Liz - Yep, the scale may not accurately reflect what is happening for you right now. A little fat loss and a little muscle gain. Let’s see how it goes this week. Thankfully there are no holidays involving marshmallows to get through, so we can remove that variable from the mix...LOL. XO.
Connie - Awesome to have you feeling well enough to be able to read the screen again without discomfort. I am so happy some progress is being made in helping you figure out all of the medical obstacles you are facing. It is a terrible feeling to not know what is going on. There was a period of time for me when my health was slowly going downhill that I kept going from doctor to specialist and back again trying to figure out my health issues and why I felt so crummy all of the time (other than the fact that I was obese). This was when I started to re-explore plant exclusive eating and found Dr. McDougall’s work through Jeff Novick, who I followed in a separate Yahoo group, years ago. I had read many other of the plant based program books, and felt confident that the points being made were true...but... I kept waiting to get really serious about them until I figured out what was wrong with my health. I kept wanting a diagnosis of some sort because then I thought I could best optimize my effort. But, for me anyway, it was just an unconscious stalling tactic. It kept me in the knowledge gathering stage of behaviour change without having to actually makes some serious changes. I felt like I was doing something for myself, working on the problem, when really I needed more
doing and less
thinking. I can often get stuck in these parallel tracks of working in the vicinity of a problem that I want to solve without actually truly tackling it (my volunteering gig on this website is kind-of an example of that too).
I am reading between the lines here, so please correct me if I’m wrong...or simply PM me to butt out, but am I understanding you corrected in that you have given up caffeine containing soda, but not, say, caffeine free soda? Congratulations on the first step! I have had a terrible time eliminating caffeine and will be cheering you through this process. How is it going? Giving up diet soda was one of my holdouts too, because it was calorie free and provided a hedonic buzz that was close enough to the real thing to make it tricky to let go of. I hope you are able to get completely off the soda soon, if you haven’t already. The diet is important, but if you find it easier to really focus on one issue at a time, I’d focus on that one. (I don’t mean let the dietary changes you’ve already made fall to the wayside, keep up with things you are already doing, but with regards to changing the calorie density for continued weight loss or trying to ensure better adherence than you currently are doing - well, I’d put all of that on the stovetop warming centre while turning up the heat on the soda strategy.) XO.
Laura - Hi right back at you! How was the weekend?
Annette - Excellent plan! I see you’ve already figured out how to add the weight loss ticker tape to your post signature. You have surpassed my abilities here...LOL. Best wishes this week starting up your journal. It is a key tool in helping you accurately keep track of how you are doing. Our minds can sometimes play a little trick on us and have us thinking we are being more adherent than we really are, so this will truly keep you honest and on track.
Sirdle - If your family ever travels out this way (Canadian west coast) please do come and share a meal with us. I’ll even make the colourful carrots...LOL. Your trip sounds wonderful.
Alishana - Awesome, I’m glad you are jumping back in. It took me longer than others to appreciate those same changes in palette that you are experiencing, but it happened eventually. That is heartening to hear and will help towards your adherence. Keep up some pretty good adherence and you will get those last 13 pounds off over time.
Moonlight - I am of the feeling that you and I are very similar and it may just be the case that we have to do the most strict version of the MWL plan - without added sugar and maybe salt - to get where we truly want to go. I find it so interesting how resistant I am to that idea - not in theory, but in practice. The
errors occur in the moment to moment decisions, not in the forecasting or long term planning. Possibly because I am (we are ?) both highly cue reactive to pleasure inducing foods/substances/experiences and emotionally volatile enough to let those small slips derail us a bit too long to make further progress. We are able to recognize it too, which seems to be quite demotivating. We are stuck in a loop and the most noninvasive way out of it are the strict dietary changes listed above. We’ve travelled this path so many times that it is the easiest, most well worn, route for our fast-thinking decision making selves to make in a pinch. As an aside, in the past 2 years of no further weight loss progress for myself, I have given up alcohol and (still feeling tentative about this one) caffeine containing drinks. This is progress of a sorts as they will no longer periodically cause errors in food choice related judgements and send me into
the pleasure trap.... a trap I am especially prone to. So...now onto the next items on the list, I guess.
As for my food prep, I do it twice a week. I have managed to keep it consistently a habit through associating it with the fun activity of watching webinars or listening to podcasts. When we are eating out too often, or I end up eating the regular program food too often that I make for my family because I am too busy/tired to use even those pre-prepared ingredients for my own meals, I end up throwing away a lot of food that doesn’t get eaten. I really hate doing that but I am not willing to disrupt my food prep schedule because it is highly necessary for success. If the food is not sitting there ready, there’s an even higher probability of going off plan.
Don’t let your slip discourage you. Let it be another lesson. There will come a time when you’ve accumulated enough of those to tip you into another motivated phase (like right now!). I had recently let life get really busy, too busy to keep enough focus on this goal, so I have pared down my summer activities to the bare minimum that I feel I reasonably can and am digging in because September will get busy for me again and I want to be in the best place possible before I have to split my attention again.
I slipped last night too. I couldn’t sleep and wandered into the kitchen. No nuts, no raisins, but there were salted sunflower seeds (my youngest son really loves them so I hesitated to throw them away). I ate half a bag and added some honey, then followed that up with oil-free toast and peanut butter. I managed to stop and compost the rest. So now I’ve thrown away something my child enjoys and am contemplating getting rid of bread that my husband relies on to stay on track (when he‘s trying to do-so) and it feels very selfish but it may be necessary for a time. This kind of thing provides me with never-ending embarrassment to discuss here, but
c’est ma vie and my experience with this process and I think that’s what I’m supposed to share. This is not the average experience that one has following the program. People who embrace the vast majority of the guidelines are going to do very well and meet their goals. But some of us are going to have to just go all the way...and figure out how to do that without setting ourselves up into an
ego trap. Best wishes this week my friend. I am still in it and will be doing what it takes to make this a very successful month. Don’t sweat yesterday because it is now today, and today can be great! YAY YOU...absolutely!
by laurag » Sat Jul 06, 2019 10:50 am 
