Heading Home

It's Wednesday, which means we're half-way through the work week! It also means that my visit with my sister has come to an end - we're going home today and getting back to our regular routine tomorrow.

We spent yesterday afternoon in Harrisburg, touring the state capitol and visiting the National Civil War Museum. Both were well worth the time, and we wished we'd had more time at the National Civil War Museum as there was a lot to see. It was another afternoon with a lot of walking and standing!

I wish I'd worn a pedometer on this trip, because it would have been interesting to know exactly how many steps I took and how many miles I walked over the past few days. All I know for sure is that it was a lot!

In the past, going on vacation and getting out of our regular routine meant all bets were off in terms of my food consumption. I used to pretty much eat my way through a vacation - snacking while we drove, then using the lack of routine as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. No wonder I never had a lot of energy by the end of each vacation day, and no wonder I always returned from vacation up a few pounds.

This time, we watched what we ate pretty carefully (with a couple of pre-planned exceptions), and both my husband and I had more than enough energy to be active all day and still enjoy the evening. For me, this was a MUCH better way to vacation! We ate small meals about every 3 hours, and several of the meals each day were Take Shape for Life/Medifast meals. SO easy!

Is healthy eating part of your every day routine? How about when you're out of your routine? The best way to prepare for those "out of routine" days is to hone your on-plan skills today :-). Committing to staying on plan today will not only move you one day closer to your goal, but it will help you navigate those "other" days.

What a Difference 2-1/2 Years & 126 Pounds Makes!

Today is our last day in Pennsylvania, as we head home early tomorrow morning. It's been wonderful spending time with my sister and her husband and we've managed to do a lot of fun things. Yesterday was a very full day, as we spent the day in Philadelphia (a 2-1/2 hour drive from my sister's house). We parked downtown and then spent the better part of 8 hours walking (or standing) as we went from one historical site to another. This was my first time in Philadelphia and it was amazing to stand where so much of our history took place.

What was also amazing to me was that I was able to be on my feet for almost 8 hours, and much of that walking. That is something that would have been almost impossible to do just 2-1/2 years ago. There were several times during the day when the realization washed over me that I probably wouldn't have been able to experience everything I did had I not lost weight. Even if I had somehow managed to keep going with 126 extra pounds on me, I would have been exhausted beyond belief at the end, and my feet and knee would have been throbbing. Instead, I felt energized by everything I saw and was able to do. I'll be honest and admit that the day caught up with me by the time I got back to my sister's house, but I had energy to spare for the day, and that's what mattered to me.

We packed lots of water and an assortment of Take Shape for Life/Medifast cheese puffs, pretzels and crunch bars, so once again I had the nutrition I needed to keep going all day long. When we finally stopped to eat at the end of our day, we chose to have one of the sandwiches Philadelphia is famous for. I did an internet search to find the best place to have the sandwich, and it was worth the search. Because I'd stuck with Medifast meals all day and walked several miles, and because I'm in maintenance, I knew I could afford the calories and carbs this time :-).

It was also great to pose with my husband for pictures along the way, including one of us in front of the Liberty Bell, and not have to cringe at the thought of having a camera pointed at me. It was also nice knowing that after both my husband and I losing weight, the camera was able to get both us AND the Liberty Bell in the same photo without needing a wide-angle lens!

One of the things that finally motivated me to get serious about losing weight was my trip 2-1/2 years ago to the Grand Canyon. I was very close to my top weight of 268, my size 24W jeans were so tight I could barely lift my legs high enough to get in and out of our rental SUV, and I was so out of shape that I had to stop twice going up the stairs to get to the rim of the canyon. I was out of breath and exhausted walking around that day, and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to do the traveling I wanted to do unless I could figure out how to stop eating and lose weight. That trip was the turning point for me, and after trying for three months to lose weight on my own when I returned home, I finally decided to give Take Shape for Life/Medifast a try.

I thought about that trip yesterday, and couldn't help but think about how much has changed in my life. I spent almost 11 months losing weight I had carried around for over 20 years, and in losing the weight I truly got my life back. In many ways, I actually got a new life, one I couldn't have imagined just a couple of years ago. I am SO thankful, and I never want to take it for granted.

Losing the weight and getting my life back happened by committing to the plan one day at a time. Are you committed to an on-plan day today? This is a short-term sacrifice, but the long-term benefits are amazing, perhaps even better than you can imagine. Go for it!

