Phatsister Needs Motivation! Suggestions??

[thephatsister]

You would think that carrying around way too much weight and not having anything to wear would be motivation enough, but I am having such a hard time. I make up way too many excuses and let myself indulge in the silliest stuff. I need help!! What have you done to motivate yourselves??

[kccc]

Post here a lot. When I give advice/recommendations to others, I reinforce them for myself. Plus, then I feel pressure to walk the talk.

Non-food rewards. There are five senses OTHER than taste! I buy flowers, stop to admire sunsets, etc. I also journal, so I can get more in touch with myself and the things I love. (At one point, I did writing exercise around the senses... "I love the smell of..." "... the sight of..." "... the sound of..." etc. The goal is to write at least 5 things for each, as fast as you can. Ten if you can do it.)

GOOD meals - especially when I'm having a tough time. I enjoy cooking more than I used to, and a lot of the foods I like can EASILY be part of an N-day meal. (Shrimp. Strawberries, and other fruit in season.)

I also took up knitting. Love it - and can't eat while doing it. (Not motivation as much as distraction, but hey...)

Good luck!

[Kathleen]

Believe it or not, perhaps my greatest motivation for this diet was to be able to take my kids to TCBY and have frozen yogurt cones with them without feeling guilty. The greatest motivation for me in following this diet is being able to enjoy whatever I want on S Days.

Kathleen

[howfunisthat]

Isn't it amazing how easily we want to just fall back and give in to our old habits? Ugh....I had a REALLY hard week last week & wanted to completely give up! But what's the alternative? I was MISERABLE before I started this plan...I don't want to go back there!

1) So....have you read the book? I've read it and underlined it and I read parts of it again & again. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend doing so.

2) One of my biggest motivators is that I'm not doing this alone. I truly don't want to let anyone down and since I've talked about this plan to other people, I feel as if I'm not just battling this for me, but for my family too.

3) Does the HabitCal work for you? Some people don't like it, but I find that updating it on a daily basis is great for me...I HATE the thought of messing up my yellow & green calendar with a red day....just last week I stopped myself from eating more because I knew I'd have to put a red mark on that day.

4) I go to the "Y" to exersize, if I can. I can't always drop everything and go...but when I do it really helps me get over the struggle of the day.

Don't know if any of these help....hang in there! Let's all be "After" pictures together!!!

janie

[oolala53]

One of the strategies in Judith Beck's book The Beck Diet Solution is to make a list of all the reasons you'd like to lose weight. I changed it to include why I want to make peace with eating. I'd like to be slimmer, and I probably will lose weight, but I doubt I'll get thin. After all I've tried over these 37 years, I know there are habits I won't keep, and I think I'd need to keep some doozies to get really thin. but , I don't need to be really thin. I do, however, want to achieve a more detached attitude toward food, and I think I'll be slimmer when I do.

I had several reasons that had to do with looking good, although I think my standards aren't as high as some, and I think it's a bad habit in itself to allow shame to be a big motivator. (A tiny one that you can still have a sense of humor about? okay. crying when you look in the mirror? not okay) It can drive you down into a well of self-hatred that will backfire. I said things like it's easier to find nice clothes when I can wear smaller sizes. I also wrote specific items of outfits I wanted to feel comfortable in. Also, I need to be at hunting weight! I'm single, and statistically, slimmer women my age marry more than heavier ones. (always exceptions, I know, but why not play my best game? as much as I'm willing to, and still be authentic. No one has ever accused me of being Barbie or a Stepford girlfriend--no comments from the peanut gallery!) Funny, I wouldn't try to lose weight because a specific man told me to (watch out! oh, no, he di'n't!), but I'm willing to try to lose 10 pounds to increase my odds of attracting a man who'll be a good fit for me. My blood readings are good, so health is not a big issue, but I know the odds are also better if I get into my normal BMI range. I've known for years that I eat way more than I'm truly hungry for, and it has finally gotten to me that I just don't want to rely on food for whatever experience overeating provides me. It's not out of terrible shame, as some say. But it's like the pride of riding a bike like the big kids. I'm enough of a wanna-be do-gooder that a small motivation is feeling that I am not using resources irresponsibly when others go without. Next, I wanted to develop character without becoming an ascetic freak. I also study Zen and a big part of that is recognizing how much the mind can mess with you in all kinds of ways, and food is one of them, and not being at the mercy of those thoughts. Another one is that I know I just have to find a system I can be consistent with and LIVE with, not something I'm doing "until...". No S definitely is the closest I've found that seems it could be forever. I want to be done with this, in the sense that I want not to have to live around the fight with food. I think I have other things to do, and I suspect I can't discover them while I'm all caught up in this. Also, when you come down to it, food is just more enjoyable when you get hungry. It's so delicious then!

