Making Plans

Apparently, I remain suggestable. Despite myself. When I would love to just do my own thing, especially where my weight maintenance, and hopefully loss is concerened, I am in situations where everyone wants to help me. And help me they do, despite my announced intention to the contrary.

On Tuesday, I went to my regular weight maintenance class at HMR where the unit, since the new year began, is on getting back to basics.

It has been the perfect unit for me since, in December, I let go of food sheets for the first time in several years, and not so coincidentally, gained four pounds. That on top of the weight that I had been slowly gaining over the prior six months. An eight pound increase.

I did a lot of things right in December, though, including continuing to go to exercise class, going to my weight maintenance class (where - ahem - I had a perfect attendance record all through November and December), and weighing myself every single day. Despite the fact that I did not like what I was seeing on the scale. Also, I not only did not hide the fact that I was failing to keep records, but I made sure that both Lucy and Richard were aware. Both encouraged me to pick them back up again, but wisely did not press the point.

I truly believe that being honest with myself, and with others, was what made it easy for me to start over right after Chritmas.

But keeping food sheets has proven to be only half the issue. I actually needed to address the problem eating areas that was driving my weight up. It started with purging my home of all the junk and processed foods that I had collected. That has proven not to be enough, though. While I've stopped the weight gain dead in it's tracks, I've only dropped a couple of pounds and, with my impending knee and foot surgeries coming up (my friend Wendy refers to me as "At Wounded Knee." Thanks, Wendy - lol!), I need to get more agressive. After all, the exercise is going to grind to a halt during recovery.

So what to do? I'm not good at limiting myself at foods, nor am I good at making food plans. "Decisionless days." Lucy calls them. As soon as I lock myself into a set menu, I revolt (against who or what, I don't know) and deviate. So I've been very resistant to the idea.

The thing is, though, that pretty-much everyone who advocates weight loss says that a plan is essential. Richard reiterates it over and over again. Lucy promises us that weight loss is not very likely without one. And in the face of this pressure, how do I deal with it?

Well, Lucy has seemingly come up with an idea for her class that may do the trick. Last Tuesday, she suggested that we not plan every bite that we are going to eat that day, but instead figure out what we were going to do for exercise, how we were going to get our minimum five fruits and vegetables per day into our diet, and - for those who participate, not me - how and when we were going to take our meal replacements. She had us pull out our HMR Food Journals and commit these plans to paper. The idea being that 1.) we are way more likely to maintain a healthy lifestyle if we commit to it in writing and 2.) we are way more likely to displace bad habits by crowding them out by good than by just saying no.

I did not want to write anything down, but I humored her and did so.




Surprisingly, I did not have much trouble keeping the plan. I was resistent to the idea, though, and did not do them yesterday. But then woke up this morning and thought "Why not? I'll give it a try."

The results were startling. Except for not making a salad to go with my dinner because I was not hungry enough for it, and not using tomato sauce on my baked spaghetti squash because when I pulled it out of the refrigerator, it looked like a science experiment, I kept to the quasi-plan perfectly. I ate other foods in addition to my written record, but pulled my day in at a net calorie level (food intake minus exercise calories burned) of 1150 calories. Wow!

So when I got home this evening after Richard's class, I decided to try it again tomorrow. Wrote down my exercise plan, which by the way, included the 25 abdominal crunches and the four push ups that Richard, this evening, implored us to do on a daily basis. Came up with a plan to get more than my minimumly prescribed roughage, and included a Benefit Bar treat in the mix. And I also sketched in an outline of an exercise plan for Saturday.



Now, I don't pretend that my troubles are over, that this new form of less-commital weight loss plans is going to be the panacea for all that ails me. But I'm willing to give it a try.

I'll let you know how it goes.