Procrastination and being busy doing nothing

I am just so totally and utterly going NOWHERE at the moment; the only thing I seem to be good at is eating and gaining weight!!!

A week ago, I figured what I needed was some life-coaching. someone to help me get past whatever it is that’s stopping me from successful weight loss. It sounded good, I had a 20 minute free session and I could see that there was a lot of work that could be done to re-frame my mind and get myself out of this situation. But there was a slight snag- the £50 price tag for 45 minutes!

I know that working one-to-one with a professional is never going to be cheap- and also that this would be money well spent. BUT, and it’s a big but, I don’t HAVE £300 knocking around for the average 6 sessions. It’s simply too far out of my price bracket. Having the ME means I’m only working part-time, and the income I get is soon swallowed up with food, bills etc that there really isn’t anything left for expensive therapies.

Shame that. It looks like I’ll have to just keep plodding on in my own dysfunctional way.

I’ve thought that maybe I need to join a new slimming club, you know, try something new, but then I stop and think, well, you hear of the people who have tried ‘every diet going’ and are still overweight, and I don’t want to go down that route of false hopes and ups and downs. One ‘diet’ is enough I reckon. But then, if I no longer have the motivation to stick to that diet… why am I sticking with it? Surely there’s another option just around the corner that will be the answer to all my problems, the thing of dreams?

I also look at my recent attempts to get motivated. I’ve tried SOOOO many different ideas, different avenues, tools, techniques and plans to get my mojo back, and it seems that for every new thing I try, this becomes more of a dieting minefield and less of a weight-loss exercise.

It’s as though I now know TOO much, I know too many rules, I know too many tools and tips and restrictions and good things and bad things- so much so that it overwhelms me and instead of managing to focus on one positive habit change, I end up feeling that this dieting lark is too full of restrictions, that there’s too much writing and recording and reflecting involved. I end up feeling exhausted before I’ve even started. So it’s easier to carry on doing what I’ve always done than it is to work out which forms I ought to be filling out today- it’s as though I’m bogged down with miles of dieting red tape.

I’ve got the food diary, the unplanned eating assessment form, the goalsetting form, the weight-loss graph, the hunger scale, the tool planner… the list goes on and on and in the end it’s easier to not do any of it.

I guess maybe I’ve become a victim of my own motivation. I’ve documented my diet to death.

Maybe I really DO need a new start. Chuck out all the tools, forms and tables and charts and start again. But how?

The big bad one four

14st0lbs

I knew I shouldn’t have stepped on the scales this evening. I knew it was a bad idea before I even did it. Fourteen stone!!! This is ridiculous. This must be the lowest point of my weight-loss journey so far. I’ve put on one and a half stone from my slimmest, and I’m nearly back to square one. I was 14st7lbs at my heaviest. Not so far to go before I’m back to that size!!!

Why am I doing this to myself? Last night I had a binge. A proper binge. 8 biscuits, 4 packets of snack-a-jacks popcorn, two flapjacks, two packs of crisps and a cereal bar. That was after my dinner. I didn’t need any of it, but I still ate it. Why? What on earth is wrong with me? And yesterday morning I’d got up and decided that I would follow a diet for one day. One day only, and I still blew it!

I KNOW it’s self-destructive to binge, I KNOW crisps and cakes are bad for me, I KNOW healthy food makes me feel better and more energised, I KNOW I’m happier when I’m losing weight and getting compliments, I KNOW I’m eating food my body doesn’t need, I KNOW I’m not hungry even when I’m eating that thing I have a compulsion to eat.

It’s all crap. I’m crap, dieting is crap, weight is crap, low self-esteem from being overweight is crap. And yet, I’m responsible for my size. I, I am the one that feeds myself, I am the one that pushes food I don’t need down my throat. I am the one that acknowledges that I’m not enjoying eating the third or fourth biscuit or packet of crisps.

Am I really that rubbish? Am I really that weak-willed and shallow that I give in to every craving I have and lull myself to sleep with mouthfull after mouthfull until I feel sick? Why do I do that? do I really hate myself that much, that I want to punish myself week after week at the scales with a gain? Do I really hate myself enough to overfill my body with junk food? Do I really hate myself that much that I want to carry on looking fat and feeling uncomfortable in too-small clothes, and getting indigestion from eating the wrong things?

