So it's been a while. About four
weeks, actually. I haven't posted due to being busy and having a social life -
or at least that's the excuse I'm giving. Writing up a post for this blog only
takes about ten minutes, but since I've stopped working I don't have ten
minutes on my lunch break where I would otherwise be twirling on my chair. I
have also been struggling at the 215-217lbs mark for most of August thanks to a
collection of social events organised by various wonderful people and all of
which I thoroughly enjoyed. BUT I HAVE TRIUMPHED NOW and I am at 214lbs as of
this post. Well done me, break out the low-calorie champagne!
This post is going to be talking
about excess, i.e. eating too much. Once a week, it's probably okay. But when
you start letting yourself get away with it two, three, even four times a week
that's your diet officially failing. If for a third or half your week you are
going over you're diet, you are not dieting properly. You'll still make
progress but it will be at a significantly reduced rate. Now, if you're just
looking for a gradual loss over a longer period, that's fine. But if you want
more instant results because you're impatient and prefer drastic changes to
tiny incremental ones (like me) you're going to have to work harder at sticking
to your diet. I have known for most of August that I have been letting myself
down concerning the diet and while I haven't put weight back on, and have kept
calorie amounts in mind a lot of the time, I have binged suitably to slow my
weight loss to the rate of a crippled canal boat.
On the other hand I haven't become
massively depressed about it either. I knew what I was doing incorrectly and
understood that the only reason I wasn't losing weight was because I wasn't
trying hard enough therefore all I
had to do was try harder again to start losing weight. I know that seems a
little circular, but it links back to two of my guiding principles for dieting:
'Don't give up' and 'Make it your own'.
Just because I stopped losing weight
didn't mean I would never lose weight again. I can deal with a hiatus or a
busy, filling month food-wise and then start dieting again afterwards. Even if
I put weight back on I could look back on what I'd been eating and doing, and
then analyse where I had been going wrong. I can also break from the diet
pattern on occasion because I know what I am doing - I am constantly thinking
about what I've eaten, what I'm going to eat, what I need to eat and what I
need to do if I want to eat more. Seriously, if someone asked me at any time of
the day I could give them a full break down of my calorie allowance, calories
in, calories out and what sort of food I was considering for the rest of the
day as well as any exercise I had planned.
Basically, my diet is full time. It
is a part of every minute of my day and constantly on my mind - some of my
friends will freely attest to this, and I have been caught committing such
crimes as trying to sneakily check the calorie content of marshmellows while
shopping and trying to justify going 800 calories over my allowance for a
portion of chocolate fudge cake. Some people diet part time, and that's how I
started; they have an aid, or a system, or a program that monitors calorie
amounts for them so they don't have to keep a personal track of the data. This
caused me problems as I like to plan things and think ahead, so I quickly began
to work out calorie amounts ahead of time. I think a lot of people who are
really driven to lose weight - who accept they, as I did, really need to lose
weight - quickly adopt this system as it gives one a lot more control and
awareness of the diet and their dieting needs, and allows for more significant
results in a shorter space of time.
I am not saying dieting part-time
doesn't work; it does. It just takes longer, like saving while working a
part-time job. That's not what I want - as mentioned earlier, I am impatient
when I know I can get results faster and I am driven, partly by myself and my
own goals but also by the encouragement of my friends and family. I love
hearing how much better I look now, and I also like being able to do more
physically strenuous activities. No, I'm not at an Olympian level and no, nor
am I as fit as I would like to be. Yet.
But I will be, and I will be pursuing my goal until I am.
I have a friend who is dieting as
well, but on a less drastic level. He is losing weight, and is persevering with
his diet and has done so over the last 3 months or so. He is getting results.
But if I did it at his pace I would become frustrated by my lack of immediate
results. Really, you have to diet as suits your attitude. My attitude makes me
chase as much as possible as quickly as possible, in all things, and that is
the overriding attitude of this blog as a result. There are other ways to diet,
of course there are, but they don't work for me. So if you're reading this and
you're dieting and it's different from my method, that's almost certainly
great, because we're different people. I can only advise from my own
experience, but I am happy to talk about other methods, and I accept they are
out there. So if you're doing it differently and it's working, keep it up and
don't lose hope! Even after three BBQ's, several pizza's, hot dogs, take out
and a variety of other high-fat foods assailing your diet.
No comments:
Post a Comment