The first step - before worrying about food or exercise

I sometimes get the "just" response from people who want to know how I've lost the weight - as in, "Oh, you 'just' watched your calories and you 'just' exercised."  If 'just' were that easy, no one would be overweight.  An alcoholic's solution is to 'just' stop drinking, right?  Of course, there's a lot more to it than that.  I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that addiction is the end result to issues already present in our psyche.  After all, why do we keep doing something to ourselves that leads to our own demise physically, spiritually, medically, and socially?  It's a slow suicide.

The reality is that losing weight successfully for the long term takes strong, continual commitment.  It's a very slow process, it takes a long time, it's time consuming, and it's a lot of hard work - physically, emotionally, and psychologically.  It can be extremely frustrating, and for those of us battling obesity, it's a daily struggle.  We need food to survive so we are confronted with our addiction every day, all day long for our entire life!  However, the results of success are incredible and well worth the trouble!  

Before I could worry about what I would eat or adopting an exercise program (applying these two things in the past was always short lived for me), I decided to start with some self analysis to try and figure out the underlying reasons why I became obese and remained that way for pretty much my entire life until my weight had gotten completely out of control.  I considered seeing someone professionally to help me, but I decided to give it a shot on my own first before spending all that money and time undergoing therapy.  The one nice thing about being in my 50s is that by now I know myself well enough to know what makes me tick, what works for me and what doesn't.  No one knows me better than I do.    

I started mulling over questions in my mind, such as:  Why is it that my one biggest failure in life has been my weight?  I can do anything I set my mind to, except for my weight - why?  Why do I feel that I don't deserve better?  Why don't I think enough of myself, love myself enough to improve my life?  Do I sabotage myself on purpose because for some reason I feel I don't deserve to be happy?  Am I depressed?  I know I'm not happy, but am I clinically depressed?  What have I been doing that hasn't worked?  What does work for me?  What do I need to change -  and how do I change it?  Why do I always give up when it comes to my weight?  What triggers my binges?  What are my biggest stressors now that I'm retired and can't blame my job anymore?  How do I handle stress?  Why do I stuff myself with "comfort foods" when comfort is the complete opposite of what these foods provide me?

In the beginning, I had more questions than answers, and it was frustrating.  It sounds silly to say this, but there were times when I sat there for hours just thinking, mulling these questions over and over in my head, trying to figure out the answers by reviewing my life, my past relationships, and my past actions and reactions to bad situations.  The TV would be on but I'd realize an hour later that the show I was watching was over and I hadn't seen any of it because my mind was busy.  I felt like I was wasting my life just staring at the wall and thinking, but then again what else was I doing with my life?  I started telling myself over and over again that:  yes, I deserve to be happy.  I deserve to be healthier.  I deserve to be thin.  There's no reason I should be punishing myself by stuffing myself with food.  The only thing that matters is my well being not only physically but especially spiritually.  No one can make me feel bad about myself unless I let them.  People who put me down, hurt my feelings, or treat me badly have their own issues - it's on them, not on me.  I'm a valuable person.  I deserve a better life!  

This was my mind set for several weeks, maybe even months, and then a funny thing happened to me along the way:  something in my head clicked, like a light switch, and as I began to figure out answers to some (not all) of my questions and I started actually believing for the first time in my life that I did, in fact, deserve better, I started being successful in the weight loss department.  It was a slow process that picked up speed as I saw results.  I'm a visual learner.  Whenever I do anything new, such as design and build my own bookshelves (as in: buy the wood, get the saw and router out, etc.), I research it, mull it over in my head, and try to figure out what problems I might encounter if I do it this way or that way.  I basically design and complete projects in my head before I actually attempt them.  This has always worked for me.  It turned out that losing weight was just another project for me to figure out in my head before I attempted it.

When I was analyzing my past behavior as it related to food, I started having small epiphanies and realizations that I call a "forest-for-the-trees thing" (or my "DUH!" moments), meaning that the ideas that finally dawned on me that led me to success were nothing new, nothing earth shattering, the information had been there all along, but I just didn't get it until now.  All these years I heard the information about how to lose weight, it was there all along, but I wasn't listening.  I didn't know how to apply it to my own life.  I see it now in people who marvel at my transformation and ask me all sorts of questions because they want to do the same thing themselves, but they're not listening.  They're not applying what I tell them works for me, nor are they trying to find what might work for them.  Most often I see disappointment in their faces when I tell them how much time it's taken and what it's entailed.  I can tell that they immediately think, "That's too much time and too much work."   I recognize that look because I had it so often myself before.  I, too, wanted an easy fix that wouldn't take forever or would take a lot of hard work to achieve it.  Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes and I fear that's what they're waiting for me to give them.  Nothing worthwhile in life is ever easy, is it?  Losing weight is no different.  

In particular, I had five epiphanies that turned things around for me right off the bat.  Once I resigned myself to these five realizations, a calm came over me about the entire process and I was able to apply them to success: 

1)      I have to change my lifestyle - for the rest 
         of my life.  I have no choice.  This is it. 

