Enjoying Food or Enjoying Life?

For many of us prior to starting on 5&1, enjoying food was one of the major pleasures in our lives.  Going on this program was hard because it meant giving up a major source of pleasure.  My social life revolved around food - every time we got together with someone, it was to eat.  There was good conversation and a lot of fun, but all of that took place over a meal or dessert or a variety of snacks.  

What I realized after starting on this program was that while I had been enjoying food - lots of food, I wasn't enjoying a lot of other things.  I didn't enjoy physical activity because pain in my knee and my back made even walking difficult at times.  I didn't enjoy shopping for clothes because I hated the size I was in and, out of embarrassment, never shopped for clothes with my friends.  I felt fatigued much of the time and was happiest when I was sitting someplace, particularly at a table with food in front of me.  I didn't enjoy going to a beach and would never attend a pool party . . . the list of things I didn't/wouldn't/couldn't do was pretty long.

What was true for me then is still true for some people I know.  They won't even try this program because they claim that they just enjoy food too much to give it up.  What's sad is knowing that for some of them, their enjoyment of food and their resulting obesity is preventing them from enjoying so many other things - they're enjoying food, but not really fully enjoying life.

As I started this program and began to really embrace it, an amazing thing happened.  While I wasn't enjoying food in the same old way (from a culinary perspective, eating five Medifast meals and a lean & green doesn't placate the pleasure centers in the brain like all of those high-sugar/high-fat and calorie-laden meals), I WAS enjoying other things.  My knee and back started feeling better pretty quickly and I started to enjoy taking walks.  My energy level went WAY up and I didn't feel like crawling into bed when I got home from work.  We still got together with friends, but I found out that I could have a great time with them and NOT eat the same old food - a lean & green at a restaurant or having my own Medifast meal while they snacked on something else didn't impact my ability to have fun at all.

As I continued to lose weight, I realized that I was getting a whole new life for myself - one that wasn't defined by obesity or dependent on food to have a good time. 

Six years ago, I stayed on plan through the holidays and lost 18 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's.  My memories of that holiday season aren't about the food I did or didn't eat - they are of time spent with family and friends.  My enjoyment of the holiday season wasn't diminished in any way because I didn't eat this or that because my focus was on enjoying time with the people that I loved.

Since reaching my goal on May 22, 2008, I've been able to enjoy a wide variety of food again, but the lessons learned while on 5&1 have remained.  Enjoying life is about so much more than what's on my plate.

Today are you choosing to enjoy life, or are you choosing to enjoy food?  Choose wisely :-)

Watching Out for Slick Spots

Some things are as predictable as, well, snow in Michigan in the winter.  One of the things that is absolutely predictable with the first snow of the winter is an absolute rash of fender benders.  Thankfully, most of these are just that - fender benders - with no serious injuries.  Once everyone readjusts to driving on snowy (and sometimes icy) roads, things settle down pretty quickly.  What amazes me is that it snows absolutely every winter, and anyone who has lived in Michigan for any length of time and driven in winter has developed the winter driving skill set they need to navigate the roads safely - at least that's the theory.  In practice, however, it appears that some people need to relearn how to drive every single winter, and the rest of us try our best to avoid getting hit by one of them. 

Why is it that we so quickly forget what we think we've learned?  I am almost certain that by the time the snow melts for the last time every spring, most Michigan drivers are expert at dealing with winter roads.  Then the weather turns warm, the roads become dry once again and many drivers get lax and are seemingly caught unaware when the snow inevitably falls the next winter.  

The same is often true for those of us on 5&1.  We think we've "got it" this time, and we do really well for a while.  Then things come up and some find themselves off plan and quickly out of the 5&1 routine.  When that happens, there can be a series of "5&1 fender benders" before these individuals are back on the road again.  

Staying on plan, like winter driving, requires lots of repetition and attention.  The more we do it, the more comfortable we are and the easier it gets.  We can't afford to take our eyes off the road because there may be unexpected "slick spots", but if we hit a spot and start to skid, we know exactly what to do to bring things under control so we don't end up in a ditch.  And landing in a ditch is no fun at all!

