I get the question quite often "Isn't it SO much EASIER living life at a healthy weight?"
And the answer is more complex
than a "Yes!" or "No, not really" can communicate. So I will NOT
disappoint you with a one or three word response, here goes!
Being morbidly class IV super obese was difficult. It was the hardest thing in the world, it added a unique
stress to my life and a unique sadness that can only be resolved by
losing the weight. The stress that was attributable TO THE WEIGHT, and
the depression which was a result OF THE WEIGHT is gone.
But that doesn't mean that life has gotten any "less hard" or the choices I make on a daily basis don't require conscious effort. It doesn't mean that I have somehow "crossed over" to a worry-free life of ease.
What I want to communicate is this: If you are waiting for the weight loss to solve all of your problems in this world, think again. YOU need to solve them.
I realized that this journey brought up many deficiencies that existed in my character,
deficiencies I had ignored all of my life....until I didn't anymore.
One of these deficiencies of character, something that I have had to
continually (and painfully) practice with a view to mastery is the desire for instant gratification. The lack of the will or the skill of putting off something I want NOW for something I want EVENTUALLY.
If
I had to condense this ENTIRE JOURNEY of mine into one phrase, it
really would be that I have been learning, through trial and error, pain
and tears, that what I sow today will grow into something over time. I am 100% in control of what that "something" is, and 100% responsible for it. Is that something evidenced
by a life of self-control and intentional living (after)? Or is that
something evidenced by a life of instant gratification and mindless
eating (before)?
I choose the after. I choose
everything that comes with the after. Even the hard stuff of the doing
in the NOW what will LEAD to the after. I want my AFTER to be
sensational for me, stunning for me, I want to live a life of no regrets. I want, in short, to show up for myself and to be my own hero in this story I am writing.
And that takes a
decision every day of my life to move towards my primary goals of
maintaining optimal health. Heck, I wouldn't mind moving in to ULTRA
health. And I'm working on that.
So
yes everything that WAS hard at 272 pounds IS easier at 142.
Absolutely it is. But now I have a new kind of hard, which is making
that decision every day to CONTINUE to do what it takes to live the life
I want to live. You see, I'm 2.5 years
into this process. But I had a day 1 too, August 1st, 2010. That was
THE day I made the decision to begin. Because that decision has to
happen, and then we DO it.
So wherever you are on your time-line, do your ultimate best today. Not hoping "things" get easier, because "things don't change, people do". And get ready for the ride of your life.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
I May Not Be Able To "Lose 130 pounds".......but I CAN lose 2 pounds 65 times!
Hang in there! Sometimes the journey seems like it is
taking forever. We are not used to things taking forever in our
culture. But good things sometimes take a long time to marinate/slow cook/ferment, you name it.
When I began this journey (again!) I could not bear to look at the big picture in terms of "how much do I have still to lose" because the number was too big. It was too daunting. It was to "other-worldly" and seemed unattainable. Had I not already done it once, I would have doubted it could actually be done. In my mind, "having" to "lose 130 pounds" smacked of failure. Defeat. And I didn't want to look at my journey as a "should, have to, need to" type of journey. I was all about the "want to, desire to, can't wait to" mentality.
So I chose to look at it in 2 pound increments. And that really took the negative "you'll never do it" pressure OFF and replaced it with positive "see, you are DOING IT" pressure.
Two pounds I can do. Two pounds I DID, pretty consistently, just about spot on 2 pounds on average per week for 16 months! And the days went by, and the sizes continued to drop.
By breaking the process down in to numbers that I could wrap my head around, the impossible became.....POSSIBLE.
So how many "2 pounds" do you have to lose? What are you doing TODAY to lose that next "2 pounds"?
And what is your underlying motivation? Is it one of obligation? Is it a "should" or "have to" type process of running away from something negative (the weight) that you are resenting? Or is it a creative process of "can't wait to, desire to, want to" process of creating health, and becoming the best you that you can be?
Because I'll tell you what, this journey has GOT to be enjoyable. Yes the Medifast 5&1 is a tool, a vehicle if you will, that will get us where we want to go. But we can enjoy the journey, can't we? Are you enjoying the journey? Are you actively involved in dreaming about the "you" that you are becoming? Or are you still JUST running away from emotional pain and conflict which being obese was causing in your life? It is important to make that distinction between "Negative goals" and "Positive goals" because as you DO lose a few "2 pounds" here and there, that emotional pain and conflict that is driving you (if that is what is driving you) will diminish and then you will find that you have less and less motivation to see this through.