So, when I dissected it over a period of days, I saw that I had about 20 discernible reasons for sticking with something. Beck recommends writing the list and then transferring all or part of it to index cards, carrying them with you, and reading them several times a day for as long as it takes until the reasons start popping into your head during the day without looking at the cards. For me, sometimes it will be the appearance thing and sometimes it will be the pride thing, etc.

Beck has a lot of good strategies that are just about developing discipline and habits. Some of her recommendations don't jive well with this, such as keeping a food diary, planning everything you are going to eat ahead of time (ouch!), and a few others, but a lot can be adapted very well to No S. I'd bet some of the successful people here are doing some of those things, or versions of them, without knowing it. I know Reinhard likes to keep things simple, but, for many of us who didn't have the first thing we tried make us lose 20 pounds in two months and not feel that it was that hard (God love ya, R-man!), for those who've also practiced hundreds of times the habit of saying we won't eat something and then eating it and not really truly deeply realizing that we were hurting more from doing that, we may need a few more trapezes.

If you suspect that emotional eating is your main bugaboo, you'll find there are people here who have/had that issue and have found this to be helpful. Some have said they've gotten rid of all their eating disorder books, but I suspect some of the delving into themselves and such has set some of the groundwork. However, many of those programs advocate regular routines of meal eating and avoiding junk foods; No S seems as good a system as any to follow as you examine the obstacles.

"Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize." Henry James

Hope this is what you meant.

[blueskighs]

I make up way too many excuses and let myself indulge in the silliest stuff. I need help!! What have you done to motivate yourselves??

phatsister,

we are all so unique it might be helpful for you to do a little probing and search out why you are making up way too excuses and considering what motivates you?

for me, it really has been desparation. To say that I am sick and tired of binging and restricting as a way of life, is putting it lightly. I am simply DESPARATE to put all of this foodie weighing obsessive lifestyle BEHIND ME ... make it ALL part of my past.

When I stumbled upon the NO S Diet book at Barnes and Noble and read it in one day in March, something clicked ... the door to my "food/dieting/calorie counting/ scale weighing" jail cell, I realized Reinhard had handed me the key, but I had to put it in the lock and walk out the door and embrace the freedom of a life without binging and restricting.

That is the tricky part. Once you pick up NO S a lot of the "diet fantasy" needs to be let go, a lot of the time wasted on whatever personal food fetishes are ours has to be refocussed towards other endeavors.

Pragmatically, reading the entire book and using Habitcal are the best step by step tools to use so that you can deal with the rest,
GOOD LUCK

Blueskighs

[oolala53]

First, I read something last night about another habit that rings true for the attmept to change any habit: until the reasons for not doing it are greater in number or importance than the reasons for doing it, you will not be able to change that habit.

As blueskighs said, you probably have to be desperate to escape the pain/ridiculousness of what you're doing. You might have to recognize what overeating does do for you (gotta be something positive, or you wouldn't do it) and then weigh it against the disadvantages. Bottom line, though, is you have to want NOT to be a person who consistently overeats for whatever reason. Thankfully, that desire can take you through the initial phases; later, the habit itself will make it more likely because the pleasure of moderation will likely increase and outdo the pleasure of overindulgence.

Second, you might want to post this question on the general discussion board.

BTW, I had a medium-big failure yesterday, but I'm okay. Fall down seven times, get up eight. I'm going to do this or something to find peace with food. No question. It's definitely too painful not to. I couldn't will this "place" though. But, I'm glad I'm in it.

Keep posting.