It's not all about the sacrifice......

Hi ladies,  Today I recieved a small ($500) bonus from my job and the day off.  Last year I noticed a pair of chanel set diamond hoop earrings in the window of a jewelry store in the mall - they were $1295 - much more than I could afford to spend.  A month ago, I noticed the same pair of earrings in the window for $695 - still a little more than I would normally spend on myself.  So today, I went in and tried them on and bartered the price down to $500 out-the-door.  The point of this post is not about the great bargain or the jewelry - they're very small.  It's about how your life changes after weight loss.

A few years ago when I was heavy, I would never have cared about diamond earrings.   In fact, I didn't shop much at all for makeup, clothes, shoes, purses, jewelry or anything but stuff for the house and, of course, food!  My reward system was pretty much about food.  Today my perspective has drastically changed.  I do not reward myself with food now.  I have little desire to dine in restaurants - I want to shop for shoes and clothes and perfume and makeup.  When I spend time preparing healthy food or working out at the gym, it's not a big sacrifice, it's part of the path to one of these rewards.   I still go in stores frequently and see clothing that is too small and I know that if I work a little harder maybe next year I can fit into those cute smaller things. 

My late father once told me that the hardest part of dieting was getting started.  In my experience, he was right.  Once you get going and start seeing the weight melt off, your motivation increases and you begin to think about rewards in terms other than food.  

To diet, plan, shop and cook healthy food, give up social events (involving food) and put time in at the gym or walking or swimming or whatever requires sacrifice and dedication.  There is a point when this "sacrifice" becomes easy and the rewards shift and reinforce a new positive self image.  I hope everyone here can experience that.  It truely is worth the sacrifice.

Great post!  Just to tease ya, your therapist would call this a transference addiction! But a good one.

I too have taught myself to think about shopping successfully for clothes when I am tempted to blow my plan!

Neecee,  Thanks for the nice words.  I'm not sure I'd call it an addiction - that kinda implies obsession, compulsion, excessive physical dependence or psychological dependence.  The shopping I do, which is usually only on payday is more of a hobby - something I enjoy.  I'm not spending the mortgage money or running up debt or blowing my kids inheritance.  But you are right that that there was a big switch from my former hobby, or perhaps addiction, to food which pretty much defined my social life.  Just about all my social activities in my former life involved food.  Now, they involve things like trips to the park, the beach for walking, window shopping, movies (without the snacks), night classes and working on my house and yard.

yeah, know whatcha mean - I tend to toss that word "addiction" around. Not everyone was or is addicted to food.  I am sorry to imply that you were!

I think I was, and I get that the word technically speaking does not apply to food. It's just that once I began to treat it like an addiction was a truning point for me. Then again, I had clearly insane behaviors with food:  binging, purging.

I'm not sure the words compulsion, obsession are much better, but again, I feel I was any of the aforementioned when it came to food.

Hmmmm....so let's see, you got a five hundred dollar bonus from work and you blew it on diamond earrings.  That's my kind of woman!!! Way to get a bargain, Sister...you bagged a big one.

I was just the opposite when I was big.  I loved make-up and jewelry and shoes and purses.  They always fit no matter what size I was.  So as I began to lose weight, I just rewarded myself with more.  And then I started to save alla that money for reconstructive surgery, that became my future reward for every pound lost.  To me that was the biggest reward for my sacrifice.  But you are right.  Practice makes perfect, or thinner, and after a while, the diet became a part of who I am, and a better way to be and feel, so it wasn't a sacrifice anymore, it became just the way I eat.  Besides, I spent too much for this new body to put all of that weight back on it! 

Mary 

I was in a hurry when I popped off before, but BigCity, you are exactly right - we do trade in negative behaviors for better ones (hopefully).

When we got fat, we owned this set of behaviors that had to change. So it stands to reason that when we become successful, we had to switch gears.

At first it does upset out mental apple carts to feel all sorry for ourselves.  Most of us are mad at the world, mad at ourselves. Mad mad mad.

To call it a reward is somehow uncomfortable for me, dunno why exactly. Kind of indicates to me that i feel I still don't "deserve" good things. I set those things into place - mine too was going to be a pair of diamond earrings, as a matter of fact. Never got to goal, never bought those things.

As I type I am thinking back to my mother's attitude about allowance for us kids if we did chores. She did not buy into that - said we had to do it b/c we are part of this family. So, maybe it's kind of that mind wrap for me:  I am doing this just cuz I said so...just cuz I need to do it? 

hmmm, will have to think on this.

I'm a reward kinda person.  When I was young I got  allowance and rewards for getting all "A's" on my report cards.  Later in life, I would use food as a reward and I also used food as comfort when I was sad and lonely.  I'm reasonably certain I was addicted to food.  I was always hungry.  I didn't binge or purge though.  And I recall last week someone posting here about what they would order at a specific restaurant in advance of the visit.  I never dreamed about food or planned in advance what I would order at a restaurant.  But I did look forward to social events that involved food, that's for sure.  And typically, I overate at those special events. 

Hmmmn, I haven't thought about this for a long time, but the ONLY time my mother rewarded me for anything was for excelling in school.  The only time I ever got any really nice clothes was for singing solos.  It starting to make sense to me now how I would reward myself for finally doing something that was impossible for me...losing weight.  Very enlightening!

Mary

Singing solos?  Tell me more!  I didn't know our Mary was a singer!  What other special talents do you have?

I've been singing ever since I found out I could get out of baseball if I took choir in the sixth grade!  Mind you, all of this was done before I gained weight, but I was very active in Little Theater in our community growing up and I sang in a Gospel band in high school.  Our senior play was a musical and nobody wanted to sing for tryouts.  I was the only one who showed up with my own pianist and rocked the house belting out Cabaret...which is still one of my favorite songs.  I haven't sang in the last few years, I was a li'l busy getting whacked, but I can't tell you how many weddings and charity events and churches that I've sung in. 

What other talents do I have?  I do a lot of imitations and dialects and I can sing just like Patsy Cline..she was my Daddy's favorite.  He could sing just like Hank Williams and we used to do some pretty cool Cline/Williams duets that never existed.  I sang Crazy at a Gong Show for charity and the new sheriff, who had never heard me sing before, gonged me half way through because he thought I was lip syncing.  I've never been gonged before in my life!  He was embarrassed when he found out that was really me.

Other than that, I'm pretty much like you...an expert on plastic surgery!   

Mary