My Why - Getting Past Failure

(Note aside from the post title above I am going to stop calling my previous attempts failures, keep reading to learn why.)

 

I went to HS with this lovely lady and we are FB friends, she too is going through her own weight loss journey (I don't feel like I am giving things away because I am not using her name and it was on FB but I am not sure if the page is private or not)  and she had a very honest post today about her past failures and it was inspiring, she is not letting the past dictate her future.  She has made changes that are working for her and is happy to take anyone else along on a similar journey.  Below is my response to her:

Congratulations! I think for so many we try and we may even make progress and then we fall off the wagon and we see it as a failure rather than being human. I have tried and failed many times, what changed for me this time was I was ready and I was able to focus on the why aka my long term goal. For me, it wasn't to be a specific size or weight but it was I wanted to live a long life to be with my kids and I felt that I needed to make a change to help me make that happen. The path I was on did not look like the way to make that happen. I needed to change the way I ate, how much I ate, and how much I moved, they all had to work together for that big picture.

I realized after I posted that comment that I had so much more to say, but her comments were not necessarily the right place to do it, so ta-da!  My blog is the answer.

For me, the first step was that I was finally ready, sure each time I tried to lose weight I thought I was ready; but I was not because I gave up at the slightest obstacle.  I came off a really tough medical year and I had a lot of time to think about where my life and health were heading and that was scary but also powerful.  All that self-reflection made me realize that even though I thought I was ready before, I knew that this time was different and I really am ready, and that has to be the first step in any journey but I think it is of special importance in a weight loss/healthier you journey.

I know that you are supposed to create actionable goals to help you actually achieve them, at least that is what Gretchen Rubin says and I believe her.🙂 I have done that in the past and I wanted to tweak it because the past hasn't worked so why would it work now?  I said in the FB comment that I wasn't focused on a specific weight and it is a contradiction because I am not focused on a number but yet I am. That number is my actionable goal but it was set by my doctor, not me, and I really feel it is going to be a range and not a specific number once I get close to that number.  As an obliger this is fantastic, I am not setting the goal, I don't need to meet my expectation but that of my doctor. Her interest is in helping me get and stay healthy.  BOOM this is my difference.

The next difference comes from Noom, it really helped me because it forced me to answer a lot of questions, some were uncomfortable because they made me think, engage, and work for it. With this app I did something I had not done on previous weight loss attempts:

1. I defined my WHY- my long term goals, my medium term goals, and short term goals.
2. I started counting calories thereby creating a food journal with accountability.

My unsuccessful attempts (I refuse to call them failures because I did learn things from them and have used what I learned in this journey) had been focused on a specific end goal number only, so I didn't have my why, it was just an arbitrary number I felt I pulled out of air that sounded good.  I also didn't do enough to create short and medium goals to support that larger goal, I was depriving myself of incremental victories.

The newest bit that I have added is that calorie counting/food journaling.  Yes, it was a pain when I started and yes it can still be a pain.  But what it is showing me is that I have so much more control than I thought I did.  It is also showing me what a portion size really should be.  <--- That right there is so huge for me, it is not that I am depriving myself all the time it is simply that I still pretty much each the way I have in the past but with drastically smaller portions.  The smaller portions took a while to get used to but I realized that I was satisfied from a hunger standpoint with the smaller sizes 98% of the time, but I may have wanted more because it was so good.  I have been slowing down and enjoying the food more than I had so even though I have less I seem to be enjoying it more.

The best part of my Facebook comment for me was this line:

 I think for so many we try and we may even make progress and then we fall off the wagon and we see it as a failure rather than being human.

And that is why I am trying to stop calling my past attempts failures, they were not they were unsuccessful.  And sure that is semantics, but it is also framing for the positive, to help me gain the outcome I want. I want success, so I look at what worked and what didn't accept that I am human and try again with some changes.

I have mentioned some things that are new, here is what I am retaining from previous attempts.

• Tracking/logging or my exercise some may call it obsessive but I need it to keep me doing it.
• Daily weigh-in; at first it was hard but now it is second nature.  I am also starting to be able to see past the small normal fluctuations and really be able to focus on the larger trend.