Thin Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Binge’

The holidays are here again and you fell off the diet wagon again. Now you are looking for a way to get back on that diet wagon and really get serious about losing some weight. The first thing that you have to do is to stop beating yourself up over having a binge fest over the holidays. You cannot change one thing that you did or ate in the last few days. You can’t change the past, you can only move on and try to be better in the future. The 100 pound question is “what exactly is better?” If “better” for you is to lose weight that is great, but how long have you been doing this “better” thing?

If you have had trouble trying to diet and lose those pounds then let’s stop for a moment from beating ourselves up over trying to be “better.” We are what we are and if we desire to lose weight we have to stop thinking we live on a ranch somewhere secluded away from work, life and food. We need to look at what is in our life and learn to deal with what we have. If you have a hectic work schedule then you need to stop trying to lose weight around your work schedule. If you know you have to work late, then get up earlier to exercise which may mean you have to go to bed earlier. If you can’t find a healthy place to eat lunch, than start planning on bringing a healthy lunch. If you are using your schedule as an excuse from losing weight then you are really just making excuses.

If you do not have the ability to go to a gym during the day then buy a piece of equipment and stick it in your home. If you do not have the money to buy equipment then just get a pair of sneakers and go for a walk. If you are having a hard time losing weight then the answer may not be just another failed diet, maybe the answer is just a lack of motivation and mediocrity. If you really want to lose weight, and have no medical condition, the only one stopping you from losing weight is yourself.

Whew!!! Those were some pretty extreme words that were just spoken and it is hoped that your feelings were not hurt, but the truth remains that if you want to lose weight then you and only you can make it happen. You are not on some game show and you really are only in competition with yourself. You need to take a moment and reflect on what it is you really want out of the goal of weight loss. You need to stop accepting failure and stop expecting more than can be delivered.

As you move forward from this moment in time it is expected for you to stop beating yourself up and start to accept the need for self love. You need to stop being so filled with a lack of self tolerance and start to think about what will work for your own individual weight loss. You do not need to be in a rush and just because you want to lose weight does not make it an all or nothing. Set a goal for 1.5 pounds of weight loss a week. That is a doable goal and one that can be easily achieved and tracked with the use of FitDay, which is a wonderful weight loss program for your computer. Setting an achievable and measureable goal is better than just saying you will lose some weight.

As this holiday season starts and ends accept yourself for what you are and if you desire better, then you possess the power to make yourself better. Do not get side tracked by poor goals or with perceived competition with your girlfriends. Use your friends as tools that when used properly can help the situation. With the goal of a pound or two a week, and tracking that goal, you will be able to build that needed motivation for a successful weight loss journey.

Weight loss is not a destination; it is a journey that will take the rest of your adult life. By embracing your failures you can improve your future. By pushing aside defeat you can create and maintain motivation. By accepting your shortcomings and holiday binges then you are on the right road for reality in weight loss. In that reality you will have up days and down days but as long as you have another day you are still in the game. Hang in there, realize you are human. Accept the fact the only competition is yourself and unless you can embrace that competition you may never reach your goals.


You can achieve weight loss if only you were to accept the fact that you are human and that a diet is not an all or nothing event. When you reach that day of your ideal weight you will realize that it had to be a life style change to make it happen. Once you achieve that weight loss you will realize that to prevent weight gain you need to continue your “diet”. At that point your “diet” had better be a lifestyle because most people cannot live on a diet for the rest of their forever. Most people who lose the weight and keep it off are those who made fundamental changes in their behavior and now to keep that weight off they need to keep going to maintain that weight. To maintain that lower weight you better be living in such a way that you will be happy. If you are not happy with how you LOST the weight you will slip and that slip will cause you to gain all the weight back again.

Skip the diet, stop beating yourself up, make reasonable goals for your weight loss, stop being in competition with your neighbor, friend and especially yourself. If you want to lose weight make the change, love yourself for yourself and stop looking at the calendar. Weight loss will happen when you make it happen and you will not make it happen until you are really ready to make it happen.

