Thursday, April 9, 2009

Day 58 - Deciding Day by Day

I have to admit that sticking to the Cambridge Diet is not always easy. Sometimes it is easy. I don't have to think about what I'm going to eat, ever. I just mix up a shake, chug it down, and it's over.

But sometimes, it's really hard, especially when The Wife or The Kid are eating something especially nice.

Last night, The Wife asked me if I wanted to join her and The Kid for dinner. She was serving Hamburger Helper and vegetables. They've been eating quite a lot of the stuff since I've been dieting, so I wasn't really tempted. Honestly, I don't like it all that much.

But last night, I was tempted. So allowed myself to consider the possibility of joining them. I imagined how the dinner would taste, how it would feel in my mouth, and the consequences of what I'd see on the scale in the morning.

Suddenly, it didn't seem all that worthwhile. I decided to have a shake instead.

What I've realized is that I decide what goes into my mouth, day by day. Sometimes, when things are hard, I have to make the decision hour by hour, or even minute by minute.

But really, I am the one that's in control here. I can decide to have a shake, or go out and have pizza if that's what I really want.

So I get to decide, at various points along the way, if I want to stick to the shakes or break the diet.

And that's okay, because I won't have to have these shakes forever, and I don't necessarily have to stick to it every single day in order to lose weight. The more days I stick, and the longer I do it, the more weight I'll lose, so there's certainly an incentive to keep going.

But deciding to give myself a break, as long as I'm on track more than I'm off, is okay. I'll get to the end eventually.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't have a blog so that's why I am anonymous. Nothing sinister.

Here's something I learned (and it was true) about losing weight.

Every time you drink a shake you are teaching your metabolism "Look, this is all you are getting today." And your metabolism says, "Well, I'm not happy about it so I'll dip into your fat cells and use some of those for energy."

Then, when you eat what you want to eat, your metabolism says, "Damn, man! You mean I don't have to work today and eat fat cells? Hot Dog! (pun intended)"

You have to either decide to be on Cambridge the rest of your life or learn how to eat what you KNOW you should be eating.

Otherwise, you are just shocking your metabolism on a regular basis and it just freaks out.

It's not really the food that shows the pounds on the scale the next day ... because you know in your heart that if you eat a slice of pizza for dinner that it's impossible to show on the scale the next day.

The increase or decrease of poundage on the scale is only the result of what you ate 3-4 days earlier.

It is scientifically impossible to eat a piece of pizza for breakfast and show it as a true weight gain at lunch.

The only way this is true is that the pizza clearly has salt in it ... salt that you have removed from your diet. Salt has an immediate affect on the body's system, causing it to retain fluids.

If you ask any nutritionist, (as I did) you will discover that weight gain is not an immediate result of the [name food here] you ate for lunch.

I have been meaning to tell you this for a while.

Bottom line ... I don't care if you use the Cambridge diet for 365 days with no cheating. The very second you go off it you are retraining your metabolism to stop working so hard to chew up those fat cells. And now you have to teach your metabolism to slow down. And you end up with hunger pains because you're giving it more food (instead of the drink) and it had been used to not having anything substantial for 365 days.

It's a prescription for disaster. You will eventually gain it all back and then hate yourself even more.

And you're not being fair to yourself because you think you are trying to do the right thing with the Cambridge diet.

But you're freaking human. You gotta eat real food. You just have to work on your brain and tell yourself you can control food urges.

I've been reading your blog a long time. I think you are too hard on yourself.