Surviving Memorial Weekend and Beyond

Can you believe it? This is Memorial Day weekend, the official kick-off to summer! This can also be a very challenging weekend for everyone who wants to stay on plan because food seems to be an integral part of the celebration. Many of us will be getting together with family members and friends sometime this weekend, and there will be a lot of temptation for us to deal with. Some of us will also have to deal with well-meaning family members and friends who will try to talk us into eating off plan.

I am often asked if I ever stepped off the path and ate something that was not on plan, and I'm also asked how I kept going on plan on those days I didn't feel like it. Since it's Memorial Day weekend, this is a perfect time to address not only how I handled these times, but to hopefully help you get through unscathed, too :-).

In answer to the question about if I ever stepped off the path and ate something that was not on plan, the answer is yes and no. There were a couple of times (Christmas Day and on last year's Medifast cruise) when I took one bite of a dessert, just to taste it (on the cruise, I had one bite of my daughter's dessert every night). So yes, I had a taste of something that wasn't on plan. But the answer is also "no," because I never kicked myself out of the fat-burning state the entire 11 months I was on plan.

As I've shared before, the fact that I stayed on plan was NOT because I was strong. Trust me - over 20 years of failed dieting and a starting weight of 260 had me feeling about as weak as a person could feel, and there was nothing to make me think that Take Shape for Life/Medifast would be any different. Because the cost was a bit of a stretch for me, I made the decision to actually follow the plan as written, without any deviation or any attempt at "outsmarting" it. I reasoned that if I wanted to play around with a plan, I could pull one of the many diet books I owned off of my bookshelf and do that one. Initially, I figured I'd do the program for a month and see what happened. I was pretty skeptical, but mixed in with that skepticism was a smidgen of hope that maybe, just maybe, this would somehow be "it."

That first week, losing 9 pounds and seeing my blood glucose numbers return to normal was very exciting, and my skepticism diminished a bit as my hope began to grow. I had a rocky time getting into the fat-burning state, including a lousy headache, and that made me motivated to not go off plan because I did NOT want to relive those three days again :-). I felt great, I wasn't hungry, which amazed me, and I didn't want to mess it up. My head was in the game and I was scared that if I started messing around, I'd lose that focus and might have trouble getting it back. That fear kept me on plan because I felt like I was just about out of non-surgical options for losing the weight.

I also stayed on plan, even when I didn't want to, because I was sick and tired of feeling, well, sick and tired. I hated how I felt and I hated how I looked; I hated constantly having to figure out if I would or wouldn't fit in a given space, wondering if a standard lawn chair would support my weight or worrying that the airplane seatbelt wouldn't fasten - I hated it. When I started on Take Shape for Life/Medifast, I was sick of being fat and I was sick of the endless cycle of yo-yo-dieting. I knew it was going to take me a long time to lose the weight (it happened much faster than I thought it would) and I knew that cheating would only keep me fat longer. I reasoned that I'd spent over 20 years fighting the obesity battle and I didn't want to waste another day that I didn't have to being overweight.

I was also tired of feeling guilty about almost everything I ate. When I was on one diet or another and cheating, I felt guilty. When I wasn't on a diet, I knew that I SHOULD be and I felt guilty about all of the high-fat, high-calorie food I ate. I was tired of thinking "I know I shouldn't be eating this" while I ate, and I decided I didn't want to live like that any longer. I reasoned that all of those foods would come back, in moderation, once I reached my goal, and I envisioned how wonderful it would be to actually enjoy food, and enjoy it at my goal weight.

That's pretty much the "why" of my choosing to stay on plan, so let me share the "how."

I incorporated as much variety as I could into each day. I like almost all of the Medifast foods, and found that just a pinch of spice or herbs was all I needed to allow me to actually look forward to each meal. I had a variety of shakes, oatmeals, soups, bars, puddings and drinks and never had the exact same flavors two days in a row. I ate different Medifast foods on the weekends (scrambled eggs, oatmeal muffins, cream of tomato soup pizza or taco bread), which gave me something to look forward to each weekend. If my kids were coming over and ordering pizza, I made sure that I had my Medifast pizza then so that what I ate looked and tasted a lot like what they were eating. It was important to me to not feel deprived, and I honestly never did.

I focused on what I was gaining instead of what I wasn't eating and tried to keep an "attitude of gratitude" as I did the program.

That's not to say I never had a pity party, because I can assure you that I did. There were certainly days when I wanted to spend the entire day eating non-Medifast meals, but I stayed committed to just taking it one meal at a time. I viewed this as a season in my life that I'd set aside to get healthy, and I wanted to make this season as short as possible :-). I tired of staying on plan, but I never tired of seeing the scale moving down and getting into smaller sizes!

I also spent time looking at all of the success photos and reading the success stories, and it was so inspiring to realize that many others had already had wonderful success on this program. I'd look at those goal photos and think about how wonderful it would be to post photos of my own.

For those summer holiday weekends, like this one, I had grilled chicken and a great salad, then enjoyed a bar, pudding, or shake cake while everyone else had dessert. I learned it was possible to focus on just enjoying the people around me instead of making it all about the food. Getting through a summer holiday weekend and staying on plan was very empowering - I never regretted staying on plan and doing so strengthened my resolve for the next challenge.

Lastly, as most of you already know, I daily asked God to give me the strength I needed. I knew I couldn't do it on my own, so I asked my Heavenly Father to help me. When I hit moments where I felt ready to cave, I asked for help, and He was faithful to give me what I needed when I needed it.

Much of what I've shared here has been shared before, but I hope something I've shared will encourage you to stay on plan this holiday weekend. I can promise you that if you hang in there, you'll be so glad you did next Tuesday morning, because you'll be that much closer to your goal.