Talk about a “Food Decision” wall!! I hit it hard this week. Take a bit of fatigue and add several last-minute twists to a schedule that was a tad too tight in the first place, and all of a sudden food decisions become hard. I found myself saying, “I don’t want to DECIDE what to eat. It’s too much work. I just want someone to make dinner miraculously appear for my family and me.”
My clients describe this place of indecision and frustration a lot! Today, women work so hard in their careers and have so many additional responsibilities PLUS they are often expected to also fulfill the traditional “wife” duties of social planning, intra-family communication, scheduling, housework and meal planning/preparation. Overscheduling is a way of life. It can be a huge burden to carry.
The Food Decision Wall is that point when there’s nothing in the house to feed the kids except raw carrots and dog food and you’re seriously considering which would be more nutritious. It’s when you scream, “I NEED A WIFE!” It’s when you KNOW the best possible solution is to grab the phone for … FAST FOOD DELIVERY!
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If you watched the Oprah segment about the Geneen Roth book, Women Food and God, you may have seen some changes in the popular talk show host.
I certainly noticed change. Since I am deeply involved with the real change necessary to lose weight permanently, I’ve often prayed Oprah would get it.
The most important part of the show for me was when Oprah admitted she had shamed herself when she ran the January 2009 magazine cover of her “skinny” and “fat” selves.
I remember how much that magazine cover bothered me, especially the headline “How did I let this happen again?” Those words told me she had been living in an unconscious state during her weight gain.
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My twitter buddy Trish was having a tough time this week. She felt she did all the right things and yet she gained 2 lbs on the (*%#@^^!!) scale!
Here’s my answer to her:
I’ve had to work through many frustrating situations in my weight loss journey. Since I’ve kept my weight loss for over 10 years now, I’ve learned a lot. You might not like what I’m going to say, but you asked “what would I do?”
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I love baseball. I love the symbolism, the metaphor, and the geometry of it.
Phil Hughes is a Yankee pitcher.
He started his big league career with a couple stints as starting pitcher in 2007 but was injured in just his second game. He rehabbed but wound up in the minor leagues. Phil DID NOT LIKE the minor leagues! He made no bones about it.
Last year, he returned to the major league but didn’t fit into the Yankees’ rotation of starting pitchers. He wound up in the bullpen, a place starting pitchers don’t like. Phil, however, said he’d do anything not to go back to the minor leagues (hint: he had motivation).
This year, he competed for the 5th and last spot in the Yankees’ starting rotation of pitchers and won it. Yankee starting pitchers are VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE!
Good for Phil, right?
Last night was his second start. He was hurling heat! His curve ball was curvy (admittedly a girly descriptive for a pitch), his cutter was slicing across the plate at unhittable angles.
He issued only 1 walk in 5 innings. Phil was working on a no-hitter, a rare feat in baseball! (Even rarer, a perfect game is no walks and no hits.)
It was mesmerizing. After the 6th inning, still a no hitter!
After 7, Phil still in charge!
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What the world calls “weight loss” is a temporary condition based on a diet, not on real life. As I discovered, we pay for temporary weight loss with deprivation, excessive exercise, and, most importantly, we pay with the body’s precious metabolism. Then, we’re forced to give back the “weight loss” when we can’t support the payments anymore.
I call this “renting weight loss.” It’s prevalent in our society, and heartbreaking.
As I lost over 70 lbs. (and sustained that loss for 10 years), I learned a few things. Speaking at my 10th year celebration forced me to think about all my lessons from an overview perspective. It looked like this:
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As I travel, spreading the word about permanent weight loss, I often speak to middle and high school girls about health, body image, and the negative impact of dieting on weight. It’s always very touching for me to look out over the classroom and see the young women as I speak. Many of them (according to some statistics, about 50%) are already dieting and associating being thin with deprivation.
Thin = Deprivation
Wrong!
Most of them can’t look ahead to see how their current behavior and stringent dieting will lead to frustration, anger and excess weight in their twenties and thirties. It takes many years to see the real equation:
Dieting and Food Avoidance = More Fat
If I could do one thing for these girls, who deserve a healthy future free from disordered eating, it would be to freeze them right where they are.
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This blog post is inspired by my fabulous twitter buddy, Shannon. She asked for input on a particular diet on twitter. Since I wanted to say more than my initial “under 140 characters” reply (“DON’T DO IT!”), I decided to share it here.
The diet program that caught Shannon’s eye was first popular about 12-14 years ago, right in the middle of my 4-year weight loss period.
I had lost about 65 lbs when I entered a 9 month training program. At that point, I didn’t think of my weight loss as tenuous and I was committed to the idea of permanence, but I still experienced lots of anxiety about it.
During our training, we had a lunchtime speaker come in and talk about fitness. “Oh, this will be interesting,” I thought. The man brought the book “Body for Life” by Bill Phillips and talked about how great it was. I rolled my eyes (kinda like this):
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I love the debate over diets I see on Twitter every day. Do weight watchers. Buy Jenny Craig. Follow Biggest Loser. Shred with PX-90. Beach body fads. Invest in a body bugg.
In a way, it’s all a smokescreen, isn’t it? None of these programs is going to bring the permanent change on the scale we all want. Only WE can do that.
Research shows people who achieve permanent weight loss, even if they start out on a diet, leave it behind pretty quickly in order to create a unique, personal lifestyle change. They begin to change their own individual behaviors that impact their weight, instead of focusing on food.
A lifestyle change goes a lot deeper than a diet. It takes a little longer. It’s not quite so simple. But you get to keep it!!! That’s why I invested the time and effort to make permanent change back in 1996. My objective from the beginning was permanent weight loss. I wanted all along to be here, in 2010, celebrating 10 years of sustained weight loss.
Here are 5 behavior changes that have huge impact on weight loss:
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- Confused? Most people are. All this is diet advice from the perspective of what I call Diet Mentality. Based in fea… https://t.co/oLbdhU6utw
- https://t.co/0JcSIOHFVS https://t.co/0JcSIOHFVS
- I've always said exercise is more important than food control. What do you think? https://t.co/nRyJeKMZ9y
- Before and after pictures are usually complete fakes, and give us the misconception that the "after" picture is the… https://t.co/QUdTrITjeG
- Take a look! Wisdom! https://t.co/zjh6DbmIh9