With Christmas looming, there are a lot of food "slick spots" waiting to put your 5&1 vehicle into a spinout, so my encouragement to you today is to keep your hands on the wheel, your eyes on the road, and keep doing what you're doing (staying on plan!).  Every time you choose to stay on plan, you are becoming a more "expert driver" and will be better able to navigate past potential pitfalls.  Every time you choose to stay on plan, you are one day closer to your destination - your goal weight.  

Today, as every day, the choice is yours.  Choose wisely :-)

It's the Most Wonderful, and Challenging, Time of the Year

Since we are now into December and the holiday season, I thought I'd share with you a blog I wrote in early December six years ago.  I was just over five months into my weight loss journey, and I approached the holidays with a lot of trepidation.  Here's what I wrote:

It's only December 4, but this is going to be one tough month!  December is always challenging, but in years past I always dealt with stress be eating more chocolate or Christmas cookies, and one stress I never dealt with was trying to AVOID all of the holiday goodies.  But this is definitely a different year for me - time to gird my (shrinking) loins!

There is food all around me, and almost NONE of it is on plan.  We hosted a Christmas party for our small group Bible study on Sunday night and I stuck with the shrimp cocktail (no cocktail sauce) and some raw veggies (both were part of my L&G for the day).  Then I walked into work on Monday morning to find a large box of Godiva chocolates sitting my my desk (that was quickly taken to the kitchen and OUT of my sight!).  Then a large package of gourmet popcorn was delivered to our office, and additional food gifts will continue to come for the next two weeks.  Our office is holding a holiday luncheon for physician office billers on Thursday and we're catering in a full Italian meal - two different kinds of pasta, homemade breads, and truffles and cannoli for dessert - certainly nothing for me to eat!  And the list just goes on and on, day in and day out for the next couple of weeks.  I have a lot of holiday events to attend and/or host, and it will be a literal minefield for me to walk through every single time.

But what's true for me is probably true for many of you, too.  I'm not complaining, just taking stock of all of the potential dangers and carefully planning my strategy to ensure that I don't end up thrown off plan.  Part of the planning is making sure that I eat my Medifast meals on time and don't allow myself to get overly hungry.  Part of the planning is making sure I have an emergency stash of Medifast food at my desk and in my purse so that I never have an excuse to stray.

Then there's the mental and emotional preparation!  Here's what I'm telling myself right now:

• That non-plan food will not get me where I want to go, and it may result in me getting seriously off-track
• Everything I need nutritionally is provided through my 5/1, so there is absolutely no need for me to go off plan (and "just because I feel like it" doesn't count!)
• I already know how all of this food will taste because I've had it before, so I don't need to taste it
• These types of food will be around next year, and next year I will be able to have a small (as in VERY small) taste of the things I'm most wanting
• By refusing to give in now, I am strengthening my "no thank you" muscles;  this will help me to maintain my weight loss later
• I don't want to spend one more day than necessary being overweight, and that piece of chocolate/cookie/etc. could cause me to spend another day overweight
• I haven't been out of the fat-burning state since I first got into it in late June and I do NOT want to go through that misery again just to have that chocolate/cookie/etc.
• If I get out of the fat-burning state, in addition to the misery that will accompany getting back in, it will take me approximately 3 days to get back in.  That's 15 meals and $30 (@ $2/MF meal).  Is that chocolate/cookie/etc. worth $30 to me?

Yes, I'm talking to myself a lot right now!  But I am committed to losing weight and don't want anything to get in my way.  It's not easy, but having made the decision to stay on plan, it really IS simple.  If the food isn't on plan, I don't eat it!  Who's with me?

Besides, the Reason for the Season isn't food, anyway, right?

That was my mindset six years ago, and with God's help, that's what helped me lose 18 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's.  Then, as now, it always comes down to a choice that we have to make.   I have no regrets for the choice I made six years ago :-).  If you want to get through the holidays without regrets, choose wisely!

Food Won't Fix It

The food part of this program is the easy part.  In fact, it couldn't be easier!  The hard part of this program is the head and heart part - learning to redefine our relationship with food and learning to not view food as anything more than nutrition for our bodies (nutrition we can enjoy, of course!).

