Off-Plan Eating, Part I

It's about as predictable as puddles after a rain storm.  Mondays find individuals who, for one reason or another, went off plan over the weekend.  These individuals are invariably filled with regret and frustration that they somehow slipped - people are rarely happy that they made the choice to step off plan.  I encountered several individuals yesterday who were dealing with Monday morning regret, and it got me to thinking.

Before starting on Take Shape for Life/Medifast, I never stayed on any plan for very long.  I always started each weight loss plan, however sound or crazy the plan was, with the best of intention and the highest of hopes.  The problem was that I was always trying to fix a problem - my weight and my size - and I wanted to fix it as fast as possible.  Never mind that it had taken time to get into the mess I was in, I wanted it fixed overnight (well, almost overnight . . . ).  Of course, the fix was never fast enough for me and I quickly lost interest in the program I was on.  It didn't help that the weight loss was slow and that I usually felt pretty iffy - hungry, low energy, cranky and deprived. 

That's generally not the case on Take Shape for Life/Medifast, however.  Individuals on this program lose weight fast - there is no safer way to lose weight as quickly as we lose it.  Once we get into the fat-burning stage (3-4 days), we also generally feel pretty good with low hunger and lots of energy. 

So what gives?  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why are we so prone to sabotage ourselves?  I'm not a trained counselor, so I'm not offering professional advice here, just my opinion :-).

Assuming that weight loss is steady and that hunger isn't really an issue, I'm guessing that something else causes a person to make the decision to go off plan.  And it is a decision, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.  Nobody accidentally goes off plan and eats off-plan foods unless you aren't aware that the food is truly off plan (an example would be someone who eats carrots because they don't realize that this vegetable isn't part of the weight loss portion of this plan).  Eating nachos and cheese doesn't count as "accidentally" eating off plan - it's a choice, period.  But the question is, why do so many make those choices over and over again, especially when the choice is followed by almost universal regret?

If we keep our focus on what we're trying to move away from, the further away we get from the problem that prompted us to start on plan, the less motivated we are to continue.  Once the acute pain is lessened, we start to feel like we can give ourselves a bit of slack.  I've seen this over and over again - someone loses some weight, feels happy about their weight loss and decides they deserve to take a break and have a "treat."  They may be far from a healthy weight, but they decide to prematurely celebrate their progress, and the celebration includes off-plan food. 

Unfortunately, this is often a slippery slope.  Once someone goes off plan, then gets back on (getting back on is a good thing, of course!), they may then tell themselves that going off plan is no big deal - that they can take the weekend off and get right back on.  That may work once or twice, perhaps three or four times, but the more often a person makes the decision to go off plan and "take a break," the less likely it is that they will reach their goal.  For those who do eventually reach their goal, it's almost always because they finally decide to get serious and commit to staying on plan until goal and stop taking "breaks."

Changing this oscillating pattern requires a focus shift from what we're trying to move away from to what we're moving towards.  When our eyes are focused on what we want, when we have a clear vision of what it is, we are more likely to be single-minded in our pursuit of getting to goal.

I think there are other reasons why people choose to go off plan, too, but I'll talk about those tomorrow :-).  In the meantime, today is a new day with the opportunity to make choices that will either move us towards or away from our goal.  Choose wisely :-)