So examine your motivations, your reasons for doing the plan. If ALL of your reasons are centered around what you DON'T want anymore, what you are trying to get OUT of your life, start to dream a little bit. I'm not saying those are BAD reasons to want to "lose weight", they are often THE trigger point which get us to begin to change. But you WILL need to REPLACE those reasons with POSITIVE goals, which are things you want to bring IN to your life, good things, as a RESULT of this process of creating a healthy YOU.
What do you hope to ACHIEVE? Who do you want to BE at the end of this process of getting healthy?
Examples of negative goals: (want something out of my life)*I want to get off my medication
*I don't want my knees to hurt anymore
*I don't want to be the biggest person in the room anymore
*I don't want to be in the 200's anymore
*I'm tired of my CPAP machine
Examples of positive goals (something positive I want to bring into my life):
*I want to be the fittest and healthiest person I can be
*I want to finally achieve this dream so I can go on to achieving some of the other dreams I have
*I want to be a great role model for my kids/family
*I want to live the healthiest, best life I can, insofar as it is in my control
*I want to run a marathon
*I want to run again (period!)
I didn't come up with the negative/positive goals concept myself, it is detailed in the most excellent book "Dr. A's Habits of Health" which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to make THIS time the LAST time.
Rinse and Repeat!
When I began this journey (again!) I could not bear to look at the big picture in terms of "how much do I have still to lose" because the number was too big. It was too daunting. It was to "other-worldly" and seemed unattainable. Had I not already done it once, I would have doubted it could actually be done. In my mind, "having" to "lose 130 pounds" smacked of failure. Defeat. And I didn't want to look at my journey as a "should, have to, need to" type of journey. I was all about the "want to, desire to, can't wait to" mentality.
So I chose to look at it in 2 pound increments. And that really took the negative "you'll never do it" pressure OFF and replaced it with positive "see, you are DOING IT" pressure.
Two pounds I can do. Two pounds I DID, pretty consistently, just about spot on 2 pounds on average per week for 16 months! And the days went by, and the sizes continued to drop.
By breaking the process down in to numbers that I could wrap my head around, the impossible became.....POSSIBLE.
So how many "2 pounds" do you have to lose? What are you doing TODAY to lose that next "2 pounds"?
And what is your underlying motivation? Is it one of obligation? Is it a "should" or "have to" type process of running away from something negative (the weight) that you are resenting? Or is it a creative process of "can't wait to, desire to, want to" process of creating health, and becoming the best you that you can be?
Because I'll tell you what, this journey has GOT to be enjoyable. Yes the Medifast 5&1 is a tool, a vehicle if you will, that will get us where we want to go. But we can enjoy the journey, can't we? Are you enjoying the journey? Are you actively involved in dreaming about the "you" that you are becoming? Or are you still JUST running away from emotional pain and conflict which being obese was causing in your life? It is important to make that distinction between "Negative goals" and "Positive goals" because as you DO lose a few "2 pounds" here and there, that emotional pain and conflict that is driving you (if that is what is driving you) will diminish and then you will find that you have less and less motivation to see this through.
So examine your motivations, your reasons for doing the plan. If ALL of your reasons are centered around what you DON'T want anymore, what you are trying to get OUT of your life, start to dream a little bit. I'm not saying those are BAD reasons to want to "lose weight", they are often THE trigger point which get us to begin to change. But you WILL need to REPLACE those reasons with POSITIVE goals, which are things you want to bring IN to your life, good things, as a RESULT of this process of creating a healthy YOU.
What do you hope to ACHIEVE? Who do you want to BE at the end of this process of getting healthy?
Examples of negative goals: (want something out of my life)*I want to get off my medication
*I don't want my knees to hurt anymore
*I don't want to be the biggest person in the room anymore
*I don't want to be in the 200's anymore
*I'm tired of my CPAP machine
Examples of positive goals (something positive I want to bring into my life):
*I want to be the fittest and healthiest person I can be
*I want to finally achieve this dream so I can go on to achieving some of the other dreams I have
*I want to be a great role model for my kids/family
*I want to live the healthiest, best life I can, insofar as it is in my control
*I want to run a marathon
*I want to run again (period!)
