Week 5 Weigh In, My 1st Cheat and Forgiving Myself
Yesterday (10/25/2010) was my week 5 weigh in and I was down another 3.4 lbs! I am just loving this diet. This is the longest that I have ever stayed on a diet before and I am seeing great results. I love being able to fit into old clothes and start to see some things getting too baggy.
The biggest change I have noticed this week has been mental and emotional changes. I have noticed that my attitude about food really is starting to change. Before going on Medifast, I tied my eating to my emotions a lot. I would eat when I was bored. Eat when I was sad. Eat when I wanted to reward myself. Eat because I thought I did something to deserve a "treat". Since being on Medifast, I am detaching my food intake from my emotions much more. However I am now finding that I really need to stay away from my triggers, even if they are on plan. I have never given triggers much thought before, but peanut butter is definitely a trigger for me. A small amount of peanut butter is okay for a snack and I really like it, but I notice that if I make something with peanut butter in it, my craving is very high. Even if I have a peanut butter crunch bar for a meal at work, I crave it all day.
Back in July & August, before changing jobs and in turn changing health insurance companies, I start working with a therapist that specialized in eating disorders. I suspected that I had a compulsive or binge eating disorder and was finally ready to get help for it. I had never been to a therapist before and it was very hard for me to start the process and I didn't want some kind of therapy that would take years to peel away all the layers of the onion. I wanted help about why I overate and how I could stop having obsessive thoughts about food and such a strong desire to eat everything in the house. I found out that I am very much "all or nothing". That is with food, relationships, projects at work, etc. I am either fully committed or complete disengaged. This led to a lot of binge eating episodes because I would have to eat all the cookies in the package, but if there were never any, it wouldn't even cross my mind.
The other big epiphany I had, is the fact that I couldn't accept that I am doing good at controlling my eating. As an example, I was tracking my calories on Sparkpeople.com and at the end of the day I would be fully within my ranges and be really proud of myself. Then I would get a strong compulsion to binge & mess up the whole day. It turns out that I have felt like a failure for so long about my food & weight issues, that "doing good" went against the core of who I thought I was and I would binge to reinforce my negative perception of myself. So I had to work to change the perceptions of myself (in process) and accept that life isn't all or nothing - there is a middle.
Last night I had my first official cheat on Medifast. I mixed a packet of Hot Cocoa with 3 TB of water and 1 TB of peanut butter and left it in the fridge to make fudge for today. I got so obsessed about it last night and wanted to eat it that I ended up caving in and ate it even though I already had my 5th Medifast meal. I really hope that it doesn't put me out of Ketosis, but I feel pretty good today so I think I should be fine. I decided to forgive myself and not make peanut butter fudge again! It just further drives home the emotional aspect that lead to me being overweight. I haven't had the obsessive thoughts about food for several weeks, so that struck me off guard too.
I wish I could be blogging about how strong I was and resisted temptation, but instead I am blogging about how I had a weak moment, forgave myself and jumped right into my normal Medifast routine today like nothing happened. I am not going to let 1 mistake drive me off a course that I have been so successful on for the past 5 weeks. Things are not black and white and it is okay if I mess up. What matters is what I do next and I always need to keep my eye on my goal, instead of beating myself up for a mistake. I forgive myself and today is a new day!
The biggest change I have noticed this week has been mental and emotional changes. I have noticed that my attitude about food really is starting to change. Before going on Medifast, I tied my eating to my emotions a lot. I would eat when I was bored. Eat when I was sad. Eat when I wanted to reward myself. Eat because I thought I did something to deserve a "treat". Since being on Medifast, I am detaching my food intake from my emotions much more. However I am now finding that I really need to stay away from my triggers, even if they are on plan. I have never given triggers much thought before, but peanut butter is definitely a trigger for me. A small amount of peanut butter is okay for a snack and I really like it, but I notice that if I make something with peanut butter in it, my craving is very high. Even if I have a peanut butter crunch bar for a meal at work, I crave it all day.
Back in July & August, before changing jobs and in turn changing health insurance companies, I start working with a therapist that specialized in eating disorders. I suspected that I had a compulsive or binge eating disorder and was finally ready to get help for it. I had never been to a therapist before and it was very hard for me to start the process and I didn't want some kind of therapy that would take years to peel away all the layers of the onion. I wanted help about why I overate and how I could stop having obsessive thoughts about food and such a strong desire to eat everything in the house. I found out that I am very much "all or nothing". That is with food, relationships, projects at work, etc. I am either fully committed or complete disengaged. This led to a lot of binge eating episodes because I would have to eat all the cookies in the package, but if there were never any, it wouldn't even cross my mind.
The other big epiphany I had, is the fact that I couldn't accept that I am doing good at controlling my eating. As an example, I was tracking my calories on Sparkpeople.com and at the end of the day I would be fully within my ranges and be really proud of myself. Then I would get a strong compulsion to binge & mess up the whole day. It turns out that I have felt like a failure for so long about my food & weight issues, that "doing good" went against the core of who I thought I was and I would binge to reinforce my negative perception of myself. So I had to work to change the perceptions of myself (in process) and accept that life isn't all or nothing - there is a middle.
Last night I had my first official cheat on Medifast. I mixed a packet of Hot Cocoa with 3 TB of water and 1 TB of peanut butter and left it in the fridge to make fudge for today. I got so obsessed about it last night and wanted to eat it that I ended up caving in and ate it even though I already had my 5th Medifast meal. I really hope that it doesn't put me out of Ketosis, but I feel pretty good today so I think I should be fine. I decided to forgive myself and not make peanut butter fudge again! It just further drives home the emotional aspect that lead to me being overweight. I haven't had the obsessive thoughts about food for several weeks, so that struck me off guard too.
I wish I could be blogging about how strong I was and resisted temptation, but instead I am blogging about how I had a weak moment, forgave myself and jumped right into my normal Medifast routine today like nothing happened. I am not going to let 1 mistake drive me off a course that I have been so successful on for the past 5 weeks. Things are not black and white and it is okay if I mess up. What matters is what I do next and I always need to keep my eye on my goal, instead of beating myself up for a mistake. I forgive myself and today is a new day!
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(Balam) :)
shaeshae...