they feel and how they wish they had your will power. They say things like ‘all things in moderation’ and then post on facebook that they’ve eaten an entire box of chocolates! They tell you off for spending time at the gym and then say things like ‘I’m on a starvation diet for my holiday in 8 weeks’.

Several months ago I wrote about a moment when I realised I didn’t want to be in the “Fat Club” any more.  I saw two pretty, young and fat woman tucking into huge greasy pub meals and I knew it was something I never ever wanted to be part of again.

The next step was to realise that I had the same feelings about the “Diet Club”.   I actually can’t bear to hear about people being “good” or “bad” or “cheating” and I even find it frustrating to hear people talk about their weight loss in terms of a week rather than months or even years.

BFG is right.  People (by which I mean all women everywhere) start off by noticing you’re losing weight.

Then they ask how you’ve done it.

Then they ask how long it’s taken.

If they’re people you see regularly, they will then watch to see you give up and put the weight back on.

I’ve done it myself and even used to explain to people that that’s how I lived.  I remember starting a new job and meeting a tiny office full of colleagues for the first time.  Several of them were going out for a cigarette and asked if I smoked.  Just about the first thing they heard out of my mouth was, “No, I don’t smoke but I’m permanently on a diet.”

And I was in.  The non-smoker was forgiven because she was a serial dieter like the rest of them.  We would never be lacking in things to moan about.

Today my goal is to be the person who eats good tasty food, doesn’t fret over menus, moves as a matter of course, maintains a stable weight and looks slim and healthy without obsessing.  I want to be ABNORMAL even if it leaves me open to criticism by people who are used to seeing me fail.

I sometimes get strange reactions when people find out I’ve been married since my early 20s to the same man and that I have grown up children.  It’s abnormal to be in your 40′s with an empty nest and a silver wedding anniversary behind you.  Sometimes people think we’re lucky to have managed it – as though we have effortlessly glided through married life. I used to have a deep need for people to know how hard it actually was to stay married sometimes but now I’m just happy that we’ve got this far and are still in love.

I want my body/food relationships to be the same. I used to worry that people (women) would like me less if they didn’t know how much I’ve struggled with my weight throughout my life. I still feel this a little – but my goal is to no longer care if people think I’m “lucky” to be middle aged with a nice shape and a healthy weight.

You know – it’s scary to think of not being in the Diet Club – of not having that stuff to talk about endlessly – the instant bond based on failure.  I wonder if it’s possible to just be a “floating member” when social situations require it.  I’m going to pay attention to that this week.

What do you think of this article?

For a long time, I wanted to be in the “Diets don’t work” club.  I love the idea of telling everyone that I will never diet again – but I quickly learned that meant being fat forever.

Hala El-Shafie says: Diets set you up to fail; they should be banned. Eat small amounts of the right food. Eat regularly and well. Get moving: exercise helps. Think about why you eat. Accept your body shape and who you are; size 8 (4 US) jeans will not necessarily make you happy.

Yes! But,where I come from, if you’re used to eating whatever, whenever and however much you want, Ms El-Shafie’s approach to not dieting IS dieting. There are about a thousand steps between where I started and where she wants me to be.  I’ve been working at this for years and I’m not there yet.

For me this is a “just do this” statement and about as helpful as responding to malfunctioning light switches with, “just rewire the house”.

In my experience, “just do this” statements are used by people who don’t want to share your problem with you.  They offer solutions that reflect well on their own behaviour – “Well I could rewire my own house!”.  Well bully for you – as my mother would say.

Instead, I favour the “acknowledge how messy life is” response.

• Start with figuring out the problem – it might take some time.
• Then think of little tiny things that are going to help you climb out of the muck and mire.
• Finally – keep trying and making mistakes and falling down and getting dirty and asking friends to help you up.  Suddenly you find that things are going generally in the right direction.

There’s no timetable – this might take years or just a few months.  I can’t imagine it taking less than a few months. Just be prepared for stretches of hard work and results to be followed by cruising and consolidation as you regroup or just enjoy your success so far.

And while you’re doing all this figuring out, it will probably help to have some tools on hand that other people have devised – maybe Weight Watchers or Nutracheck or a Low GI diet (I’ve never tried that one but it always seemed sensible).  As long as we treat them as tools and not religions, they can be helpful rather than harmful.

I’ve also got a collection of books that I dip into when I need encouragement or sometimes I just read through blogs of people who are also figure this food/body/mind thing out.

How do we asses whether or not it’s working?  I think the only way is to think back to the beginning of the process.

• Am I further ahead than I was 30 years ago.  Yes – by many many many steps.

• What about 2 years ago? I’ve learned SO much about myself in this process since I started dropping down from 170lbs.

• What about last month? No- I haven’t made much progress for a couple of months.  I guess it’s time to push forward again.

What does “push forward” mean in this part of the journey?  It means getting the last few pounds off and starting the “forever” process with maintenance.  Can’t say I feel particularly psyched.  My stomach bothers me every day and I find myself eating what I think will make me feel better.  I need to be more mindful about what does make me feel better and construct a plan around that.

OK – This life has huge capacity for “Day 1′s” and this is yet another of them.  Losing another half stone (7lbs) can’t make my health worse and it just might make it a bit better.  So here goes.

Thinking about the diet/non-diet thing again and how exercise reflects my frame of mind.

When I have my diet head on, I exercise to eat.  I see my hour on the treadmill as earning calories.  I think that attitude comes largely from Weight Watchers which does encourage exercise as “earning Points”.

But my non-diet head strives to eat to live and I want exercise to simply be part of living.  So yesterday, before I went to the gym, I ate a tablespoon of peanut butter on a ryvita and drank a small glass of milk.  Of course, I barely burnt off enough calories to cover that, but I felt great on the treadmill.

Even writing this, I’m wondering if the difference is so subtle that it doesn’t matter.  As long as you exercise, why fuss about the reason?

But I’ve always failed at maintaining weight loss because of the on-diet/off-diet attitude and exercise gets tangled up in it and disappears when I’m “off”.  So maybe I need to be strict with myself for a while and only eat to exercise because that’s the attitude I want to take with me for the rest of my life. I want to eat to fuel my body and enjoy social times without ignoring that.  I don’t want to exercise like mad because I’ve got a dinner coming up where I might want to stuff my face.

What do you think?  Do you eat to move or move to eat?