I am currently suffering from some all-or-nothing thinking surrounding food journaling. Yesterday I said that today I would journal every bite NO MATTER WHAT. It didn't happen. Why? Because Sunday is my day to start a "new week" and my crazy all-or-nothing thinking is making me feel like I have to wait til Sunday to start fresh because this week is already "ruined." Pretty nutty, eh? Yeah, I thought so.
So what can we do? According to Ms. Spangle, we need to think of our eating plan as a "boundary", not a "diet" and that our boundaries should benefit us, not burden us. She encourages defining your boundaries in such a way that you can adjust the boundaries as needed.
The exercise for today is to define your "narrow road" and your "wider road". The wider road might be for when you are at maintenance or it could be for times that it is too difficult to stay on your narrow road for any number of reasons. With the wider road, you allow yourself a little more leeway but you still stay on the road.
My narrow road looks like this:
- Stay within my points target every day.
- Journal every bite of food.
- Exercise 5 times per week.
- Abstain from sweets.
- Pack my lunch for work every day.
- Cook a healthy dinner each evening.
Now on an ordinary, run-of-the-mill day, I can stay on this narrow road without extraordinary effort. But life happens sometimes and I don't always have all the time I would like to stay on the narrow road. In the past what this meant was it was completely wheels off. During times that I was working long hours and going to school at night I would just throw my weightloss goals out the window. My all-or-nothing thinking let me believe that if I couldn't stay on the narrow road then I might as well go off completely in the ditch.
Defining a wider road will allow me to have a "Plan B", so to speak. I can go a little easier on myself when the situation calls for it without going hog-wild and pig-crazy, as my favorite little granny would say. So the wider road I will follow during those extra busy times is:
- Make every effort to stay within my points but if I don't or can't, I will continue to track my points anyway so that I don't completely lose awareness of how much I am eating.
- If I stop tracking my points for any reason I will start again as soon as practicable regardless of if it is in the middle of a week or even the middle of a day.
- If time constraints with work or school keep me from exercising 5 times per week I will at least get up and walk for 5-10 minutes during my lunch hour.
- If I choose to have sweets I will eat them in a measured portion and count the points. For example, no more Ben and Jerry's right out of the carton!
- If I don't have time to pack my lunch or cook a meal at the end of the day, I will opt for the healthiest choice I can: Subway, grilled chicken sandwich with a side salad, etc.
What I have learned so far in these 4 days is that it is really easy to say you are going to do all these things but quite another to actually do them. This book is not a magic bullet. But I think over time it will help that I am spending a few minutes each day thinking about these things and writing about them. Reading your comments help too. I take great inspiration from others who are fighting the good fight too.
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6 comments:
this post made me think that while the BOOK may not be a magic bullet your BULLETS ABOVE...how you lay everything out in big and small steps/goals ARE.
in that youve set yourself up for success now you just need to print those goals/choices out and slap em on a vision board :)
Deb you are doing great with this book and mapping it all out! :) You go!!! Miz iz right, print this out and put them somewhere you can see them.
I can totally relate to this. Unfortunately for me, although my mind may have treated going over my calorie goal by 10% or 100% as the the same thing, my body sure knew the difference!
I love the idea of defining narrow and wider roads, and my roads look a lot like yours. Journaling everything, even on really "bad" days, is key for me because it keeps me focused on the fact that what and how much I eat is a choice with consequences -- and making conscious choices is the first step to making better ones.
I'm sure the time you're spending thinking about these things will help you establish a healthier lifestyle over time. Following along with you as you write about them certainly is helping me!
you are so great at thinking it through......I need to work on this!
That book has some good advice! It's so important to not make this about punishing yourself, but about making good choices. Take each day one at a time - if you make a less than productive choice, then you try to balance it out with better choices. Your bullet list has a lot of good strategies - I use some of them myself!
Hang in there, you're on the right path!
Awesome awesome post! You are really working it out! Don't stop believing in yourself.
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