I didn't come up with the negative/positive goals concept myself, it is detailed in the most excellent book "Dr. A's Habits of Health" which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to make THIS time the LAST time.
Rinse and Repeat!
When Life Gives You Lemons, HEY! FREE LEMONS!
We all know those people in our lives, you know, the ones who can take a picnic in the sun and turn it into the end of the world.
Being Irish, I USED to be one of those people. I worried about EVERYTHING! What people thought of me, if I was doing something right, what if the world ends tomorrow, blah blah blah....
I realized something about that way of thinking though, and what I realized is that you end up an exhausted hamster running in the hamster wheel getting NOWHERE. And most of the time none of those things (like the pesky end of the world) happen anyway!
But we worry, don't we?
So what is the use of that? When I made the decision to STOP worrying about what other people thought about me, when I made the decision to organize my life around what mattered most to ME and my FAMILY, no matter what others may say or think? Wow. Freedom.
And I love my life. I won't deny it or hide it. I have been accused of "bragging" about my life, and "bragging" about myself. And I'm sorry to anyone who is offended about that, if that is the perception than you don't know me very well and that is OK. Everyone is free to have their perceptions.
What I DO want to shout out to the world is that even a knucklehead like me can do this plan and find success. Even someone like me who at times felt she couldn't stick to the plan for one day let alone 3 or 7. Someone like me who doesn't feel like she has an iron will or a steely resolve or an abundance of self control.
All I do is wake up and do the plan. My first meal is a Medifast meal. To do anything besides that is pure lunacy in my mind. Even in maintenance it sets my day up just right. (I'm not saying you have to use the products for the rest of your life even in maintanance, many people choose to substitute 100-calorie healthy fuelings in the 3/3 plan that is maintenance). But I do. Because it helps get my mind right. It helps me live in the reality of my decision to attain and maintain a healthy weight, to live in optimal health and indeed move towards ultra health.
So I continue. And if my life or my experiences can help anyone then great. =) Take care y'all!
BTW for an update on my family and my son, my little bambino came down with his first fever since last June so we have been through the ringer these last few days with labs, antibiotic shots, tamiflu, more labs, more shots, etc trying to figure out the cause. If you are the praying sort, please lift up a short little one for us, when a transplant kid gets a fever it is a big deal. Thanks again!
Being Irish, I USED to be one of those people. I worried about EVERYTHING! What people thought of me, if I was doing something right, what if the world ends tomorrow, blah blah blah....
I realized something about that way of thinking though, and what I realized is that you end up an exhausted hamster running in the hamster wheel getting NOWHERE. And most of the time none of those things (like the pesky end of the world) happen anyway!
But we worry, don't we?
So what is the use of that? When I made the decision to STOP worrying about what other people thought about me, when I made the decision to organize my life around what mattered most to ME and my FAMILY, no matter what others may say or think? Wow. Freedom.
And I love my life. I won't deny it or hide it. I have been accused of "bragging" about my life, and "bragging" about myself. And I'm sorry to anyone who is offended about that, if that is the perception than you don't know me very well and that is OK. Everyone is free to have their perceptions.
What I DO want to shout out to the world is that even a knucklehead like me can do this plan and find success. Even someone like me who at times felt she couldn't stick to the plan for one day let alone 3 or 7. Someone like me who doesn't feel like she has an iron will or a steely resolve or an abundance of self control.
All I do is wake up and do the plan. My first meal is a Medifast meal. To do anything besides that is pure lunacy in my mind. Even in maintenance it sets my day up just right. (I'm not saying you have to use the products for the rest of your life even in maintanance, many people choose to substitute 100-calorie healthy fuelings in the 3/3 plan that is maintenance). But I do. Because it helps get my mind right. It helps me live in the reality of my decision to attain and maintain a healthy weight, to live in optimal health and indeed move towards ultra health.
So I continue. And if my life or my experiences can help anyone then great. =) Take care y'all!
BTW for an update on my family and my son, my little bambino came down with his first fever since last June so we have been through the ringer these last few days with labs, antibiotic shots, tamiflu, more labs, more shots, etc trying to figure out the cause. If you are the praying sort, please lift up a short little one for us, when a transplant kid gets a fever it is a big deal. Thanks again!
Great Annual Check-Up for my Son!
I'm sorry if it seems like I was MIA this week, my 8 year old son had his annual follow-up appointment with the "big guns" at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (Stanford) for the kidney transplant he received 5 years ago.
