Life Gets In The Way

I haven’t been posting much, I’m sorry to have disappeared like that. It’s mostly a case of life getting in the way, too much going on and too little time with maybe a little writer’s block thrown in for good measure. I’ve actually been taking a break from most internet things weight related, the blogs I read and the support forums I visit. I’ve been still downloading some podcasts that are weight & fitness related and listening to them as I work out, but that’s about it for my involvement in it over the past few days.

It’s an interesting experiment, though it didn’t start out that way, it started out by just having a couple of busy days where life got in the way. Then I didn’t push myself to get back into it. It’s a different feeling not being so focused on my food, weight & diet all the time and taking more time for other things.

I’ll likely return to a middle ground. The pendulum swings from side to side but eventually falls to equillibrium in the center. I’m off on the other side of the pendulum swing right now, but I’ll be back soon.

Lessons Learned and Relearned and Relearned Again

I try very hard to let go of my embarrassment that in the realm of food and my weight, I’m a slow learner. I’m usually pretty bright, if I can say so myself, but not here. In this journey, I have to learn the same lessons over and over and over again before I get them and even after I get them, I generally forget them a few more times so I can relearn them again just for reinforcement.

I’m at the point now where I’m not only relearning old lessons, but relearning the lesson itself that lessons need to be relearned over and over and coming to terms with that. I suppose it’s normal. I’ve never really thought about it before in that way, but it falls perfectly in line with my tagline of “nana korobi ya oki – fall down seven times, get up eight”. I think what I’m learning today is that those numbers seven and eight might not have been just chosen at random, they might have been chosen for that proverb based on the fact that it takes that long to finally really understand a new lesson. It’s a blow to my ego that I don’t pick up on things, especially things about myself, faster than that, but based on the evidence, I really am slow at figuring myself out.

These originally self-flagellating thoughts stemmed from an issue I had this weekend. I’m once again working on trying to lose the last twenty pounds to get to my ultimate goal. I’ve been tweaking my diet a bit, cutting out a few marginal items that are usually okay for me to eat but are high calorie enough that they hinder weight loss. I’m balancing this with my overriding need not to feel hungry or deprived – now there’s a lesson learned after a very long time – and I’ve been doing fairly well for the last three weeks crafting and following a plan that seems to be do-able, and likely to accomplish my goal. The confounding problem? I’ve been watching the scale. I thought I had to, to monitor whether my new plan was working or not. That’s silly, after all this time, I know when I’m eating well. I could add the calories in my head and know I was in the right place. I could feel the relative ease of sticking with this new plan. I was watching the scale for gratification, not monitoring. I was enjoying the extra motivation and validation of seeing another little drop on the scale. It was stroking my ego, until it stopped. And it does. I know that. I’ve learned that lesson a few hundred times, too. The scale goes up and down and weight loss is not linear. I use the tagline “Bouncy” under my avatar at my support forum for that very reason. More lessons relearned.

So, after a few days of no change on the scale, or small bounces up, yesterday morning it finally got to me. As it has done before, many times. The frustration overrides my good sense and subconsciously I wonder “why bother if it’s not working” and I decide if it’s not working, I might as well stop depriving myself. And I eat things that are not going to help me achieve my goal in quantities that will prevent me from achieving my goal. I’m shaking my head as I write this because I still can’t believe I fell for that stupid line of subconscious reasoning yet again, but I did. I guess I need to realize that this probably won’t be the last time, either.

There is progress in setback though. I did remember yesterday to stay away from sugar. This may be only the second time that I’ve fallen off my diet plan like this without also turning to sugar. It took me forever, but I have learned (at least for now, I’m sure I’ll have to relearn this lesson again someday) that sugar is freaking dangerous for me, especially when I’m having an off plan day resulting from feelings from frustration and deprivation.

Fall down, get up. I fell down yesterday, and I’m back up today. I’m back on my food plan and about to head out for my usual Sunday long run. And, I’ve learned my lesson again, not for the first, not for the last time. Don’t weigh everyday. That’s my lesson, I know daily weighing works for many, but my lesson is don’t weigh everyday. I’ve got a measuring tape, a pair of just too tight jeans and a slightly too small, but stunningly gorgeous red dress that I want to wear to the office Christmas party. I think I’ll stick to those three items for gauging my progress with my diet for the next month.

