Scared and need guidance!

I am within 7 pounds of my goal weight of 130 pounds. I started this journey at 185 pounds and I may have topped out above that weight but I didn't weigh myself until I had been exercising for a few months already.

I am horrified that I will not be able to maintain this weight. I have lost weight many times in my life before though I have not been at this weight since high school and I am a 54 year old grandmother now. I started this to get healthy so that I will be around for my grandchildren and to enjoy my retirement with my hubby. I am loving my life now and I don't want to lose it to obesity again.

I just realized that I might be swapping my food addiction for an addiction to "dieting". I don't want to be obsessed with my diet. I also realized just a few minutes ago that for the past eight months of this journey the weekly weigh-in has been a huge part of my reward for my hard work. Seeing the scale go down even a half a pound was a big rush for me. That reward is soon to be no more.

While I have just recently learned to love shopping for clothes. I have thrown out or given away all the clothes in my closet bigger than a size 8 which leaves me only a very few items of clothing. I have rewarded myself with shopping for clothes and slowly I am building a wardrobe again. In about a year I should have a whole new wardrobe and I won't need to shop for clothes. So that as a reward will be gone also.

I know in my heart that I can do this but it is a totally unknown scary dark forest to me. My mind is looking for ideas and tangible things to grasp onto. Any insights or ideas would be most welcome!

Thank you all in advance for sharing and listening. This really is scary for me!

Terry

Hi.  I feel you and the fear.  I haven't been this little (even smaller now) since lower highschool.  I have been there, same feelings, same clothes issue, and so on and it is difficult.

What I did for me, and it's only me, I got a belly peircing!  So, I look for new body jewelry to keep me interested, and at the weight I want to stay.  Again, that's just me and what I did for me.

The most important thing you can remind yourself is what you said in your second parapragh ...  "I started this to get healthy so that I will be around for my grandchildren and to enjoy my retirement with my hubby. I am loving my life now and I don't want to lose it to obesity again".

Keep loving your new you and enjoy the grandchildren, looking and feeling great!

If you're worried that you're obsessing about dieting, try to switch the focus.  Your health is your main objective so you may find it helps to start thinking about 'nutrition' and 'fitness' more than 'calories'.   Then you can look for other rewards besides the number on the scale.   Feeling healthier, clearer skin, more energy, lower body fat %... When you go to see your doc maybe get that cholesterol level and the BP checked out.  Have they improved? 

You can carry on monitoring your weight to make sure you're withing a reasonable range of your target.  It would be normal to maintain at a couple of lbs either side - lighter or heavier.  'Success' can become... still being the same weight in 6 months' time... 12 months time.   Did you know most successful dieters have regained it in 18 months?  That became my goal.  To prove that particular statistic wrong!

Going from losing to maintaining requires a different set of skills and a slightly different focus.  But you can do it and I'm sure you will.

I'm with GIJane.

 I also worry about becoming diet-obsessed. I always scoffed at dieters, thinking that it's unfair for society to expect women to look a certain way, that it's unhealthy, that they'll gain it back, that as long as you eat healthy food you won't gain weight anyway. Then I studied far from home, and put on about 1kg every month, despite all my lentils and brown rice: I just ate all the time. It's my first time dieting and I'm 3kg from my goal weight, but I worry that I'm becoming boring because every time I think of eating something I find myself calculating its weight or calories, and when I get invited out for supper I instantly start thinking about how to account for all those calories. I think my boyfriend was getting sick of me hardly eating what he cooked for me, too.

 I'm trying the following:

- going for healthy, rather than necessarily low-calorie foods: focusing on vitamins, unsaturated fats, not much sugar (and no fake sugar), protein and fibre

- not weighing myself every day. I was driving myself crazy! Cutting it down to about once a week to see if I'm still on track 

- slowly weaning myself off calorie counting, as long as my weight stays relatively constant

- giving myself a break on weekends: not to go crazy with food, but to focus on the friends and family rather than the breaking-my-diet part.

- getting more into exercise. It gives me more leeway with what I can eat, and it makes me feel healthier so that it's more of a healthy lifestyle and less of a diet. In the beginning I could only do 8 lengths, but now I'm doing more than 30! It helps to have something apart from weight to be proud of.

There are some useful things I've learned through dieting, like self-restraint, how big my food portions should be, healthy food choices, and discipline. Hopefully I can keep these without being a slave to the scale.

Thank you all! I am growing more confident in my ability to stay healthy. I have been looking back on my past "dieting" experiences and evaluating how and what caused me to gain the weight back. I feel that this time I have indeed changed my life style.  The truth is I think I changed my life style in some small way with each of my adventures in dieting. It has just taken 40 years of trying to finally get to a place where I had made enough changes to make it stick. Plus at this point in my life I don't feel like I have the luxury of abusing my body with out paying heavily for it. I have paid a price for the abuse I did in the past and I am working to pay that debt still. I can't afford to add anything more to the unhealthy side.

