When It's One of "Those" Days

There were days when I was happy and hopeful while on Take Shape for Life/Medifast's 5&1 plan, feeling energetic and just plain loving the feeling of finally not being controlled by my appetite.  On those kind of days, I felt like I could do 5&1 forever. Life was good and I was loving every minute of it.

Then there were those . . . other . . . days.  If you've been on program for very long, I'm guessing you know what I'm talking about - maybe this is even one of "those" days.  Days when I woke up and groaned at the thought of facing one more Medifast meal, let alone an entire day of them.  Days when I felt deprived as I thought about the list, the very LONG list, of favorite foods that I wasn't eating and wouldn't be eating for a very long time.  Days when I was madder than mad at myself for getting myself to the point where I needed this stupid program to begin with.  Days when I resented anybody and everybody who was walking around, perhaps bigger than I was, happily eating whatever they wanted while I opened up one more packet of space food.

If the last paragraph pretty much sums up how you're feeling today, or how you've felt recently, take heart :-).  Thankfully those days of feeling miserable and deprived were few and far between.  They weren't fun, but they were an important part of my journey.

Staying on plan was easy when I was in the groove, really loving the program and feeling motivated to change.  Staying on plan when I felt like staying on plan was easy, but it didn't challenge me to grow and change, because I've always found it easy to do what came easy :-).

The real challenge, and the real growth, came when I wanted to do anything else and eat anything else - but chose not to.  Not wanting to stay on plan but doing it anyway only happened because I was focused on something other than immediate gratification.  Once I had a vision in my mind of what living at my goal weight might look like, and once I made the fundamental choice to get to a healthy weight, whether or not I felt particularly motivated on any given day was irrelevant.

Of course, I had to give myself a good talking to when I had one of "those" days :-).  My conversation with myself usually included some of the following thoughts:  "It doesn't matter if you're bored with the program or not; boredom won't kill you, but obesity might."  "So what if you don't feel like being on program today?  You didn't feel like going to work, either, but you still hauled yourself out of bed and showed up because it's what you had to do.  Same thing goes with staying on plan - it's what you have to do."  I didn't cut myself any slack on this because I had become an expert in cutting myself slack and it had gotten me all the way up to being diabetic and 268 pounds.

Instead of being focused on moving away from being obese and diabetic, my eyes were fixed on a goal: being healthy and thin.  It was a lot more exciting (on most days!) than looking backward and moving away from what I didn't want.

Staying on plan isn't always easy, and if you're anticipating being on plan for a while, you will definitely have one or more of those kinds of days.  When you do, you will have a choice to make.  Choose wisely :-)