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Wednesday 23 March 2011

Struggling

After re-reading some of my posts from an old blog on the WW site, I see a trend. I make plans to get back on track, I'm good for a few days, a few weeks, maybe even a few months, and then, poof, gone. I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I know it's a problem, and creating more guilt than necessary isn't really going to help me.

Instead, I think I have to look at my mental attitude. Frankly, I'm scared to get to goal. When I used to be a competitive athlete, my national team coach once told me that he thought I was scared of success. At the time I thought he was absolutely insane...all I wanted was to succeed, how could I be scared of success? At this point in my life I understand what he was saying. I am absolutely terrified of success. I have not, in my recent memory, been below 140 lbs. I don't know what it feels like. I don't know who I am at a weight below 140. Am I still me? Will everything that brought me down before still bring me down? Will I even like how I look at my goal weight? How will I maintain it? Obviously I know how to do the wrong things, otherwise I wouldn't be in the chubby situation I am in now. So what happens, is that a few months in, I lose focus, let life interrupt, and start making excuses.

I gave up meetings. I basically tossed WW out the window. My bf and I started looking for a condo in January. Almost every single day after work we were looking at places, signing documents, or meeting with people. I lost my workout time. I don't work out on the weekends. I do all of my work on the weekdays, and use the weekends to actually relax. I seemed to have tossed out all my healthy habits as well. Exercise? yup, gone. Tracking, planning, and actually eating a vegetable? Tossed. I can see myself falling, and am not really doing anything to stop it.

On Thursday I said that this would be my last junk food type weekend. That starting next week I will re-commit to planning my meals and actually eating whole, non-processed foods. I am becoming addicted to junk food, and that's not good. I seriously think that I have an overeating problem. Because I can't say no to food. No matter what. And if it's a choice between home cooked and eating out, eating out will win 9 times out of 10. I wasn't always like that. It's as if I have this mentality that the food is somehow going to disappear. I live in a fairly prosperous country...the likelihood of me starving is like slim to none. But the feeling persists. I don't think I'm ready to look for a support group or anything, but it's not a feeling that I am comfortable with. This is something that I have to learn to control. The food will not disappear. If I don't have chips tonight, it's not the end of the world. This is going to take some time.

In the meantime...I need to start exercising again. I've let it slide since the great condo search of 2011, but it's the only thing that keeps me going. I need to enjoy it again. Make it part of my routine. But I also need to realise that a slip is just a slip, not a full blown car wreck. One day is nothing...two days is starting something, but one day? Who cares? That is so small in the grand scheme of things. So I am going to go back to baby steps.

1) Hit the gym 2x/week - if I do more, fantastic
2) WATER - people can't live off of diet coke
3) Plan my meals. If I can spend 30 minutes playing Angry Birds, I can spend 30 minutes planning my weekly menu

That's it for this week. I have found that give me something out of control, and I will give up something that I can control in order to try and control the thing I can't control. Twisted, I know. So for example, back when I started condo searching, I couldn't control when we looked at units, and I couldn't control when the agent needed us to sign papers. So I gave up exercising and planning entirely. Another example...when my dad died, I didn't so much fall off the wagon as jump wholeheartedly into the weeds on the side of the road. Eating and exercising are two big things, and when I am faced with a multitude of big things, I will give up the easiest ones to give up. This needs to stop. 

But let's start with baby steps. After all, even babies learn how to run eventually.

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