Reading the comments to my previous post reminded me that most of us are aware of the difficulty achieving permanent weight loss. And we are scared. Scared we will fail. My comment to the commenters here:
Its scary isn't it?..this trying to change ourselves from the inside out Sometimes it feels as if we are stumbling around in the darkness.... like it's trial and error and we're hoping to finally hit on the thing that will work.
The one thing I've noted on the blogs of those who lose their weight and are able to return to eating "normally" without regaining their weight is that they are all very physically active. Most are runners while others bike for miles and miles. It appears that they can eat large amounts of food and maintain their loses because they burn up a lot of calories in exercise--to the tune of several hundred a day.
But many of us can't do that. I tried to take up running. It seemed ideal because I could burn a lot of calories in a short time. At first it was hard. But as it got easier I found that I really liked it. But I had foot problems and had to stop. It took several months for my foot to heal.
I started running again and the foot problem reappeared. I ceased the activity, allowing my foot to heal and settled on walking and lifting weights...making lemonade out of my lemons.
But I can't even do that. I now have chronic Achilles tendinitis and can't walk without heel pain. And the leg lunges I was doing began causing leg and thigh pain to the degree that the pain was interfering with my sleep.
I so want to exercise but it seems like physically I am unable to. So I am frustrated because my weight loss strategy---monitoring my food intake and increasing my physical activity-- was working so well and now I have to eliminate the activity element. That is causing me some concern and fear that I may regain what I've worked so hard to lose.
This stuff in my head--the thinking that "how can it work now?" can set my intention to failure if I don't deal with it. If I believe it won't work, I may give up. My belief will dictate my behavior.
So, that is where I'm at right now...wrestling and struggling to keep the focus positive--trying to get myself past the thinking that I am on the verge of failure because the equation has been changed. But I don't know of any way to adjust the equation now that I can't exercise as I had been doing. Short of reducing my caloric intake--which I know for certain won't work because it hasn't in the past--there's nothing left.
Of late I've hit this wall--the knowledge that for the rest of my life I have two choices. I can be fat or monitor my food intake and wrestle with all the emotional issues. Will there ever be an end to it? It doesn't appear there will. That stinks. Fat or fretting...those are my choices.
I want peace with this. Where is the peace? It seems the more I delve into the emotional issues connected to food and the overeating of it, the more I realize how complicated they are. It was easier when I just had that piece of paper with the diet plan. But, then again, that didn't work either. I should be mad for the wasted effort and the wasted years. But being mad would just be wasted energy adding to the heap of waste.
Wasn't' life simpler back in the day when the main thing a person had to think about each day was surviving for another day. They didn't worry about what they put into their mouth. They ate what they had and were thankful. There was enough to worry about--disease--drought--death--famine--enemies--shelter. They worked from sun up to sun down and fell into bed physically exhausted from just trying to survive another day.
See--this is the thing I hate about "dieting"...the focus isn't on living. It's on eating and how much or how little or yadda yadda yadda. When does it end? It doesn't. And that is depressing.
I am thankful that each morning there are new mercies. I'm in need of some it seems.
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Oh my...now I'm laughing. After I finished this post I read one of my regular blogs. This is an example of that mercy I spoke of above. Now I feel better. Go here to read "Diet and Exercise are What it Takes--True or Not True?"