Fill in the blanks, right? I mean, WOW, we sure do expect a lot out of ourselves!
And then we punish ourselves for not measuring up to impossible standards.
We think we have to be 100% PERFECT, 100% of the time. We have to be the world's best....
Worker
Daughter
Friend
Lover
Spouse
....whatever! And when we don't measure up to some impossible standard we set ourselves up for, we feel bad. And we need to feel better.
So we eat to feel better. But then....OH NO I did it again...! I screwed up! I overate and now the calculator in my head is telling me that I either
a). Fell out of ketosis, or
b). Ate too many calories or
c). (HORRORS)....BOTH!
OMG! So NOW what do I do?
...and then comes the famous phrase...."Screw it, I'll eat whatever I want and restart tomorrow".
How many times have you played this game?
And if you're in the middle of a binge -- which of course you are at that point.....what comes NEXT?
Well, next comes...the punishment phase! Now you're not eating to 'feel better' and to get out of your own head because you didn't like the feeling you were having (frustration, anxiety, stress, worry, sadness, anger, guilt, shame....the list goes on and on!)....
now you're eating to PUNISH YOURSELF.
It is at this point that I usually STOP tasting the food. Or at least, it doesn't taste as good as it did when I first started to have that 'first bite' or 'first off plan food' or 'extra MF meal'.
Now I'm into punishing myself for SCREWING UP AGAIN.
I'm so STUPID! How could I DO this to myself? Over and over and over again it goes....
the cycle repeats....and now I'm stuffing myself literally to the point of PAIN because I HATE myself because I 'did it again'.
But here's the thing.
What IF......
we WEREN'T stupid?
What IF....
that cycle in our eating was born out of a desire to HEAL ourselves, to take CARE of ourselves, the only way we knew how?
If you've been overeating for a long long time....if you're a food addict....then your 'healing' habits are firmly entrenched and involved with ... you guessed it..... FOOD.
You've been 'using' food to 'self-medicate' for so long, that it's hard for you to do anything ELSE!
"Changing the script" from "I need to eat something" to "I need to take care of this ANOTHER WAY" is the hard part. But it CAN.BE.DONE.
Little by little. Over time. It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen in a week or a month or even in the time it takes to get to goal. You may hit goal and STILL have some of these leftover bad habits. I sure did!
But here's the thing. You've had SOME successes....you've learned how to conquer some of your demons...and you can USE those successes as 'practice'. As a lynchpin, a learning experience, to TEACH yourself that you can conquer ALL -- yes ALL! -- of the times when you want to cave and just eat....ONE OCCASION AT A TIME.
That means that you're going to have NEW occasions that you weren't prepared for.
OOPS! Didn't expect THAT in my life....so now what do I do?
Now you rely on what WORKED for you in the past....and you try different things that worked. You don't automatically reach for the donut anymore.
And....here's another key....if you DO fail, if you DO cave, you sit down and THINK about it, you analyze what was different, what went wrong, and what you could do NEXT time, and you DON'T punish yourself. You don't fret over that week's weight....you just get back on that horse and start again and resolve to do things differently next time.
And over time, and I mean lots of time, after all these bad habits of yours are pretty deeply entrenched, aren't they?....you DO learn healthy habits INSTEAD. And it DOES become automatic.
I look at my own Coach, who's been successfully maintaining for over SIX years. That's a long time...and she's learned her lessons so well that 99.99% of the time she doesn't even THINK about eating sludge anymore. Right now she's going through some pretty heavy-duty changes in her life....not all good....some real trials....and yet she isn't going crazy in the food dept. Why? Because she's RELEARNED how to eat. And how NOT to eat. She's LEARNED how to handle her stress without eating. She does a zillion OTHER things instead...she rants and raves (LOL! Hey! Why NOT?), she does deep breathing, she meditates, she goes antiqueing or plays computer games or reads or helps others or....whatever. But she has SKILLS she's learned that have REPLACED her eating.
Isn't that INSPIRING?
That's what I'm trying to do. And I'm succeeding, for the most part, which teaches me more and more that IT IS POSSIBLE to maintain 'forever'. No, it's not easy. But it IS possible.
And every time I get through a situation and think "WOW! I didn't even THINK about eating!" I'm amazed and grateful and I KNOW I'm winning this 'war'.
So....every time I LOSE? (because I DO lose sometimes, you all know that if you read my blogs LOL)....I try very very hard NOT to beat myself up, NOT to punish myself, instead I think about exactly what led up to it and what I could do differently next time. That's all.
LIFE is a series of learning experiences.
And I firmly believe that how we TREAT OURSELVES as we learn, is all important.
If you love yourself, truly love yourself to your CORE and understand that you're human, you're a 'work in progress' and you will NEVER be perfect and that...guess what? That's OK because no one else is, either!.....then you will FORGIVE yourself enough to pick yourself up off the floor and try ONE.MORE.TIME.
And that one last time could be the one that 'takes'. You never know!
So STOP punishing yourself. For what you did last night or what you did last year.
For whatever you 'could' have been or 'should' have been or said or didn't say or did or didn't do. You did the best you could with what you knew at that point in time.
So ....you know differently now. USE that information and move forward.
But please, please stop punishing yourself.Keep on keepin' on!
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