Maybe There is More to Emotional Eating

I’ve had my previous post about emotional eating kind of running around in my head lately. I still believe what I wrote about emotional eating, but I’ve been trying to reconcile the fact that I do believe my obesity was driven primarily by physiological causes to the fact that there is obviously some psychological component to my relationship with food and to the fact that so many seem to believe their weight issues are emotionally driven.

I’m the first to admit that I will reach for food if I’m upset. And I’m also the first to admit that my relationship with food is not an easy one. I don’t deal with hunger or deprivation well, I get antsy and uptight if I can’t eat when I feel I need to. I need more control over my food than many others do. So I don’t pretend that my food and weight issues have no psychological effect on me.

As I watched “The Biggest Loser: Families” on TV last night, I got to thinking about how, for many of the contestants, there is definitely a big emotional or psychological component in their weight loss journey. I’ve watched every year of this series since its inception, and have observed how, especially for the women, losing weight often becomes a time where the contestants learn to value themselves, find self-acceptance and self-love.

How to reconcile it all? I’m kind of thinking out loud here, but I have some ideas that make a little sense to me.

I do stand by my original premise. I hate the term emotional eating and the insistance that it is behind all obesity and making it sound like a deep-rooted psychological disorder. I really feel it diminishes the reality of what is happening and shames us for having confusing responses around food when what we really need is solutions, tools and self-acceptance. I hate the underlying assumption that the obese are of poor moral character because we use food as a coping mechanism sometimes. Everyone uses a coping mechanism sometimes, the fact that ours is food is less harmful than some coping mechanisms, though admittedly, not as healthy as others.

But, maybe I was wrong in assuming the two aren’t connected for many people.

Maybe the degree to which there is a psychological component to our obesity differs from person to person. In me, I think it’s small, as I said before. But maybe that’s because I did therapy for years and dealt with much of the very real life and esteem issues I had in my younger years. If I had never dealt with those issues previously, then started losing weight, would the weight loss have been a catalyst for emotional change? Would I have then sought to solve some of those life issues and become convinced that the two (weight and emotion) were two halves of the same coin?

Maybe, it’s just that there are life issues that need to be resolved that aren’t necessarily tied to weight, but when we make huge shifts in our lives, like losing weight, it throws off our equillibrium and we are forced to deal with life issues that were lying quietly before. We are challenging the status quo with regard to our physical health, and so we inadvertantly challenge the status quo of our mental health. It seems like the two are irrevocably intertwined, and maybe it’s easier to deal with them as one issue, but perhaps they are two seperate issues, either one of which could have been dealt with without the others at a different time or place in our lives.

And then, for others, maybe the two are irrevocably linked, one unsolveable without solving the other? Particularly in cases of abuse, I can see this as possibly being true, where people may have cloaked themselves in weight in an effort to protect themselves from further abuse. Certainly we see people act out in response to life’s traumas in many ways, why can’t obesity be one of them?

I have noticed that people tend to assume that what is true for them is necessarily true for others. I guess I made the same mistake in that earlier blog post, assuming that because my obesity was mostly physiological, that it must be that way for others. Maybe I’m just in the minority of people that have dealt with their emotional issues and obesity issues seperately. Could the strong current belief that emotional issues must be at the heart of obesity stem from the fact that the majority of people who have lost weight have just found they had to deal with emotional issues (whether they were truly connected or not) at the same time?

No answers, just more questions.

