The MakeMeThinner Support Forum

[ChynnaDoll]

Nickie with YOU as her mom, how could she NOT grow-up to have "good" self-esteem and self-worth:+) You are such a nurturing, caring, and attentive mother, and i see you continually striving to be the "BEST" you can be, and she will definitely appreciate and love you for it. Don't worry, "everything" will be alright, and i also want to say that food is my "big friend" too especially Ritz crackers and believe me you're not alone there either, but we are both trying to deal with this the best we can. I hope tomorrow i'm be pleasantly surprised with some sort of loss.

Keep on shakin!

Chynna~

[Pashta]

Hey Nickie, are you a stay at home mom too? Cause if so, then it makes sense that you want to give food as a gift or comfort. I am a SAHM and that is the main thing I do, cook and clean. The kitchen is my domain so when I want to do something nice I make nice meals too! Don't blame it all on your childhood hehe.

I would never comfort my kids by offering food though, I give hugs and talk about it instead. I am very proud to hear you say that you are being vigilant and consciously making the decision to not do that. You are a great mom.

[holberry]

my mother was a food giver! Even with me as an adult, it was 'I ve got so many good meals planned for your vistit' And she had a little frig on her patio filled with snacks, mostly candy. My mother was a thin women, with a bit of anerxia. When she jumped from a 4 to a 6, holy moly! this was not ok
So with my family I dont make food a family affair. Love can be shown in other ways. Sounds like you do that to Nickie.
hb

[bikipatra]

I guess I am a SAHLSH. A stay at home lazy spoiled heifer.

[nickieluv]

Thanks for the feedback and support, everyone. I'm not a SAHM - yet - but that's the dream. I've decided that I'll keep my job, though - you're allowed up to 2 years leave for each child (as far as I know - I need to iron out the specifics with the union) and your job will still be waiting for you. So I think that's what I'll do - take 2 years per child, work for a year in between kids - it's just safer. I won't have to interview for a job at the end of 10 years being out of the workplace, I'll still accrue seniority in the years I'm working, I'll keep my tenure - and in case my husband's company closes and he's out of work, I can go back to work with only 2 weeks' notice at any time. Of course the plan changes all the time, but that's the latest. I was able to say home for a full year with my daughter (my first child) and it was wonderful - I've missed her this year but I know that I was there for the first year and witnessed all of her firsts.

Well, anyway - I was happy with my loss this week - although vacation sped by too quickly (started out nice and leisurely and then sped up from Wednesday on) there are only 10 or 11 weeks left of school - I can handle that. Off to church today, and I have to play a funeral for a friend's grandmother this afternoon (due to my procrastination I am still scrambling to find a keyboard - I am praying that someone at church will have one I can borrow). Then back to work tomorrow. When's my next day off?

[Tawanda]

Nickie, congratulations on the great loss this week!

[JonnaD]

Congrats on the good week, Nickie. Hope your week goes smoothly.

[SuzyQ66]

Congrats Nicki on your continued success with the program.

I stayed home for five years and ended up going back to work when my hubby lost his job - so it was odd to see that in your post. I have now been back for 5 years (wow where does the time go) and I truly enjoy my job. If I didn't like it I would then be dreaming of being a stay at home mom again.

Have a great week!!

[Lizabette]

NICKI GIRL!

[nickieluv]

The compliance ticker is gone. I have decided that what is most important is not that I keep track of yet another number, but that I commit to compliance every day regardless of what happened the day before. Although I'm still keeping track on my compliance calendar at home. This is a long journey and given the issues I have with cheating when a certain event or milestone draws near, perhaps breaking up the journey into smaller pieces is not working for me. Every ten pounds lost - or almost ten pounds - ends in a binge. Every time I set a mini-goal, the end of the sentence is 'and then I can eat.'

I don't know yet, but I wonder, if part of my struggle with temptation lately has been giving this journey an ending point. I decided, along with my husband, that I did not want to put conception on hold indefinitely. That I would stay with MF until Christmas, then transition off while trying to get pregnant (since transition gradually adds calories and that's what you're supposed to do when pregnant anyway). It would be nice to reach goal by Christmas, but even if I don't, I'll be in a much better position to have a healthy pregnancy. Having decided that, I think part of me may have decided - without my approval - that since I'm not going to reach goal anyway, why bother? But that is not the case. Even if I know I'm going to transition after Christmas, not reaching my goal number does not mean this weight loss has no purpose. And after the baby is weaned, I'll be right back to MF. If I were to accidentally get pregnant right this minute, coming back to MF would still be the plan.