Am I really that crap that I can’t respecct my body enough to look after it? I know exactly what I could and should be doing for my health. Believe me, I’ve probably read more dieting magazines and books than 50 people together. I know what foods support my health, and what foods don’t. I know every trick in the book, but I don’t USE the tricks. When it comes to it, I don’t care, I want food and I want unhealthy food.

When did my relationship with food get so warped? When did food become a comfort, a way to switch off, a way to let go and forget? When did food stop being fuel and start being an obsession? Why do I think like a fat person? Why do I prefer the fatty foods and see them as treats, treats to be had numerous times a day? Why can’t I eat only when I’m physically hungry instead of when I’m having cravings?  Why can’t I stop when I’ve had enough rather than eat and eat and eat and eat? Why can’t I make the right food decisions and why on earth can’t I choose foods that are supportive to my heath rather than detrimental to it?

I AM RUBBISH. I AM TOTALLY UTTERLY STUPIDLY RUBBISH. I need to get a grip, but I’ve been trying to get a grip for a year. And I’m failing to get a grip. I’m under a dietician, I go to Weightwatchers when I can. And I still can’t get a grip.

I’m USELESS. Totally USELESS. Utterly USELESS. I hate myself. I can’t even maintain a diet for a single day. What sort of crap is that. I can’t even eat healthily for a single day. I’ve tried dieting, I’ve tried ‘not dieting’, I’ve tried eating healthily, I’ve tried eating diet foods full of chemicals. But my head’s not in the right place.

But I’m panicking. I do NOT want to get back to my heaviest weight. I want to be slim, I want to be the old me, the me with a healthy relationship with food, the me that’s independant, the me that’s healthy, the me I was before I got ME and before I got depression from the frustration of having ME.

I want the motivation I used to have- I want the energy I used to have- I want to be able to get up an hour early each day and go jogging like I used to do before the ME, I want to cut my calories and diet properly without nearly fainting with fatigue like I do now, I want to be full of vitality instead of being constantly trembly and weak (a weakness that makes me want to eat). I want to be able to go to the gym, use the rower, the treadmill, feel the burn, get the endorphin high from being able to exercise and push myself. I want to go out and do things on my days off instead of lying on my bed exhausted and incapacitated. I want so much, and my illness has taken so much away from me.

No wonder I’m unhappy, no wonder I turn to food. Eating is one of the few things I can do. Eating is my way to feel good. My way of ‘treating’ myself. Eating is easy, it gives me energy. Everything else in my life takes my energy away.

Life with ME is hard. Right now, it feels very hard. It’s hard because my health stands in the way of my dreams. It’s hard because I feel ill most of the time, and when I feel ill nothing else matters. Not even losing weight. When I feel nauseous and shaky and my heart is racing and the room is spinning, carbs and sugar seem a very good idea indeed. Carrots and apples just don’t do it.

My heart is bleeding, It’s bleeding for the me I once was, the me that jogged every day, the motivated, energised, can-do me. In fact I guess what I need right now is a good cry. Perhaps I need to sit down and acknowledge that my life is hard. Maybe I need to allow myself to be struggling, maybe it’s ok to be weak and rubbish and a dieting failure, because I have good excuses. Maybe I should realise that I have good excuses. Maybe I should stop trying and maybe I should let myself balloon up into a size 24, and just not care, because I have excuses.

Maybe I should give in to my situation, and acknowledge that losing weight is a rubbish thing to do when you are ill, maybe I need to realise that I am too weak, to ill, too messed-up to be a successful dieter. But the tears running down my face make me think that that would be soul-destroying to give up. I don’t want to give up. It seems like an impossible mountain to climb, it seems like I have a wall of thick concrete to pull down, it seems like my whole life opposes me losing weight. That’s how I feel right now.

But I won’t give up.

Setting goals and rewarding yourself

I think it is very, very important to reward myself at every step of my weight-loss journey. This is especially important when my weight-loss is going slowly and when I am losing motivation to continue.

I reward myself for two things. Firstly for reaching my weekly goal, and secondly for reaching every quarter-stone mark.

My weekly goal

Each week, I fill out a ‘weekly review’ sheet that I devised for myself. I review the week just gone, and plan the following week’s targets and goals. I also record how much weight I have lost in total and add a pound coin to my money box for every lb I lose.