I Just Don’t Have Enough Discipline And This Is All My Fault

I felt this way for a really long time. I remember the pattern well. Bloated and full from overeating dinner and subsequent snacks in the evening, around an hour or two before bedtime the self-recriminations would begin. Reviewing the crappy food and the volume of food I’d eaten in the previous 18 hours, I’d wonder what in hell was wrong with me that I didn’t have the self-discipline to stay on a diet for an hour in the morning, let alone a full day. How could I be so weak? Didn’t I care about myself? I had to do something. I was starting NOW. No more overeating, no more junk food, no more sugar. Tomorrow would be the start of a successful diet. Sometimes I got out the notebook and started making rules for the diet. Drink my water, no junk food, salads for lunch. Sometimes I got out the calendar and for motivation started counting; two pounds per week, if I kept on it until Christmas or my birthday I could lose “x” number of pounds. Think how great I’d feel next Christmas! Sometimes, I just promised myself I wouldn’t eat poorly the next day. Sometimes, I tried to convince myself I needed to just learn to accept where I was because, based on past results, this weight wasn’t going anywhere. Fat acceptance, anyone? I might as well cultivate it since I was living in fat reality.

Why has obesity doubled or tripled or whatever it is, in the last 30 years? Where did this obesity epidemic come from? Everyone points to our food supply and lifestyles. Health industry professionals or Joe Averages (Six Packs? ) on the street, if asked about the “obesity epidemic”, will all give an answer that is some riff on the idea that we have too much food, too much junk food, too sedentary a lifestyle and the population is too lazy. Do we really believe this? Really? We believe that two-thirds of the population of North America is overweight or obese because they are too lazy to exercise and eat right and chooses not to? People are dying from diabetes & heart disease and just don’t care enough to eat right? I went to bed each night awash in shame and humiliation because I was too lazy? Yes, white chocolate covered Oreos taste good, but *that* good? Good enough to kill myself over? I don’t buy it. Sorry.

What if it isn’t our fault? What if it isn’t a matter of discipline, self-love or anything else? What if it’s physiological? What if our bodies are betraying us, day after day, making the wrong food choices so strong that we can’t give up those foods any more than we can decide to give up breathing?

Call me melodramatic, but that’s exactly what I feel obesity is. At least, that’s what it was for me.

When I went on my low-carb diet, cutting out sugar, flour and starches, I experienced an amazing thing. After a while, I stopped craving them constantly. Sure, the idea of them still sounded great, but I didn’t need to have them NOW. A chicken breast with roasted vegetables sounded as good for dinner as a roast beef dip on french bread with a side of fries. It didn’t used to. That’s how I know now when I’ve been eating too many starches and refined carbohydrates again, my tastes change, and the healthier fare sounds boring and bland compared to the sugars, flours & starches.

I discovered that I react physiologically to refined carbohydrates, they are like an opiate in my system. That’s when I realized that the sentiment of “I just don’t have enough discipline and this is all my fault” was not true and a very damaging belief.

A good forum-mate gave me the title for this blog post, she was talking about how discovering that truth is empowering, for the want of a better word. There is a world of difference between blame and responsibility. If we are to blame for our own obesity, that blame can weigh us down and make it hard to lift our heads long enough to find solutions. I don’t take the blame for my obesity anymore. I do take responsibility for it, though. I’m the only one that can go out and find out why I have these issues and figure out how to fix them, but I can’t do that if I’m too mired down in the idea that I’m a lousy, lazy & undisciplined person in the first place.

Can I Eat This Way The Rest of My Life?

I was on my online support forum this morning and came across a question from someone saying that after four months of very strict adherence to her diet, she was having peanut butter & chocolate cravings and could she have the sugar free chocolate peanut butter cups.

I’m never sure how to respond to these questions. How is someone else supposed to know if she can have sugar free chocolate peanut butter cups? Is she looking for a ruling based on the rules of her diet as printed in the diet book she is following? She was following an Atkins diet. Well, technically, according to the Atkins book, there is no room for candy. There is no week where candy is added to the diet. I haven’t read the Atkins book recently, but I don’t recall a section where candy is added, even in maintenance. I’m not sure I know of any diet that will advocate candy.

However, if you are doing Atkins, then the big problem is sugar, carbs and the effect of the carbs on your blood sugar. The sugar free peanut butter cups are generally made with sugar alcohol sweeteners that have a much less effect on blood sugar for most people. If you have to eat candy, it’s probably better on Atkins to eat the sugar free kind than anything else.