For those of us who were or are emotional eaters, learning how to establish a healthy and proper relationship with food is hard work.  Some of us spent decades of our lives enmeshed in a very unhealthy, love/hate relationship with food.  We ran to it whenever there was a blip on our emotional radar, somehow expecting that food would fix the problem or at least make us feel better.  The problem was that we never ended up feeling better.  My own experience was that even while I was doing my emotional eating thing, I kept mentally telling myself that I shouldn't be doing this and reminding myself that I was cheating on whatever diet I was currently on.  Of course, those thoughts didn't keep me from eating the food, but they did make me feel guilty while I was eating it.  Once the last bite was swallowed, the comfort I had been seeking was replaced by more guilt and self-recrimination, sending me deeper into whatever funk had prompted the eating to begin with.  The problem that I'd tried to salve with food was still there, of course, and I'd added a nice layer of guilt and regret on top of it.

Can anybody relate to this?  Honestly ask yourself:  when did food ever fix the problem?  Food can help to bury the feelings for a moment or two, but the problem never was solved with a fork.  Never.

Learning to deal with problems and the emotions that accompany them in a healthy way is such an important thing to learn if we want to not only reach a healthy weight but also maintain a healthy weight for the long term.

For me, part of this process was really learning to turn to my Heavenly Father in a new and deeper way.  I made a commitment to stay on plan and not cheat, so when the stuff of life bubbled up (as it always does), I realized I couldn't resort to old habits and run for the nearest chocolate.  Out of desperation I cried out to the Lord and asked for His strength to get me through the moment, and as I did that, I found Him to be faithful to provide what I needed in that moment.  Every time I turned to the Lord and made the choice to draw on His strength, there was enough strength to get me through that particular moment.

As I continued to do that, I realized that food never did truly comfort me, that it really wouldn't - and couldn't - fix anything in my life.  And that realization finally set me free from years of emotional eating.

This holiday season evokes lots of memories and emotions.  Some of them are good, but other emotions are difficult.  We may feel a lot of stress as we try to get through a long list of things to be done.  This is the time of year when some people give in to the emotion of the moment and toss aside their good intentions to eat healthy and stay on plan.  But food won't fix it.  Eating stuff that will get in the way of goal won't make us feel better.  We'll end up feeling sluggish, guilty, and frustrated.  And eating more to deal with THOSE feelings will only make us feel even worse!

Choosing to walk away from emotional eating isn't easy, especially during this time of year.  But making the choice to do so is incredibly freeing.  The choice is yours . . . choose wisely :-)

Avoiding Obstacles

I don't know about you, but the calendar seems to go into hyper-speed between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Once the leftover Thanksgiving turkey is put in the refrigerator and the Christmas decorations come out, the days start to fly.  

Between the decorating, shopping, family get-togethers and holiday parties, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas can feel like one obstacle after another for those of us who are either on our weight loss journey or focused on staying the course in Maintenance.

A while back I read a quote that said, "The only time when our obstacles matter is when we take our eyes off the goal."  That's a good quote to keep in mind - or post by our computer or wherever we'll see it - as we launch into this holiday season.

Keeping our eyes on the goal is key throughout this journey, but it's critical during the holiday season when we are surrounded by distractions that threaten to get us off course.  If we're focused on what's really important to us - getting to and maintaining a healthy weight - then the potential obstacles won't matter.  We will be aware of them and have a strategy in place to make sure that we leap over them.

Think about Olympic runners in track and field.  They encounter hurdle after hurdle, but their eyes remain fixed on their goal and they sail over the hurdles.  If a runner becomes fixated on the next hurdle, it not only slows their pace but that hurdle could be the one that causes them to trip and fall.

Where do you want to be on January 1?  Focusing on that as a short-term goal can help you get through these next weeks unscathed.  More importantly, how are you going to look and feel when you're at  your goal?  That's where you're heading - don't let anything get in your way!  You will be faced with lots of choices over the next few weeks, and those choices will either bring you closer to your goal or result in a step or two back.  Choose wisely :-)

Waiting for Perfect

If you've read my blogs for very long at all, you've probably noticed that I enjoy good, thought-provoking quotes.  There is often a lot of truth wrapped up in a pithy sentence or two.  That is certainly true for this quote:  

"Don't wait until everything is just right.  It will never be perfect.  There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions.  So what!  Get started now.  With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.  ~ Mark Victor Hansen

I am the kind of person who likes to get her ducks in a row, get everything "just so" before I take the first step.  There have been a number of things in my life over the past 4-5 years that have moved me outside of my comfort zone as I've been forced to learn as I go instead of getting everything right first.  I've realized that waiting until optimal conditions, with everything in place and all obstacles cleared away, usually means that I keep waiting . . . and waiting . . . Life has a way of being messy and less-than-perfect, and just as soon as one obstacle is eliminated, two more pop up.