Sunday - I ate emotionally. I knew I was doing it, I knew WHY I was doing it, I knew food wouldn't make it better - but what the food did was numb me. By eating I was no longer focusing on what I was feeling. And after all, that's exactly why I overate in the first place - I just didn't realize it back then. My daughter was being frustrating, I was tired, I was depressed about my vacation ending - and I ate.

What I did on Sunday night was dig out the packages of the things I'd eaten (which I didn't think was a lot) and add up all the calories I'd consumed - almost 2000. Very educational. I had been thinking (although I didn't dare write it here) that after goal and transition I would simply go back to eating what I wanted, when I wanted. Writing down the calories like that - and that was only from 6pm on (prior to I was compliant) - made it clear to me that I can't. I've said that, but not really believed it, until that moment.

However, I don't think I can maintain by constantly counting calories. I will get sick of it - I know myself. But what I CAN do is keep healthier foods in the house. Fresh fruits. Vegetables. I know now what a portion size of meat looks like. I've never been known to binge on apples or celery. Carrots, yes. Grapes, yes. So maybe those are not good choices for me long-term. I'm not saying I will go back to not eating all day and then just shoveling in the food all night. But I learned on Sunday two big things:

1 - the foods I thought I was craving actually don't taste that good anymore (the EasyMac was so bad I couldn't even eat it)
2 - the way I used to eat probably resulted in me consuming over 4000 calories a day

So then yesterday - I had a conference over an hour's drive away. We also had a major snowstorm. The conference was not cancelled, and on the way there were at least 8 cars off the road - and to top it all off I was over an hour late for the conference because I had the wrong directions. It was a disaster. I remained compliant all day long. Then on the way home (still a snowy and slippery hazardous drive), I started imagining food. I won't go into details but I will say my daughter had Chicken McNuggets for dinner. I discovered the same 2 major points as above - apparently I hadn't learned them well enough yet.

So this morning I am suffering the consequences. Monday morning I felt OK, but I saw a gain of 2.3 pounds. Today I felt horrible, but saw an additional gain of only half a pound. I still have a junk food hangover - I've drunk 64 oz of water already but am not eliminating it at all and still feel incredibly thirsty and have a dehydration headache. I am eliminating other things in great quantity, however (TMI I know, but this is for me after all, and I want to remember everything when I look back, good and bad).

On the other hand, when I got dressed I had an interesting experience. I put on the dress I had been planning to wear, convinced that it would not fit - and it fit. I've worn it before and had it for ages, but it had gotten too tight to wear at my highest weight. But I was sure it would be tight. It wasn't. My husband said it even looked a little big. So here are my revelations for today:

1 - if I am craving something during a cheat, I should go get it. I know that's bad (I should stop the cheat immediately of course) but it makes sense for me personally. Otherwise, I will just cheat again (this has happened twice now).
2 - Cheating does not mean I am going to instantly gain back every pound I've lost plus a few, overnight. The scale is fickle and there's no real rhyme or reason to the numbers on it even when being compliant.

The offshoot of #2 is that cheating is not the end. It does not negate all my progress. It lengthens my journey, yes, but it does not end it. I did not 'blow it all.' I am not hopeless, worthless, doomed to failure, fat, ugly, a horrible person. I'm just me - imperfect but trying.

So cheating is not the devil. Cheating is not something to be avoided at all costs because it's going to ruin my hopes of a healthy body forever - it's just something I should not choose to do because it does not match up with my goals. I am hopeful that by taking away the 'forbidden fruit' image of cheating, it will lose its hold on me. After all, I only want to eat foods off-plan because I can't. So maybe I can learn to feel that I CAN eat anything - it's my choice - but I also have the ability to choose NOT to eat something, too.

I know some of you might be disappointed or think I am not being hard enough on myself - but this is where I'm at. Sometimes I cheat. I'm trying to learn not to. But I am still an MF'er and I'm still on the path to a healthy body and just because my path is more a zig-zag than a straight line doesn't mean it won't lead to my goal.

Actually, you're all probably thinking nice things - but since I'm not beating myself up I figure somebody else must be.

[CaribGirl]

Nicki,
I luv (HAHA) reading your journal. You seem to be very honest with the feelings that you write down here.
My experience has been (and please note that i said MY) when I tell myself the things you seem to be telling yourself in regards to cheating, that i am only justifying my cheats. I have found that when i can justify and rationalize my cheats, I tend to have them more often. No, they are not the end of the world, but for me, when i cheat once and can justify it, I cheat again, and again,a nd again. And like you siad, that just makes the goal that much harder to attain.
I wish you the best of luck. You seem to want this, and in my opinion that is 98% of the battle. Just don't let the other 2% win.....

