goal setting

I’ve climbed back onto the planet of the living

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I’ve been missing for a while. I don’t know if anyone missed me, but I know I was hiding in my tiny corner of the world. I’ve been fighting my inner demons a lot lately. They’ve been eating me alive. I’m finally pulling myself out of their claws.

I’ve been doing a lot of all or nothing thinking lately. I’ve been categorizing everything I do as either 100% good or 100% bad. No existing in between. My eating habits in particular have been all or nothing, and not very healthy. When I’m good, I don’t eat anything. Eating anything is bad. It doesn’t matter if its a 100 calorie salad, it’s still bad to eat it. I’m very unhappy with myself for maintaining my 140 lb. loss, and not losing more. So, the moping about and blaming and intolerance. I’ve got to fix this in my head. So, after looking back through my DBT workbooks, I’ve come to a conclusion. I have to change the way I am thinking about my state.

Instead of being disgusted with myself for not losing more, I should be proud that I’ve maintained this loss for over 6 months. That’s a long time for me NOT TO GAIN! I should be ecstatic! Instead, I’ve been looking at it as a failure. I think that every time I eat I shouldn’t be eating. I stopped working out and walking. I felt like it was pointless because I was eating and still as big as a giant whale. Enough of the self-loathing. Enough of the self-hate. All that was doing was making things worse. No hope. No worthiness. No chance for success. So, I’m shifting the POV.

Never before have I lost so much weight. Never before have I maintained without gaining back the lost weight and then some. It’s been years since I could wear clothes this size. I actually fit in public places (restaurant booths, narrow hallways, and such). I can’t even lift the amount of weight that I’ve lost. I’ve got a lot to be proud of. I am worthy of respect and acceptance.

To help cement this in my mind, I’m back to doing a daily DBT diary card to make sure I keep using my skills. I’ve done a pros and cons of my current behavior, and compared it to one of my previous behaviors (while losing). I’m struggling to stay in Wise Mind. I’m using cheerleading statements. Affirmations. Before and after photos. Lots of reflective writing. When I stopped using my skills, the demons crept out of their crypt, and dragged me back in with them.

I was sleeping way too much. Binge eating, again. Telling myself how stupid/fat/ugly/disgusting/useless/worthless I was. Actually, in reflection, I’m amazed that I didn’t gain all the weight back. When I think about it, I have changed my habits enough that they carried me through the crypt and kept me from going entirely into the dark.

My binges are no where near what they once were. When I ate in the past, it was like I was afraid someone was going to take the food away from me. I ate everything I could get my hands on, no matter how it tasted. I’d sneak and eat away from prying eyes. I eat until it hurt and keep on going. Now, I actually stopped when I realized the food didn’t taste good or wasn’t satisfying me. It was healthier food (whole grain bread instead of a whole quarter sheet cake). I didn’t hide that fact that I was eating. Well, what do you know? I wasn’t doing as badly as I tried to tell myself I was!

I am going to go back to taking care of myself. Buying healthy foods, not junk. drinking more water. Walking every morning. Working out 2-3 times a week. Journaling every morning. Using my DBT skills every day. Self-soothing with a bubble bath or candle watching or coloring or reading. Practice my mindfulness and meditation practice. I’m starting a new weight loss program, too. CoreLife Med. I’m hoping it will combine with all my efforts to help me lose another 60-80 lbs. I took a year to lose the 140 lbs., it’s just not realistic to think I’ll get the rest off with no effort. Kind of silly of me, wasn’t it? I know better. I just let all my demons take charge. They are sneaky things. I let my guard down for a few days, and they came and took charge.

I’ve got this. I have the tools. I have the knowledge. I will do this.

Time keeps on slippin’ into the future

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I feel like I am stuck in a tar pit. My weight loss has slowed down. It makes me feel like a failure, even though I know I am not. I am down 119 lbs. I still feel like a beached whale when I look in the mirror. I have friends who tell me I look a lot different, but I can’t see it.

Factually, I have evidence that I have lost weight. All of my pants had to be taken in 5-6″. I’m down a shoe size. Clothes that used to be tight, now fit loosely, even my leggings! I fit in public seating now.

I guess it’s the fact that even though I’ve come a long way, I still have quite a distance to go. It seems disheartening, like waking up Christmas morning and not getting anything in your letter to Santa. Or having a stranger make fun of you or talk loudly about how disgusting you are. It hurts and it makes you wonder if you will ever be worthy, good enough, loved.

Of course, I am my own harshest critic. I love myself the least. It isn’t good for me. I know this, but old habits are hard to break and I still hear my parents voices telling me I’m fat, stupid, disgusting, embarrassing, and a failure. Wow, those voices are loud! I know that they were feeling bad about themselves and tried to feel better by claiming to be superior to me. There are even times when I can shut them up. I deserve better.

