Entering Into A New Stage

by Pamela on May 11, 2013

Well, it wasn’t exactly how I pictured it, but I’ve officially entered the “maintenance” phase of Optifast. This isn’t, however, because I’ve reached my goal. It’s simply because I’ve run out of money. Whatever else Optifast is, it is NOT cheap.

I’m not all that concerned, though. I can still go to Optifast meetings (including the monthly maintenance one), so long as I pay a little, and I’m still very focused on my health, eating, weight, etc.

This has been the situation for the past few weeks, actually, and I’ve just been eating a lot more fruits/vegetables and logging everything (mostly) in MyFitnessPal. So far, so good. I have maintained my loss beautifully and without too much difficulty.

The challenge, of course, is beginning to lose again. To do that, I’m thinking I will have to plan out a menu for myself and not deviate from it. I still have Optifast shakes, and can buy more, so that can be a part of my plan, too. My leg is feeling better — although it has certainly not healed completely — so I can do some walking, and even some running, without too much trepidation. I’ve set up my weight bench in the garage so I can do dips and other strength-training exercises. It’s definitely possible, and I’m going to do it. I’m just not sure if I’m ready yet.

I have a lot of self-doubt, wondering whether I’m slipping back into bad patterns, whether I’m making excuses or, worse, giving up completely. But this is a journey to a long-term goal of eating healthfully and moderately, so this is just a new stage — definitely not the end. But I think I need a little period of adjustment before I plunge back into trying to lose.

For this adjustment period, I’m learning to do things like:

  1. Have a vegetable (or two) at every meal.
  2. Focus more on the vegetable than the rest, eating a very moderate amount of the “main course.”
  3. Try different vegetables and different cooking methods.
  4. Experimenting with Asian cuisine, which seems to be less meat-heavy.

I’m definitely not there yet, and some meals are better than others, but I feel like I’m learning and making progress. And that’s what it’s all about.

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Persistence

by Pamela on April 20, 2013

The last couple of weeks have been a roller coaster, motivation-wise. I’ve eaten a LOT of food — and by that I don’t mean that I’ve eaten a lot of calories, only that I’ve substituted food for shakes quite a few times. And I’m supposed to be on my last three weeks of full fast — shakes/bars/soups only! So, I’ve been feeling a lot of guilt and self-doubt. Am I really putting my old demons behind me? Am I making forward progress?

But, then again… I can wear the pants! Well, not exactly wear them, because they are too tight for me to feel comfortable wearing them in public, but I can put them on and button and zip them. And right now I’m wearing jeans I couldn’t go near before, and it’s a beautiful day and I’m drinking a shake.

The events of this past week haven’t helped, though — explosions, dismemberment and death have gotten me seeking food for comfort, perhaps unsurprisingly. The best thing I did for myself was to take a break in the middle of the non-stop “manhunt” news yesterday and take a nap. That gave me time to reflect on the bad feelings I was having — and I gave myself permission to feel them, but I also took myself away for a while to distract myself.

And, now, the news has stopped being so relentlessly depressing and I’m itching to get outside and do something physical. It’s nice and cool (rare for Texas, we even hit a record low last night) but sunny. However, I still need to be careful about my muscle tear — it needs time to heal.

Ah, here’s another opportunity to practice sitting with my bad feelings. My husband just walked in and told me he thinks he may have burnt out the engine on our EXPENSIVE NEW riding lawnmower by running over something. We cannot afford to get it fixed right now. But I will NOT eat over my stress and anger about this situation.  Instead, I think I will walk out to the garden.

P.S. The lawnmower took a little work, but it’s running well again. Whew!

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Getting Over A Fear Of Food

by Pamela on April 13, 2013

For the last few weeks, I’ve been unofficially transitioning back to real food. That translates into cheating, but cheating with real food — the type of food I’ll be eating post-Optifast. I’m getting over feeling too guilty about it, because I’ve realized that it’s actually helping me in some ways, in that my desperate fear about real food is that once I start, I won’t be able to stop.

But I’m learning that I can stop. I will stop. I will serve myself an appropriate portion, eat it, and stop — and that will satisfy me. There’s this frenzied feeling that hits me when I begin to eat or, more specifically, when I finish off a plate of food. I want more, more, more. I want to keep eating. I want that good feeling to keep going.

The problem, of course, is that if I keep eating, the good feeling will quickly turn into a very bad feeling — a feeling of being overstuffed, lethargic, guilty and disappointed in myself. I just need to remember that before I go for seconds.

I don’t get that with the shakes or bars, because I am confident that I can have one shake, or one bar, and it will satisfy me for hours. I need to develop that confidence with food. Now, I accept that there may be foods — there will likely be foods — that I will have to cross off my list entirely. The “feeding frenzy” they inspire may be more than I can handle. But I think if I stick to whole foods, I won’t go nuts.

I still have a long way to go in terms of finding recipes that will satisfy my requirements and also satisfy my kids — who tend to reject a lot of things that I make, especially if they seem unfamiliar. I think that, in the end, I’ll just have to make the healthy stuff and if they won’t eat it — and, hopefully, they will learn to, over time — they certainly won’t starve.

 

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Patience

April 11, 2013

I won’t lie. I haven’t followed the plan perfectly. But I’m doing well enough to continue losing weight fairly steadily, which is excellent and encouraging. My challenge, lately, has been to rejoice in all the progress I’ve made, rather than looking at how far I still have to go. I think the trouble stems, at least [...]

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Why Lose Weight? My Kids

March 25, 2013

There are those people who credit their weight loss to their children. Their line goes something like, “They keep me busy chasing after them all day!” I am not one of those people. But that doesn’t mean my kids aren’t a motivation. I desperately fear passing on my weight/exercise issues to them, especially my eldest [...]

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52.8 lbs to go!

March 22, 2013

  On a recent login to my Fitbit account, I was greeted with the image above. 58.2 lbs to go. Is that supposed to encourage me? Just kidding. That green portion of the image certainly DOES encourage me. That’s how far I have come. But the remaining 52.8 lbs just seems so huge and dramatic [...]

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Identity Crisis!

March 2, 2013

No, I’m not actually suffering an identity crisis. I’ve just been thinking about the identity crisis we all face when we lose (or even gain) a good amount of weight. The stimulus for this thinking is a book I’m reading by a blogger I’ve followed for a long time — she was once known as [...]

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Why Lose Weight? — Career & Clothes

February 21, 2013

My job sometimes requires me to stand up in front of people and talk. I’m supposed to project an air of confidence, an impression of being knowledgable, and, in some ways, a sense of leadership. It’s something I’ve worked on for YEARS and, to be honest, I feel like I’ve had a breakthrough recently — [...]

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Slaying Demons

February 15, 2013

This week hasn’t been an easy one. There were two distinct time periods in which I felt a nearly-overwhelming urge to eat — pizza and/or macaroni and cheese. These are classic comfort foods for me, and it was one of those weeks where I felt like I needed comfort. It didn’t help that I’d actually [...]

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A Stronger Body

February 11, 2013

Since I started with this diet, I’ve been exercising sporadically. No real routine, just when I felt like it and had a chance. Walking, biking, elliptical. Again, nothing consistent. In keeping with that, yesterday I met a friend at her gym and we took a class — a Pump class. Back at my old health [...]

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