2/3 me diary

2/3 me said:
... it's a normal downer of life. I need to be able to eat mindfully whatever life throws at me - not drop it if something difficult happens. Difficult things are always happening.
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This is so true. It's not easy and maybe not possible to achieve massive things with your weight loss in difficult times, but it needs to not completely derail you either.

Keep talking the talk in here - that's a bit of light.

You have thought about the closet eating. You have written about it. It's not a proper secret - maybe this will help turn it into an open cupboard?

I so relate to the idea of sneaking food and hiding what I was doing.

It sounds like it's making you as miserable as it made me. Do you think you are trying to reward yourself, or to punish yourself?

Your desire to progress is a massive positive. You can do this!!! :)
 
Walking the walk is tough, it's not something anyone succeeds at every day, but it is also one of the ways new discoveries are made. If everyone did everything right every time they tried it, we wouldn't have lots of new inventions, and we would not have discovered lots of the techniques we use for many, many tasks.
Just think about cheese; do you think they were TRYING to make cheese when it was discovered? Nope, just a happy accident that they learned how to replicate. Keep doing what you are doing, focus on getting through things with your sick and miserable dog (not human, but still loved), and watch for any tricks you learn for avoiding secret eating. Sometimes you'll do it right, sometimes you'll fail, but remember that avoiding or having any one meal is not going to matter much in your overall plan, so you can't give up or declare a success due to any one meal. Even birthday meals. :p
 
Guess what - on Monday I recorded a 1/2 pound loss - whoopee! I seem to have put a halt to the descent - which is a first. Now I need to get the eating to a level where the weight begins to drop again.

I have bought a bike, and over this weekend rode it back from the shop - a 6/7 mile ride with a large hill to push up. Today I also did a ride of about 7 miles, and had great fun!
 
The other positive thing is that since admitting to eating secretly - I haven't. Sometimes I need to face my eating behaviour head on, as I can be amazingly "blind" to my own behaviour.

I am just really glad this place exists, with people in it willing to put out a helping hand to others, because I feel I am getting further with my eating than I ever have before, and without this support I know that by now I would be drowning in chocolate and classing myself as a hopeless failure.
 
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Woohoo! Two great bike rides - way to go!

Congratulations on the loss - and on starting to turn things around!! :)
 
I've been thinking about a bike lately, as well. I'm doing a lot of walking and hiking, but I kind of miss the wind in my face from a bike.
Me = jealous.
 
There's no need for jealousy, there are plenty of bikes about.

I have to say, I am missing my bike already. My hubby is working late and the roads around here are not safe for young kids, so I doubt that I will get my bum in the saddle before next weekend. But I can dream of me sailing along, noticing the signs of spring, laughing at bunnies playing in the fields, and calves poking their heads over hedges.

People were giving me some very odd looks, but I realised that was bacause of the daft grin plastered over my face. I felt as if I was a child again!

Oh, in all the bike excitement, I nearly forgot to say - I lost a pound at today's weigh in. Hurrah!
 
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Your bike rides sound magical. Gotta love the daft grin. :D I hope you don't have to wait too long for the next ride.

Congratulations on the pound! :)
 
ooh how fab! cycling around jersey - you are so lucky! glad you have found something that you enjoy doing AND is exercise :) well done on that pound down - hope the weather is as good there as it is here - you'll be able to get out on the bike again and get a tan xx
 
Life Sucks

Well, it doesn't, not really, it's just I am feeling pretty miserable about myself, having gained wieght last week, even if I lost a bit this - I am feeling that I am not doing really well at this intuitive eating, as I seem to intuitively want to eat things that are tasty and calorie ridden in fairly large quantities. I was feeling a lot worse - last week I wasn't sure I would ever post here again, feeling so disillusioned after gaining weight (my Mum had been over, and we had a huge meal with all the family over, and there were lots of ice-cream left overs, and I ate out...)

But yesterday I read the book called "Hunger - an unnatural history", and I feel differently. Basically I am trying to get out of the diet mentality that I have been in for so many years, and that has resulted in some spectacular weight losses - followed by equally spectacular weight gains, and a very unnatural attitude to food. I want a natural attitude to food - I want to eat when I am hungry, eat what I fancy, trusting that I fancy healthy food over unhealthy because it tastes, and feels better, and to stop, naturally when I am full. I am to eat intuitively, in other words. But going from eating the way I used to, to eating intuitively, can take some time. Some people gain before they find the weight creeping away. I haven't gained, but I am floating abaout at around the same weight for longer than I want to.