The Power of Community

Happy Monday! Our Pennsylvania trip is fast coming to an end, with only two more days here. Yesterday started with church, then we went to Chocolate World in Hershey yesterday afternoon before joining my sister and her husband at their small group Bible study last night.

Today we're spending the day in Philadelphia - my first time there! We'll pack as much into the day as we can, and for two American history junkies like my husband and me, this is definitely a day to relish.

Last night, the small group discussed the value of being in a community. Although they were talking specifically about the need for community in a church setting, there is a much broader application, and one that certainly applies to those of us who are on our wellness journey.

One of the things that made a huge difference to me on my own weight loss journey was the support of others who were also on this journey. Getting involved with an on-line community was a critical part of the success I ultimately experienced, and I stay involved with the on-line community (although to a lesser degree than I used to) as a way to pay it forward and hopefully help someone else.

Being involved with my on-line community enabled me to honestly and openly discuss my own struggle with weight. As I did that, I found encouragement and support, and it was a safe place for me to finally be able to heal. Had I not been able to share my journey with others, I don't think I would be where I am today - not only with my weight, but in being able to share with others about my own journey. The healing that happened here has now allowed me to be part of encouraging others as a full-time health coach.

There were days when I was tempted to quit, but as I blogged about how I was feeling, someone would always be there to remind me of how far I'd come and encourage me to keep going. That encouragement was just what I needed, and it made all the difference.

As you continue on your own journey, stay connected to others! Seek out those who can support you - your health coach, your family members and friends, or even an on-line community, then make sure that you're providing a little support back. Together we can all arrive where we want to be - at a healthy weight - then we can help still others do the same thing. Community is a wonderful thing!

Consequences

Happy Sunday everyone! I'm still at my sister's house in Pennsylvania, and we are packing as much into each day as we can :-). This morning we're going to church with them (her husband is the children's pastor at a large church in Mechanicsburg), then we're heading to Hershey for the afternoon.

Yesterday we spent the day in Lancaster, where we visited a life-size replica of the Tabernacle, toured an Amish house and farm, and spent time at a farmer's market in Bird-in-Hand (I love the name!). The hands-down highlight of our day was attending the Sight & Sound Millennium Theater's production of "In the Beginning." After doing their creative best to depict the beauty of the Garden of Eden and life in a world untouched by sin, watching Eve's temptation and the fall was hard. It was all I could do to keep from shouting out "Don't do it!" as Eve struggled with whether or not to taste the forbidden fruit. Of course, she did, and it was sobering to watch how the joy they experienced in Eden was quickly replaced by despair as Adam and Eve began to deal with the consequence of the choice they made. And the world, and life, has never been the same. It was striking to watch Adam and Eve deal with the death of their son, Abel, and realize that their actions had resulted in his death - and their own profound pain.

That's the problem with consequences - we usually never see them coming. We get caught up in the moment and go after the immediate gratification without taking time to consider what the long-term effects might be. Certainly no decision we make, good or bad, will ever have the long-reaching consequences that resulted from the Fall (thank God for that!), but that doesn't mean that our decisions happen in a vacuum.

We are faced with choices every day on a variety of issues, and sometimes we don't even realize we're making choices because we determined a long time ago what our values would be. If a store clerk accidentally gives me too much change, I don't waste a second deciding whether or not to point it out, because I made a decision a long time ago to be honest. Those decisions are easy, and they're pretty clear-cut.

The decisions that are more challenging are the ones where there is no right and wrong, where it's more a matter of choosing the better of two options. How to spend our money or our leisure time, or, for those of us focused on getting to or maintaining a healthy weight, what we're going to eat.

Choosing to stay on plan or not certainly isn't a moral issue, but there ARE consequences to our choice. We may not experience the consequences, good or bad, right away, but we most certainly will.

As I think back to the funeral of my mom's cousin last month, I know this cousin had no idea that years of obesity and the resulting complications of diabetes would result in her passing away one week before her first grandchild was born. This was an unforeseen consequence, and I can't help but wonder if knowing years ago how things would end would have motivated her to make different choices.

Choosing to do what's hard now and get to a healthy weight will result in consequences (the good kind!) that you may not be able to imagine right now, but they WILL come. Staying on plan today certainly doesn't provide the immediate gratification that eating off plan might, but there's no comparison when we look the long-term consequences. Bottom line: you'll never regret staying on plan today, and you'll reap the long-term rewards of doing so. So go for it!

Sacrifices Big and Small

Happy Saturday! I hope your weekend is off to a great start!

