Week Three - Learning from the Hard Times

Here we are in week three of the challenge and I'm pleased to report that between us we've lost a very satisfactory 61.8lbs in two weeks so well done all!

I know a number of you have had a difficult couple of weeks with challenges in personal life affecting your motivation and impacting on your weight-loss journey. It seems like whenever the news is on there is strife and sorrow, hard times and horrors. The financial climate is biting down on all of us and I don't know anyone not hit in some way by the uncertainty of the economic down-turn.

Times of stress can easily have me reaching for the fridge door, ordering an extra pint or simply feeling like I just can't sustain the effort to keep on track. I recognise that this comes from outside forces working their evil way on me but get stuck in the feeling and struggle to bounce back. We can't ignore the fact that life is getting tougher right now, so today I've been thinking about how we can turn the bad around and start "learning from the hard times". . .

One of the hardest things to do in this whole weight-loss journey is to change embedded behaviours but even harder for me is recognising what triggers the lows that knock me off track. In the past on WW, when I've had a STS or a gain I've drawn a line and moved on but recently I decided that rather than just ignore the bad weeks I could learn from them. I began going back over my points journal for bad weeks and looking for clues as to why it went wrong. I found I had missed a few things here and there, gone over heavily the day before weigh-in or simply underestimated the points for my meals. This gave me an idea why I might not have lost weight but the question was then, why had I lost focus on those weeks?

So this time around I have kept a very brief journal. Each morning on the way to work I log a sentence to sum up how I'm feeling. I do the same at lunch and again in the evening. If I have a blow-out meal or succumb to the insidious vending machine I make another note (often just a grumpily scratched "because I'm bloody hungry"). By going back over the journal I've begun to recognise the key feelings that trigger my bad behaviours. Boredom and tiredness from insomnia are key elements but more so are feelings of low self-esteem. When I feel I don't deserve to be loved and cherished, when I feel I am not worth the attention of others or that there is nothing in me that is special and unique, I turn to food to comfort me or to confirm my lack of willpower and absence of self-worth.

I've made great progress on changing my habits, planning my meals, thinking before I eat, exercising more regularly and replacing 'bad' foods with 'good' ones but if I want the healthy lifestyle I'm aiming for I need to change the way my mind works too. So what am I learning from the bad times? That there are deeper reasons for my bad choices and I need to face up to those to move on. Right now my little journal is becoming rather bigger as I try to find the root causes of my lows and I'm considering looking for professional help to talk through the issues I have. If I want to be whole I have to accept the broken pieces of me and fix them.

So, here we are and I promise that this is a positive message guys, despite the dark thoughts in the above. Celebrate your wins, your good weeks and your happy times, but don't undervalue the potential strength that can come from facing up to the dark days and learning from the hard times.

Take care each of you and here's to a happy week for us all!