I realized that any time I changed my eating habits in the past, I viewed it as a temporary fix.  I'd lose some weight and then I would return to my old habits.  Of course I gained it all back…DUH!  It never occurred to me that it couldn't be temporary, that I had to change my habits for the rest of my life.  This time around, I had the rude awakening that I had to completely overhaul my lifestyle where food was concerned and change almost everything - forever, and there would be no turning back.  I was getting too old to keep going back and forth, plus having to start all over again from the beginning every single time was defeating.

2)      It's going to take me years to lose the 
         weight, but time passes anyway. 

Yes, it's overwhelming and disappointing that it will take so long, but time will pass anyway -  so why not try?  I'm an instant gratification person.  I want things NOW.  The idea that it'd take me three years or more to reach my goal (assuming I could even do it in the first place) was too daunting for me and it always dissuaded me from even starting.  That's just too long to wait for my goal weight to happen!  This time around, however, I told myself that whatever improvements I made, whatever weight I might lose would be better than doing nothing at all.  Wouldn't it be better to lose a few pounds within the next few years than to stay the same or, worse yet, gain more?  Also, I realized while I was on my journey that I had always looked at how long it'd take to get to the end of the process, as if I had to wait however many years it would take to lose the weight before I could be happy.  It never occurred to me how much my life would improve during the journey.  I had no idea that the improvements I'd undergo would be exponential as I got closer to my goal!

3)      Never, ever, ever give up!   

Whenever I watched "The Biggest Loser," a reality TV show where contestants lose weight while competing with each other for the final monetary prize, I could always tell which contestants were going to succeed the most because I could see it in their faces:  the determination and refusal to give up even when they had to keep getting up and trying again and again.  Whenever someone lost that determination, they started to fail.  By watching them, it dawned on me that success is all in my head.  I can't control much in life, but I can certainly control what foods go in my mouth.  No one can force me to eat anything I don't want to so it's all up to me.  I'm the one who controls how I perceive and react to situations.  In the past, whenever I had a setback, such as an injury or stress or reached those dreaded plateaus where my weight wouldn't budge no matter how good I was being, I would always give up.  There was a part of me that would ask, "What's the point?!  I'm trying so hard and I'm not seeing results so what's the point of even trying anymore!"  I often felt like the universe was working against me at every turn and I'd always give up.

This time around, if that question popped into my head after a setback, my response changed to:  The point is I'm miserable and I don't want to live like this anymore.  The point is that if I don't try, I won't succeed.  The point is that if I give up, I'm going to gain it all back and then I'll just die inside.  

I've been asked if I ever contemplated giving up during this particular journey.  I have to say truthfully that at NO time did it occur to me to give up.  Not once!  Yes, I doubted I would be successful, but I never thought of giving up.  Even when I was on a 16-month plateau, I never thought of giving up.  Yes, I was frustrated and annoyed, but instead of wanting to give up, I'd tell myself out loud, "I REFUSE to give up because what's the alternative?  To gain it all back and die inside?"

4)      Don't strive to be perfect because you 
         never will be.

I'm a perfectionist by nature and if I can't do something perfectly, I give up.  It's taken me a very long time to understand that I can never be perfect.  Nothing is perfect.  No one is perfect.  It's a concept that is still incredibly hard for me to adopt.  However, this time around, I told myself over and over again that I could never be perfect, particularly as it relates to food.  Instead, I just have to do better.  In the past whenever I overate or binged, I'd feel like a failure and the bad feelings created from that alone were enough to stop me from continuing.  This time around, I realized that I'm going to fail once in a while, but that's okay, the key is to brush it off and get back on track.  Instead of being disappointed in myself - or worse yet, disgusted with myself, I told myself, "Okay, you did it, it's over, now get back on track."  I no longer feel like a failure when I lose my way momentarily.  It's a healthier way of dealing with binging or giving in to "bad" foods I shouldn't eat.

5)      Just worry about one day at a time, one week 
         at a time. 

Like I said before, I'm an instant gratification person.  Looking at the end of the line when it's going to take years to get there is too daunting for me.  When I started this journey, I was facing having to lose 130 to 150 lbs.!!!!!  That's losing the equivalent of an entire human being! Talk about overwhelming and disheartening!  How in the world could I ever lose that much when I couldn't even keep 20 lbs. off for more than a couple of months?  I've failed for more than 30 years regarding my weight, how could I do it now at this age?  So once again I started talking to myself and decided that what would work best for me is to not worry about the total amount I had to lose, but rather just worry about doing better each day and tracking my weight once a week.  During my journey, whenever I started thinking about how much I still had to lose or I'd put goals on myself, such as, "I want to weigh XXX by this date," I'd panic and would start overeating again.  I was sabotaging myself based on fear.  Once I reminded myself to worry about one day and one week at a time and not worry about setting goals for specific scale numbers, I was able to get back on track immediately - and succeed.   

I've had other epiphanies, many DUH! moments, during my journey, which I detail throughout my blog, but these five were the ones that turned things around for me the most before I even started dealing with food and exercise.