Making A Commitment

Whether you decided to make it a New Year’s Resolution or not, taking off the weight takes commitment. It’s not something you can approach haphazardly. I’ve been guilty of that, too. You SAY you’re going to diet. You’re determined to do it. But every day, you cheat just a little. You tell yourself you’re going to write down everything you eat, and then about half-way down the page, as in half-way into the day, you sneak something that you don’t really want to write down. You tell yourself, you promise yourself, you’ll write down everything else, just not that cookie/handful of Ritz crackers/bag of cashews, it doesn’t matter. But that little secret keeps you from being completely honest with yourself. And worse, it allows you to do it again - and again. It's a form of self-sabotaging your goal while all the time saying out loud to yourself and others who'll hear you, that you are cutting back, you just don't know why you can't lose the weight.

If you’re going to really set your mind to dropping the pounds, you must decide that it’s something you are going to do no matter what and that you’re not going to let your will power get away from you again - because you know you’ve done this before. You’ve made this promise to yourself before - at this time of year even.

So what’s different this time? Why are you here? Only YOU know that. For me, it was waking up one day, getting on the scales and saying to myself, I’m not OK with this anymore. I’m not OK with looking and feeling this way - and admitting that there is no one else who can do this for you. No one can make you make that decision. Not a husband, not a doctor, not a mother – it must be you. So, do it for you. Respect yourself that much. Love yourself that much. You deserve it.

A Loss Is A Loss, Celebrate!

Nutritionists and other health experts, when talking about how much weight one should expect to lose in a week while dieting, usually say 1 to 2 pounds is normal. So when your scale shows you've only lost a 1/2 pound from the previous week, it can be very disconcerting and frustrating when you expected so much more.

Remember that everyone's body is different. And all sorts of things impact our weight loss, even when we're doing absolutely everything 'right:' eating fewer calories, eating healthier, not eating past 7pm, etc. Don't get discouraged! Focus on the fact that even at a half pound, it's still a loss! The trend is downward. That's what matters.

You might consider a couple of ways to see your progress at a glance, helping you note your shrinking body for a little more visual encouragement. I keep a calendar in my bathroom, one with the date squares large enough for me to write in. It's my health calendar and I keep all sorts of details about what's going on with my body, in particular, my weight. By writing down the number every day, I can see at a glance, not only how my weight compares today with yesterday's but also how it compares to a week or three weeks ago.

Another possibility is creating a graph. You can easily do it on the computer, or you can do it the 'old fashioned' way with actual graph paper taped to the door of your closet or somewhere you'll see it every day. Physically creating those little graph squares each day with your weight number, will help you see how you are progressing. If the trend is downward, celebrate. If it's on the same line for weeks, hang in there. If you're eating fewer calories, you will drop the weight. If the graph line goes up, try a little harder. It's just another helpful tool to keep it all in perspective.

A Word About Lowering Calories

It's tempting sometimes to set an unrealistic limit on our calories. It was only 20+ years ago that popular fashion magazines touted a 1000 calorie a day diet as a good rule. Some women and teens got a bit too enthusiastic and cut that number in half, to just 500 calories! All in an effort to get the weight off faster.

As I said here in the entry titled, Determine Your Daily Calories, use a calorie calculator like the ones available at www.caloriecontrol.org to figure the amount you should be taking in on a daily basis in order to lose weight. But what ever that number ends up being, conventional wisdom now says that women should not go below 1200 calories a day and men shouldn't go below 1500-1600. The reason for this is twofold. It's next to impossible to get the kind of nutrition we need: the vitamins, the minerals, the energy, in a daily diet of less than 1200 calories. Health professionals have also discovered that our bodies go into a starvation/survival mode if we diet too severely. To put it quite simply, the body doesn't know when it's going to get another meal so it slows the metabolism for survival. You'll actually stop losing weight for awhile which will end up frustrating and discouraging you.

