March 6th - Plodding along


So, here we are again at another official weigh-in day, and I have lost one kilogram (go to my progress page if you wanna check it out).  I'm pretty pleased because after all I'm still averaging just over a kilogram a week, but there's now a bit of a ho-hum factor setting in.  I guess I'm just an impatient sorta gal - I tend to attack things with gusto - so I want to be thin, and I don't want to be thin now, I want to be thin yesterday!!!

When I look back at past weight loss efforts, this time would be pretty high risk for me I think.  Feeling like things aren't happening fast enough is a sure fire way to start picking away at the edges of my resolve, but this time it's not feeling like that - and I'd like to reiterate a theme from my journal that might explain why. 

Previously, I've lost weight (successfully in the short term) by restricting reasonably severely over a period of a couple of weeks or so.  Having a small appetite made it easy to not eat much, but it simply was not sustainable.  Given that I was mostly losing a smaller amount (6-10kg range) at these times, I would then go back to my former eating habits once I reached goal fairly quickly.  Slowly but surely over time the weight would creep back on, often with extra.  As I got older and less active, the weight came back more quickly - and with the added assistance of some personal trauma and depression, the rate of weight gain skyrocketed in recent years.

This time I am very focussed on health and lifestyle change.  My planning, cooking and eating style is different as opposed to being a restricted version of my usual style of eating.  For the first time, I believe I have found a style of eating that allows me to eat three meals a day plus snacks, to eat out at a restaurant by asking questions and ordering well, and to eat in a balanced and nutritious way that promotes my long term health.

The rate of my weight loss will continue to frustrate me because I am impatient.  But it doesn't make me want to shift my goal away from health.  I will eat like this while I lose weight, and continue to do so when I have reached my goal.  Let me be quite clear that while I am getting sick of waiting for my goal weight (and that's just something I will have to accept), I am not sick of the way I am eating. Previously I have gotten sick of eating a restricted diet and returned to old habits when I'd had enough.

Now I know this is a basic premise of Weight Watchers, but it's easy to pay lip service to some of this without really thinking about how it applies to yourself.  So think hard about this - if you're not prepared to go on with certain changes, don't make them.  For me this has meant moderation - I can become quite an exercise freak when I'm trying to lose weight.  But this time I am only doing as much exercise as I can imagine sustaining in the longer term - and that means social tennis once or twice a week, and a walk maybe two times a week.

So, be realistic and be in it for the long haul. 


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