Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Weigh in

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I'm late! I'm late! I know I usually check in on Mondays, but I'm running late this week. At least I have some good news to report! The scale said 237.5 which means I'm down 1 pound.

I have to confide that am having some difficulty lately, though. You could probably guess by watching me lose and gain the same 5 pounds for the last few months. It's hard for me to name my difficulty. This whole thing should just be so simple. Don't eat too much, don't gain weight. I know what I'm supposed to do and I start of doing it, but then there's some part of me that convinces myself to make bad choices. It's like I bump my head and get temporary amnesia. Sometimes when I'm staring at a plate of cookies, I don't even have an internal struggle going on. I don't think, "these are the pros and cons of scarfing that cookie." Instead I think, "Lalalalalal....oooh look a cookie. I've been good today" even if I haven't, or "those are only like 1 point, I can eat 6."

I don't even know how to begin to combat this. I've often wished I could hire someone to follow me around and give me a jolt of electricity or a slap or something just so I'll THINK before I make a bad decision. Because that's the problem, I don't even think, I just inhale. But I know that I need to learn to make good choices on my own and even in the face of serious temptation.

This weekend I struggled with that problem (despite my reasonably good news on the scale) and if I tried to estimate how much I'd eaten, I probably wouldn't even come close. I don't know how to explain it. It's like I go temporarily insane and start munching. I can chock some of it up to mindlessness which could be avoided if I hadn't had a bowl of candy on the coffee table (I know, DUH!). I also think some of it was slipping into old comfortable habits because I was upset about/with my parents.

The good news is that these bouts of insanity don't last nearly as long as they used to. Before I began this process, they would last days, weeks or months. I was surrounded by people who were doing the same thing so it seemed OK. I need to get past this so that I can move on. If I eat chocolate cake, I want it to be because I thought it over and decided it was worth it, not because I didn't think at all.

Does anyone else struggle with this? Any suggestions of what I can do? I'm so tired of constantly being on a diet but never achieving my goals and I would really love some advice.

6 comments:

Ria said...

I LOVE that cartoon - probably because I feel like that a lot :)

Congratulations on the loss, and don't beat yourself up . . . this process is anything but simple!

I definitely have the "bout of insanity" problem too. That's a very good way of referring to it, since I really can't explain why that bag of corn chips ended up empty next to my computer last week. I think you're on to something when you talk about mindlessness and slipping into old comfortable habits.

Journaling everything I eat, even (especially) when I start snacking, really helps me with the mindfulness part of it. For example, my "corn chip incident" was followed by a little more snacking, but seeing that I actually had created a calorie surplus for the day shocked me into stopping there . . . and seeing that calorie surplus on FitDay's calendar function for the rest of the week helped keep me out of the fridge and going to the gym.

Good luck this week!

Dina said...

Congrats on losing a pound!

The Fat Foreigner said...

Congrats on the weight loss!

Is there any reason you need those cookies/snacks in the house? I have the same problem where I go on to auto-pilot and start eating, half the time I think it's just because they're there. Eventually I realised that the only way I can be successful is to not keep them int he house. I still get cravings sometimes, but it's a lot harder to indulge them, and for the most part it happens less often.

Anonymous said...

Im with the better idiot.

could you just get em out of the house?

heck even in the trunk of the car for safekeeping :)

new*me said...

I'm with Miz...........get them outta there!!

Congrats on the loss ;)

Anonymous said...

great job withe weight loss. keep up the great work.