Results? He is doing GREAT! We won't have the results of the DSA lab (Donor Specific Antigen) for a couple of weeks, so provided those are A-OK we will be really flying high with thankfulness and elation.
So I type this as I sit on a bed in a hotel room in Mountain View. We spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday touring around our old stomping grounds when we were residents of the Ronald McDonald House for 8 months in 2008. We took the ferry from the Ferry Building to Sausalito, bought a couple of Tin Tin comic books at the store in Sausalito that carries ALL of them, we spent some time at the Ferry Building, and the day before we went to Half Moon Bay and Pacifica. We have really packed it in these last few days, but it didn't give me much of an opportunity to blog!
So here I am.
This week has been chock full of emotions. Coming back here where the miracle of his transplant occurred, where hope was reborn and we dared to dream that he would live to grow into a fine young man. We are living that dream.
I feel like I have been given a new lease on my OWN life also. I dared to dream that I could be an active and vibrant Mom, the best "Me" I could be. And I took steps to make that happen. I didn't sit back and "let" it happen, any more then my husband and I "sat back" and "let" my son's kidney transplant "happen". We relocated our entire family for 8 months. We did the research as to which protocol was going to be the best for our son. We chose the "steroid free" protocol, and Stanford Docs pioneered that protocol very successfully 13 years ago, so we chose them. Julian has never been on steroids and will not have the long term effects of prolonged steroid use on his little body.
We changed our entire life for our little man. My husband commuted every weekend from Colorado to San Jose by air. We made it happen. We did go into massive debt. Thankfully we have been able to work our way out of that over the last 5 years, and "debt free" (except for our house) is actually on our horizon within the next 18 months or so!
We made choices that our "wants" or "preferences" did not matter, that we would do what it took to make it happen.
And that is how I have approached my health these last 2 1/2 years. It is an absolute priority for me to remain healthy. It is part of who I am, part of who I have committed to be for my son's sake.
When I am NOT working on my health, I become a very selfish person. Honestly. That is the truth. It is what I have discovered after looking back on years and years of abusing my health and abusing my body with morbid obesity.
When I am NOT working on my health, my day is oriented around when and what I can eat next. Planning what yummy things I can get my hands on throughout the day. Then eating it, then feeling yucky and being lethargic on the couch for the rest of the day. What kind of life is that? What kind of Mom am I if that is the sole priority of my existence? Honestly? Food? Yummies? I lament at how much of my life I have "lost" serving at the altar of yummy food.
I made a command decision to NOT lose any more of MY life to the yummy food. I made a command decision that I will make myself LESS emotionally available to my family because I was FULLY emotionally available to yummy food. Nope. That is not my life. My life is so much more than that.
So I encourage any of you who are reading this, who are at the beginning of this amazing process of transformation, you CAN do this. But only YOU can do this!
1 packet at a time. 1 day at a time.
Rinse and Repeat!
Results? He is doing GREAT! We won't have the results of the DSA lab (Donor Specific Antigen) for a couple of weeks, so provided those are A-OK we will be really flying high with thankfulness and elation.
So I type this as I sit on a bed in a hotel room in Mountain View. We spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday touring around our old stomping grounds when we were residents of the Ronald McDonald House for 8 months in 2008. We took the ferry from the Ferry Building to Sausalito, bought a couple of Tin Tin comic books at the store in Sausalito that carries ALL of them, we spent some time at the Ferry Building, and the day before we went to Half Moon Bay and Pacifica. We have really packed it in these last few days, but it didn't give me much of an opportunity to blog!
So here I am.
This week has been chock full of emotions. Coming back here where the miracle of his transplant occurred, where hope was reborn and we dared to dream that he would live to grow into a fine young man. We are living that dream.
I feel like I have been given a new lease on my OWN life also. I dared to dream that I could be an active and vibrant Mom, the best "Me" I could be. And I took steps to make that happen. I didn't sit back and "let" it happen, any more then my husband and I "sat back" and "let" my son's kidney transplant "happen". We relocated our entire family for 8 months. We did the research as to which protocol was going to be the best for our son. We chose the "steroid free" protocol, and Stanford Docs pioneered that protocol very successfully 13 years ago, so we chose them. Julian has never been on steroids and will not have the long term effects of prolonged steroid use on his little body.
