Category: #why

Sustainability

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Yesterday began with a hearty breakfast after my Saturday morning Weight Watchers meeting. We discussed how important it is to make our healthy lifestyle choices be sustainable. If we want to live the rest of our lives eating healthy, then we have to learn how to eat what we want but within limits. Feeling inspired, and thinking about the Belgam Waffles in my freezer as featured in yesterday’s social media post to my group:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10226578251616684&set=gm.1302000540682814&idorvanity=563000671249475
Facebook, Greenlawn Goal Setters

I was satisfied, and really felt proud of myself, go me! I can eat what I love and still lose weight. Later in the day, I was feeling hungry again – I did a quick body check and it was legitimate internal hunger:

I walked into the kitchen and there on the toaster were the bakery cookies that were left over from my son’s birthday party Thursday night. I stood there thinking, “You’re going out to dinner with friends later. If you eat a cookie that means you are going to have to balance it out with a lighter dinner choice. You are going to see a show too – which means you may want a fancy cocktail…” Even after all that thinking, I was reminded by the meeting – “if this is going to be sustainable (for the rest of your life) if you want cookies you need to be able to work them in.” I tracked and ate four bakery cookies.

Of course, that wasn’t a strategic choice, it was an emotional choice. I was watching a Halloween show, and I wanted the cookies. I wanted that sense of sweetness and Halloween at that moment. I knew what I was doing and I was alright with my choice.

All would have worked out except, when I did go to dinner later, the food was not good, so I really ate very little. I went to the show Beautiful (it was so great if you have not seen this musical and you love Carol King, do see it). Once there, I did get a lovely seasonal cocktail with a fancy apple slice and Tito’s vodka that also went into my tracker. But, by the time I got home hours later, I was very hungry! And because I was so hungry, I did not handle that situation as well as I could have. I ate a bowl of cereal with skim milk, two enlightened bars, and 2 bags of Utz Halloween Pretzels with 3 thin slices of smoked gouda cheese. In the end, I felt a bit defeated and went to bed.

This honest reflection of my day and real awareness is the thing I want to celebrate this morning. In the past that could have been way worse. Worse, because I would have had a blind spot to what I was doing, and I would have most certainly eaten more. That would have been followed by a great deal of shame for being so weak. Now I see that it’s not weakness it was genuine unchecked hunger.

I have one more thing to share. Many years ago I read Geneen Roth’s book, Women, Food, and God, her Eating Guidelines were a game changer for me:

“The Eating Guidelines
1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations or music.
4. Eat what your body wants.
5. Eat until you are satisfied.
6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure.”

― Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

If you have a curious mind, you may want to try eating mindfully today. If your experience is like mine, you may find it’s easier to tell when you’ve eaten enough. You may also be more aware of the physical sensations of what you’re eating feeling more present during the experience.

Fine Tuning My Interoception Sense

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Yesterday was a curious day and I find myself thinking about it this morning. Here is what happened, after eating a good breakfast:

(Click the link, if you want to learn how to calculate smart points)

I was very satisfied for a really long time. I kept myself pretty busy throughout the day doing errands and such. I wasn’t aware of my hunger again until 3:00 p.m. I prepared another meal of foods to pick on – an orange, 1/3 cup of shelled pistachios, and a leftover meatloaf muffin. After eating I realized I was still hungry so I ate 7 tortilla chips, Yes, I could have had some vegetables or some other lower-point option but I didn’t feel like washing, peeling, or chopping.

At 6:30 dinnertime rolled around and I ordered a thin-crust pizza and salad with chicken. The restaurant had included that pizza dough bread. I had a small slice, of pizza (I should have weighed it) a lot of salad and a piece of bread. When I looked down at my plate, I realized, there was more food on my dish than I needed.

Connecting Body & Mind

I started this morning browsing the internet for information about hunger cues, and my search led me to a term I wasn’t familiar with: interoception. What did that mean? It turns out Interoception is one of our senses and it helps us understand and feel what’s going on inside the body. So if you feel your heart beating, or are hot or cold it is your Interoceptive sense at work…

Facinating!“Fascinating!” By the way, I am a big fan of Strange New Worlds check it out on Paramount Plus if you’re into Star Trek.