We spent all day yesterday in Gettysburg. This was my first time there and it was incredibly moving. We spent some time at the newly-opened museum there, then took an almost 3-hour driving tour (with audio guide) of the battlefields. I had no idea the battle of Gettysburg covered so many miles! Seeing the monuments on the battlefields and reading about the personal stories at the museum was very moving, and I was struck with the sacrifice that so many made to preserve the union and eliminate slavery.

Sacrificing for the good of our country, or sacrificing to help or even save another person's life is something we embrace as representing the highest of ideals. My admiration and appreciation for those who have sacrificed so much, even up to their own lives, to secure and preserve our freedom cannot be adequately expressed in words.

I'm almost hesitant to write any more, because I don't in any way whatsoever want to diminish the tremendous sacrifice that these brave individuals made. However, I do find it interesting that while we admire (as we should) the sacrifice of others, and while most of us wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice our own lives for someone we love, we often struggle when it comes to making sacrifices for our own good.

Going on 5&1 requires sacrifice, but it's a small sacrifice and a short-lived one. In order to get to a healthy weight, we are asked to sacrifice eating some of the food we like for a short period of time. In terms of sacrifice, this is really a pretty small one :-). The question is, do we think we're worth the sacrifice? Is getting to a healthy weight, maybe even getting off of medications and reversing disease, worth a small, short-term sacrifice?

Again, writing about sacrificing while on 5&1 seems almost sacrilegious after a day at Gettysburg . . .

I'll end today's blog by asking what you're willing to give up temporarily to get to a healthy weight? Who's committed to an on-plan day today?

More About the Hard Part :-)

Happy Thursday! I am writing this from Pennsylvania, where I’m visiting my sister. My husband, my parents and I left yesterday morning for the 600+ mile drive. It was a long day of driving, but with lots of sunshine and the start of fall colors, it was quite lovely. We stopped for a salad for lunch, but other than that, all four of us munched on Medifast crunch bars, cheese puffs and pretzels and drank lots of water (and yes, we had several bathroom stops along the way!).

Yesterday I wrote about the need to change how we relate to food if we’re going to be successful in not only losing weight, but in keeping the weight off, and I talked about emotional eating. I know that emotional eating isn’t the only thing that can trip us up, however. For many of us, we are challenged to figure out how to stay on plan or maintain our weight when much of our social life revolves around food. That is an ongoing challenge for me. Almost every time I’m with a group of people, there is sure to be food – mostly baked sweets, my personal downfall. Every week, someone brings baked goods of some kind to our adult Sunday School class; every Tuesday morning’s Bible study has “treats” and our small group fellowship always starts with coffee and dessert. Getting together with friends almost always means going out for a meal or meeting for coffee (and often dessert).

As I’ve talked with others, I know this is a huge challenge. How on earth do we be part of the social scene and stay on plan?

When I was on Take Shape for Life/Medifast 5&1, I continued to attend all of my regular activities, but I brought along the foods I needed. If someone was serving dessert, I would make sure I ate before I got there and then simply say I had just eaten and wasn’t hungry. If we were going to a potluck, I’d bring a large tossed salad (and sometimes some cut-up chicken for my “lean”). I realized that life wasn’t going to be put on hold while I lost weight, so I had to choose to make the best of it. There were times when I privately pouted and felt sorry for myself because I wasn’t eating what everyone else was eating, but most of the time it felt good to know that I was making hard but healthy choices. There is something very satisfying about facing a temptation and making the right choice . I worried about what others would think if I wasn’t eating what they were eating, but soon learned that most people didn’t pay any attention to what I was eating, and if they did pay attention, they really didn’t care! I’ve heard people talk about being afraid of offending this person or that person if they don’t eat something, but my best advice is to just get over it because most people really don’t care. A simple explanation that I was trying to be careful with what I ate, or trying to eat healthier, or even that I was trying to lose weight sufficed for almost everyone. I realized that I needed to do what I needed to do for my health and that I couldn’t compromise what I needed to do for fear of offending someone. I reasoned that anyone who really cared about me would want me to get healthy.

In maintenance, it’s gotten a bit more tricky. First of all, I’m often one of the smaller individuals at any given gathering, so when I’m not diving in to the food, it can feel a bit weird. However, I have to keep reminding myself that what I’m doing is about making healthy choices for myself, so I can’t compare what I’m doing to anyone else. Because I know that if I eat sweets on an empty stomach I’ll end up feeling not so great an hour or so later, I bring a crunch bar to Bible study and to our adult Sunday
School class. While others are loading up on baked sweets, I have a bar. As much as I enjoy most of those things, I’ve pretty much decided that I’m not willing to spend calories on them. I know I’ll spend a lot of calories and get little to no nutrition in return, and I know there’s a good chance I’ll feel lousy once the inevitable blood sugar drop kicks in. It’s simply not worth it.