[Tawanda]

Nickie, I doubt (and hope) that no one is thinking anything negative about what you've shared. This is your journal and your journey. We're here to cheer you on with every success and to commiserate with you during the hard times. You are doing so much thinking and soul searching during this MF journey, learning so much about what emotions and thoughts you are going through in regards to eating and food. It is how we recognize and change the patterns that we have previously set.

I continue to wish you the very best as you work on your weight loss journey and discovery of yourself.

[nickieluv]

...when I tell myself the things you seem to be telling yourself in regards to cheating, that i am only justifying my cheats. I have found that when i can justify and rationalize my cheats, I tend to have them more often.

Carib;

Thanks for saying this. I have done the same thing many times on other diets, too. And in fact, it was even more true on other diets that don't deal with ketosis. If you had a bad day you just ate less on the other days and it was supposed to even out. The equivalent here would be for me to say that if I was going to cheat, I'd just have very few carbs, so it wouldn't mess up the diet that much. And that thought did occur to me, but I saw it for what it was and dismissed it.

Usually I feel that something is off when I am justifying something. It doesn't ring true to me. My post today doesn't feel inauthentic to me right now, though. Maybe in the next few days something will happen that will prove me wrong - that has happened a lot, too. But at the moment, it feels true.

I'm not trying to tell myself that it's OK to cheat. I know it will slow me down and make me feel icky and it won't be worth it in the end. But if it's what I choose to do, even knowing all that, so be it. I won't gain 40 pounds overnight, the same way I couldn't lose that much overnight.

Sometimes I think that I cheat because it's my way of saying that I'm not worthy of success. It's me, fulfilling my own prophecy that I am a loser (not in the good way) and will never reach my goals - that if I try at something, I'm doomed to failure and am just kidding myself to think otherwise. Today was not the first time I've cheated and not seen a huge consequence on the scale - but it was the first time that I realized, deep down and not just saying it to sound good, that I'm not a bad person for doing it. I've still lost over 30 pounds. I feel better. Cheating made me feel bad - both during and after. The binges were not satisfying in any way, other than some of the food tasted good. But I don't need 2 or 3 of everything on my plate for it to taste good - one bite or one piece accomplishes that. The rest is overkill and hurts me.

I feel at peace about the last two days. Knowing that one day, or two days, of bad choices is not the end of the world is good for me. I still know that turning this into three days, or a week, or a month, is not the right choice for my ultimate goals. I'm back on plan today and I'm happy about it. I like being on plan. I feel strong and healthy when I start my day with MF. I just get frustrated when I have slow losses, and I feel like I'm missing out on my favorite foods, and I start to wonder what the whole point is to sticking to it.

But I am sticking to it, and there is a point. My relationship with food is really damaged. I have to fix that. I'm working on it, and sometimes I binge still. Another thing I need to edit (and another reason I deleted the compliance ticker) is the feeling that if I want a second bar in one day and that's cheating anyway, then why not go hog wild? So - for me - having more than one bar in a day is no longer non-compliant. If I want one - and I mean really want one, not just want the convenience of a bar instead of making something else - then I will have another one. It's still MF. It's not perfect but it's not cheating. And at the end of the month if I run out of bars too soon, so be it. I only order 4 boxes a month, and I'm not going to change that - if I eat all four boxes in three weeks instead of four, that's my own fault. But my last two binges have been partially precipitated by several incidents of wanting a second bar and depriving myself of it - so I'm not going to do that anymore.

Class coming - I'll continue later....

[holberry]

Niki, I think you thought out the cheat healthily. Go on and do what's right, or rather eat what's right.
Are you ofer the storms yet?
hb

[DonicaB]

So maybe I can learn to feel that I CAN eat anything - it's my choice - but I also have the ability to choose NOT to eat something, too.

You hit the nail right on the head with this. You can eat anything you want, but it is a choice whether or not you eat it. Sometimes I think life would be easier if I didn't have any choices, but what kind of life would that be? I have made some very bad choices over the past 11 years. Because of these choices I am now experiencing the consequences. I wish I would have had sense enough to not allow myself to get to such an unhealthy point in my life.

If you know you can eat off plan and get right back to it, then I don't see a problem with your philosphy of cheating. For me, I don't trust myself at all to get back to it. If I have a major binge, I truly believe that I will struggle severly with getting back on plan. Have I cheated? YES. I've had my struggle with the peanuts and most recently with taking bites of this and that. I find it hard to not continue with those minor problems, I think a major binge would put me over the edge.

Only you, know what is in your heart. ONly you know what your weaknesses are. As Tawanda said, we are here through thick and thin. (Oops, maybe I should find a different expression )

DonicaB