Obsess Much?

For those of you that didn't know 2 weeks ago Bill and I went to a "Life on Wheels" Conference in Lewiston, Idaho. I will have to share more about that in the future. :-) Onto the real topic:


So over the course of the past few weeks I have come to a realization (yes sometimes I can be slow…) I have become obsessed with losing weight. I am not at a point where every thought of every day is consumed with thoughts of eating right and exercising but I would say the majority of my day revolves around it. As many of you know I have been reading the Beck’s Diet Solution. The book is really good at a few things, showing you how you sabotage yourself with your thinking and how to work around it. The thing the book does that I dislike is they want you to plan every single thing that goes into your mouth. It also wants you to pre-plan every moment of your exercise. While I don’t suppose it is the intention of the author, for people like me with an OCD tendency to begin with, it can really make you obsess about the whole thing.


For an update: As of this morning I am down a few more pounds 21 pounds from my February start date but 31 total from my original start. I am actually pretty impressed that I am still going strong (even if a little too strong at times.)

My plan is to change my diet in a way that I can maintain it the rest of my life. The things I am truly beginning to discover are the following:

I don’t like fast food in general. If given a choice and money not being an option I will generally choose a healthier meal. With time and money being an issue we all have to live with it is unreasonable for me to expect that I will never have to eat on the run. This weekend I went to the movies. I ate a good health breakfast before we headed out so it was not difficult to bypass the popcorn, nachos, etc. The movie was nearly 3 hours long (The Dark Knight a.k.a. Batman) and once we were done we had to head over to the store to buy all the things we needed to make our lunches for the week. I was starving and knew it would be a mistake to go to the store that way and also knew that being 30 minutes from home that a snack wasn’t going to satisfy so we stopped at Burger King. This is very acceptable to me because I know that there will be times you just have to do it.

When I went on my trip I obsessed for weeks before planning for exercising and planning to try and make my own meals at times. Much of the obsession was completely useless and in the end just stressed me out. Now I am not saying people shouldn’t prepare but I think I took it a few steps beyond preparing and well into obsession.

Friday of last week things came to a head. I went to Costco with Bill and I went hungry. I knew it was a problem but there was nothing I could do about it. I had eaten all my back up snacks and part of the reason for the trip was to get more of those back-up snacks. Now sometimes I wonder why they set up stores the way they do… Why would you have to walk through the bakery to get to the fruits and veggies. Well now I really know. I stood there surrounded by fresh baked bread smells. With Croissants to my left, muffins to my right and bagels behind me. You ever feel like carbs are cornering you? Well there I was and I had already been PMSing that day. Bill keeps doing the usual “You don’t really want that…” I was on the verge of telling him where to go when it dawned on me that I was going to make myself crazy. I stopped and took inventory on myself and moved away from the carbs. After I left the store I realized I really did want the croissants but the rest of it I didn’t. I wish they sold the croissants in smaller packages because I can not justify buying a dozen of them. In the end I did win out by bypassing them all but I realized that I was really and truly becoming obsessed and so is Bill. We have both spent so much time convincing ourselves that we don’t want things we really do want because they are “bad” for us.

If this is going to be a lifestyle change for me I am going to have to be able to live with this, day in and day out. I am going to have to be able to have a croissant when I want one. Even if it is fairly empty calories and more fat then I really need. I am going to have to be able to take a week off from my exercise if I am feeling yucky without beating myself up for days. Last week I just felt awful most of the week. My joints were all sore and my muscles were achy. I wanted a break and I think I needed one. You can only push yourself so hard and do so much before it is time to relax. This week I am devoting to relaxing. Sometimes you just have to relax.