It's All About Balance

For those of you who think I'm promoting unhealthy eating: that is not my goal. I have spent years dieting and feeling like I couldn't have this and couldn't have that. Well I'm here to say, yes you can. But it needs to be in balance with healthy foods. Increase the "healthy" foods in proportion to the unhealthy ones. There are no forbidden foods, there are just foods that need to be eaten sparingly or in moderation.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Reduced

My Son Finds My Little Cake (1/4 recipe cake)

Living the Dream not the Fantasy, A Weight Loss Story

                The music beat in time with her heart as she stepped into the night club. Her hair hung, brushed feather soft over her cheeks and down her back. She combed her fingers through the soft curling strands and felt a tingle of eyes on her stunning figure. She knew she was beautiful, sleek, slim, tanned and sexy. Then her eyes met his. His look was the only one that mattered.  

                How does reading this make you feel? If you’re a man maybe you’d need a slightly different version, but you get what I mean. If you’re like many other human beings in the world, you may dream that this how life would be if you lost weight. Well I’m here to tell you, that if you keep up this dream, it’s a real sign that you are not ready to confront the reality of your weight.

Weight loss brings a lot of joy and self confidence. But many don’t truly want to confront it and would rather stay in their fantasy while they eat their chocolate and snack on chips. Always thinking, someday I’ll lose the weight and then I’ll be blissfully happy.

I lost my excess weight three years ago and surprise! All my dreams didn’t immediately come true. So why do it in the first place? Well, I may not have had all my dreams come true, but I did find myself much happier than I ever was when I was sixty pounds heavier. What did happen is my husband found me more attractive, I have much more energy, I have learned to enjoy life, and I am anxious for others to put away the fantasy and embrace the reality. The reality of weight loss is truly wonderful, in a very real sense.

First of all I’d like to expose the fantasy that overweight people live in everyday of their lives. My husband teaches nursing at a college. He has his students practice gathering basic information of patient’s health. Each of the students checks fellow students’ weight, height, and blood pressure.  My husband, having never had a weight problem (I know, we all hate people like that) didn’t understand why students were so distressed at having the class see their weight. After all, people have eyes. They can see that a person is overweight, right?

All people to a certain extent are in denial. We don’t allow ourselves to confront the fact of how we really look to others. Being inside our own bodies has in a sense blinded us to how other people see us. We are very quick to pass judgment on others because of how they look, but we truly cannot bear to have the same judgments brought against us. Well, I’m going to give you a secret. That actually doesn’t change after you lose weight.

 I’ve lost sixty pounds and now fit into sizes I’d never dreamed I’d ever wear, sizes I couldn’t even fit into in Junior High School. But when I go shopping and pull those sizes off the shelf, I have a curiously mixed reaction. I love that I can wear those sizes, but at the same time I feel as if the other shoppers around me are scoffing at me. In my head they are saying, “Oh yeah right. There’s no way you can fit into those sizes.” Then I step into the dressing room, look at the jeans I’m to try on and in my mind, I perform a miracle. I see these very skinny jeans that I couldn’t possibly fit into, and yet I pull them over my legs, over my hips and zip them up. I tell you even three years after losing the weight, I’m still surprised and amazed at that. Then I walk out of the store on cloud nine.

So, you may ask, why would you want to go to all the effort to lose weight when it doesn’t truly make you feel different about how you looked? Well, I didn’t lose weight to feel different. I actually lost weight because I choose to be different.

For most of my life, I lived it in a world ruled by food. Every day, I looked for and got my food fix. When I was sad, I ate, when I was happy, I ate, when I was frustrated, I ate, well you get the picture. In any case, my life revolved around food. My happiness in a large part came from the food I ate. Yet, food was only making me happy for the few moments while I was eating it. All the other times, it caused guilt and depression. So what kind of life is that? Was I truly happy? --No I wasn’t. I was miserable.

So how did I change that? What was the catalyst? Well, it was me. I made the decision. Not only to lose weight, but to start putting myself first: before my husband, before my children, before any other responsibilities. You may think that is selfish, well so did I. I believed it my entire life up until I lost the weight. But then there was one day, my daughter did something that reminded me of myself and the thought came to me. How do I want my daughter to live her life? Do I want her to always be too busy taking care of others that she never has time to take care of herself? The answer was a big no! Then I realized that she was learning how to live her life by my example. So by me not taking care of myself, I was teaching her the same. It was then I understood I needed to make a change not only for myself but I needed to do it for her.

But I’d been trying to lose weight for twenty years and had not succeeded before. How would this time be different? I considered the fact that I had been obsessed with losing weight. Thinking about calories, fat, simple carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates, -- I’d studied them all and knew them backward and forward. Yet knowing this didn’t cause me to lose weight. In fact all this did was brought food into the forefront of my mind. So I decided to change my focus. I would think and obsess as little about food as I could. I created the simplest diet I could think of. I had three meals a day and one snack, all portioned sensibly and I would drink eight glasses of water. That was it. That was my program.

Now the big struggle came. I had to keep redirecting my focus from food. When I wanted to eat, I would pick up a book. When a snack attack came, I would turn on some music and dance around the house. And when I allowed myself a sweet treat as a snack, I would repeat in my mind, “This tastes exactly the same whether I eat one cookie or a dozen.” And I would keep repeating it until I began to believe it. I started making only enough food for one meal. And only enough snacks for one serving.  I had to safeguard my environment from too much temptation.

The first few weeks were very hard and then it got better. During the second and third month, I no longer had to struggle nearly as hard. But it still took a focused mind set. And after three years I know I will always have to do this. It will always take a conscious effort. This is not something I can ever go off of. This is a way of life.

Today, after having lost 60 pounds, I still weigh myself every morning. I do this because I realize that my enemy is complacency. I have to be proactive to keep from slipping back into my old habits. I’m not saying I’m perfect. There have been times when I’ve fallen off the wagon, so to speak, but I pick myself back up and keep trying. It’s the keep trying part that has allowed me to maintain my weight for so long. And I expect I’ll have to keep trying my entire life. But I’m happy. Happier than I ever was with that far off elusive dream I once had.

I have my health, I enjoy life, I play with my kids, I’ve written a book, I’ve started a business, I have done so many things that I never would have if I’d still been medicating myself with food. Life is so much sweeter now. And that’s what I want to get out there. To all of you using food to fulfill your life, only to find your heart empty, put down the fork, and step out into the world. We only live our life once, don’t miss your chance to live a happy one.

Comfort Eating

Remember, as with any other addiction. Comfort eating needs to be replaced with another comfort activity. To get ideas, think about the things you loved to do as a child and try doing them. You just may be surprised how much you enjoy them again.

Need an idea? Here's a few:

Listen to music
Dance
Go out and explore (go for a walk)
Pick up a hair brush and do some lip syncing
Take a bubble bath
Take a nap

Go people watching at the park
Read a good book
Draw a Picture
Call a friend
Play a Video Game

In other words, do something for yourself, simply for your personal enjoyment. Isn't that what food has been doing for you? Take time for yourself doing something healthier than eating that piece of chocolate cake.

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