And then there is the bigger question. Can you eat chocolate, in any form, and get back on your program afterward? Some people are real all or nothing when it comes to dieting. They have one piece of something that isn’t legal on their diets and say “aw, forget it” and spend the rest of the day eating cookies, chocolate and chips.

Is the question about its effect on the scale? Will eating sugar free chocolate stop me from losing weight? Well, how much are you going to eat? One or two won’t likely stop you from losing weight. Eating a bag of them everyday probably will.

But, to me, the bigger and more important question is – can she go the rest of her life *never* having chocolate again? Everyone talks about the poor success rate of dieting, how 95% of all dieters regain all their weight. Is this because they try to diet on food plans that are unsustainable? If I only have two modes, dieting or gaining, will I ever be successful? How can I be? I need to find a way to eat that I can sustain for the rest of my life. Sure, the losing weight version of it may be a little more restrictive, a few less calories, a little less leeway for treats, but honestly, I don’t think I can live the rest of my life never having chocolate again.

I needed to teach myself a way to incorporate chocolate into my life so that it didn’t derail my weight loss (or maintenance) efforts. I think that was vital. I only had an on or off mode before, no middle ground, neither sustainable for the rest of my life. But now, I eat on plan most of the time, and allow for treats and off plan indulgences on occasion. As a matter of fact, sugar free peanut butter cups are one of my favourite treats to have once in a while.

I’m happy to see that concept popping up in more and more diets and from more and more diet & fitness people in the industry. I’m seeing people suggesting a 90/10 ratio of eating on plan to off, or just working at being “more good than bad”. One popular diet actually budgets 75 calories a day for sugar free treats.

I can’t be perfect for the rest of my life, but being “more good than bad”? That I can do for a really, really long time.

Online Support Forum Caveat

Oh, and I forgot to add my caveat to my post on online support forums. Like being an anonymous driver on the highway, being an anonymous poster on the internet can take away people’s inhibitions, good judgement and common courtesy.

As you explore online support forums you will meet more than the world’s fair share of people willing to tell you what you are doing wrong, that you need to do something differently, that they have the facts and you are wrong, that anyone that doesn’t see things their way is stupid. Beware of anyone not using “I” statements and instead telling people what to do. Beware of “truths” or “facts” not supported by good argument or evidence. Everyone, it seems, has an agenda. And choosing a diet becomes akin to choosing a religion for some, the evangelical seem to be the most prolific on most online support forums.

Take what you like, leave the rest. Read critically and form your own opinions. Verify the facts. Don’t take *anything* personally.

And have fun. My caveat nothwithstanding, online support forums are great resources.

Resources – Online Support Forums

I promised a blog post a while ago about the resources that I use to help keep me motivated and on track.  I find that I spend a great deal of time (maybe too much) online reading and researching weight loss, weight maintenance, healthy eating and fitness.  I belong to a number of online forums, read a number of blogs, watch TV shows about weigh loss and listen to a bunch of podcasts. 

I find it all very motivating for a number of reasons.  I learn so much.  There are always new viewpoints to consider, new information to assimilate and ideas to try.  I remember where I’ve been I hear others talk about their struggles and I am inspired to keep moving forward when I hear about the success of others.

The first internet resource I found were online support forums. I’ve participated in a few online support forums.  I was doing a low-carb diet when I started and so when I searched for information on low-carb diets online, I found Active Low-Carber Forums and Low Carb Friends first. I started posting in the sections for people with more than 100 pounds to lose and started making friends with others in the same situation I was in. It was inspiring to see those that had done it, had lost 100 lbs already. I learned a lot of practical ideas about how to make it easier to eat a low-carb diet everyday. I started to make connections, even friendships, with others on the forums. We supported each other, commiserated with each other, and helped each other, sharing ideas and experiences.

I was surprised to realize later just how important those online support forums were in my weight loss journey (and my ability to keep the weight off after). I couldn’t just disappear, I had to show up everyday and say hi at least. If I didn’t show, people asked where I was. And if I’d had a bad day and overate or eaten off plan, I couldn’t lie and say everything was okay, so I couldn’t ignore the problem. By not being able to ignore returning bad food habits, I was forced to deal with it and either get back on plan or admit I couldn’t. I’d never had that kind of accountabilty in weight loss before. I truly believe it got me back on plan many times that I might otherwise have slipped back into old patterns for months or years and eventually regained all my lost weight.

