The wagon

Punkygirl

Member
Ok, so I fell off the wagon about a fortnight ago, then the wagon drove off and I can't quite catch it again!
Anyone have any tips for when this happens?
 
Hi Punkygirl,

This has happened to me before, you just need to stay focused :) Everyone has their own reasons for starting a diet and you just need to remember yours :) I can see already you are doing well according to your profile [15 lbs is a stone isnt it?, that's bloody good!], and you just need to reaffirm that what you are doing is truly good for you. Are the people around you supporting you, maybe you should try to be more open about losing weight with the people that you live with so they can also support you :)

Hope that helps
 
My advice would be to stop dwelling on it, and start doing what you need to do to feel good. What I mean is, stop thinking about past mistakes, and instead, just get on with doing the right thing now. You can't change or control things in the past, but you can change what you choose to do in the future. As soon as you start making choices you are happy with now, things will fall into place and I bet you'll feel much better and more positive, and thus more likely to be successful with your health goals! In my experience, there's not really a helpful way to "think yourself out" of these situations, so it's just best to get on with making healthy choices, and the mind will start to feel much better as a result!

Also, personally, I find it helps to not take a binary view of things like "on plan" and "off plan", or "doing well" or "off the wagon". If you compartmentalise things like that, it can be really easy, if you make one or two less healthy choices, to think "I've failed", and then get disheartened and cease to put in the effort in working towards your long-term goals. It's way better to think, "I didn't make a healthy choices on a few days, but a few days don't determine how I'm going to be in the future" - and see it as shades of grey. Choosing to eat well is something you do for a lifetime, and so there's really not much point trying to see all foods as "good" or "bad", unless you seriously plan on depriving yourself of things you might want to eat for good. I've lost 5 stone over a couple years doing plenty of things that people would consider "off the wagon" - but I don't see it that way, and I don't beat myself up when I decide to eat something that's really unhealthy if I really fancy it, which is why I think I feel quite happy when I'm losing weight, and why I've been able to stick with it, because it doesn't feel like punishment.

Best of luck, hope you feel better and more motivated soon!
 
A few things have helped me:

1. You know you want to lose weight. Yet irrationally, you binge for whatever reason (for me, it was emotional, and the belief that I would never lose weight, so I thought, sod it, I will eat all 5 donuts). it occured to me, I am not my emotions, why are my emotions leading me? Surely, I should have control over how I feel. Once I recognised I had control over my emotions I know longer felt the need to binge. This exercise helped me; I began to think about the negative feeling/emotion I had: I feel angry, why do I feel angry then I examined why (for me, I noticed I set myself standards which are way too high i.e., I will never ever cheat on a diet ever again) yet when I did cheat, I found I was setting myself up for a big fall. It was my own fault I felt this way and my own fault for being lead by my emotions. Once I recognised that I set my standards too high I lowered them to have 1-2 official sensible free meals a week. I am doing this and my desire to cheat has gone, and I am losing weight.

2. " I've had a bad day, I deserve one final treat before I start my diet tomorrow". This mindset didn't help me lose weight, because everyday became "I'll start tomorrow".

3. Because you ate off plan does not make you a weak and worthless person. This is something I would feel all the time. "Oh my God, I cannot believe that I binged, why do I have such little control, I am such an idiot, I will never be slim". I recognised this pattern and thought that just because I ate off plan, does not mean I am an idiot, it does not mean I will never be slim and it does not mean I lack control.

These were a few things that helped me :)

Good luck with it, I know how horrible it is, that post-binge downer.

Kieran

x
 
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