Okay, so we are starting day 7 of the New start of this weight loss/life transformation journey, and I have been thinking about what has been working and what has not.
As I have started this new commitment to transforming my life and my health, I have found that quick changes do not work for me. Honestly, for me, the idea of having a slim body is not enough to motivate me to better health, mostly because I know I am so much more than my body and up until recently, i have always been able to do what I wanted to do with my body the size and shape it is. However, there are a number of things I am finding I am not able to do, like take long walks without getting winded (and by extension climb mountains) , easily climb up and over obstacles like snow banks (and by extension being able to tide pool), sit on the floor (and get back up) playing games with the kids without pain, sit anywhere for more than 15 minutes without pain, etc.... Over the past couple of years, my body, even though it has been overly large for most of my life, and all of my adult life, is progressively deciding that I can not do all I used to do. I used to be a big woman that could still go for long walks, climb mountains without a problem, scramble over rocky, steep, and jagged shores to find fascinating tide pools (even if it mean almost being swept into the sea by a rouge wave from time to time), I could get through dense woods with no trails, I could play games with toddlers, getting up and down from the floor frequently and quickly, I could even sit and watch a movie without needing to constantly shift my position (though I rarely sit still anyway). I was a big woman, but a very active and capable big woman, so size did not deter me from doing any of the activities that I wanted to.
So, these changes in my abilities to do all of the things I want to do have been a large motivator in this push to a new start. Part of the timing also has to do with life circumstances--life is stable and calm enough right now for me to actually be able to focus on this without a million other stresses swooping in. The house is done enough to live in, with a million small projects for improvement--which is normal for a house. My routine is pretty stable and has regular down time in it that can be used for self-improvement and health focused exercises. My routine is very flexible, allowing for me to meet the kids needs. I have a mostly stable,though low, income, and depend on a certain amount every month from various sources, which means I can do a living budget (while it is not enough to actually start paying off old debts, it is finally enough to make ends meet on a monthly basis--someday I will generate enough income to pay off back debts, but for right now, being able to finally make ends meet for basic living needs is a huge blessing). I also currently have some external social/emotional supports which helps me to keep on an even keel. While my social life is seriously truncated due to a couple of factors (mainly the fact that I have 2 kids with special needs that required a LOT more in a babysitter than most can offer at the price that I can pay). So, in general, life is settling in to a more stable, predictable level, where I can move from surviving and into thriving.
So this better place in daily life, coupled with the loss of ability to do some of the things I always took for granted, have created a good space from which to focus on changing my body composition. So, this first week has had its ups and downs. There has been some trial and error about what is going to work for me eating wise, and what does not work at all. I have had a number of slips into old habits this week, improving bit by bit. It is a change not really of how I act, but more of how I think and perceive, which in turn changes how I relate to food and why I eat what I eat. This week I have been able to do some perception shifting, and some good insight into why I eat what I eat, and how to change the why. Changing the why in turn changes the behavior. Action stems from thought, and just changing the action, like dieting as a short term solution, is not going to change the problem long term. It is why many diets fail, even in people who are devoted and dedicated to the the diet, who lose 40, 60, 100 pounds while strictly adhering to the diet, and then once they reach their goal, gain back what they lost plus some. It is because they (and I) have not changed an inner perspective, and inner relationship with food and eating. So i am finding this week, that I am changing my relationship with food, which in turn is making it easier to change my eating habits. It is not an overnight shift, it is a progressive shift, and I am on the path to making a permanent change in the way I relate to food.
Another factor that has really come to the for front over the past 2-3 days is my blood sugar. It was up and down and kind of unpredictable for a while, ever since I found out I was diabetic a couple of years ago. And it used to be easy to shift back down to lower levels with tweaks in my eating, so I did not worry about it too much, because even if it was stupidly high one day after a couple of days of bad eating, I could bring it back down into the "normal diabetic target range" with a couple of days of eating better. However this week, I have found that even with much lower carb days, my blood sugar is staying consistently too high. That, THAT, is scary to me. I have been focusing on it a lot since September when I found out my wildly swinging blood sugar was negatively impacting my eyes, but through the holidays, I have not been careful AND not been monitoring it (that idea that if I ignore it I can pretend it isn't real idea that never actually works). And now that I am back to monitoring it daily, I am finding it to be a bigger deal that it has been in the past. So, I now have a number that is a thousand time more important than the number on the scale. It is the number that tells me whether my life will be healthy and long, or painful and fraught with medical issues. So THAT is a number I can get behind, that is a number goal that really means something to me. So this week, the blood sugar scare works far better to motivate me to better health than any number on a scale ever could. So that is one of my primary focuses now.
So, today's food diary is:
as of 10:15am:
3/4 cottage cheese
1/2 grapefruit
16 oz black tea
3 cups water
No comments:
Post a Comment