As it turns out this sense is what signals awareness of internal hunger cues. This makes me also think about mindful eating – it’s an attempt to get in touch with this sense. Great, I just need to fine-tune my interceptive hunger to eat more mindfully. Well, hold on, it’s not so simple,, there are 11 dimensions of interoceptive hunger that are highly idiosyncratic. So if I understand this, it means the perception of interoceptive hunger is contextual to each of us. It’s complex, and the researchers set out to answer the questions:

  1. Are hunger sensations multidimensional?
  2. If they are, how do people differ?
  3. Are such hunger reports reliable?  

This table shows how the study defines the multidimensional nature of interoceptive hunger. It looks like the feelings: of fatigue, irritability, or cold emptiness are moderate to strong indications of this sense:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1148413/full

Another finding was having more beliefs about hunger, and forms of interoceptive hunger were associated with greater uncontrolled eating. Of those, two primary signals were people who had hunger factors of being fatigued or boared tended to eat uncontrollably. People who had greater restraint presented with feelings of cold emptiness. While emotional eaters presented with feelings of irritability. And of course, interoceptive hunger was more intense for the female participants of the study. This all makes sense to me.

I am a learner, and I read these studies because I think they start important conversations and discoveries. It could be that there might be practical implications for learning more about how interoceptive hunger develops.

Having this new learning in my back pocket is already coloring how I see the Hunger Scale l I created:

Hunger ScaleDownload

Now that I know more, I think this scale can help me be aware of interoceptive hunger. During the “Gentle Hunger” phase, my body’s signals are (likely) to be different than yours. The work, if you decide to do it is to identify how your interceptive hunger presents. For me, some signals I am going to pay more careful attention to growing feelings or physical symptoms of cold or emptiness, headache, bad breath, and abdomin noises.

Incentives & Expectations

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Having expectations is tricky. Weight loss doesn’t always play fair. One day weight can fluctuate by two pounds and other days weight can go down consistently like clockwork. So when I think to myself, “I should be at my goal weight by November.” I need to be a little cautious because a statement like that has the potential to turn a holistic process into a pass/fail situation.

Strategy #8 Be a Visionary

My weight loss journey is taking time to unfold. The way I perceive this time has a huge impact on my morale. I have a lot of weight to lose and it’s easy to get snagged in the day-to-day pitfalls of (very normal) weight fluctuation. Sometimes it helps A LOT to take a different perspective.

To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.

Bell Hooks

I have expectations for my progress, and I think I need to have those, they are like a beacon to guide me. Otherwise, I think I’d get too comfortable with where I’m at. Lots of people look great to me, but say they struggle with the last leg of their journeys: “I only have 7 pounds to lose but I keep going back but I’m stuck.” This is when it helps me to be a visionary. I can keep tabs on how it’s going now with my sites set on my future success. Yes, success is a given when using this strategy. I have to believe that I can do it, if I don’t believe then I won’t make it, guaranteed.

A way to manifest that visionary stance is to go to the data to analyze what is in the past to plan for the future. It affords me a greater perspective, one that celebrates all the effort I have dedicated to this process:

Over the past 11 days (7/31/23 – 8/10/23) I have gained 3.6 pounds and have lost 5.1 pounds. That means I’m trending downward down 1.5 pounds overall. According to experts (take your pick: Centers for Disease Control, American Medical Association, The National Institute of Health), A healthy average weekly weight loss (that can be maintained over a lifetime) is said to be between 1-2 pounds per week. This all means I’m doing great and I’m on track to achieve my goal. Being a visionary means you can see what others cannot yet. If you’re going to be visionary about anything in life, I think starting with yourself is a great place to begin.

Casting My Vote

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James Clear, author of Atomic Habits contends that the habits we keep are like casting a vote towards a person’s identity. So if you want to say you live a healthy lifestyle, but you only eat fast food, and don’t exercise, you’re casting your votes for living an unhealthy lifestyle. We are what we do. This is where some may think, “Well that makes sense but getting into the habit of living a healthy lifestyle is overwhelming. There is so much to do, and it’s difficult to manage it all!’ I hear this and can relate!

Strategy #5 The Two-Minute Rule

If you want to establish a habit but it feels too hard to get started then the two-minute rule is just what you need. You can do almost anything for two minutes! Here is how it works; basically, the goal is to spend no more than two minutes doing something. For example, if writing were a challenge tonight, I would set my timer for two minutes at the end of that time, I know I met the goal. There is a little dopamine release, “Yay I did it.” and now I feel good. If I do this every day (over time) I know I am the kind of person who writes every day. I can say, “I am a writer.” that becomes part of my identity.