I set a goal for the following week. This may be to track my food intake, or to use one of the tools mentioned here. And I also choose a small reward from my box of treasures. I am a crafter, so my reward is usually a pack of ribbons or small embellishments worth a pound or two, but nice enough for me to want!

My chosen reward then sits in a prominent place all week, reminding me of my goal and spurring me on to succeed.

My weight goals

I use larger rewards for my quarter-stone targets. They might cost anything up to ten pounds, which may sound a lot. That’s fourty pounds spent on myself for each stone I lose. But when you realise that I might only lose a stone in three months (due to my health), these rewards become quite important to keep me going.

I then have even bigger rewards for each stone I reach, and for losing 10%, 20% and 30% of my body weight.

And one day I will be giving myself the greatest reward of all- when I reach my goal weight!!!

Motivation for change

I think anyone thinking about enhancing their health or losing weight should take a look at Pete Cohen’s  Ultimate anti-health plan It’s a powerful way of thinking about the consequences of your actions and spurring you on to change.

We all know that food can affect us, but it’s so easy to know the facts- and yet not make the changes we need to make in order to feel healthier.

When you have a chronic health problem, it seems even harder sometimes to find the energy and motivation to change. When you are feeling completely and utterly ill, the last thing on your mind is ‘deprivation’. And I guess that’s where the problem arises.

We think of eating healthily as ‘deprivation’. I mean, how mixed-up is that? Somewhere, we have been wired to see the chocolate, cakes, ice-cream and crisps as some kind of ‘treat’ that we ‘deserve’. And to see the ‘healthy’ foods as the boring and bland option.

What if you had, say, a chocolate bar and an apple sitting in front of you. And you could have them both? Would you eat the chocolate first and leave the apple behind? Until the apple got all wrinkly and you had to throw it away?

So how can we turn things round to realising that making nutritious, wholesome food choices is in fact the biggest treat we can ever award ourselves? How can we start to believe that our bodies deserve to be fueled with energy- and vitality-giving foods?

How can we start to make the choices that will not only help us lose weight but also feel better health-wise?

Is cold-turkey the answer? Anyone who has ever tried a restrictive diet will tell you that it doesnt work like that- you end up craving the very thing you are denying yourself- until you give in and eat that ‘forbidden’ food like there’s no tomorrow.

But what if it wasn’t forbidden?

What if you saw that apple and chocolate, and you asked yourself, ‘do I want to feel energised and cleansed (apple) or wired and ravenous (chocolate)?’

And what if you could have some chocolate without feeling hungry the second the last crumb was gone? how could you do that? How about making a rule that for every piece of chocolate you eat, you had to have the apple FIRST?

Then you’d feel fuller, you might not even fancy the chocolate afterwards (who am I kidding?), and you would feel satisfied after having much less chocolate.

Worth a try?

Goals

It can be hard to imagine how you can lose 1,2,5, or even 10 stone. Often people are put off before they even start because the task seems to big, too unattainable.

I’ve found that it is far better to break your goal down into small manageable steps. Many people break their weight loss down into half stones- always focusing only on the next half a stone. Its kinda like eating the elephant. You can look at an elephant and think you’d never be able to eat that… but if you eat a small amount a day, you will find that it is achievable.

My weight loss is very slow- partly because of my poor mobility- so I break down my goals into 1/4 stones. It might take me a month or so to reach my next 1/4 stone, but they soon add up. Its not a race (though I have to keep reminding myself of that!). Its simply a journey to a new you. Your journey will be unique. Focus on what YOU can achieve for YOU, who cares how long it takes, if you get there in the end.

 You can do it! Decide on your next mini-goal today.

getting motivated

My motivation for losing weight is three-fold.

1.  I hate being overweight- I hate the roundness of my face and the fact that I am wearing big clothes. At my heaviest, I was in size 20s, I am now down to a 16/18.
2. I would like to be healthier- I dont like to think that carrying extra weight is increasing my risk of heart disease, cancer, arthritis and many other conditions.
3. My energy levels will be higher once I have 4 stone less to carry around with me every day. And with ME, energy is pretty scarce… so anything that can improve my energy levels has to be a bonus.

I dont have any specific events to aim for though- a lot of people lose weight for a wedding or a holiday- which can really give you focus.

What is your weight loss motivation? why are you losing weight, or why would you like to lose weight? write your motivation down and refer to it often. Its your first weight-loss tool, and a pretty effective one at that.