That was certainly true of my past weight loss efforts.  I wanted the calendar clear, with nothing on the horizon that would involve food and tempt me to go off plan.  Things had to be good at work - no stress, and there certainly couldn't be any issues at home.  When all of these things were properly aligned, I could focus on losing weight.  However, the minute life happened - good or bad - the diet was once again off.  And trying to lose weight around the holidays?  Forget it!  Talk about a less-than-ideal time to lose weight!

I was very much in a mindset of wanting to wait for the perfect time to start another program just prior to placing my first Medifast order.  I started this program on June 24, 2007, just when the summer fresh fruits were beginning to appear at our local farmer's market.  I really like fruit, so the thought of not eating fruit for an entire summer was troubling and I seriously considered waiting until fall to begin the program.  But then I thought about the honey crisp apples, my favorites, that made their appearance in the fall.  Fall wouldn't be a good time to start, either!  But then after fall, I knew the holidays would be here and who in their right mind starts a weight loss program during the holidays?

So, in mid-June of 2007, as I tried to figure out when I should place my order and get started, I realized that the next "convenient" time to start the program wouldn't be until January 2, 2008 - more than six months away.  I realized that I absolutely could not go that much longer at the weight I was at (260), and I feared that if I waited six more months, my weight would be much higher.  

Was it the ideal time for me to start?  That's hard to say.  All I know was that it was the right time to start.  I started the program two weeks before my birthday and one month before our two-week vacation at a lake cottage we rented. I started this program at the beginning of a summer filled with cookouts and get-togethers with family and friends.  It wasn't ideal and there were certainly obstacles to address, but it was the right time for me - and I couldn't have imagined how much my life would change in the process.

Some of you are just getting started on this program and the holidays are staring you in the face.  This isn't an ideal time for you to start, either, but it's the right time because you're ready to change your life.  Good for you for not waiting until things are perfect . . . you won't regret the choices you're making!  Think about how much better you're going to feel on January 2 when you're 10 or 20 pounds lighter than you are today :-).

You've made a great choice in beginning this program, and each choice you make today, tomorrow and the day after that will bring you closer to a healthier future.  Choose wisely :-)

How to Avoid Getting Sidetracked

Ready or not, Thanksgiving is here and the holiday season is about to shift into full swing.  In my almost-six years of health coaching, I’ve sadly seen the same thing over and over again: some individuals do really well right up until now, then crash and burn when the holidays arrive. Some of them recover and go on to reach their goal and some continue to flounder even to today.

Often what trips people up are other people. They have a plan in place to deal with the holiday meal and show up with a solid plan and lots of resolve. Then the pressure begins from, of all things, family members. They hear, “It’s a holiday, for goodness sake.  Live a little!” “You’ve been doing really well, so you deserve to take a break and reward yourself.” “Just this once won’t hurt!” “But this is Mom’s/Grandma’s/Aunt Lucy’s (you pick!) prize-winning dessert that she only makes once a year. You can’t hurt her feelings by not eating it!”  You get the idea – there is no end to the things people will sometimes say in an effort to get someone off track.

What’s interesting is this: most of the time, the people who are trying to get us off-track aren’t on track for their own health!  I saw a post on Facebook a couple of days ago that said, “Don’t get sidetracked by people who are not on track!” This is GREAT advice and something to keep in mind as we head into Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and then the holiday parties and meals in December.

Think about it! When is the last time that someone who was at a healthy weight and living a healthy lifestyle encouraged you to eat unhealthy things? Most people who are living a healthy lifestyle at a healthy weight are VERY supportive of anyone who is focused on the same thing.

When someone who isn’t at a healthy weight urges you to go off plan “just this once,” remember that this very thinking is probably keeping them in their own unhealthy state.  Nothing irritates an unhealthy person more than seeing someone resist the very temptations they are giving in to. Misery loves company.

Keeping this in mind tomorrow (and beyond) will hopefully help you to choose wisely J.  Have a wonderful – and healthy – Thanksgiving!