I am also the kind of person who enjoys a fun beach day now and again. This is a local beach close to where I live on Long Island, New York. It was a really nice summer day.

Redesigning My Life for Weight Loss to Happen

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Habits are a funny thing because they seem so obvious to everyone. When a behavior is repeated with a high degree of frequency over time it becomes a habit. If the behavior is easy to do and requires little effort or thought the more likely it is to become a long-lasting habit. It is all pretty basic. Some people rail against the idea of forming habits to lose weight because it all seems too Pavolov’s dogs, or rats chasing after cheese in a maze for them. I get that but here’s the truth. The truth is everyone already has habits even if they are not conscious of them.

A Day in a Life of a Weight Watcher

Here is a story I’ve heard before. A woman closes up her kitchen for the night and then sits in a favorite chair. She enjoys winding down her day by reading a book. After a while, a snack craving happens. She tries to ignore it but eventually succumbs getting up and going back into her kitchen, thinking to herself, “I closed the kitchen.” to make herself a snack. As she is doing it she may even be thinking, “I should not be having a snack. I’m not even that hungry.” Then she eats the snack (or snacks) as she reads her book. She has mixed feelings of reward and disappointment, chalking it all up to a lack of willpower. This happens night after night and is sabotaging her weight loss. The root cause is not a lack of willpower, this is an example of an unhelpful, unconscious, habit.

Strategy #4: Habits are Helpers

It’s easy to read along with this and say, well ok Captain Obvious. It’s obvious to us right now because we are not the ones experiencing the cravings, or anticipating the rewards that habits bring with them. I’ve been that woman, and I can tell you for sure, it wasn’t obvious to me. I know at least some of you reading right now are doing this same behavior too. So how do we get rid of unhelpful habits? We wake up to them and then we redesign our lives.

I was able to redesign my habits to get rid of snacking at night but I noticed I had not been reading. I love to read fiction, and I need to read nonfiction for work if I am going to stay abreast of the latest educational trends. So I redesigned my life with a helpful habit.

  1. I included reading for 20 minutes a night on my habit tracker.
  2. Each day I think about a convenient time to read for 20 minutes. Sometimes it’s during lunch, or in the evening, I like having flexibility.
  3. The reward comes from two things: checking off the habit on my tracker (because it’s a habit I want to create) and the act of reading itself.

Habits happen either way. Will you make them your friend or foe? I am telling you it’s not fate, you get to make that decision. If you master your habits you can get anything you really want. This is true for weight loss, and anything else. Think about this because I am telling you are your greatest resource if you know how to tap into your power.

habit-tracker-getting-to-goalDownload

If you’d like to purchase this habit tracker go to my Amazon List

A Birthday Wish

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If you know, you know, gaining back weight is hard. I think it’s very important to try to make sense of why this happened to me. I regained 74 of the 94 pounds I lost over the span of five years. This is a hard post to write, so why do it? Why be so vulnerable in such a public space? I want my story to be about resilence not failure, and I want to evolve. I also need to understand why it happened. Sharing these blogs helps me to reflect, and a weight gain story isn’t that unique. Lots of people struggle with weight gain and maybe if I take the risk and put myself out there others will be inspired do their own work of uncovering their why.

Looking Back to Go Forward…

I am at a mid point in my weight loss journey, I have another 35 pounds till I reach my goal, and my intuition tells me that it’s time to take a look back. When I reached my weight loss goal last time, my motivation was all about turning 50. I wanted to look and feel my best, and I did it. I felt really amzing, I was really proud of myself. I did maintain my weight loss for a long time, until COVID happened. Then two of my most reliable habits were taken from me: going to Spin classes, attending in person Weight Watcher meetings. Everyone was home doing jig-saw puzzels, drinking, and eating. Old habits set up shop and I let myself be oblivious.

