Post by SusieQ on Feb 1, 2005 8:30:32 GMT -5
There's a mental leap that successful losers make somewhere in their journeys. And that mental leap, I believe, is critical for getting the weight off, and even MORE critical for successful maintainance.
The good news is, that all of us can learn to think like these successful losers and maintainers. We can cross the Great Divide separating the successful from the not.
In order to lose weight, we have to burn more calories than we consume. That means, for most of us, we have to eat less and move more.
It should be simple.
It isn't. Our biology dictates that our bodies are constantly trying to to outwit starvation. Preparing for the famine that lies just around the bend. And since our bodies and our minds are intimately linked, when the body is challenged by fewer calories, the mind tries to help. Our minds tell us to forage, to eat, to store energy. Our metabolisms tend to slow to conserve calories. And the biggest problem...is that our minds interpret this weight losing experience as....DEPRIVATION.
And why not? Before we embark on this weight loss journey, we indulge in our favorite foods without restraint. We eat hot fudge sundaes, loaves of fresh-baked bread, chips and pretzels and cakes and cookies and lasagnas gooey with melting cheese and....
....and whatever your particular thing might have been.
Then After, we do without these things, or we do with them in vastly lmited amounts and frequency. Nothing like Before.
With this kind of obstacle, how does ANYONE succeed?
By learning how to experience the weight-loss promoting behaviors as INDULGENT, not DEPRIVING.
In the beginning, it feels depriving to sit at a restaurant and watch all your companion diners eat chocolate-y, rich desserts while you sip your tea and nibble at a fruit cocktail ordered off the breakfast menu. In the beginning, it feels depriving to get up early while the DH or the partner or the roommate sleeps in, so that you can squeeze in your 30 minutes on the treadmill before work. In the beginning, a healthy, mild hunger makes you think you need to go the emergency room of your nearest hospital. In the beginning, your mind constantly tempts you with the thoughts that you can "just have one' piece of chocolate (you know you can't just have ONE), "what can one time hurt" (it never stops at ONE time). Then there are the thoughts that come to trick us out of our resolve:
"It's too hard."
"I'll give in for now and enjoy this vacation. I'll start again next week, next month, next year...."
"This isn't worth it."
"I can't do it."
That's what's on the failure side of the Great Divide. What's on the other?
After, you know that eating mindfully and slowly while savoring high quality foods will feel wonderful. That you can get more satisfaction out of a Core dinner of barley and mushrooms, green salad with avocado dressing, and grilled salmon with lemon and onion, than with any amount of greasy, awful fast food. You find a deeper wisdom in your body than the demand for a quick calorie by consisting feeding it high quality nutrition in reasonable portions, and never letting it go truly hungry.
The mind follows. You begin to relax around food. The weight comes off...slowly, steadily. You feel better. You look better. Your health improves. You now understand, deeply, in your body, that you are taking care of yourself, indulging yourself in a deeply nourishing fashion.
What are the tools you need to make that leap? Here are some of them:
1. Mindful eating. Critical, really. You cannot have a quality eating experience if you wolf your food. You are trying to unify your mind, your body, your gut, and your desires for weight loss. You CANNOT feel satisfied and indulged with your food if you do not savor it! And you need time to savor a meal.
2. Never going deeply hungry. It's really important, especially in the beginning of the journey, to avoid intense hunger. Hunger makes our bodies AND our minds panic. You cannot learn to trust that you will get enough if you panic your body like this, either in a misguided attempt to lose weight quicker, or by accident. Plan your meals and your snacks so that you will not go deeply hungry.
3. Provide satisfying, high quality nutrients to your body. The body (and the mind) panic less about fewer calories when the need for nutrition is met. You will be less hungry if you eat mostly high quality foods and try to avoid crap: sugar, white flour, artificial anything.
4. Outwit the body's conservation principle: exercise is the best way to keep the metabolism from slowing down in response to weight loss. Building metabolically active muscle can really help, especially in maintainance!
The best way to learn to love exercise is to keep at it. There's an energy hump at the beginning: it takes a certain amount of time to reap the "high" that comes with exercise. If you keep at it, it will come. (More on the psychology of exercise in another thread.)
5. Program your mind to reward good choices. When you select healthy foods at a restaurant, for example, learn to tell yourself how wonderful it is to have made such good choices. Feel those choices as self-nurturing. Say to yourself, "I'm taking such care of myself!" This is the best antidote to any feelings of deprivation.
6. Have fun with the process! Build in non-food rewards. Make a graph of your weight loss, and enjoy watching the line go down. Get a map of the United States and chart your biking miles on it until you've crossed the continent.
7. And when you really feel that you need a piece of chocolate, icecream, lasagna, whatever....give yourself TOTAL permission to have it. Eat it mindfully. Count the points for it. And never, ever feel guilty about it.
8. If you make a mistake (and you will), learn from it. NEVER call yourself bad names. If you make yourself feel too bad about it, you will want to avoid experiencing that again. And the easiest way to avoid it is by not trying to lose weight! So don't make yourself feel that bad! Your body is not enemy. Your body is your friend. Never treat a friend badly...
So that's it. To change from feeling deprived by weight loss to feeling indulged by it....learn to experience the weight loss behaviors as fulfilling, deeply satisfying, and as expressions of the ultimate in self-care.
