Up and Down: Riding It Out and Working Through | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans LLC

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I met Heidi from The Write Fit at Fitbloggin’ (she was the awesome chic with JumpSport Fitness Trampoline™!) and we just clicked. She told me she’d love to write for us about self-sabotage, and I’m thrilled to share her thoughts with all of you!

We have all been there.  We have all been on diets, watched what we put in our mouths and felt the ecstasy of waist bands loosening, shirts blousing and having a bounce in our step as we feel particularly waifish.  But then something happens, those size X’s become size Y’s.  If you’re like me, you may have thrown out your size Y’s and low and behold you get to walk around looking like a two pound sausage in a one pound bag as my Italian mama says.  I reread my article on weight loss plateus from February where I was logging in at a righteous 137 pounds.  I come to you today as a 145 pounder.  It’s fine but what I find is that I have a sabotage “thing” going on and I know that I’m not the only one.  I think we can look at pop icons and see that it is a very common occurrence. 

Why does this happen?  Before I provide you with what the pros have to say, I’ll give you my reason.  After some reactionary emotional flogging, I have had time to just quietly consider why this happens to me.  Honestly, I get cocky.  Confident.  I think, “oh, I’m skinny now, I can eat whatever I want” and believe me I do.  Half a jar of peanut butter usually and other types of concoctions that I will not reveal publicly in the event I run for office.  There’s no secret why I gain the weight when I’m stuffing my face with a foodstuff that has 200 calories per two tablespoons if I am chowing down on half a jar at a clip.  It’s not that I do not enjoy being thin, it’s like I said, I just get super confident, I feel that I am naturally thin and I’m not.  There are very few people I know who are.  Maintaining a healthy weight or a goal weight takes discipline and awareness and often that awareness can become exhausting which leads me to another reason, my personal reason for sabotage plain exhaustion for weight gain.  I get tired of counting points, watching what I put into my mouth, I just want to eat and I get sloppy.  A naturally thin person does not overeat seriously, watch someone who is naturally thin.  They eat until satisfied and that’s it.

Now for the professionals’ opinion on weight loss sabotage: I found Dr. Blair-West website to be of particular interest and intrigue.  He believes that the, “80% five year failure rate in treating obesity and maintaining weight loss, is because obesity has been traditionally conceptualised as a physical condition resulting from a willpower deficiency.” Dr. Blair-West coins this notion, “Restrain Theory” and it makes a lot of sense.  The constant mindfulness or lack of willpower that comes with our conception of losing weight (or gaining weight) is exhausting and becomes a burden.  Blair-West does not offer this theory to give us an excuse to stuff our faces but offers us a different paradigm to shift our focus and provide a new lens for perceiving and approaching how we lose weight.  Visit his website: http://weightlosspsychology.com/portal/content/view/30/108/ to learn more about his point of view and papers that support his rationale.

In the end, know that you are not alone.  I often recall a bumper sticker that I read years ago that said, “I may be fat but you’re ugly and I can lose weight”.  OK, so that’s not very nice but it serves as a reminder that fat can come off…just look at Oprah, she is the Queen of yo-yo dieting if there ever was one and bless that woman, she has to show her gains and losses in front of millions every day.  As a fitness instructor I am self conscious about getting in front of my classes, I cannot even begin to imagine exposing myself to the masses like that woman.  Take a breath.  Visit Dr. Blair West’s site and know that fat and pounds are temporary.  We can reframe the way we interpret our thoughts and we can re-pattern how we think.
Perhaps it’s time to refresh and lighten the load of our heavy thoughts.

With Love and a Spring in Her Step,

Heidi Lauckhardt-Rhoades The Write Fit

www.thewritefit.us

@aTweetLife