Phase 1

Some of you may recall reading my Happy New Year post from the beginning of the year where I talked about some of the changes I wanted to make in myself. I just wanted to let you know that I am actively working on accomplishing this goal. The biggest change I want to make is, of course, with my weight. However, there are so many factors surrounding the entire weight issue. There’s so much pressure, judgment and bad feelings involved it’s a hard subject to tackle. I don’t want to announce that I’m on a diet and then be spotted eating a cookie, because that’s going to give people a reason to judge me. If you see my fat ass with a cookie you are going to assume that I will never succeed at my diet, or that I have already fallen off the wagon. Even though I know I have eaten nothing but blueberries, cottage cheese and lean ham for the past 3 weeks you only know that people on diets don’t eat cookies. And that’s why diets fail.

Seriously, in this type of situation there are only 3 options:
1.) never eat a cookie again – YEAH RIGHT!
2.) sneak your food and hide while you eat the cookie (which leads to binging)
3.) don’t tell anyone you are on a diet – which means no one is encouraging you and supporting you – also means you have no accountability and can quit anytime you want.

I have done a lot of diets. Some of them have worked really well, but none of them have ever been permanent. Besides, the word “diet” actually makes me hungry. This is why I am not currently dieting and hope to never go on another diet again.

What I am doing sounds much more dramatic. I’m “changing my lifestyle”. Taking baby steps towards my goal of being a better me. It’s slow going, trust me. Since the beginning of the year I have only lost 5 pounds. Fairly small number for someone as big as me. Heck, about 3 years ago I was on a diet that resulted in me losing 11 pounds in my first week. But obviously, that didn’t stick so what’s the point.

Only 5 pounds in approx. 16 days isn’t a very big loss. But what is big is some of the changes I have made in my lifestyle. For example, I am no longer putting any food in my mouth after 9:00 pm. That may sound kinda late to most of you. The common rule is not to eat anything in the 2 hours before your bedtime. But since I stay up until an average time of 1:30 am – 2:00 am, not eating after 9:00 is meaningful. And difficult. I mean not even a bite of food goes in my mouth, whether it’s good healthy food or not. That one was especially rough on me last night cause I was feeling restless and there were a few squares of peanut butter fudge in the kitchen. It’s hard not to walk by and pop one in your mouth, but I did it.

Another change has been taking out smaller portions of food and drinking more liquids with my meals. Liquids is a tough one for me cause I’m very rarely thirsty. I seriously can go days with nothing more than 1 glass of tea or perhaps 1 can of diet coke. Nurses complain anytime I need blood drawn because my veins withered away and died of dehydration at about the age of 12. So, filling my stomach with liquids is going to actually do a lot of good. I’m not drinking as much as I should yet, but I’m working on it.

Something else completely new is that I am going to be adding a new daily feature to this blog called “1, 2, 3”. It will be a post that will be nothing more than 3 positive statements about myself that day. The reason behind this one is that I am my own worst enemy. Nobody hates me as much as I do and nobody talks as bad about me as I do. I call myself fat, dorky, stupid and gross countless times a day – whether I’m talking internally to myself or actually conversing with other people. Obviously that has to change. So I’m going to force myself to think of positive things and try to quit talking negatively about myself.

Those are the baby steps I have taken in Phase 1. As soon as I have these things under control and they become second nature, I will introduce Phase 2. No quitting this time!