Florafloraflora's check-in thread

Counting carbs/calories is a drag. Obsessive scale stepping is a recipe for despair. If you want to count something, "days on habit" is a much better metric. Checking off days on a calendar would do just fine, but if you do it here you get accountability and support. Here's how. Start a new topic in this forum called (say) "Your Name Daily Check In." Then every N day post a "reply" to that topic as to whether you stayed on habit. A simple "<font color="green">SUCCESS</font>" or "<font color="red">FAILURE</font>" (or your preferred euphemism if that's too harsh) is sufficient, but obviously you're welcome to write more if you want. On S-days just register that you're taking an S-day. You don't have to do this forever, just until you're confident you've built the habit. Feel free to check in weekly or monthly or sporadically instead of daily. Feel free also to track other habits besides No-s (I'm keeping this forum under No-s because that's what the vast majority are using it for). See also my <a href="/habitcal/">HabitCal</a> tool for another more formal (and perhaps complementary) way to track habits.

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florafloraflora
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Post by florafloraflora » Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:16 am

Bah. Even yet another failure today, first thing in the morning too. I've been having terrible insomnia for the past week. This morning when I got up at 4 and couldn't get back to sleep, I ended up eating some sweets. Boo. Usually I can control myself when I wake up in the middle of the night, but my resistance, and my judgment in general, is way down right now.

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:00 pm

Flora,

I'm sorry to hear you're having such a hard time of it lately...

I wouldn't take that new york times article about your body "wanting to be fat" too seriously. I think it's far more likely that it's old, deeply entrenched behaviors that want to be indulged coming back. Most dieters never alter these behaviors on a deep level, and so as soon as they let their guard down, the old behaviors return. It might seem like it's the physical fat that's causing this eternal recurrence, but my bet is it's really the mental fat.

Reinhard

florafloraflora
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Post by florafloraflora » Thu Oct 25, 2007 5:07 pm

Thank you, Reinhard. My check-in looks really dire because the only thing I post here now are failures. In between failures, things are actually going pretty well. The hardest times are when I'm crazy-stressed at work or elsewhere in life and everything seems to be falling apart. That's when the rules tend to go out the window for a day or two. But crunch time doesn't come too often, and I've been able to right myself without too much trouble when it passes.

I do appreciate your support, a lot.

florafloraflora
Posts: 219
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:03 pm
Location: Washington, DC USA

Post by florafloraflora » Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:38 am

Failure yesterday: Girl Scout cookies came in. Not that that automatically means failure, but yesterday to me it did.

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