And, I’ve truly I met some of the best people in the world. I’ve met many of my online friends in real life now, and we have friendships that have surpassed our common interest in weight loss. As a matter of fact, I had a tableful of forum friends at my wedding two years ago.

I’d encourage anyone interested to check out an online forum. There are many of them, supporting any kind of diet or no particular diet at all, offering generic diet & fitness support. They aren’t the only way to get online support obviously, but they are an important resource for me.

Emotional Eating

I HATE this term.  Emotional eating.  I feel like it implies I’m an incompetent and mentally ill boob that can’t function in life without the crutch of overeating.  It makes me feel like person who is so immature emotionally that they can’t deal with the everyday problems life throws at me without damaging my health and psyche with overeating. 

As I was reading an article today where the writer was extolling the necessity for dieters to learn to overcome this most terrible of ills – emotional eating – he went on to describe the symptoms of emotional eating as “overcome cravings, food addictions, self-image issues and other self-sabotaging behavior”. 

Overcoming cravings, food addictions, self-image issues and other self-sabataging behavior.  Isn’t that different than emotional eating?  It sounds different to me.  Maybe it’s just a trivial difference, semantics, but it feel like a monumental difference to me.  Emotional eating makes me feel like I’m being accused of being someone who is overly emotional and that sounds close to someone who a tad emotionally unstable.  I’m not like that.  I’m reasonable.  I’m functional.  I am pretty emotionally mature, I think.  

Now, being someone who has to overcome cravings, food addictions, self-image issues and other self-sabotaging behavior (I’ll keep using the American spelling since that was in the original quote, but my Canadian heart wants to change it to ‘behaviour’ ), well, that’s not the same thing.  Those are behaviors, habits and ways of thinking that I need to work on.  *That*, I’ll buy into.  Yes, I’ve had to make many shifts in how I think about myself and my environment and my relationship with food during this last five years. 

There is so much stigma already associated with obesity and overweight in today’s world.  Do we have to imply that those struggling with those issues are mentally defective as well?  I do have behaviours (oh, I can’t help it, it just types itself that way) that I need to change and needed to change to be successful at losing weight and keeping off.  But the ex-smoker had to change certain behaviours, too, as did the reformed drinker, as did the guy who works too hard and has to cut back after a heart attack, as did the new parent that had to give up their old partying ways to take care of their child, as did the timid employee as they had to learn to stand up for themselves in the corporate world.  That’s life.  We find we have developed behaviours that no longer work for us and we have to change them.  That’s *not* an emotional problem. 

The point the author was trying to make, that changing our diet alone, adding exercise, is not enough to guarantee success, is a good one.  We have to root out and find the behaviours that make it too easy to revert to our old ways.  We have to find out how to de-stress without ice cream.  We have to figure out how to deal unsupportive family.  We have to learn how to recognize we are on the wrong path and get back on the right one quickly.  These may be processes with an emotional component, but they don’t mean we have an emotional deficiency or incompetency. 

The terminology of “emotional eating” bugs me so much that I actually stopped reading that article to come write this.  I’m going to have to go back and finish the article, just because it’s probably got some interesting info that I’ll be able to pick out of it, but how many people read the article and bought into the assumption that there is something emotionally wrong with them and finished the article, not empowered to make a change, but feeling beaten down by the implied message that they have emotional problems?

My #1 Weight Loss Maintenance Tool – Luck!

I admit it. I got lucky and it’s luck that has played a huge part in my weight loss maintenance.  I’m completely serious.  I got very, very lucky when I got to the point where my weight loss period was ending and some things happened in my life that made it much easier to stick to my newer healthy habits and much harder to revert to my old ways. 

It was the summer of 2004 when I got to the point when I had lost almost exactly 100 lbs since starting my current diet the previous September.  I was still fairly heavy, around 200 lbs, but my weight loss was slowing down, it was getting harder and though I didn’t realize it, I was probably at a very dangerous juncture where frustration with slowing weight loss could have easily sent me back to my old ways. 