My husband eats what I eat and is quite happy with it. Since the kids are all grown and gone it makes it easier with just two in the household to consider. Since the rest of my siblings are all thin family events are not really an issue. My family eats healthy foods in small portions and they are supportive of what I have done. I allow for one meal a week to eat whatever my hubby and I would like so that we have room for things like pot roast or fried chicken with the skin on. This keeps us from feeling deprived so that we don't feel like we have to cheat.

My blood pressure is excellent now. It was high as was my cholesterol. They are both back in a normal range. My husband had dangerously high blood pressure which is another reason I started this. I wanted to get his blood pressure down enough to get him off the medication. It looks like we may have succeeded but the doctor wants him to stay on the medicine a while longer. He takes a reduced dose now though. Three more months until it is checked again. This helps keep my focus where it should be I think. I still have to be conscious about eating though and I don't think that will ever change.

I guess I am struggling with the deepened commitment that I am realizing as I reach maintenance. I am realizing that I can't turn back now and that I must continue down this road. It is an unending quest to maintain these physical bodies in a state of health! I think it is worth it when I consider the alternative of growing old with unhealthy eating habits and no fitness routine to support me. I don't want to be taking pills to lower my blood pressure and cholesterol, pills to fix this or that as things malfunction from abusive habits. My mother-in-law, bless her soul, lives on medication. She takes 15 different medications each day. She is wheel chair bound and on oxygen. Much of her plight could have been avoided if she had been willing to take better care of herself with healthy diet and exercise.

Well enough rambling from me...I do appreciate your encouragement and I will keep going and find my way down the trail here as the rest of you have done! It is easier knowing that I am not alone!

Terry

 

I think the last part is the real challenge.  What the 'kids' often don't appreciate is that it's ultimately not about being slim for cosmetic reasons.   It's about looking after yourself and not spending a big chunk of your life as a cripple to avoidable diseases.  No-one lives for ever & we can't dodge ill-health completely but - as you say - who wants to be taking pills for this and medication for that when, with a bit of care and attention, they might not be necessary?  

It's not easy.  It's a very 'grown-up' thing to admit that you're mortal!  And it takes a certain maturity and self-discipline to keep on top of things.   However, once you get into a good healthy lifestyle habit it becomes as tough to break as all those old bad habits once were.  So it does get easier.

People ask me 'don't you ever feel like blowing out?' because, to the untrained eye, my diet probably seems quite controlled.  But, like you, my idea of a 'treat' has been somewhat re-set and I keep my pleasures small.   Your fried chicken 'with skin on' made me smile for being so modestly decadent :-)   Mine's a fillet steak with a couple of glasses of red wine.... equally self-indulgent!    I think you've got exactly the right approach. Best of luck.

Terry, best of luck to you.

gi-jane, I quote:

"What the 'kids' often don't appreciate is that it's ultimately not about being slim for cosmetic reasons.   It's about looking after yourself and not spending a big chunk of your life as a cripple to avoidable diseases".

  First, if it keeps a person motivated to keep weight off and maintained, cosemtics or vanity is a good thing, combined with healthy eating and physical activity.  So if you look good, you feel good.  Than one can often avoid these crippling diseases. 

Then again, crippling diseases strike anyone at anytime.  MS for example - there is no method to that disease !  However, I do know that if a person looks good and feels good, the 'diseases' do not win - the person does. 

As for being mortal, enjoy the fillet steak, fried chicken with skin. Enjoy everything in life to a certain degree of moderation.  This includes a healthy eating habit and physical activity combined.  Look good - feel good - love- live.

"First, if it keeps a person motivated to keep weight off and maintained, cosemtics or vanity is a good thing"

Thanks for saying that playergirl. I've lost weight and lowered my blood pressure but I still want to lose a bit more. Healthy weight is a broad range and I want to be at the lower end. That is vanity. But okay, if it keeps me motivated to eat healthy all (almost all) the time, I need to embrace vanity. So here is to maintaining slim, and the low cholesterol will follow after.

 

Taking pride in ourselves is important too! Vanity to a degree is about taking pride in oneself. We need to love ourself for who we are and not just what we look like on the outside. However, I do think if we are living a healthy lifestyle that the outside will reflect that in a beautiful healthy body.

I am aware that all disease is not just a result of an unhealthy life style. I feel that life is TOO LONG to spend it being ill if we can avoid it with the things we do. Life is TOO SHORT to miss any of the wonderful joys to be had as well. Moderation and enjoying little things like a small piece of chocolate versus an entire box of chocolate make it possible to have the Long and the Short of the best life has to offer!

Maintaining seems to be all about remaining in this conscious state of being when it comes to food, exercise and body awareness.

Terry

 

Ah, Terry, see, you had it all figured out afterall !  Glad to see you not scared anymore, but very much aware.  Without mincing the words or fine tuning, we're basically on the same page!  Congrats Terry !