We changed our entire life for our little man. My husband commuted every weekend from Colorado to San Jose by air. We made it happen. We did go into massive debt. Thankfully we have been able to work our way out of that over the last 5 years, and "debt free" (except for our house) is actually on our horizon within the next 18 months or so!
We made choices that our "wants" or "preferences" did not matter, that we would do what it took to make it happen.
And that is how I have approached my health these last 2 1/2 years. It is an absolute priority for me to remain healthy. It is part of who I am, part of who I have committed to be for my son's sake.
When I am NOT working on my health, I become a very selfish person. Honestly. That is the truth. It is what I have discovered after looking back on years and years of abusing my health and abusing my body with morbid obesity.
When I am NOT working on my health, my day is oriented around when and what I can eat next. Planning what yummy things I can get my hands on throughout the day. Then eating it, then feeling yucky and being lethargic on the couch for the rest of the day. What kind of life is that? What kind of Mom am I if that is the sole priority of my existence? Honestly? Food? Yummies? I lament at how much of my life I have "lost" serving at the altar of yummy food.
I made a command decision to NOT lose any more of MY life to the yummy food. I made a command decision that I will make myself LESS emotionally available to my family because I was FULLY emotionally available to yummy food. Nope. That is not my life. My life is so much more than that.
So I encourage any of you who are reading this, who are at the beginning of this amazing process of transformation, you CAN do this. But only YOU can do this!
1 packet at a time. 1 day at a time.
Rinse and Repeat!
Saturday, March 2, 2013
No One Can Pursuade Another To Change...
Do you ever run across one of those concepts, or books, that you really wish you would have found earlier? What if you had already READ the book that you find so useful now, but you weren't ready to receive the information it contained yet, so it just winged right over your head and your heart?
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is that book for me presently.
You see, I KNOW I have read this book before. I read it in college, in a Nutrition Services Management class I took. But I don't remember reading THIS BOOK.
THIS BOOK is amazing and I feel like my head is going to explode because I'm so excited to begin building these 7 Habits!
Something that really struck me in the set-up of the book was Marilyn Ferguson's quote "No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal."
I suppose the professor of my Nutrition Services Management course hoped that she could convince us to absorb this book between our ears, but I don't think I was ready to hear what it had to say then. I know I wasn't.
For any who have read the book and retained its contents in your brain, for most of my life I have been in the "Dependent" state of being. Blaming others for my situation in life, relying on others to tell me who I was, asking others why I was important or mattered, and really being devastated if I found out that someone didn't think well of me. My self-worth was very much dictated to me by others. The book draws an analogy of being on an amusement park carousel, on a horse, with all the mirrors around you showing you what/who you are. And you are relying on the input of all of your externals to come to some sort of assessment yourself about who YOU are.
Yep. That was me. "You are lazy". Oh, I guess I must be lazy. "You are slow and fat." OK. Check. Got it. Be slow and fat because that's what everyone expects me to be. And the classic, the boy in junior high, who, while we were running around the track, called me "Chicken Legs". OK. Right. Chicken legs. Add that to my list of "who I am".
"You can't do anything right" may not have been what my father said VERBALLY, but he said it in every other way possible as I was growing up. At least that is what stuck to me.
In through college, and for most of my adult life as a morbidly obese person, I trusted those external evaluations of who I was. They became part of my inherited identity, that identity that was put upon me by other people. I never chose those things, those labels. But I accepted them. And it made for a very sad and lonely internal thought life.
The last 7 years I have spent breaking those paradigms and developing new ones. I have been doing it on my own, and with Dr. A's Habits of Health, and with my own desire to write my own story. To create the best version of myself possible. Three years ago I harnessed the powerful life changing tool of Take Shape For Life, beginning with those first few days of eating according to the Medifast 5&1 Plan, and beginning to change who I was on the INSIDE.
And now I'm ready to continue. I'm ready for this book. I'm ready to fully move from DEPENDENCE on others for my self-worth, to INDEPEDENDENCE, and then finally to INTERDEPENDENCE as the book highlights.
One of the game-changing statements so far of the set-up of this amazing book is this:
"Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don't have the character to do it. THEY DON'T OWN ENOUGH OF THEMSELVES."
And this is SO true in the process of self-discovery, owning enough of myself. I want to OWN ENOUGH OF MYSELF so that I can truly be at peace with who I am, rejoice with others in their victories while experiencing plenty of my own, and all of us together being part of something bigger. Something meaningful. For me, that is helping to get America healthy. One person at a time. Starting with me.
