I’m making a small shift in thinking today. I’m essentially trading out one set of labels for my current eating plan and focus for a different set of labels. It’s funny how labels and words colour our thinking. In November and December of 2010, I was doing a calorie cycling plan to help take off the extra weight I put on in early 2010 after taking some steroid medication for a respitory illness. I did quite well. I lost about 11-12 pounds.
Then in January, I started posting on a forum thread for a particular kind of calorie cycling that was close, but not exactly to what I was doing. In its initial, early phase, this particular plan is far more restrictive than what I was doing and of course, most people on the thread were doing the initial phase. I found myself subconsciously moving more towards their way, being more restrictive during my lower calorie cycles. And then I found myself going off plan more often. Deeper into the restriction, I’d go. And off again, I’d fall.
January has been a bust for weight loss. I’m in the same place today as I was at the end of December.
It’s not the thread’s fault. Or that the thread’s plan is wrong. It’s just not right for me and my mind is just too malleable sometimes. I was hearing these things that weren’t right for me, but subconsciously letting them change my behaviour even while knowing intellectually that it was wrong for me.
So, I said good-bye to the thread. I’m using my old labels for my calorie cycling, not the ones I picked up with the new plan. As soon as I did that, I felt a shift. A lessening of the tension of trying to be on a plan that is too restrictive for me. A tiny drop in anxiety that I didn’t even know I was feeling.
I am in the same boat.
I started restricting like crazy this Jan, but mine was through exercising. I went from burning 300-500 calories a session to 600-800! The scale screeched to a halt and hasn’t moved in four weeks. Hopefully things will change for the both of us.