I have to remind myself a lot about my primary choice – staying at a healthy weight – because it is all too easy to want to settle for immediate gratification. I’m not saying I never do that, because I do, but I’m far less likely to do that now than I was even a year ago.

A year ago, fresh from Transition and finally into Maintenance, I reveled in knowing that I could finally eat anything I wanted. Even though I was fairly careful, I found myself returning to some of my old favorites a bit too often, and when I started eating those things, I often ignored portion size and just “went for it.” By the time I got through the holidays last year, I had picked up about ten pounds and my 6’s were as snug as they could be and still be worn in public. That was a real wake-up call for me and I realized that I could NOT return with abandon to my former way of eating or I would risk regaining my weight. This past year has been one of fine-tuning Maintenance and continually evaluating and re-evaluating what I’m eating and why. It’s been more of a challenge than I anticipated, but staying in my goal range, staying in my goal size, and remaining free of diabetes are all worth the effort.

While we’re in Pennsylvania, I am planning on a couple of meals that I know will be outside of my regular Maintenance plan, plus we may make a trip to Hershey :-). The good news is that I have the freedom to do that now, and as long as I don’t make it a habit, I’ll be just fine.

Have a great, on-plan day!

It's Easy . . . and It's Hard!

Welcome to October! We are officially into the last quarter of 2009, so it's time to ask the question: how's it going for you?

Some of you started the Take Shape for Life/Medifast program last January and promised yourself that THIS was your year; I hope you're on track to realizing all of your January dreams, and I hope that some of you have reached your goal by now and are enjoying maintenance. Others of you are you in the middle of your journey, and some are just beginning.

Sooner or later, one things becomes crystal clear: the weight loss part of this program is simple (not always easy, to be sure, but it's simple!). What's NOT so simple is the maintenance part. Most of you reading this probably aren't in maintenance yet, but this is where all of you are heading (you ARE heading towards your goal and maintenance, right??).

I've had conversations with a couple of people over the last two days who reached their goal, did transition "sort of", then found themselves back into old habits. No surprise, both individuals are now dealing with the reality of regained weight. Thankfully, neither of them regained all of their weight back, but gained back enough weight to realize that it was time to rethink what they were doing.

No matter how well you do on the weight loss portion of this program, you will probably gain back your weight if you don't change how you think about and relate to food. That is the bad news, and there's no way to soften it. If you don't fundamentally change your head and your heart when it comes to food, this will ultimately be nothing more than another diet. To be sure, it's a very effective diet and there is no safer way to lose weight quickly. If you work the program, you can't help but lose weight.

But I don't think that anybody here wants to lose the weight and then gain it back. We've all "been there, done that" and it's a miserable way to live. That kind of oscillating behavior leads to terrible frustration and a feeling of failure. I'm guessing that everybody here wants to lose weight, reach your goal, then stay there for the rest of your life. The GOOD news is that you CAN do that! However, it will require some hard work to change your relationship with food.

I tell people all of the time that when I started on this program, I just hoped that I'd lose a little bit of weight - I had no idea that there would be so much emotional and spiritual growth in the process. Learning to NOT turn to food for comfort was a major turning point for me, and it has made all of the difference. Identifying what I REALLY wanted - reaching and staying at a healthy weight - has helped me to make the secondary choices I need to make to maintain my weight.

There are times when I'm tempted to dive fork-first into a platter of my old favorites, and there are certainly times when I DO have small portions of some of those foods, but I'm careful about what I eat. I refuse to waste my calories on less than wonderful food, and when I find myself suddenly craving something, I take a moment to figure out WHY I suddenly want it. More often than not, for me a sudden craving means that I'm stressed or frustrated or something, and the old "reach for comfort food impulse" has once again reared its ugly head. I keep hoping that it will eventually disappear forever, but so far that's not the case. What HAS changed is that I know that food doesn't fix anything except for real, physical hunger. When I recognize that old impulse, that's my cue to address the real issue and not bury it with food. As I've shared in the past, addressing the real issue for me begins with turning to the Lord in prayer.

I hope you're having a fantastic, on-plan Thursday! Keep up the great work on the food part of this plan, and don't forget about the "other part" of the plan. It's not the easy part of the plan, but it's the part that will make all of the difference for the rest of your thin and healthy life.