Regaining the weight was a slow process. Life events my coping strategies made it so easy to lose touch with my body. My “lockdown” was to set up house in my head and live there taking the rest of me for granted. Does that make sense to any of you? I was going along slowly gaining for a long time and it felt almost annoyomous. What I mean is while my weight fluctuated up and down (with a long term trend of going upwards). Just last year, my friends at work were complimenting my weight loss. They would remark about how great it was that I was maintaining the loss. I wasn’t maintaining it – and I knew that, but I ignored that it was happening.

By the winter of this year, the jig was finally up. By then there were no complements about me maintaining weight loss. To the outside world, it was obvious I wasn’t. On the inside I was feeling physically and mentally sluggish, and my confidence was taking a beating, I certainly wasn’t happy with my appearance. Everything to do with food had felt like it once had, overwhelming. It became very clear to me that I could no longer ignore my problem.

Early one morning, I stepped on the scale and to get reacquainted with reality, I thought to myself, “Now you know.” This was quickly followed by an onslaught of negative self-talk. My inner voice was all too happy to share her opinion about how I had let myself down, “You gained back so much weight! How could you do that? You knew it was happening. What’s wrong with you? You are practically starting over”. I realized that if I was going to do this; “Again!” (there she is) and have a of shot of being successful, I’d have to figure out how to quell that inner voice.

The Body Remembers…

Muscle memory refers to the body’s ability to reproduce a move without giving it any thought. So if you are a person who has lots of experience doing yoga, playing golf, or even riding a bike your body knows the script. This is the best analogy I can think of to descibe how I felt after my freak out session about my weight gain. I decided it was time to say goodbye to my negative inner voice, pack my bags and move out of my head and trust myself that I could indeed make weight loss happen again.

Strategy #2 Living As If…

Starting over was hard but something that helped me was to live as if I was feeling confident with my habits even if I wasn’t. That negative inner voice kept opening windows in my head and shouting down to me, “This is too hard!” When that happened, I would play this little head game. Let’s say a thought pops into my head like, “Ugh, I don’t want to drink any more water.” Another thought bubbles up, “This is just what you do. You are the kind of person who drinks 64 ounces of water every day. Now drink up.” I would act as if this is the total truth, and eventually it actually does become the total truth!

In a lot of ways, I’ve already arrived. What I mean is, I’m not wishing I were living a healthy lifestyle I am living it. And, yes, I have a way to go before I hit goal, but I’ve got this. Healthy living is becoming part of my identity. With this change, I feel like I can be more flexible when some other life event comes along and messes with my systems. I do want to lose weight but more than that I want to hold onto feeling physically better and mentally freer.

It’s very likely that I’ll always need to be warry of negative thoughts. Pictures will happen, feeling inadquate will happen, and there will definately be low days in the future. My big work is to learn how to manage that negativity. This strategy of living as if, is teaching me to understand that what I do in the long terms matters a whole lot more than what I think in a fleeting moment.

My Birthday Wish…

Today is my birthday, and I’m old enough to realize that I have so much to be grateful for already. In a real sense my wish has already been answered, because just being alive is the crown on my head. So here is my birthday wish – I’m sharing it with anyone reading this post at any time: “I wish that we would all believe in the power that we all possess to change ourselves for the better.” We can do it together.

Happiness is…

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I have systems that are working really well:

  1. Meal planning (especially dinner)
  2. Having the right tools e.g. food scale, water jug…
  3. Being part of a consistent, strong, and caring community
  4. Doing activities tht are both: fun, & make me feel stronger

My “why” for losing weight is being able to feel comfortable in my own skin. I want to feel like myself in any situation I find myself in. However, what good is feeling good in my own skin, if I am clueless as to who I really am? My weight loss journey is helping me to know myself better, and (for that) I am filled with gratitude.

Searching for what I need to learn in order to make my journey successful is as important to me as losing weight. An example would be how I needed to learn more about habits, so I read the books: The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits. Finding the information I needed to learn in order to help myself tapped into my personal sense of power.

You have power too; believe in yourself, and believe that you can do what needs to be done to reach your goals. Using your power to transform yourself either physically and/or mentally is an amazing way to live.

Maybe you’re reading this post and feel far away from its message of empowerment. if you’re “sort of” on a weight loss journey, sitting on the fence between belief or disbelief I hope you’ll cross over to believing. I believe in you, so let’s do this – together.

