This pattern is fairly consistent forever. Look at the really long view:
So right now, my challenge is whether I want to strive for the pattern: bring my weight back to where I want it by restricted, planned eating, followed by relaxing the rules, then bringing the rules back before it goes too far. What I have been experimenting with instead is trying to eat mindfully and healthfully all the time, but without any rigid rules. Evidence so far indicates this is not a good strategy for keeping my weight in bounds. I'm still not willing to give up the attempt yet.
I continue to try on different strategies for how to act, versus falling into rules about good and bad food. I do still try to make choices about food based on broad general guidelines, summed up by Michael Pollan ("eat food, mostly plants, not too much"), but without demonizing any specific foods or whole categories of food. I try to eat mindfully, slowing down and thinking and feeling how the food feels to me. I try to prepare my food myself. On another note, I'm also upping my activity levels. I'm a long way from finding a set of actions or attitudes that stabilizes my weight at a place I'd like it to be.
I really struggled in this post to avoid any value-laden language, about eating or my weight. No words about where my weight "should" be, nor about what is eating "right". So hard. I refer to where I "want" my weight, acknowledging it's a number or target I've picked myself. It is derived from how I looked and how I felt when I was there, not from any external table or chart. Food choices I try to make based on how they make me feel, short and long term, informed by extensive reading on how our bodies handle different foodstuffs, but not by some categorizing everything as "healthy" or "bad".
4 comments:
Glad to see your thoughtful words about language. Agree it’s a road to nowhere to load discussion with non-essentials about good and bad choice, food, people, bodies.
I’m trying to eat more plants, and to rarely overeat, and to exercise without expecting a return on weight, though it helps. And those three things take a lot, also not ready to be more controlled right now.
Miss you, but tough time since Mem day, and now off for busy but fun time in Boston. Will call when i’m Back, maybe we should calendar a date even with no plan, just to make sure we still recogniZe each other.
Liz
I so hear you on the mindful eating....a) I deeply love the idea of it; resonates with me as being "right", b) I really really think it should work to bring me to a weight I want to be and keep me there. c) it never does.
don't know if I don't do it enough/right or I'm kidding myself on its powers to lose weight. I'm convinced of its powers to be healthy and useful in other ways, but it's not really enough for me as an active weight loss techniqiue. I keep thinking that if I ever one day in the misty future get down to my goal or even vaguely near my goal perhaps it will be the magic that keeps me there.
but for now, I think i have to do WW vigorously. which I'm not right now. sigh.
Nan, it's so good to hear your voice again. I have missed it. I know we all have our own self-images....is it wrong to say you look great? I know we also have our own inner goals and inner voices....what i think is interesting about OA is that the term is "allergic" to certain foods, such as wheat, flour and sugar. Not bad vs. good or wrong vs. right. It's about increased cravings, etc. etc. I can't really explain it here, but the idea is it is an allergy that makes us sick. However, you have to be an overeater like me, who has overeaten on sugar and felt the effects a mean drunk must feel. Turning monstrous. I have a friend who says, "I love my family too much to do that to them." I think of that often. I like your graph and your diligence. Sending hugs. I like Michael Pollan's line, too. Love, Alice
Hey, ladies, love love love your thoughtful comments. I do read them all, you know, though I don't reply.
xoxo,
Nan
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