(LighterLife Route to Management – Week11 Day1)
To me, the whole point of LighterLife is learning to deal with what life throws at you without resorting to food. This is done whilst losing weight quickly, easing back into eating normal food, and developing a personal arsenal of different life management tools. I think I often falsely say that it’s about learning to deal with food. But it’s not about food. It’s about dealing with life. Emotions, in particular, but LIFE, really, in general.
Following from that, what then are the right and wrong easier and more difficult ways of succeeding with LighterLife? I have given this some thought lately, once again frustrated over the fact that there are no ‘full stories’ available anywhere to learn from. Even this one, my story, isn’t currently a full one – it doesn’t even start from the beginning!! I occasionally wonder if it’s ok to ‘fill in’ afterwards? I suppose it is as long as I do it based on my little black book i.e. Thought Records and other diary type entries, and not just make it up or pad it with hindsight wisdom…
Anyway. The obvious thing is to immediately think that the easier way is to just stick to the program. And so the more difficult way – and not a little more uncertain in terms of success rate – is to flex it, it, or in the case of Route to Management, just make it up as you go. Well yes there is A LOT OF truth to that. BUT. I believe there’s more to it. I believe that the easier way is to primarily focus on why you’re eating, and the more difficult way is to purely focus on what you’re eating.
Don’t get me wrong on my use of words ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’. Going about this weight management and maintenance through dealing with the emotional and mental shit aka ‘issues’ that I have generated during the past 35 years of my life is extremely hard work. EXTREMELY!!!!!! In fact it is such hard work that if I thought all I needed to do to maintain my current normal weight is to focus on food, I’d be LAUGHING. But I don’t, so I’m not.
Of course I also focus on food. A LOT!!!! I plan what I eat, I look back on what I ate, and I find myself struggling with things like muesli and now cheese, and I find myself binging when I drink too much. Yet I still think it’s not about food.
It seems to me that most blogs about weight loss are born out of enthusiasm and excitement over the prospect of weight loss. And just before they become dead and static noice in the blogosphere (i.e. no longer updated), there is evidence in the entries about lapsing, slacking off, losing interest, etc. You know what I mean. And many of the reported failures seem to be about being too tired/angry/sad/happy to care, or being ‘unable to not give in’ to chocolate or cake or whatever. Reading between the lines, it’s about not being able or not wanting to deal with what’s going on in your head. Because when you do that, you make yourself vulnerable, and I suppose it is the humankind’s in-built function to avoid being vulnerable!
So I say the mind is the key. I can either learn how it works and be able to find other ways than food to deal with its reactions and demands, OR I can ignore it forever and be never able to work out why I still binge. I CHOOSE to work with it. And I would like to – one day – arrive at a place in my life where I don’t have to be so CONSCIOUS OF IT ALL OF THE TIME!!!!!!!
Filed under: Route to Management, RtM - Week11 | Tagged: Future thoughts, Life, Observations