The book I was reading details the effects of starvation, which dieting is basically, and I recognise a lot of it. It can take a while for someone to normalise their eating after a starvation period, sometimes years. I feel better about being so slow to get there myself.

I have to tell myself that I have been eating the other way for years - feast or famine, it will take me a while to adjust to this new way of eating. It will take my mind a while to accept that I will give it what it craves, that no food will ever be forbidden again - something that will end the cravings I have been told.

I've just got to hang in here.

The fact that my weight has sort of stabilised is proof that this will work - my weight is normally either going up, or coming down. I did not think my body knew how to plateau!

As for the bike, I haven't riden it since. I was poorly last weekend, and this week I drove past someone Saturday morning on her bike, and was so envious, but by the time I had got all my jobs done, the weather had turned and it got even worse Sunday. Still, there is always next weekend.
 
Summer is coming in :D
You'll have a chance to ride that bike, darn it!

As for the intuitive eating... It's not always easy, and you still have to think about the relative value and nutritional content of the foods you eat.
I'm actually somewhat envious of your stable weights; mine fluctuates by several pounds on some days, which is really strange. Even if I am not eating much differently from one day to the next, my plain water weight just seems to come and go with the tide, and I don't keep a scale in my house, so when I do get to a place with a scale, I tend to take advantage of it.
Even more strange is that my waist measurement will fluctuate a lot, sometimes by as much as 4-6 inches, like last night!

I hope you'll be able to ride your bike this week! :D
 
I’m back! I have been settling into eating intuitively. Guess what, I have gained weight, but I have stopped binging, and though I gained a bit, my weight then settled. My taste in food has changed as I have learnt to eat when I am hungry – I found that I was gulping my food, and when I re-taught myself to actually chew it properly, it tasted different. Some things tasted better – some worse. I take an apple into work near every day now, because I love to eat an apple. I also eat properly now – I used to often live on a series of snacks, but now I find myself happily waiting for mealtime, and having three meals a day.
The other day I bought the Paul Mc Kenna “I can make you thin” workbook, to help me focus even more on the principles. Having a daily checklist focuses the mind, and I realised that although I was eating what I fancied, I did not always wait until I was hungry to eat, and was not always careful to stop when I was full. I am excited about beginning to lose weight as I pay more attention to those things.
 
No tapping or spinning please!

Hi, been searching to see if anyone else is using Paul McKenna and see that he has the rep of being about hypnotism - well, just to say that I laugh all through his hypnotism CD - but I am all for getting my subconscious onside - lord knows, my subconscious is often my biggest enemy when it comes to losing weight - I swear it likes me being big! So I listen to the CD every night, just on the off chance that it will help, even with me giggling. It's the way he gruffens his voice - for some reason that presses all my giggle buttons.

I haven't read his book, I am still happy with the battered copy of The Intuitive Eater. I think his book may be a little unrealistic - in the Intuitive Eater there are no promises to get you thin - to help you loose when you are very overweight yes, but not to help you get thin (what is thin? A size zero?) and the Intuitive Eater advice is that it may take a while to get uses to letting yourself eat what you want when you want it, and to lose the diet mentality (sorry all those dieting, but 42 years of dieting have proved to me that there is a diet mentality, and that it is poison to me), whereas McKenna reckons it takes but a few days.

Anyway, his methods are more or less the same as the Intuitive eater, just with more focus on visualisation, and tapping and spinning - things that I have absolutely zero belief in. My cravings have almost disappeared in the months that I have been eating what I wanted when I was hungry - without any tapping or spinning at all.

Anyway, catch up with you all soon.

Manda
 
Hi Manda

I am a veteran of a vast number of failed weight loss projects.

I could not fail to notice your "2/3 ME" nom de plume as I last week hit the milestone where I had lost 1/3 of my February weight - I was 21 stone then and am slightly under 14 stone now. I was a lot bigger than you are. I am 48 years old so am a little older than you.

I have become disillusioned with the concept of calorie counting over the years. I do not see it as a technique that I could ever adopt for life - heck I have proved that I cannot keep it up for a couple of months.

The main difference between this weight loss project and countless others for me is that I now do a lot of walking. I would recommend that you get a pedometer and start walking. They are really cheap these days.

Take care. I hope that you succeed in your quest.
Best wishes
Margaret
 
Hi Margaret,

Just come back from walking the dogs! I have a back problem, so long walks are out for now - I am seeing a chiropractor and have booked a pilates core strength class with a practitioner that my chiro recommends (but there are no spaces until January), and we are hopeful that I will be able to strengthen my back enough to partake in regular sports again, but for now my back is just not recovered enough from years are carting about my kids on one hip.