Namaste!
Susie
The good news is, that all of us can learn to think like these successful losers and maintainers. We can cross the Great Divide separating the successful from the not.
In order to lose weight, we have to burn more calories than we consume. That means, for most of us, we have to eat less and move more.
It should be simple.
It isn't. Our biology dictates that our bodies are constantly trying to to outwit starvation. Preparing for the famine that lies just around the bend. And since our bodies and our minds are intimately linked, when the body is challenged by fewer calories, the mind tries to help. Our minds tell us to forage, to eat, to store energy. Our metabolisms tend to slow to conserve calories. And the biggest problem...is that our minds interpret this weight losing experience as....DEPRIVATION.
And why not? Before we embark on this weight loss journey, we indulge in our favorite foods without restraint. We eat hot fudge sundaes, loaves of fresh-baked bread, chips and pretzels and cakes and cookies and lasagnas gooey with melting cheese and....
....and whatever your particular thing might have been.
Then After, we do without these things, or we do with them in vastly lmited amounts and frequency. Nothing like Before.
With this kind of obstacle, how does ANYONE succeed?
By learning how to experience the weight-loss promoting behaviors as INDULGENT, not DEPRIVING.
In the beginning, it feels depriving to sit at a restaurant and watch all your companion diners eat chocolate-y, rich desserts while you sip your tea and nibble at a fruit cocktail ordered off the breakfast menu. In the beginning, it feels depriving to get up early while the DH or the partner or the roommate sleeps in, so that you can squeeze in your 30 minutes on the treadmill before work. In the beginning, a healthy, mild hunger makes you think you need to go the emergency room of your nearest hospital. In the beginning, your mind constantly tempts you with the thoughts that you can "just have one' piece of chocolate (you know you can't just have ONE), "what can one time hurt" (it never stops at ONE time). Then there are the thoughts that come to trick us out of our resolve:
"It's too hard."
"I'll give in for now and enjoy this vacation. I'll start again next week, next month, next year...."
"This isn't worth it."
"I can't do it."
That's what's on the failure side of the Great Divide. What's on the other?
After, you know that eating mindfully and slowly while savoring high quality foods will feel wonderful. That you can get more satisfaction out of a Core dinner of barley and mushrooms, green salad with avocado dressing, and grilled salmon with lemon and onion, than with any amount of greasy, awful fast food. You find a deeper wisdom in your body than the demand for a quick calorie by consisting feeding it high quality nutrition in reasonable portions, and never letting it go truly hungry.
The mind follows. You begin to relax around food. The weight comes off...slowly, steadily. You feel better. You look better. Your health improves. You now understand, deeply, in your body, that you are taking care of yourself, indulging yourself in a deeply nourishing fashion.
What are the tools you need to make that leap? Here are some of them:
1. Mindful eating. Critical, really. You cannot have a quality eating experience if you wolf your food. You are trying to unify your mind, your body, your gut, and your desires for weight loss. You CANNOT feel satisfied and indulged with your food if you do not savor it! And you need time to savor a meal.
2. Never going deeply hungry. It's really important, especially in the beginning of the journey, to avoid intense hunger. Hunger makes our bodies AND our minds panic. You cannot learn to trust that you will get enough if you panic your body like this, either in a misguided attempt to lose weight quicker, or by accident. Plan your meals and your snacks so that you will not go deeply hungry.
3. Provide satisfying, high quality nutrients to your body. The body (and the mind) panic less about fewer calories when the need for nutrition is met. You will be less hungry if you eat mostly high quality foods and try to avoid crap: sugar, white flour, artificial anything.
4. Outwit the body's conservation principle: exercise is the best way to keep the metabolism from slowing down in response to weight loss. Building metabolically active muscle can really help, especially in maintainance!
The best way to learn to love exercise is to keep at it. There's an energy hump at the beginning: it takes a certain amount of time to reap the "high" that comes with exercise. If you keep at it, it will come. (More on the psychology of exercise in another thread.)
5. Program your mind to reward good choices. When you select healthy foods at a restaurant, for example, learn to tell yourself how wonderful it is to have made such good choices. Feel those choices as self-nurturing. Say to yourself, "I'm taking such care of myself!" This is the best antidote to any feelings of deprivation.
6. Have fun with the process! Build in non-food rewards. Make a graph of your weight loss, and enjoy watching the line go down. Get a map of the United States and chart your biking miles on it until you've crossed the continent.
7. And when you really feel that you need a piece of chocolate, icecream, lasagna, whatever....give yourself TOTAL permission to have it. Eat it mindfully. Count the points for it. And never, ever feel guilty about it.
8. If you make a mistake (and you will), learn from it. NEVER call yourself bad names. If you make yourself feel too bad about it, you will want to avoid experiencing that again. And the easiest way to avoid it is by not trying to lose weight! So don't make yourself feel that bad! Your body is not enemy. Your body is your friend. Never treat a friend badly...
So that's it. To change from feeling deprived by weight loss to feeling indulged by it....learn to experience the weight loss behaviors as fulfilling, deeply satisfying, and as expressions of the ultimate in self-care.
Namaste!
Susie