And guess what? The "wah wah wah I wish I could have a Sprinkles Cupcake" isn't even on my horizon. Why? Because I am mastering myself. And my TRUE self is not a whiner. True 'Dat.
Have a great weekend!
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is that book for me presently.
You see, I KNOW I have read this book before. I read it in college, in a Nutrition Services Management class I took. But I don't remember reading THIS BOOK.
THIS BOOK is amazing and I feel like my head is going to explode because I'm so excited to begin building these 7 Habits!
Something that really struck me in the set-up of the book was Marilyn Ferguson's quote "No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal."
I suppose the professor of my Nutrition Services Management course hoped that she could convince us to absorb this book between our ears, but I don't think I was ready to hear what it had to say then. I know I wasn't.
For any who have read the book and retained its contents in your brain, for most of my life I have been in the "Dependent" state of being. Blaming others for my situation in life, relying on others to tell me who I was, asking others why I was important or mattered, and really being devastated if I found out that someone didn't think well of me. My self-worth was very much dictated to me by others. The book draws an analogy of being on an amusement park carousel, on a horse, with all the mirrors around you showing you what/who you are. And you are relying on the input of all of your externals to come to some sort of assessment yourself about who YOU are.
Yep. That was me. "You are lazy". Oh, I guess I must be lazy. "You are slow and fat." OK. Check. Got it. Be slow and fat because that's what everyone expects me to be. And the classic, the boy in junior high, who, while we were running around the track, called me "Chicken Legs". OK. Right. Chicken legs. Add that to my list of "who I am".
"You can't do anything right" may not have been what my father said VERBALLY, but he said it in every other way possible as I was growing up. At least that is what stuck to me.
In through college, and for most of my adult life as a morbidly obese person, I trusted those external evaluations of who I was. They became part of my inherited identity, that identity that was put upon me by other people. I never chose those things, those labels. But I accepted them. And it made for a very sad and lonely internal thought life.
The last 7 years I have spent breaking those paradigms and developing new ones. I have been doing it on my own, and with Dr. A's Habits of Health, and with my own desire to write my own story. To create the best version of myself possible. Three years ago I harnessed the powerful life changing tool of Take Shape For Life, beginning with those first few days of eating according to the Medifast 5&1 Plan, and beginning to change who I was on the INSIDE.
And now I'm ready to continue. I'm ready for this book. I'm ready to fully move from DEPENDENCE on others for my self-worth, to INDEPEDENDENCE, and then finally to INTERDEPENDENCE as the book highlights.
One of the game-changing statements so far of the set-up of this amazing book is this:
"Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don't have the character to do it. THEY DON'T OWN ENOUGH OF THEMSELVES."
And this is SO true in the process of self-discovery, owning enough of myself. I want to OWN ENOUGH OF MYSELF so that I can truly be at peace with who I am, rejoice with others in their victories while experiencing plenty of my own, and all of us together being part of something bigger. Something meaningful. For me, that is helping to get America healthy. One person at a time. Starting with me.
And guess what? The "wah wah wah I wish I could have a Sprinkles Cupcake" isn't even on my horizon. Why? Because I am mastering myself. And my TRUE self is not a whiner. True 'Dat.
Have a great weekend!
So it's the WEEKEND!
As I begin to type this blog, it is 4:50 pm on the East Coast. YAY! Another week! We made it through another week!
Uh...Oh! The weekend. That means the weekend is here.
You know the one, the one that comes every Friday at 5:00 pm and gobsmacks us in the face because, let's face it, just because a weekend DOES come EVERY week without fail doesn't mean that we are PREPARED for it when it does!!!
For some, weekends are THE time that we fall off track. WAAAAYYY of track. I'm not just talking a little extra healthy fat or 1 extra ounce of protein off track. I'm talking 2 glasses of wine, some cheese-then-who-really-cares-after-that-because-I-so-totally-screwed-up-my-plan-already-so-may-as-well-eat-whatever-I-want-until-Monday-morning kind of off track.
This is the point in the blog where I mention, by the way, that this type of thinking if self-sabotage all-or-nothing thinking which will get us what we've always got and not something bright and shiny new, like Optimal Health.
OK back to the weekend. Do you sometimes feel like it is SO easy to stay "on plan" at work because of the following reasons?:
1) We are so busy we can't even THINK about food
2) We are so busy we don't have time to EAT anything but our Medifast Meals
3) We are at "work" and we are distracted, and we are also "working" on our plan.