How did I get lucky?  Well, I met my husband.  I plucked up the courage to put a profile up on a popular internet dating website.  A day later, I got an email from a very nice gentleman asking if I’d like to correspond with him.  We emailed back and forth with increasing frequency for about 5 days before we decided it was time to meet.   I went home from that first date thinking that this was a guy I could see myself marrying some day.  And two years later, I did marry him.  We were fairly inseperable after the first couple of weeks of dating though. 

Now, I don’t give Jim the credit for being the reason I’ve been able to maintain my weight loss.  It has been my effort and it’s my credit, but I do acknowledge that without Jim, my life circumstances might not have changed in such a way that it made my weight loss maintenance much easier.  First, Jim had had a health scare just a month before I met him.  He had a gall bladder attack and had to have his gall bladder removed.  It was painful and convinced him he needed to pay better attention to his diet.  His eating habits hadn’t been horrible to start with, he tells me, he’d already cleaned them up and lost his own extra weight before meeting me, but now he was very concerned with his diet and rarely ate fatty or junky foods at all. 

Can you imagine how much easier that made things for me?  I wasn’t having to try to eat healthily while my new boyfriend was eating french fries and pizza.  We pretty much ate the same kinds of foods.  And knowing his history, I certainly wasn’t about to eat french fries and pizza in front of him, even if I was frustrated and wanted to go off my plan. 

At the same time, Jim liked exercise.  He played hockey a couple times a week and went for a walk or bike ride on his non-hockey nights.  I was *not* exercising at the time and Jim encouraged me to go with him each time.  I had more trouble with this as I didn’t enjoy it at all.  It wasn’t so bad in the summer, but by the time October and November rolled around, it was too freaking cold to enjoy a leisurely walk.  I knew I had to exercise though, I knew it would help with my very slow (now pretty much stopped) weight loss.  When I passed a running store in the spring and saw a sign advertising a Learn to Run clinic, I asked him if he’d like to join with me.  Frankly, I figured with running, I could get my exercise in faster and get it over with, that was my motivation for taking it up.  Now exercise was scheduled, an event.  And there was a 5k race at the end, a goal, so I couldn’t blow off a run, I needed to keep up or I wouldn’t be ready for the race. 

My point about being lucky with two of the most important aspects of weight loss maintenance – diet & exercise – is that I fell into a situation where it was harder to go off plan than it was to stay on it.  That was lucky.  Most days I don’t stick to my diet or exercise plan because I’m thinking I want to stay healthy and fit, I’m doing it because it’s easier than not doing it.  It’s become my default position, not some good place I’m striving to get to. 

I know my food choices are being watched by Jim.  Not in a bad way, but I know he knows what I eat well enough that if I eat off plan, he’s aware of it.  And he wouldn’t give me a hard time about eating off plan, but he’d know and I’d know he knows and sometimes, it’s just that knowledge that helps me make the right choice.  And we ask each other about exercise plans everyday.  Not to motivate each other or push each other, but for scheduling purposes.  Are we running together?  Is he playing hockey?  Did I run at lunch with my co-worker so he’s running alone tonight?  It’s not that we are pushing exercise on each other, it’s just that it’s so ingrained into our daily lives that it would be odd if we didn’t do it. 

I got very lucky.  I’m not sure I would have realized without this lucky happenstance of falling into ideal life circumstances right at the right time how important it is to structure my life so that health and fitness is easier to do than to not do.   My habits before were such that it would have been easy to slip back into old ways.  I didn’t exercise, watched too much TV, didn’t cook much so stopping for take out food and drive thru food was too easy.  I was living with my sister and her kids at the time, and there was more sugar & refined carbohydrates in the house than I would be able to resist for the rest of my life.  I’m not sure I would have made it in that environment.

And even if I’d realized how important changing my environment was, would I have had the strength and determination to reorder my life in such a way as to create that atmosphere?  I don’t know how others do it.  How much harder would this have been to do with a husband who ate junk food in the house?  With a toddler?  With teenage boys who devour snack foods in one breath?  With a family already used to eating foods that I now find easier to just not by to reduce temptation?  Could I have had the strength to change my family’s eating patterns?  Would I have had the time to do it?  Would I have the time to exercise with a full time job and kids?  What if I travelled for business a lot?  How much harder would this be? 

