Reading the forum posts of others is a helpful weight-loss and maintenance tool for me. Most of us share common problems in our quest to follow ANY diet or food plan, no matter which one we independently choose. One of my favorite weight-loss forums is the No S Diet Forum, and I've put a link to it here, under RESOURCES, Links.

One of the threads I read there today talked about feeling resentful because we can't eat whatever we want, whenever we want. This is a common problem for almost everyone … including me. The following quote from a forum member on that thread gives excellent advice.

"The resentment comes from a part of your brain that doesn't work on logic and reason, it's more instinctive than that. I have heard it described on this board as the "tummy toddler". Like a toddler, it wants what it wants, RIGHT NOW, and you can't really reason with it. But also like a toddler, it can't be allowed to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, because that's not good for you (and therefore for it, since it's part of you).

The resentment does go away, but it takes time for that to happen. The worst of it for me was in the first couple of months.

One thing that can help is to keep your expectations reasonable. Don't expect quick weight loss, or to adapt to new eating habits overnight with no resentment or screw-ups. Habits just do not work that way. If you expect them to work that way, you're going to get frustrated, and it's not going to help anything. That would be like dropping a glass and expecting it to hover in front of you, rather than falling down, and getting upset with yourself or with the glass when it doesn't do that. Or, to keep going with the toddler analogy, it's as if you had let your toddler eat only junk food, decided that you were going to try to get him or her to eat healthier food, and expecting the toddler not to complain about the change.

You're changing your eating habits. That's a hard thing to do. It just is. Don't beat yourself up over it if it doesn't come easy- it doesn't for the vast majority of people who have ever tried it." 

                                                   
This past couple of months I've been extra busy with the details of life, but this weekend, I've finally found some quiet time to reflect on my personal weight-loss and maintenance goals and what behavior I'm willing to choose in order to achieve them.

 Today I did some catch-up reading at some of the forums I frequent, and one Thread particularly interested me. It is the journal of an intelligent and insightful person who has a great deal of difficulty with Denial. During the past several years I've watched as Flashes of Truth break through that Denial. Unfortunately, shortly after I see a Flash, each time it becomes lost again, buried in that Denial Abyss.   I feel certain that if this person could just retain those Truths for any length of time, she would achieve the weight-loss she so desperately hopes for.

One such Flash of Truth was a statement which was buried within her last month's posts:

"My goal has not been to lose weight or to eat less food,
it has been to desire to eat less food."

In essence, she describes an enormous stumbling block that most dieters encounter. Practically everyone with a weight problem would …. more than anything … like to rid ourselves of the DESIRE to overeat. For, of course, if that DESIRE left us, we would eat only the amounts and kinds of food that we need to sustain the body size we wish to have.

However, to actually WANT less food than the body needs to sustain it's current weight, is a goal that is ultimately impossible for almost anyone to achieve. Our bodies are designed to want to retain and store fat, and each of us has a built-in starvation response that triggers a desire to eat more whenever weight leaves our bodies. If that desire ever does leaves us…. it won't happen until AFTER our bodies have achieved weight-loss and adapted to that normal weight condition.

This is like an alcoholic saying that when they stop wanting to drink, they will quit drinking. Will never happen. First you quit… then, after years of not drinking, perhaps the desire to drink will also leave.

Another forum member did respond to her with the quote:

"Make peace with what is, and look to where you want to be."

 Acceptance wisdom.

Our overeating desire is something we cannot change, so it needs to be Accepted.
Our overeating behavior is something we can change, so we need the Courage to Change it.

                                      
This morning I sipped a cup of tea while I thumbed through a couple of my hundreds of inspirational diet books. My weight has gotten higher up than it's been for a long time, and it seems to be staying up. My fear is that, unless I can reverse this trend, it will continue to climb and climb, first into overweight, then obesity, and then back into morbid obesity, as it has so many times before, and as it does for so many other reduced obese people. I've been feeling like I'm at that in-between place. That place of inertia where the pendulum has stopped, and the task of starting it again seems incredibly difficult… if not impossible.

I read lots of good thoughts about mindful eating, which is an important concept, but struggled again with deciding on the type of eating personal plan I wanted to use today. What is consistent for me is an approximate calorie number that I work not to go over, but most of the other eating factors are usually up for grabs.

There are very few diets in existence that I haven't tried at one time or another. This is all part of my own personal dieting hobby. If I ever found one particular way of eating that I was able to follow indefinitely, I would do that. However, so far, I haven't discovered such a food plan, so my own way is to switch from one to another, and to run personal experiments while factoring in what I have learned about myself and my body and its calorie burning ability. This is not "yo-yo" dieting. This is dieting all of the time, but with different dieting plans.

 This morning an idea came to me that is different for me.. I decided that … for today… I would eat small portions of whatever healthy foods appealed to me at reasonable intervals throughout the day, BUT FOR TODAY, I would divide those small portions in half, and eat only half of what I would normally eat to maintain my current weight, and either save away or trash the rest BEFORE taking my first bite. If I find this effective, and reasonable, then I might continue doing it for awhile. I will still, of course, record everything I eat today in my computer software food journal since no matter what food plan I use, it is important for me to remain accountable for every bite, every day.

Finding something different to try sort of perked me up a bit, which led me to get out my ipod and earphones and spend some time on the treadmill and gazelle right after breakfast. Now, I feel pleased with myself for exercising on Saturday, and for eating a very small breakfast, and I am encouraged by the possibility of a successful weekend food day.

 This is how it is going for me today here in the land of DietHobby.  

                              
Online Diet Websites tend to come across as experts shining a beacon of light upon The Path to an Eternally Thin and Healthy life. However, I see myself as blindly groping about looking for a path… any path… that will lead me away from the magnetic circle that is my natural tendency to overeat into obesity.

My only expertise is my own experience, and the many hundreds of books on various food plans, diets, and exercise that I've read over my lifetime. I don't know the answer for anyone else, and there are days that I feel I'm not even close to an answer for myself.

I believe that a big part of the answer is consistent hard work, endurance, and patience. This is because this is what has brought me success in every successful area of my life, and weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss has not been an exception to that rule.

Diet and weight-loss and maintenance of weight-loss is ongoing hard work. I suspect that one of the reasons for the 95% overall failure rate is because people simply do not comprehend the extent of that fact. All of these marketing interests lie to us, telling us that they have the ANSWER, and if we just give them a little money, and a bit of effort for a short time, we will be cured of our overeating tendencies and become naturally thin. We are gullible because we are desperate to believe their claims.

What I have discovered is:

Being fat is hard,
Losing weight is hard,
Maintaining weight loss is hard.
Choose your hard. 

I wasn't born with whatever wisdom I now have. It happened as a part of experiencing life, and during that process I made many, many choices that in hindsight seem to have been mistaken ... or simply wrong.  But everything I've ever done, or ever been, or ever experienced has led me to be the person I now am. I have strengths and I have weaknesses.  I find it important to Accept all of my personal traits as simpy parts of myself as I currently exist.  This is who I am, for now. 

As we live, we change, but the traces of what we were still exist. 
Inside me still lives the toddler, the small child, the adolescent, the young adult, the young mother, and the me of every stage I've experienced throughout my life. Inside is the young me, the old me, the fat me, the thin me.  

In my present life, I have the task of loving, comforting, and accepting all these parts of myself, while continuing to make daily behavior choices which are leading me toward my future self.  It seems to me that All of us are doing this Alone but Together.