The other day I felt as if I could not stop eating.  It was the cookies, the candy, the pizza and anything else I could get my hands on.  I was binge eating and I knew I was, and yet I could not stop myself from the simple act of eating.  I was eating non-stop and was powerless to stop myself.  Knowing that I really want to lose weight it made me wonder what my problem is really all about.  I have watched Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser counsel enough players to know that THEY all had issues that they needed to deal with in order to lose weight.  In my wildest dreams and over the course of seven seasons, I never really thought I had a problem.  It was not until I tried a new weight loss product called Sensa, which is suppose to help control how much a person eats.

I like Sensa and I know that it is working for me because I now pay more attention to the fact that I am eating when I am no longer hungry.  I am not here to extol the virtues of Sensa, I am here to lay out the fact that I now realize that I have difficulty stopping to eat when I am full.  I know now that being full is no excuse for me to stop shoveling food into my mouth and for the first time it has made me realize that I am an emotional eater.  I know that I have little self-control when it comes to putting down the fork during a meal.  I now, for the first time in my life realize that the reason I suffer from being overweight is because I have the same type of issues that Jillian Michael’s speaks about.

Now that I can make the statement that I have emotional eating issues I know that something needs to be done.  I now know it is not because I eat the wrong foods, it is not because I like pizza.  I now realize that I just like to eat.  I have used food as a form of entertainment, as a way to pass the time while sitting in front ot the television.  I know now that I need to break the chains of this addiction.

You may say that I have become aware that I am a food addict.  Me being a Internet type of person I typed in “food Addict” on Google and was given the following link: http://www.foodaddictsanonymous.org/faq.htm#plan

That link provides a path to a free organization that has a fair amount of stuff to read.  What really caught my eye was the phone conferences that are free and all you do is call and you are in a meeting with others?  No cost, no fees, just help.  I am new to this site, but I will be checking it out.  Maybe I will see you out there one day soon.

Not too long ago the doctor told me that if I did not lose the weight I could develop a multitude of health problems.  He went down the list of problems from diabetes to heart disease.  At that point in my life I needed to drop over 100 pounds and it seemed as if it would be impossible.  I went home and decided that I was going to make a change in my life and that I was going to diet and lose the weight so I could grow older and have a healthy lifestyle.  At that time I really did not know where to turn or what I should do to make it happen.  I am sorry to say that I wasted money on diet pills and an assortment of weight loss equipment.  After a fairly short period of time I realized that no matter what I bought the weight loss was ultimately something I had to do.  At that time of my life I did not know that a diet binge day was vital to weight loss success.

This may sound silly but at the outset of my desire to lose weight I thought that I would lose the weight by buying something.  I thought that a few diet pills later I would be back to my slim and youthful thin person.  Looking back on it now I really did not know what the heck I was getting myself involved with.  At the moment of decision I did not realize that for me to lose the weight it was not a matter of going on a diet.  I realized that a mere diet was not the needed answer for me.  I knew that if I were to be happy I not only had to lose the weight, I had to keep the weight off for the rest of my life.  It was like a light came on when I realized that for me to obtain true weight loss for life I had to develop a new lifestyle.  That lifestyle had to include daily exercise and proper portion control and a sensible food selection.  I finally realized the true path to weight loss.  I had come to the realization that the best way to lose weight is to not go on a diet.  The best way to lose weight is for life and to do that I had to skip the diet.  I had to develop healthy habits and those healthy habits would result in weight loss for life.

An interesting footnote to this is that I have about another 60 pounds to lose in addition to the 40 I have lost.  What I have learned is that I am not in a rush.  I am not in competition with anyone.  Today I went to the movie theatre and had a large popcorn and I smuggled in some sugar free chocolate.  I had three hamburgers for diner and now that the day is over I know that the choices I made today were alright.  I have learned that for me to lose weight for life I need to allow myself a day like today every now and then.  I know that tomorrow I will be right back to the 60 minutes of cardio work.  I know that tomorrow I will be drinking ample water again.  In my weight loss over the past few months I know that I need to feed my desires every now and then.  Even though I will put some weight on I know that my emotions will be better for the duration of the rest of my life. I know that in the long run I will make better food and exercise choices than I did today.  In the long term weight loss plan I know that as long as I make more good choices I will lose weight and be healthy.

I am in this weight loss attempt for life.  Having a binge day every few months or so is actually a good thing to do for the total journey.  If a person does not take a break every now and then the road to weight loss will not end up at the final destination of being thin.