I have stated this before, but it does bear mentioning again that we are a product of our behaviors. We are creatures of habit. If we are overweight, obese, and even super obese, our behaviors support our state of being. If you are successfully losing weight, your behaviors are supporting it. If you are gaining weight, your behaviors are supporting that, and if you are at a standstill your behaviors are supporting that state as well.
Our thought-life matters to our success or failure concerning weight loss. We can make all kinds of excuses why we can’t do something. We can use money as an excuse. We can use time as an excuse. Did you know that it costs less to eat less? You don’t need to buy as many groceries when you cook by portion control. You don’t have to buy all the name brand diet snacks. You don’t even have to have them, but they are helpful to your success if you can consume them properly. If you can’t trust yourself around 100 calorie snacks, and you consume 4 or 5 bags a day, you might as well forget them, and keep fruit and veggies around for snacks.
You don’t have to eat a whole meal at a time. If you are one who likes to graze all day, like me, eating small portions several times throughout the day might be a better idea. I split up approximately 1500 calories into 6 or 7 feedings throughout the day. My habit of doing this supports my need for feeding myself via a small stomach. This also supports my desire to snack, and eating this way supports my weight loss.
Many of us defeat ourselves before we even start. What are the kinds of things we say to ourselves? I’ll share a few of the things I put myself through. My thoughts threw a monkey wrench into anything I ever tried to help myself. I had myself convinced that I was different from everyone else. Everyone else could lose weight, but I couldn’t. I blocked my own success with my thought processes.
Here are some thoughts I carried most of my life:
~ There’s no sense trying, because I’ve been fat all my life. I was meant to be that way.
~ It’s in my genes. My family was big; therefore, I am destined to be big.
~ I have low blood sugar, so I get hungry a lot.
~ I have too much to lose. I can’t possibly succeed at being normal weight.
~ I eat out of depression/anxiety, and I have to respond to the hunger signals or I go nuts.
~ I can’t afford to buy the food I need to eat healthy.
~ I have to feed my hunger.
If I sat here long enough, I could come up with some more doozies of excuses. I got them honestly enough. My dad used to tell everyone who commented on my childhood obesity that they couldn’t afford to buy healthy foods. He blamed the macaroni and cheese for my weight problem. Sure, it probably did have a lot to do about it, but to say he couldn’t afford to buy better things was a load of crap. He bought hard brick extra sharp cheddar cheese and he made the best comfort food I ever had, but to fill up on these foods is unhealthy. Dad put about a pound of cheddar cheese into one pot of macaroni. He might as well have thrown in a pound of butter instead, because cheese is full of fat.
When my mom joined Weight Watchers back in the 1970s, she decided she was going to eat right, even if no one else in the family did. She watched her portions. She had the macaroni and cheese as a side dish, and not as the main course. She had more veggies on her plate than other items. She lost 100 pounds in about 2 years time, while the rest of us kept getting fatter.
There is no food that is the enemy. We just have to change our thoughts about them. I hear all the time, “you can’t eat that. It’s fattening.” You can have anything you want, but you have to eat smart. Meat is no longer my main course. Macaroni and cheese is no longer my main course either. Veggies take up at least 2/3 of my plate. I don’t use a large plate. I use a dessert plate when I eat. Meat is more of a condiment for me now. So are starches and fats.
If I make a hamburger I usually cut it in half and eat just half of it. I’ll put the other half in a Zip-Lock bag and heat it up later when I want to eat again. When I have a baked potato, I don’t pick out the largest potato I can find in the bag. I look for the smallest. If I do bake a large potato I cut it in half or into thirds, depending on how large it is. As you can see, my foods last longer because I don’t gobble them up all at one time. My family eats the same way that I do now. My daughter is trimming up beautifully. She has come from a size 24 to a size 18 in a very short period of time. I’ve come down from a 4X to a size 22-24 which is a 3X, and that is very loose on me. I will be coming down to a 2X on my next purchase. When I had lost 140 pounds I had come down from a 5X down to a size 18 and 20. I’ll be glad to get there again, and I won’t stop there. When my mom lost her weight, she went down from a 24 to a size 14. When she died, she was buried in her Easter dress which was a size 14.
When I was 400 plus pounds (my highest weight was 412), my thought-life and my behavior supported my state of being at that time in my life. Many of us might not want to hear the truth; I surely didn’t want to hear it. The truth is that if I were over there in a third world country for a year, where there is no food to eat, I would be one who would live and be healthy. Why? Because I had packed away all the stored energy my body would need for at least a year.
My thought process had to change. I had to stop thinking that the bulky rolls of fat on my body were just more to love. I had to think about those bulky rolls of fat being stored food that my body hasn’t been using. I had to start facing the truth about myself. Then I had to form a game plan, and follow it out to make my body work for me. I am doing this, because I am tired of being a prisoner in my own body. I think; therefore I am on my way to wellness.
There is a piece of scripture that I keep posted where I can see it. It’s Romans 12:1,2:
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual[a] act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (BibleGateway.com NIV)
I try to think of my body as the temple where the Holy Spirit lives in me. I have allowed myself to embrace the renewing of my mind as it happens. I don’t fight the renewing of my mind with my own self-defeating thoughts. As my weight is coming off, my physical body and emotional being are coming into a healthy state of being. For that, I am grateful. We all can do more than we think we can. We have to resist the urge to go into self-deprecating thought patterns.