But then when the 5:00 bell rings, all MAYHEM breaks loose?
Why is that?
I have a little insight, at least I can share what goes through MY head when the self-sabotage thoughts come:
"I deserve a break"
"I deserve a treat"
"I've been working so hard, I deserve to let loose"
"I really really want it"
"Did I mention, I really REALLY want it?"
For some reason, when I truly identified the thoughts though, they represented a true break from reality. What I mean is they represented a very VERY incorrect way of viewing my reality.
Reality is that actions have consequences. I know this to be true every time I have adhered to the Medifast 5&1 Program as written, and every time I have not. It is simply so. And me having a temper tantrum on the floor and refusing to act like the adult that I KNOW I am won't change reality.
I can no more take a break from my body as a yellow canary can stop being yellow. It just isn't possible. When I am on vacation, when that work bell hits 5:00 pm on a Friday, something doesn't just MAGICALLY happen to my body which makes it process extra calories in a different manner than it has processed them my entire life. IE, storing them as fat.
JUST because I WISH that would happen does not make it so.
And what DOES happen when I make the decision to try to test that theorem AGAIN, is that my body does the exact same thing it always has. It is so predictable, really. And I'm shocked and amazed come Monday and I'm up 3 pounds. Really. Shocked. And. Amazed. And then I wonder "Why?" And then I wonder "Why me?" and the pity party begins.
So a long time ago I made a decision. I would put my big girl panties on, and KEEP them on even through the weekends. I would do MY part and stay ON PLAN, and my body agreed to respond like it always has to either a calorie excess or a calorie deficit. My body did not disappoint.
SO WHAT that it was slow? 1.9 pounds per week loss over a long period of time still ends up being 130 pounds GONE and into a size 4 pair of jeans from a size 26. Was I perfect? Heavens NO I wasn't, but the times I WASN'T really made me lose time. I don't regret it and I don't advocate it. It just was. It was my journey. And I am here to tell you that it doesn't matter if you've been OFF PLAN on the weekends for the last 5 months, THIS WEEKEND make the decision to remain ON PLAN. Then do the same thing next weekend. And you will finally, FINALLY, get the results you seek.
You can't take a break from your body. So change something. Do the plan. Honest, it works. But you have to do ALL of it not just the stuff you like.
Keep on keeping on, my friends!
Uh...Oh! The weekend. That means the weekend is here.
You know the one, the one that comes every Friday at 5:00 pm and gobsmacks us in the face because, let's face it, just because a weekend DOES come EVERY week without fail doesn't mean that we are PREPARED for it when it does!!!
For some, weekends are THE time that we fall off track. WAAAAYYY of track. I'm not just talking a little extra healthy fat or 1 extra ounce of protein off track. I'm talking 2 glasses of wine, some cheese-then-who-really-cares-after-that-because-I-so-totally-screwed-up-my-plan-already-so-may-as-well-eat-whatever-I-want-until-Monday-morning kind of off track.
This is the point in the blog where I mention, by the way, that this type of thinking if self-sabotage all-or-nothing thinking which will get us what we've always got and not something bright and shiny new, like Optimal Health.
OK back to the weekend. Do you sometimes feel like it is SO easy to stay "on plan" at work because of the following reasons?:
1) We are so busy we can't even THINK about food
2) We are so busy we don't have time to EAT anything but our Medifast Meals
3) We are at "work" and we are distracted, and we are also "working" on our plan.
But then when the 5:00 bell rings, all MAYHEM breaks loose?
Why is that?
I have a little insight, at least I can share what goes through MY head when the self-sabotage thoughts come:
"I deserve a break"
"I deserve a treat"
"I've been working so hard, I deserve to let loose"
"I really really want it"
"Did I mention, I really REALLY want it?"
For some reason, when I truly identified the thoughts though, they represented a true break from reality. What I mean is they represented a very VERY incorrect way of viewing my reality.
Reality is that actions have consequences. I know this to be true every time I have adhered to the Medifast 5&1 Program as written, and every time I have not. It is simply so. And me having a temper tantrum on the floor and refusing to act like the adult that I KNOW I am won't change reality.
I can no more take a break from my body as a yellow canary can stop being yellow. It just isn't possible. When I am on vacation, when that work bell hits 5:00 pm on a Friday, something doesn't just MAGICALLY happen to my body which makes it process extra calories in a different manner than it has processed them my entire life. IE, storing them as fat.
