Optimistic Mondays – Weigh-in Day

While I was attending weekly meetings at Weight Watchers, I heard a lot of motivating messages. One of my favorite ones was:

Being overweight is HARD.

Losing weight is HARD.

Maintaining your weight (after losing it) is HARD.

Choose your HARD!

At the time, I was in the process of loosing the weight. I could fully agree with the fact that being overweight was hard. I struggled with it daily.

Loosing weight was not as hard, for me. Once I made up my mind, and found a program that worked for me, I just stuck to it. I didn’t cheat. I wasn’t tempted. I could sit in a room full of chocolate chip cookies and ice cream, and not eat anything. It wasn’t because I was restricted from cookies. It was because I was motivated. I was strong. I was accomplishing my goal.

Now that I’ve reached my goal weight, I’ve moved onto the ‘maintaining’ phase. For me, THIS IS HARD! It’s like I’ve lost all my motivation. I can no longer be in that room filled with sweets, without pigging out like a starving child. My mind, or maybe my taste buds, is telling me, “Its okay to eat 10 cookies. You’ve lost your extra weight. You don’t need to deprive yourself anymore.”

I am struggling to find the balance. Yes, it’s okay to enjoy a cookie, or two. But that’s where my problem lays. I have to find out how to tell myself to stop after that second cookie. And I’m working on it.

That brings us back to Weigh-in Day.

I usually weight-in on my home scale on Monday mornings. That’s part of the “Fresh Start” approach to my week. It kick starts me. It makes me feel one of two things. The first is the feeling of success. That happens when my weight is within the range I want it to be. That means I’ve successfully maintained for another week. This is rarely the situation. Usually, it’s the second: Crap! I’m up again.

When this happens, as it did this morning, I can react in two different ways. The first one is to get discouraged and eat anything I want, to make me feel better. That never works!

The second reaction is to determine that I will do better. I will put a stop to the climbing numbers on the scale. By far, this is the better answer. It’s the one I try to take, week after week.

As the holiday season approaches, I have a challenge for any of you who are looking to loose weight. Don’t wait until the New Year. Don’t put it off, thinking you’ll fix it later. At the very least, determine to yourself that you won’t gain any weight. Commit yourself to at least maintaining where you are. Prove to yourself that you are in control. If you try this, like I’m going to try, you just might surprise yourself.

And if you have a bad day, or a bad week, just think: Tomorrow’s a new day. Start again.

Happy Monday.