Dealing With Deprivation

Mark Twain was known for his wry and witty quotes, and one quote that struck a chord with me was:  "The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."

Do you ever feel like that?  That the only way to get to a healthy weight is to live in a state of total deprivation, with your day revolving around a bunch of things you don't want to do?  It can be incredibly hard to make radical changes in the way we've already done things, and it's easy to feel like we have entered into a world where all of the fun has been sucked out.  For reasons we don't always understand, we cling tenaciously to habits that are taking us down a path towards disease.

Changing our focus isn't easy, but it begins with a clear understanding of where we are right now.  I've written before about a book that I highly recommend, Dr. A's Habits of Health, which was written by Take Shape for Life's co-founder and medical director, Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen.  Chapter 5 of his book is entitled, "Where Are You Now?"  The entire chapter is an in-depth assessment of our current state of health, and it is rather sobering to take the assessment because, frankly, many of us aren't as healthy as we think we are.   (If you don't have this book but are interested in taking the assessment, it's available on Dr. Andersen's website: http://drwayneandersen.com - click on the "How Healthy Are You?" link to take the on-line assessment.)

If we aren't where we want to be, and if we take the time to create a vision of where we want to be, then we will begin putting into action the steps necessary to get to our goal.  Sometimes these steps aren't the things we would necessarily choose to do on our own (hence Mark Twain's statement!), but if we view them as steps that bring us closer to what we really want, we will do them anyway.

When I was on 5&1, on any given day I would have preferred pizza and brownies to any Medifast meal - eating five Medifast meals day after day for almost a year wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do.  But I did it, one day after another, because they were a tool that helped me get to something far more important that the immediate gratification I would have received from the pizza and brownies.  Thankfully, I really enjoyed the meals, so I didn't approach each fueling with dread, but they still weren't always my first choice in what I wanted to eat.  There were times when I felt deprived, but those times were few and far between, because I was focused on reaching my goal.  Each Medifast meal brought me a step closer to what I really wanted, and keeping that mindset was key to staying on plan for the almost 11 months it took me to lose the 120 pounds.

How we view the choices we need to make will influence how we feel about this program, and our attitude can also directly impact whether or not we'll be successful over the long term.  If we approach this day after day with a feeling of dread and deprivation, if our focus is on what we're giving up and can't have, this may end up being another short-lived and unsuccessful diet.  If we view each day as another day that bring us closer to our goal and if we embrace the healthy habits this program is designed to teach us, we will eventually not only reach our goal but we'll have the habits and mindset needed to maintain for the rest of our lives.

Each day we get to choose whether or not we're going to stay on plan, and each day we get to choose the attitude we'll have.  Those choices are important . . . choose wisely :-)