Hanging In There

Happy Wednesday!  Are you excited to be on plan today, or are you wishing you could eat something - anything - other than five Medifast meals? 

I called a friend yesterday who has struggled to stay on plan.  She does well for a while, then things come up and she gives herself permission to go off plan.  Once she does that, it can be a challenge to get back on plan and stay there.  I asked her how she was doing and she told me that she was "hanging in there."  She said that she really didn't feel like being on plan but was doing it anyway.  I think I surprised her a bit when I responded, VERY enthusiastically, "That's FANTASTIC!"  She was clearly puzzled by response, because she certainly didn't view "hanging in there" as fantastic, but it is.

She's made the decision to go for it, and even though she really doesn't feel like staying on plan, she's doing it anyway.  That's huge!  For those of us who are die-hard emotional eaters, for those of us who allow our emotions to lead, it's a big deal to acknowledge how we feel and then set those emotions aside.  It's a big deal to look at a tangle of emotions square in the eye and say, "so what!"

My friend told me something else that was even more significant.  She told me that even if she didn't want to be on plan, she really didn't have a choice because she had cleared every off-plan thing out of her house.  That's significant because that means she has structured her environment for success.  If she had some of her trigger foods in the house, it would be more difficult to stay on plan, but she cleaned her cabinets and emptied her refrigerator. 

I'm excited for my friend because she's taken a couple of important steps that are going to move her towards what she's decided she really wants - getting to a healthy weight.  Even after I talked to her, I could tell that she wasn't necessarily "feeling it", but she's simply decided that it's what she wants so she's doing what she needs to do anyway.

Once we make the decision that we are going to get to our goal, the facts really don't matter.  Our emotions are facts, and the fact is that you may NOT want to do this today.  But if you've made the decision to get to your weight loss goal, what your feelings are about being on plan are irrelevant.  If you've taken an additional step and structured your environment for success, you've increased the probability of success.  My friend is single, so stripping her house of all things off-plan was easy.  I know that some of you have families and can't rid your house of everything, but you CAN put it together in a cabinet that will be off-limits to you - a cabinet that you just don't open.

This isn't easy, but when you're at your goal weight and in your goal size, when you're looking and feeling better than you have in years - maybe better than you've ever looked and felt - you'll have NO regrets.  It starts with making the decision to go for it, then making the choices necessary, one day at a time, to get there.  Choose wisely :-)