Do yourself a favor and be satisfied with slow and steady weight loss. That's how you gained the weight. If it comes off slowly, it's more likely to stay off longer. And isn't that the real goal?

My Credentials

FIRST ENTRY: I'm not a doctor or nutritionist or even a weight loss consultant. But I am someone who has battled with weight much of my life. At thirteen, I can remember going on a trendy rice diet for 10 days to lose as many pounds. That's eating nothing but rice, every day, for 10 days. Thankfully, it worked. That, along with a young metabolism, took me at a good weight well into my 20s. I found I could jettison any pounds that crept on by cutting calories for a few weeks. As the years added up however, keeping off the weight began to take more effort. I couldn't shed the pounds as quickly after overindulging.
When I got married in my late 30s, we ate out often and I, who had never really cooked for anyone but myself, and that often consisted mostly of eating over the sink, started preparing the only foods I knew. The ones I had grown up eating, delicious high fat meals. They were good and I was happy and I was eating heartily. As my portions got bigger, so did I. In the first 5 years of our marriage I put on 20 pounds. My husband never said I was anything but beautiful, but I knew better. I was disgusted with my body. I hated clothes shopping and I noticed my joints ached more. Getting out of bed actually hurt. At first, I attributed it all to age, but I suspected I might feel better if I lost weight. Finally after many failed attempts at one fad diet after another and taking off no more than a couple of pounds at a time, I remembered the only thing that ever really worked for me, calorie counting.
I knew I also had to be in the right frame of mind. I decided if I couldn't do this, if it didn't work, I would finally join one of those weight loss groups for help. But the idea of walking into a room full of strangers to say "I'm fat" like an AA meeting, scared me to death. That was my motivation. But would counting calories still work after all these years? Yes, it did. And I'm here to tell you I accomplished my goal of losing 20-pounds in less than 6 months. In fact, it worked so well, I lost an extra 5 pounds just for grins. I got into a pair of jeans that I hadn't put on in years. Shopping became not only fun, it became a thrill. I loved who and what I saw in the dressing room mirror! I had forgotten how much I missed that person and I could have kicked myself for not doing something about it sooner.
So because I know this works, I want to share my experience with you in case it can benefit others who struggle like I do. I say "do" because it's a never ending battle. Unless you have health problems or are taking medications that tend to put on weight in spite of everything you do, I think you can get some good out of this blog.
Let me say that I was never obese. If you are, (and you know if you are), you should consult a professional who can guide you through the choices and changes you need to accomplish your weight loss goal. This site is for those Baby Boomers who have hit that menopausal time of life. Perhaps you have a high school reunion on the horizon or a wedding coming up. Perhaps you have lost a spouse through death or divorce and are starting over. Perhaps you have finally taken a critical look in the mirror and can admit you are 20-30 pounds heavier than you know you should be. You don't know where the time went or how the pounds got there, but here you are. Mine came on by adding 3-5 pounds each year. It didn't look like much on the scale because it came on so slowly. But you should realize, as I did, that if you continue to ignore those little creeping numbers up the scale, you WILL find yourself obese and undoubtedly facing serious health problems on every level.
If you've been making excuses like, "Oh, it's just my age," or "I'm over 40, I can't expect to look like my teenage daughter," or "it's because my job is stressful," or "my husband says he likes me this way," then you need to keep reading. Yes, age makes a difference in our metabolism and they say stress contributes to our bodies' hanging on to fat and calories that we don't need, but there IS something you can do about it. I'm not suggesting we need to be Celebrity Skinny like those desperate women in Hollywood. No, I'm saying it's too soon for us to be giving up! And no one should expect to look like a teenager again. But you can look your best at the age you are. As for your partner liking you this way, it's important to know you should not do this for anyone but yourself, but men are visual beings. They want to like what they see. Nothing is nicer than seeing a positive body image reflected in your partner's eyes. Your husband may be a prince of a guy who is nothing but supportive, but I'll lay odds that if you lose 10-15 pounds, he's going to take notice. Try it. What have you got got lose?