Nancy told me from Day 1 that I would need to take baby steps in order to make giant leaps in health and wellness. Slow and steady wins the race! But even "slow" implies forward movement and progress. For the last 8 months I've hovered around the same 10 pounds, gaining and losing, gaining and losing with virtually no forward movement or progress. I've learned a lot, but now I need to start applying what I've learned.
Nancy had me come up with the Top 10 Things Keeping Me From Success. Usually when I get these type of assignments I struggle to come up with half of what I've been asked. But this time I knew I needed to get to the bottom of this, and I put a lot of time and prayer into it and this is what I came up with in literally about 10 minutes:
10 Reasons I’ve Not Been Successful
1. Not following the 5 Rules
a. No Sugar
b. No HFC Syrup
c. No Trans Fats
d. No Saturated Fats
e. Nothing Enriched
2. Eating out (and making poor choices)
a. Chicken Philly
b. Ice Cream
c. French Fries
d. Mushroom Swiss Angus Burger Meal (McD’s)
e. Frappuccino’s
f. Goldfish, chocolate, candy, chips,
3. Not being honest
a. I gained another 3 pounds this week and weigh 313.8 as of this morning… but I led Nancy to believe that I was in the 290’s for several weeks…(*it's taking everything I have not delete this bullet
b. Tell other people, and Nancy that I have been doing well, that I’m eating what I should be when I really have not
c. Binging, and not exercising.
4. Not being vigilant/consistent
a. Waiting until day or two before weigh day to be “good”
5. Not focused
a. Made excuses to eat/not exercise
6. Rebellious (want what I want when I want it)
a. Not even emotional, just the thought would strike and I get mad I “can’t have it” so I’d either eat it anyway or binge on something else until my craving subsided
7. Not writing down everything that passes my lips (out of sight, out of mind)
a. I really thought I wasn’t being that “bad”… but the scale showed otherwise, and I know had I written down everything I would have been shocked.
8. Lack of portion control (not measuring, taking seconds, etc)
a. I would both take the correct portion size and then go back for more, or I would just take what I wanted and ignore the fact that it was too much.
9. Not having “emergency” foods on hand to combat the munchies/cravings
a. With moving I allowed my fruit and veggie supply to dwindle and had no carrots or celery to munch on and also very few veggies to add to lunches/dinners to bulk up my meals.
10. Not having and/or not following a daily meal plan
a. Even when I had meal plans I did not stick to them 100%
b. Feel like “I’ve got it” and know what I can/cannot eat… but failing to plan REALLY is planning to fail…
It's difficult to share this in it's entirety because it is the raw, real, honest truth of how I've been operating the last several months. I am very ashamed of my actions and behavior, particularly the dishonesty to the one person who has been by my side since day 1 cheering me on.
Since then, Nancy and I have been going over these one by one and coming up with practical ways to change each of these sabatogers into success builders! My nature is to be so hard on myself, and I'm working on that too. I cannot change the past, but I can make decisions today that can make me successful one minute, one hour, one meal, one day at a time.
As a sweet friend reminded me, the mind and thoughts are very powerful. We need to take EVERY thought captive to the Lord, and we need to redirect our thoughts from the negative to the positive. My goal today is turn each negative thought around and come up with a positive replacement so that I am living in TRUTH rather than in guilt.
Place In My Head
4 years ago
Amy - If you've been reading my blog you can see that I'm struggling with a lot of the same issues. It really is all about planning planning planning, and being honest with yourself about what and why you're eating. I've been hovering around the same weight for the last 5-6 months too. But while I want to beat myself up that I haven't been better, and lost momentum after I did my 5K walk in early June, not exercising really at all since, and even going for weeks without wearing my pedometer because the battery died!, I keep trying to step back and tell myself that I've never been able to really maintain like this before. That this is a good thing to know that I CAN stay at the same weight (or around the same 10 pounds) for a significant period of time. Granted, it's not the weight I want to be hovering at, obviously!, but for years the scale has crept (or leapt) up and up and up, so to be stable is good! I know it'll be a whole lot harder to maintain at a significantly lower weight, but we'll deal with that when we get there. I keep trying to tell myself that this is hopefully forever, and changing habits that I've built over decades isn't going to be easy or instantaneous. There will be good months and years and bad months (and likely years), and in the bad times, stable is good, much better than gaining gaining gaining! Hang in there - you're not alone!
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