Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Gaining control

Wow, it's been 2 months since I posted. Oops. So, here's a brief synopsis of the past two months:

Hit 198, went on vacation, ate off plan, came back from vacation, never went back on plan, decided to stay off plan so I can train for my half marathon, decided I'd start on Weight Watchers, gained at least 12 lbs, now on Weight Watchers and the number is slowly creeping back down.

So, here's the deal. If I'm going to be walking/running/hobbling/crawling a half marathon, I need to train for it so I do more of the former, not as much of the latter. And to train, you need proper nutrition. As much as Medifast has worked for me, it's not going to get me the calories and nutrition I need for heavy duty mileage days. I have every intention of going back on Medifast after the race to achieve my weight loss goal. But, in the meantime, I am going to do Weight Watchers and train.

Because of that, I need to work on gaining control of my bad behaviors. Left to my own devices, I'd eat myself into a coma some days. How does it work that I can stay focused for 5 months and lose 65 lbs and still have issues with that? You tell me. I don't know. But I need to work on finding a new "normal" for me which includes real food, not meal replacements and one real meal a day. This is where I struggle.

THIS is where I struggle.

Finding that off switch when I'm full. Finding the control to walk away from temptation. Being able to have foods in the house that are known binge-triggers without bingeing on them. I want to have fruit snacks for my daughter, but I could easily eat a whole box of them without thinking twice. Even milk - I could drink a half gallon a day, no problem. There are foods that I love that I purposely don't buy so they can't be in the house and I can't binge on them.

I need to find the same focus I had on Medifast with doing Weight Watchers and eating real food 3 meals a day plus snacks. The exercising won't be tough - the more you move, the more points plus you get to eat. My 27 minute brisk walk tonight (brisk in that it was a 15:33 minute mile AND it was 32 degrees outside) earned me 3 points plus, or a VitaTop muffin for my evening snack. I can get on board with legally being able to eat more food if I exercise.

So I am now on a new journey - to conquer my fear of real food and gain control of how I eat. I know it goes much deeper than that - I mean, how can I live for 33 years or so without major food issues and then suddenly develop such control problems? In a perfect world, I'd be able to afford counseling and a nutritionist and heck, a private chef while we're at it, but this is my world. And my battle to fight.