The road to success can be bumpy

I love using FitDay.com to track my weight. I have been using it for several years now. ObesityHelp also has a weight tracking tool now as well (plug). Both are free and work really nicely. What I like about them, is they let you plug in your weight every day, week, month (however often you like to weigh yourself) and then they show you a graph that plots out your weight over time. For me, this is a very visual way of seeing my progress. Good, bad or ugly.

I can often see the positive results of making healthy eating choices, measuring my portions and, especially, putting in the hard work in the gym everyday. These efforts have nothing to do with my WLS. They have to do with my dedication to it. The surgery doesn't make me eat healthy, work out, take my multi-vitamin everyday or THINK about drinking enough water. All of these daily challenges fall on my shoulders. My surgery did a wonderful job of making me feel satisfied with smaller portions but there is so much more to maximizing the return on my investment!

But, let's face it, we're human and we all make mistakes. Sometimes, getting depressed, lonely, anxious or bored can lead to making less then perfect eating choices. There is something about the overweight person's mind that is an all or nothing mentality-- "Well, I screwed up so I might as well eat ____ and I will start again tomorrow." Instead of making the next meal a healthy one.

Nobody can eat perfectly 100% of the time. Life isn't about perfection. It's about the pursuit of it as we define it. If you love certain foods, you may have to figure out how you can incorporate some small amount of that food once in a while into your diet so you don't feel deprived. The trick, of course, if making it a small amount and an occaisional treat! However, depriving yourself of everything you love forever, will never work. There has to be balance in order to find a happy medium in life.

So when we falter or stray from the course and by that I mean go way of our plan-- stop eating planned healthy meals, stop measuring our portions, stop exercising. In other words, stop caring about our journey. When this happens, we have to regain control and not beat ourselves up. We have to take a moment and figure out what happened. What was going on in our lives that caused the behavior to happen? Were we sad, lonely, bored, anxious or something else? Are we just making excuses about wanting to eat the old foods we used to eat? I know that I find it is very hard to reverse four (4) decades of poor eating choices in 2 years. My surgery has made smaller portions easier but the thought process that goes behind what to put into those portions and moving my body more each day can still be a strugle. When I fall, I try to pick myself up, dust myself off and learn from what happened. Was I talking, walking and chewing gum at the same time? Beging brutally honest with myself is the only way I will ever get a handle on eating "behaviors" that drove my obesity in the first place and allow me to use this wonderful tool I've given myself.

Learning from that honesty and knowledge is the next step to real growth. WHY I wander into the pantry at 10pm when I am not really hungry is a strange phenomenon. I've done it for many years. Night time snacking is a challenge for me but it's something I can stop. What are your challenges? What do you do to learn from your "bumps in the road"? 

We're all here to help each other on this journey! I'd encourage you to share your stories- successes and challenges. Maybe someone has an idea that may help. Maybe it'll help just to get it off your chest!