I AM NOT A COOKIE CUTTER

 

17^th March, 2021

Someone once said to me, “You are not a cookie cutter”. I had never heard the term before, but I looked it up and basically it means not having the same configuration or look as many others, or being identical. I suppose I have always been different and like different kinds of people, cultures and other things. I have never wanted to be the same. I like the unusual and interesting, and with “normal” things look for a way to change them. It applies to many things – interior design, food, what I like to wear and jewellery. I love the unusual, and I like to be me. It's not always an easy way to be, but I am what I am.

Now, when it comes to weight loss, and keeping weight off, I am beginning to realise it is the same. As I have said before, everyone is different. The way they think, their lifestyle, their physical make up, the foods they like – all are different. How much weight they have to lose, why they have put weight on and their ability to exercise all affect the plan that they need. This is why the “cookie cutter” approach will not, and does not work. You hear the phrase “diets don't work”. You lose weight and you put it on. You yo-yo diet over time, and diets don't work.

What really doesn't work is the cookie cutter plan that is given to everyone. That diet that you see in the magazine, or on the TV or internet, or given to you by the slimming club that everyone goes to. They are out there for so many people to see and do. If you only have a few pounds to lose, that can be bad enough, but if you have a lot of weight to lose, you want to get it right. Many years of losing weight and putting it back on is not good for your physical or mental health.

Years ago I used to teach Indian Cookery. Each week I would hand out the recipe of the dish we were going to cook. The basic idea, the guide lines and the method. The difference then between a recipes you would see in a book and what I was doing, was that I knew my student's preferences, how hot or spicy they like their food. I was able to teach them to take the basic recipe and change it to the way it suited them. When you buy a recipe book, it's the same for everyone, but it can't tell you how to change it to suit the individual. It's the same with weight loss. 

With my other attempts to lose weight I just did what I thought I was supposed to do. Eat a lot less, cut right back on the calories and exercise. It's as easy as that!

No, that didn't work. Yes, I got results. Fast results. But the weight came back on again and again. I really hadn't learned anything.

This time around, I knew it had to be very different. I had to make my own plan on what works for me as an individual. I had to adapt the way I ate and, because I can't exercise in the traditional way, find out what I could do instead.

Now I have lost nearly all the weight I want to lose, I am moving on to the next stage of keeping it off. That's the bit that not many diet plans talk about. They don't oftain don't talk about mind set or how you don't put the weight back on, which is the scary bit. It scares me a lot, but I am beginning to deal with it in my own particular way.

I am trying something called “reverse dieting”. From what I understand, this means slowly increasing what you eat whilst monitoring what happens. The end result should enable me to be able to know just at what level I can eat food and stay within a given weight.

I still want to be able to lose a little more weight, but I must also be able to know how to stabilise it. It is a work in progress. At the moment I am not getting weighed every day. The plan is to eat within reason and then weigh myself after ten days and see what happens. I am quite anxious about all this, but it's the only way I can see what happens to me. It's all part of the plan (she says confidently). I need to find out just what is right for me. By doing it this way I will continue to learn how this all will become sustainable. That is, I believe, the key to it all. A weight loss plan that is individually tailored to a person's needs. That will hopefully suit the non-cookie cutter part of my nature. It is beginning to work for so many other people and hopefully it will work for me. I am going to get weighed tomorrow, my ten days are finished and we will see what happens.

My story continues...

All for now, until next time.

Love, Jackie

xxx