I need to dig out my journal and do some serious reflection and problem solving. Create a of list of all the good things about me and that I have done. List the things that are hurting me and brainstorming what to do about them. Creating goals and plans to reach them. I know it will help. I just have to bring myself to get the pen to the paper. It’s like I’m wallowing in the self hatred for some reason, like a pig in a mud puddle. I need to be more like a kitten playing with butterflies. Feeling good, happy, alive. I should be proud of myself. I am a successful, functional adult. I help people all the time. I am taking better care of myself. I am feeling better, happier most of the time. I’ve just got to stop getting stuck in the quagmire of my brain. Accept, not expect. Don’t judge. This, too, shall pass.

I’ve got this!

The trials of being patient

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Know how it feels when you really want something, but you have to wait for it? It’s like you’re being teased by the universe. You know what it is. You know what you want. You even know what you have to do to get it. Yet, it’s just not getting to you fast enough.

Weight loss is a lot like that. You know what you need to do. Relearn how you eat. Relearn how you approach food. Learn to be active. Learn to pacify you inner child/demons/neuroses without food. And keep doing it. It is a lot of long, hard work to do to undo the harm you’ve done to yourself over the years.

Sometimes, it’s kind of like that cartoon where the woman ate a salad then weighs to see if she lost any weight, yet. You know you’re doing the right things. You know it’s hard to do the right things. It seems like it’s taking forever for you have progress toward your goal. It makes it difficult to keep working at weight loss. I don’t know about you, but I can easily gain 5-6 lbs in one day. Losing, not so much. I’ve averaged about 1 pound a week. Some weeks I manage more. Every now and then I go the wrong way. But, I am getting there.

Maybe it would be easier if I could actually see that I’m making progress. No one just comes up to me and says “Wow! You’ve lost a lot of weight!” No one except my WW coach gives me validation. I look in the mirror, and I don’t see any difference. I “know” I’m down 114 lbs. I don’t “feel” I’m down 114lbs. I guess I should, but I don’t. Even though I can list a lot of ways that show me I am succeeding at losing weight. I can sit in my car seat without my belly rubbing against the steering wheel, by several inches. My pants that I wore just a couple of months ago, now fall off of me. My underwear is even falling off of me! I can fit in the booth at a restaurant. So why don’t I see it?

It is true, I’m still wearing my clothes as large and loose as possible. I don’t feel safe in clothes that actually let someone see my body. When I look in the mirror, I still see a huge blob of fat. Every now and then, I’ll catch sight of myself in a mirror and not realize it is me at first. When I do that, I usually think “Wow! I don’t look so bad!”

I’m still not where I want to be. I need to keep losing weight. Another 100 lbs. or so. My doctor says she’d be cool with another 80. I just have to be patient with the process. It will work. It is working. I need to keep reminding myself that it is successful, and I will get there. I write it in my journal. I write it here. I meditate on it. I reflect on it. It WILL happen.

How do you get there?

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Last week, WW was all about goal setting. Reasonable v. unreasonable. Outcome v. actions. Very good points. My ultimate goal is to lose 200 pounds. That seems insurrmountable if I look at it as 1 giant chunk. I need to break it down into manageable bites, or I’ll become overwhelmed and give up.

Of course the first step is to decide on where you want to go. Do some soul searching. Think about where you are. Accept yourself as you are. Evaluate the facts and possible outcomes. Then, determine the goal. As I said, mine is to lose 200 pounds.

Why do you need to accept yourself? If you approach the goal from a place of self-love and acceptance, you are being positive. Not punishing yourself or hating yourself. Neither of those is maintainable over the long haul, and let’s face it, reaching a major goal is a marathon not a sprint. If you can see it as doing good for yourself, and accept that you are human. You will have slips and points where you take a side journey off the path. It will be easier to find the path again, if you accept yourself and love yourself. That doesn’t mean that you can’t want to change, it just means that you know yourself and where you are and where you want to go.

Once you identify the objective, it is necessary to determine how you will get there. First, break it down into achievable pieces. I’m aiming at 5 pounds a month. I know it will take a long time, but it will also mean that the new habits and lifestyle will have time to become my new normal and comfortable to continue with through out my life.

So, we have the stops along the way, now, how do we get to them? You have to decide on the actions you are going to take. Just setting the outcome won’t get you there. You have to make the progress. Your goals are more meaningful if they are things you will do at a certain time in a certain way. I know I have to handle several angles if I am going to get to my destination. First, I am working on my mental health and self-love/compassion through journaling and therapy. I journal daily and do therapy as needed. Second, I need to change my lifestyle. I am adding vegetables and fruit and whole grains and lean protein. I drink 64 oz of water a day. I track what I eat with WW. Third, I am increasing my activity. I am working on walking more every day, at least 3000 steps (I was averaging 1000) a day. I am using workout videos on WW and YouTube and my large DVD collection. The goal is 3 work outs a week. So, I have concrete, measureable goals.

Using my steps to get to my destination, I can see success and feel that I am making progress, even if the scale doesn’t do what I want. As my WW leader says, the scale is not the most reliable indicator of success. How you feel and what you can do are the best ways to know if you’ve reached your ultimate goal. As a side effect, you’ll reach the weight goal too.