See what I mean about lucky? 

I really think that changing our lifestyles to ones that support health & fitness instead of working against it is essential for long term weight loss maintenance.  And I think I got darn lucky to fall into that lifestyle.  My hat is off to those of you who had to create it yourselves instead of falling into it.

My Diet History, Part 2

I’m sorry I’m late getting this post up, I promised it Monday and it’s now Friday.  Note to self:  Stop promising posts on certain dates.    It’s been a long, busy and difficult week.  But it’s better now, so I’m back.

To recap my last post, I took a diet history of my first 20 years and discovered a few things, though I admit I didn’t figure them out at the time, it was only later I was able to see the lessons in my history.  I was going to recap those lessons and what I’ve learned are “my truths” in this post.

However, I’m having a terrible time with writing this post.  It’s growing awkward and far too long.   As I write about each lesson learned, I’ve got a whole ton of things to say on each one and it’s getting out of hand.  I think what might be best is for me to literally just recap my list and then use that as a jumping off point to do further blog posts later expounding on the finer details of what the lesson learned means to me and how it works in my life.  Otherwise I’ll be here for hours writing this and you guys are going to fall asleep before you finish reading it.

So… in no particular order, here is a probably incomplete list of the important things I’ve learned about weight loss and weight maintenance so far:

All or nothing-ism doesn’t work for me.  If this really is a life change, not just a temporary diversion from my obese life, then there has got to be room for mistakes, leeway and less than perfect. 

The negative can be more powerful than the positive.  Perhaps it’s not the healthiest way to operate, but the fear of regaining weight keeps me on plan far more effectively than the joy of being a healthy weight does.  I try to remind myself frequently that if I make enough wrong decisions, I can be 340 lbs again very soon.  That thought gets me back on track faster than anythng else.

I credit much of my success to the fact that my new healthy eating & exercise habits are my new normal.   I’m not sure when this happened, or why, and I’m pretty sure it’s not something you can will to happen or force yourself to believe.  It just happened after a while.  It might be connected with staying afraid of regaining my weight, I know I have to stay on track to stay thinner, so maybe I subconsciously gave up hope of being able to return to eating my old way and accepted the new habits.

Weight loss is easiest when I’m not feeling deprived or hungry.  I was very lucky to find low-carb.  It made all the difference for me.  I was able to lose most of my weight, down to about 200 lbs, by just changing what I ate, and not having to consciously reduce my intake or deprive myself.  I’m not sure I would have made it if I’d been fighting a food plan that didn’t work for me.  I think it’s imperative to lose weight on a food plan you enjoy, like and trust as being healthy.

Emotional eating can be okay.  This is part of the not being perfect thing from the all or nothing-ism premise.  I’m not going to waste more energy beating up on myself for not handling stress without reaching for food.  That just piles more stress on the stress I already  have.  As long as I have my healthy eating as my normal foundation, once the immediate stress passes, I’ll return to normal, healthy eating. 

My relationship with food is permanently screwed up.  After 30 years of massive obesity, self-loathing because of the weight and dieting, my relationship with food is messed up.  It isn’t going to be completely healed anytime soon, either.  I have issues with being hungry.  I have issues with feeling deprived.  I get upset if I’m hungry and can’t get food.  I get upset if I can’t control when I eat.  I overreact if I feel deprived of food.  I don’t bother trying to get to normal with food anymore.  It won’t work.  It’s better to accept and deal with the reality of it. 

I’m a pragmatist when it comes to my new life at a lower weight.  I’ve had to accept that, for me, I’ll always be an obese woman in a smaller body.  I’d love it if it was suddenly easy now that I’m thinner to stay here and to maintain my weight.  I’d love it if I never wanted to binge eat or never wanted unhealthy foods.  Who are these people that lose their sweet tooths?  But, that’s not me.  I’m like an fugitive from obesity, always on the lookout for the police that want to take me back to jail.