I have used pedometers, but find they always break within a few days. Either I get silly numbers for steps, or none. Very dispiriting!

You have done so well, congratualtions. I can not help be envious - 14 stone sounds svelte compared to the 17 stone I almost am now, and the 21 stone you were. Your life must be imeasurably improved. Just moving about must be better without those 7 stone, and buying clothes must be a lot more fun!

I am quite sure in my mind that I am going to lose a huge chunk of my excess weight. Which is very different than I have felt for the first 41 years of my life, when I felt like a failure - even when I was slim I felt like a fake, and a failure, though I never quite understood why. When I got slim there was a "what now?" feeling, that I do not expect to have when I lose weight from this method. So I expect to keep the weight off.

It's odd though - life seems set up for people to overeat - as if eating when not hungry was the norm. In fact saying "I am not hungry" seems to offend some people when you are refusing some cake etc. Almost like it is a weak excuse.

Take care,

Manda
 
Hi Manda,

The pilates course sounds good. Our sister in law swears by pilates. It is good that the chiropractor has been able to recommend an instructor for you.

You can do quite a lot of walking in short bursts. I am sure that your dogs will appreciate the extra walks. I used to have a bad back dating from falling down the stairs nearly 20 years ago. It has been better this year since the weight started coming off than it has been in just about all those years.

I have to say that I had trouble with pedometers at first. I will tell you what the problem was in case you possibly have the same problem. When I first got my pedometer it was not registering anything like the number of steps that I was doing. I had a good idea of the miles as we had checked out the distance with the car tripometer. I had the pedometer clipped on the waist band of the trousers that I was wearing as recommended by the pedometer company. Then I realised that my bra was not as fitting as it might be as I had lost some weight. In effect my boobs were hanging down and acting as shock absorbers and the pedometer was not able to detect that the step had been taken. I put on a more supportive bra and everything was fine.

I definitely feel thinner than I did - although I recognise that I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be. Some days I feel like I am absolutely bursting with energy. I havent really bought much in the way of new clothes as I am still wanting to lose more weight and have been going down the clothes sizes fairly quickly so far. I keep thinking - maybe I can lose another stone before I get anything more.

I find the weight loss of Charlie Walduck very inspirational. I dont know whether you have seen it. I look at it every few days and it makes me believe that it is all possible.



Take care
Love
Margaret
 
That diet sounds like a halfway step between most diets and intuitive eating. The 4 rules that Paul McKenna promotes are:

1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat what you really want.
3. Eat conciously (be aware of each mouthful).
4. Stop if you are full (even if you only suspect it - if you find out you are still hungry, you can always have more afterwards).

Those are much the same as in the Intuitive Eating book. I cannot personally say that the rules help you lose weight, as I have only been following them closely for 6 days, and haven't weighed myself yet! But since I began to live using the rules as a guideline, I have changed the way I relate to food totally. I used to have secret stashes of chocolate secreted around the house. Today a friend suggested in that old excitable guilty way that we have some chocolate, and I actually felt repulsed. I wasn't hungry, and even if I had been, chocolate seems not to be the thing that I want to eat these days.

I no longer binge, and am not obsessed with food. Even if I do not lose weight, I have gained so much from following the 4 rules. But as I am now following them more strictly, I do expect to lose weight.

It is interesting that the diet that has worked for you leans towards some of the principles of intuitive eating.
 
Hi Manda,

There are indeed similarities. I am sure that you will lose weight. I weigh myself every day - I am too impatient to wait a week between weighings. This approach suits me - but it would not suit everyone.

Take care
Love
Margaret
 
That's the key isn't it? Finding something that works for you. I am a working mother who is about to start studying again - I simply don't have the time to do the walking you do, even if my back and feet could take it. I have very little spare time - and this system suits me because you don't need time - there's no weighing, or special shopping, or measuring. The journal is the most time consuming thing, and that takes 5 minutes to complete!

Anyway, I weighed myself this morning as I noticed that my clothes felt looser, and I have lost 3 1/2 pounds over the last 6 days. I am well excited. I honestly didn't think I would show a loss anything like that - I imagined that I would lose slowly, a 1/2 pound to a pound a week, and that would be fine. I want to take the weight off, but speed is not a motivating factor. So far, last week was above and beyond my wildest dreams of how successful I would be.

And I have noticed that my huatus hernia is happier with this way of eating. I regularly forget to take the pills that control the level of acid I produce (I am a dead thing in the morning until I get going) and had only the mildest sympotoms when I forgot this week. maybe the overeating, even though it was fairly mild in itself, was agrivating the hernia? Anyway, it was a good sign.

Hope you are having a good Saturday,

Manda
 
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