Finding Freedom

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I don’t want to think of my weight loss journey as being something separate from my life. What I mean is, I don’t want to say, “Well I’m on vacation so I will just have fun, and forget about following my Weight Watchers plan.” There is a subtle but destructive message in that thinking. This kind of thinking assigns something punitive to being on a weight loss journey. As if I cannot have all the fun I want and still be cognizant of how many points I’m consuming. This is a false narrative because I can be on vacation, be on plan, and have a great time.

Some might be thinking, “She has gone off the rails! Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!” I think, what I’m doing is, finally coming to my senses. I don’t want to be a prisoner of weight loss. That sounds hyperbolic but if I look back, I see that it was always black-or-white thinking. I was either good or bad; on or off and in that way, the prison I found myself in was by my own design.

A vacation would become a tripwire; after eating and drinking freely coming home to stringent routines would marginalize a personal sense of power. “See I gained ‘x’ amount of pounds, I can’t be trusted with my own decision-making.” A weight loss journey comes down to making choices. I am learning how to trust myself to make choices that will allow me to live a full life and improve my health not just when I’m in my controlled environment of home but anyplace.

Love is the Answer

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Most people have trouble losing weight. The most obvious reasons are: it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and consistent motivation to make it happen. Sometimes it’s not hard to stay in control (I’m in touch with healthy habits, and I feel good about where I am on the journey), and then other times it can seem doggedly difficult. Maybe I look at a picture and think, “Ugh… am I even making any progress?” True story, I felt that way just this afternoon.

There can be weeks of steady improvement followed by days of struggle. It is as though there is an on/off switch inside my head. Right now the switch is on for healthy living, but past experiences have taught me not to take that for granted. Something is nagging me I keep returning to these questions: “What changed?” How did I get back on track, and how did I lose the resolve from last time?” I really do like how I feel when I’m in check with healthy living, and yet (just like turning off a switch) falling out of step with these habits can happen in a snap.

Why? I think the change (for better or worse) hinges on subtle cues that activate behavioral responses. Today’s unflattering picture is a good example. On one hand, it might trigger me to drop my healthy habits, “Ugh.. might as well eat ice cream.” The other scenario might be, “Wow, it’s a good thing I am working on myself, keep going.” But really both scenarios are examples of negative self-talk. That is something to pay attention to and to work on.

The saddest part about this is when my family looked at the picture they said, “Look you have a genuine smile, you look really pretty.” When they see me, they just feel love. All of the anxiety and vanity tied up in needing to lose weight can cloud all perspective. Now that I think about it this post isn’t really about being fearful that I’ll lose my healthy habits. This post isn’t about me feeling upset with my physical appearance. Those are distractions, my weight loss journey is about so much more than habits, anxiety, and vanity. This is a journey to learn how to love myself for who I am right now, and to strive to evolve to be more today than I was yesterday.

Phone a Friend

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A friend sent me today’s cover image. She is traveling with her husband in their RV across the country. Driving on highways and local roads gives an intimate perspective of the land that air travel cannot give. They are experienced RVers who have done this every summer for many years. They know the ropes for how to pack, they can calculate how long it will take to get to their destination, and they know where to make reservations for the better campgrounds. They have an understanding of how this process works, and so they have clear expectations for what will happen along the way.

Knowing what to expect and having the capacity for doing what needs to be done, makes a successful journey possible. This thinking works for weight loss too. For so many of us, we know what to do to plan for successful weight loss, and yet we stop ourselves from actually taking the journey. Why? A reason might be because although we get close we never make it to the ultimate destination. Another reason might be that we reach the weight loss goal but can’t sustain it. Yet another reason may be that something significant changed in life, and now the systems to achieve a healthy lifestyle had to change.

Where are you on your weight loss journey right now? Maybe you’re all packed up and seeing the sights. Maybe you had to take a detour and are figuring out your new route. Maybe you took a pit stop and now your vehicle won’t start, you’ll need the tools to fix it. No matter where you are on your weight loss journey, please believe that you are the one who holds the keys. You are the only person who can decide what happens next to you.

When thinking about all the possible scenarios that could inhibit weight loss if you find yourself in the worst situation; like you’re stuck on the side of the road, your tire is flat and it’s raining... all is not lost. Sometimes, the best choice is to call in help from a friend. It’s true that this journey is one of self-reliance (only you can decide to take the trip) but it doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. Sometimes the best thing you can do to get yourself moving again is to ask a friend for help.