JUST because I WISH that would happen does not make it so.
And what DOES happen when I make the decision to try to test that theorem AGAIN, is that my body does the exact same thing it always has. It is so predictable, really. And I'm shocked and amazed come Monday and I'm up 3 pounds. Really. Shocked. And. Amazed. And then I wonder "Why?" And then I wonder "Why me?" and the pity party begins.
So a long time ago I made a decision. I would put my big girl panties on, and KEEP them on even through the weekends. I would do MY part and stay ON PLAN, and my body agreed to respond like it always has to either a calorie excess or a calorie deficit. My body did not disappoint.
SO WHAT that it was slow? 1.9 pounds per week loss over a long period of time still ends up being 130 pounds GONE and into a size 4 pair of jeans from a size 26. Was I perfect? Heavens NO I wasn't, but the times I WASN'T really made me lose time. I don't regret it and I don't advocate it. It just was. It was my journey. And I am here to tell you that it doesn't matter if you've been OFF PLAN on the weekends for the last 5 months, THIS WEEKEND make the decision to remain ON PLAN. Then do the same thing next weekend. And you will finally, FINALLY, get the results you seek.
You can't take a break from your body. So change something. Do the plan. Honest, it works. But you have to do ALL of it not just the stuff you like.
Keep on keeping on, my friends!
Remember when you said "I would do ANYTHING to get this weight off!"?
Remember way back when, before you
started Medifast (or Take Shape For Life) and you said to yourself "I
would do ANYTHING to get this weight off...to be healthy..."
Are you? Are you sticking to the Medifast Plan and not modifying it or tweaking it to suit you?
Are you truly doing ANYTHING to stick to the plan?
Are you?
Really?
If you answered YES to that FANTASTIC! You are on your way to success!
If you felt a little twinge of...."dang, no, I couldn't answer YES to all of that...." I want to remind you that you CAN do this, but only YOU can do this. You CAN stick to this, but only YOU can stick to this.
And if you do? You can have awesome, stunning, and spectacular results!
The first time I did the program I lost an average of about 2.4 lbs per week for 14 months. The second time I lost an average of 1.9 lbs per week for 16 months. It seemed slow to me. There were times when I wondered if I would ever see REAL changes again in my body.
But I will tell you this. Even losing less than 2 pounds per week, on average, over a long period of time, adds up to a BIG change.
So hey! Guess what! We found something that WORKS! I encourage you to utilize this plan to its fullest, to NOT take it for granted and think "well I can always lose more if I want to, if I really decide to stick to it...."
I guess what I'm saying is THIS IS your ANYTHING. Are you DOING it? =)
What is stopping you from really deciding to stick to it? Because it is never too late to begin. You will NOT regret it. And as I always say, the time will pass anyway. In 1 year, where do you want to be? Wishing you "really got serious a year ago?" or will you be where you want to be and writing a blog like this to encourage other people?
Wishing you the best success!
Are you? Are you sticking to the Medifast Plan and not modifying it or tweaking it to suit you?
Are you truly doing ANYTHING to stick to the plan?
Are you?
Really?
If you answered YES to that FANTASTIC! You are on your way to success!
If you felt a little twinge of...."dang, no, I couldn't answer YES to all of that...." I want to remind you that you CAN do this, but only YOU can do this. You CAN stick to this, but only YOU can stick to this.
And if you do? You can have awesome, stunning, and spectacular results!
The first time I did the program I lost an average of about 2.4 lbs per week for 14 months. The second time I lost an average of 1.9 lbs per week for 16 months. It seemed slow to me. There were times when I wondered if I would ever see REAL changes again in my body.
But I will tell you this. Even losing less than 2 pounds per week, on average, over a long period of time, adds up to a BIG change.
So hey! Guess what! We found something that WORKS! I encourage you to utilize this plan to its fullest, to NOT take it for granted and think "well I can always lose more if I want to, if I really decide to stick to it...."
I guess what I'm saying is THIS IS your ANYTHING. Are you DOING it? =)
What is stopping you from really deciding to stick to it? Because it is never too late to begin. You will NOT regret it. And as I always say, the time will pass anyway. In 1 year, where do you want to be? Wishing you "really got serious a year ago?" or will you be where you want to be and writing a blog like this to encourage other people?
Wishing you the best success!
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