Daily Maintenance Weigh In - Wednesday 9/26

Good morning! Happy humpday to all of you.

So yesterday's survey found that planning eating, tracking food and daily weighing were the most common keys to maintenance. So today's question: what's the hardest thing for you about maintenance?

I'm a little too early to answer today's question as up until now the hardest thing had been getting into maintenance and stopping the losing. I'm sure that will change.

Today's weight: 139.8

Who's up next?

181.2

 

Down .6 pounds from yesterday.

 

I am with you - the hardest thing about maintenance is learning to trust myself both with food and to manage my weight.    Thats part of the reason why I say I am "transitioning to maintenance" and not in maintenance most of the time.  

 

T-7 days - this time next week I will be on the table!

I am afraid to step on the scale.

I have started just writing everything I am thinking in a journal. So far has not helped my emotional eating.

I have to figure this out. I am hating myself for this.
There is no reason for this to over take me like it has.

Congrats to you who have lost!! I am aiming to follow in your footsteps.

Have you worked on identifying alternative comfort things to do when you're emotional? I marked every emotion with eating - celebration, sadness, loneliness, boredom, all of them were eating triggers. I now have plans for all of them that involve non-food alternatives.

Another thing that helped me was planning my eating in advance and actually logging my food ahead of time on myfitnesspal.com. If I want to eat anything that's not on the plan, I have to log it before I eat it. That helps me see the impact and also discourages cheating.

Finally, therapy has helped me tremendously with my disordered eating.

Hugs. Hope you get things figured out.

Stop hating yourself for anything.  You have recognized a problem and you are working on fixing it.  That is nothing to hate, it is something to celebrate.  It shows a remarkable amount of strength and courage. Be proud of possessing those very rare characteristics.

The mental part of this journey os the most tiring and most difficult part.  There are some days that you just do not want to face yourself and those dark corners of your psyche.  There will be other days that you will feel like a tiger and that you can take on the world.  In the end, everything you are going through right now will be well worth it.  Once you get a grip on this part of the journey, everything else will seem like a snap.

Trust me on this, I have been where you are.  

You have your journals, thats one way to process the emotions and recognize them long term.  What you need to work on now are short term tools - How do you deal with them immediately in the moment?

Heres what I do when I am feeling the need to eat emotionally:

1.  Relax yourself, takes five or six very deep breaths and exhale them slowly.

2.  Try to identify exactly what you are feeling at that moment.  Try to move past labels and focus on the real root emotion.  What I mean by moving past labels is don't settle for answers like boredom or frustration.  Look past that into the real root.  I use a five why method where every time I answer a question, i ask myself why?  By the time I have done that 5 times I am usually at a root if I am answering honestly.

3.  Once you have that root - deal with that emotion.  For me a lot of my emotional eating that I  called "Boredom" eating was really loneliness.  Ok, if I am lonely - how do I deal with that? I would call a friend or family member, I would go somewhere to be around people.  I would do something to alleviate the loneliness.

 

Another technique that my therapist gave me is the "CALM" technique for dealing with cravings.  According to her, cravings are really a form of anxiety attack.  So here is this technique:

C - Connect to Conciousness - Admit that you have a craving and rate it on a scale from 0 to 10

A - Alleviate Anxiety - Relax, Breathe Deeply, Distract your thoughts

L - Logical Liabilities - List Pros & Cons of acting on the craving

M - MObilize/MOve On - Find something else to do

 

That has been working for me a lot.

Finally - sometimes I am just too freaking tired to do the hard mental work.  In those cases, I just jump right to M - I try to rewire the impulse to eat to sip on my water or grab a dumbell and do some bicep curls.  Very rarely will I just eat something.  It has happened.  If it does, I don't let myself beat myself up for it.  I don't even think of it as a failure.  Making a bad choice does not make me a bad person or doomed to fail long term.  Its an opportunity to learn from myself and make a better choice next time.

I hope these tips help you as much as they do me.  Just remember, do not let the sorrows of yesterday poison the joys of tomorrow.

Not sure what my weight is this morning since stayed at the boyfriend's house and the scale he has is one of those stupid dial ones that I don't really trust. If I had to guess, I'm probably down from yesterday, I drank a TON of water and didn't eat a whole lot (busy busy, but I did supplement with a shake).

In the beginning, stopping losing was the problem/ figuring out the balances that my body does best with. I've mostly figured that out, mostly...

Right now, it's being ok with no****ching the number on the scale go down and not obsessing about the number on the scale. I have stayed within my 5 pound goal range and will continue to do so. But I am working on being ok with the girl I see in the mirror now and loving her for who she is, not how much she weighs.

And I totally agree Rob, learning to trust myself has been a hellacious fight so far, but we'll get there!

Could not wait to post today. 121.5.  back where i like to be.  probably fluid but it feels good to be backing off from what seemed to be a creeping gain.

what did I do?  reviewed  stuff and realized i had been hitting starbucks or other coffee shops most days for the last couple of months. I only get brewed coffee (no fancy drinks) but I hit it with a pretty good shot of half and half. Between this and home coffee i realized i was getting an extra 100 to 150 calories more than i counted.

Also have stopped the nightly peanut butter blob for the past two nights. Not saying this is forever nor that skipping it could actually cause a 2 pound loss in two days but the salt may have something to do with it. Keeping my evening snacks to skim milk, unsalted almonds or grapes (for now),

Phew, its good to feel in control.

diane

110.0 lbs

Within range. Maintenance is the integration of new behaviors and habits into a healthier lifestye. It is challenging to remain forever mindful of what goes into my mouth. It wouldn't take very much to get off track, so I continue to exercise, track my food, and attend support groups.



gail

169.8
Basically same as yesterday - a good thing.

Hardest thing for me is my thinking. I still struggle with the "I'm thin now, eating such and such won't kill me...." I have discovered these thoughts always occur due to one of three things:
1. Being in a situation that triggers habitual eating (parties, being at a show in the afternoon, teacher room....)
2. Having any strong emotion of sadness or relief or delight or stress or......
3. Being overly tired.

That's why the whole weighing, measuring and planning things really help me.

134.0 this morning...bottom of my range.

I'm with you, Mom--the hardest part of maintenance is stopping losing. Still trying to find a good combination of healthy foods with enough calories to sustain my weight. I don't want to eat junk.