Where does the time go. 1 year from my last thread post. I didn't just fall of the wagon, I stopped looking for it.
As a result, all the good I did has been reversed. Besides being near my top weight again. Knee pain, higher B/P, shortness of breath, pre- diabetes, and my personal favorite, sweating like a pig with the littlest of effort are all back.
8 days ago, I guess I finally had enough. Found my old wagon, fixed what had been broken and climbed aboard.
The Jouney Continues...(again)
Sorry to hear of your reversal but glad to hear you are back on track. Your experience is not unusual. Some people make great strides and stay there. Others make great strides and revert. It demonstrates the importance of mindset.
The people who progress and remain at their new levels do not see themselves as people who gain and lose weight or are on or off the wagon. They transform their self-image and self-talk to that of a person who sees one's self as healthy and fit.
As I write this, there are people in our gym. Some are overweight and others are fit and trim. Who are the healthy ones? You won't know by looking at their bodies. To find that out you have to get inside their heads. A fit and trim one may be an obsessive/compulsive. An overweight one may be on yet another gain/loss cycle, this time at this gym instead of one of several others where the same results were produced.
The healthy ones, regardless of body type, are the ones who see themselves as healthy and fit. The 300 lbs. person struggling to complete 10 minutes on the treadmill is, in my view, as healthy as the perfectly toned person in the free weights area now working to fine-tune the cut on his triceps. That's because the treadmill person has it in mind that his fat days are forever over. He is a huge winner in the gym today because working out is what healthy people do. His body will catch up with his self-image over time. Mentally, he is healthy and fit right now.
Healthy and fit people do not give into the indulgences that put the pounds back on; because eating unhealthy foods and sitting around are simply things they do not do. Just as they don't walk into traffic, rob banks or engage in strange religious rituals, they don't eat crap and they don't sit around. They don't do it because that's not who they are.
These people do not move back and forth between alternative states (fit and fat) because they see only one state as possible. That is not to say they do not feel the urges that are triggered by the endless stream of unhealthy billboards and TV ads. They just react to them in a different way because deep down they know those temptations are not for them.
Self-image examples are provided by people who are diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes. Once upon a time, they saw themselves in a certain way and they ate with little regard for the consequences. Now they see themselves as a diabetic and they eat and act like one. With many people, the instant they see themselves differently, their behavior changes.
In my case, there was a time when diet mattered not a bit. I simply ate what made sense at the time. In that, and especially out on the road, I developed a taste and strong cravings for fast food and large, vanilla DQ cones. Hardly a day went by when I did not go out of our way to treat myself to a DQ. Yum! When it was my turn to sleep while Diane drove, and if I did not feel tired, we'd stop at a fast food place to get my Quarter Pounder with large fries "sleeping pill." Yum! Good tasting food, a full tummy, a warm bed ... there I was, doing my duty to stay safe, getting my sleep so as to not drive tired. (I did not know or appreciate then that a healthier diet would have given me more energy and kept me more alert behind the wheel.)
When we got out of trucking and into the gym business, I began to see myself as a healthy eater. In a surprisingly short period of time, I lost my taste for the cones and fast food. My mind literally altered its response to these. The cones now seem to have a distinct tinge of petroleum in their taste (yuk!). The idea of a fast-food meal makes me wretch.
Every now and then, the old cravings will kick in. Those are easily overcome by intentionally bringing the bad taste or wretch feelings to mind. And when I give in to the cravings every few months, the satisfaction that the meal once provided now disappears a few bites in.(Yuk! I knew this meal would suck before I bought it. Why did I buy it?).
The cravings never go away. Sometimes we tease each other in the gym with them. Staff will taunt each other with verbal descriptions of unhealthy but tasty foods. Such taunts are taken as a joke because while they actually stimulate the same strong cravings everyone else experiences, we know how to neutralize them, either by the unconscious action of our trained brains or intentional acts like eating a healthy snack, bringing a neutralizing thought to mind, doing two minutes of quick exercise, getting up to get a drink of water or using other such techniques that fit people know.
You have gotten where you want to be before, RoadTime, and I know you can get there again. This time around, pay special attention to your thought processes and self-talk. Stop thinking about the wagon. It's not about the wagon you are on or off. It's about the kind of person you are and want to be. Fit people don't have ideas of wagons in their heads. They have the self-image of a healthy and fit person. This isn't about the wagon, it's about you.
How do you develop such a self image if you do not yet have one? You literally train your brain. Top athletes are coached to imagine their desired outcomes. They actually spend time with their eyes closed imagining every aspect (sights, sounds, smells, visuals) of the perfect burst out of the starting block, the well placed golf shot, the three-point basketball score, etc. Then they practice, practice and practice some more. They do the visioning work because it develops automatic thought processes in the brain that trigger in real-world situations.
You can do the same with making healthy food choices and the decision to get up and get to the gym instead of sitting in front of the TV. Imagine yourself in a situation where a healthy decision or an unhealthy one could be made. Then rehearse in your mind you making the healthy decision.
To learn more about how to train your brain, read:
The Willpower Instinct; How Self-Control Works, Why it Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal.
