21st February, 2021
Well, we are now nearly at the end of February. This time last year we were not aware of what was about to hit us, and we were about to start living in a completely new and different way. This year I have learnt so much and have really started to live and think in a very different way. I have thought about the new me and have started to put so many new things into play. I have lost up to now 6 stones and 4 pounds (that's 88 pounds) and would like to lose another 2 stone. However...
I am beginning to think that I do need to have a new plan. I have not lost a vast amount of weight since November, just going down and then up a few pounds around Christmas time, and then back down again. Now don't get me wrong, my weight loss has been slow and this is a good thing, but I feel that I now need to look at my health more. As we move into Spring, and later on into Summer, I need to be as healthy as I can within the limits of my physical ability.
It's not always about looks. To feel that you look good is important for your self-esteem, but it's not just the gift-wrap that makes the present. How I look will help motivate me to look after myself more, but I am more and more aware that I have lost weight before and put it back on. This happens to a lot of people, but there are ways to stop it happening. I have to now think about what I am going to do going forward. We have had a couple of mild, sunny days this week and even though it is cold and grey today, warm weather is on it's way. I always feel it's so much easier to feel more motivated when the sky is blue :-). I would really like to weigh around about the 12 stone mark, two stone down from where I am now, but at the moment I think my priority is to maintain what I have achieved so far. I am only now beginning to really realise just what I achieved and I definitely don't want to lose it.
Before, when my weight crept back on it was so slow, maybe 7 pounds a month, and I would like to say I was unaware, but in truth I was in denial. I didn't want to get weighed, because I didn't want to admit what was happening. I really had learnt nothing. I stopped thinking about what I was eating, didn't get weighed and, lo and behold, the pounds crept back on. I justified it to myself by thinking it caused too much stress. I had put myself under the pressure of cutting my food back so much that I always felt like I was starving. Even though I liked the way I looked, and got so many compliments, I always felt hungry and deprived of the food I liked. I could only keep this up for so long. I love food, good food, different foods and to deprive myself of them was not going to end well.By reverting back to over eating the foods I loved without any form of monitoring was just going to take me straight back to square one.
I heard something this week that is so true. A “diet” is not a straight line with a start and a finish. It's a circle, it's ongoing, it is a way of life. And as a way of life, it has to be something you can happily live with. That's not as easy as it sounds, but it's the only way it can last and be a sustainable way of living.
After a lot of thinking, my plan for moving forward is this. Between now and the end of April I will work on ways of maintaining the weight I have lost, while adjusting my food accordingly, ie. not worrying too much if I lose weight for the moment, but being happy to remain the weight I am. Any weight loss would be a nice bonus, but it is not my main aim. I want to learn more about how to incorporate more things into my eating plan and give myself a more varied diet. I will then move forward into the beginning of May with stage two, and for the next six months hope to lose a little more weight.
To achieve this and not make the same mistakes of the past, there will be monitoring of what I weigh and the foods and calories I eat, but in a more relaxed way. I feel I have to do this to now settle into a new way of living and not let history repeat itself.
Will this work this way? Well, I am not sure, but I think I am learning about myself and the way that I look at food. There is no straight line for me, just hopefully a better kind of circle. I am, and will remain, as positive as I can be as I roll towards better weather and better times than what we have had recently.
That's all for now,
Until next time,
Love, Jackie
xx
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