The endless journey

"The Endless Journey" might have been a better choice for my blog name. There are so many twists and turns in trying to figure out the right way to lose weight or even if there is a right way, that this journey is never going to end. It's a lifelong process trying to figure out what works. 

Some people figure out what works for them very quickly in the game, some people give up and never figure it out. Then there are people like me, learning something new every single day, that have some of the answers, but certainly not all of them.

Geneen Roth's book Women, Food and God provides a lot of the answers on what's wrong with me. It works if you follow her guidelines. If you don't, it doesn't work. It's just like every other plan, you can't just read the book, attend a workshop and then forget about it. You have to continue to work at it.

What I'm finding is that it's not easy to feel the pain instead of eating. In fact, it kind of hurts like hell. It's like ripping a band aid off of a wound and the scab sticks to the band aid and now you're in excruciating pain. I'm not sure how I feel about this type of introspection into my psyche. It's not pleasant and some days I'm just not up to it.

On the other hand, I suspect it's the only way I'll ever feel okay about food. I know this is a very slow process, undoing forty plus years of using food for comfort, not facing my reality, and it isn't going to change overnight.

I haven't posted since last Sunday, four days of silence. It was an odd week where I was extremely tired every day. Each night I came home and could barely move. I skipped the gym three days in a row due to pure exhaustion. Wednesday night I went to bed at 7:30pm and woke up at 7:30am Thursday morning, twelve hours of sleep. I guess I was tired.

I have today off from work, for no particular reason. I just felt like I needed a day off. I weighed this morning and I'm 174.6 which is oddly almost exactly the weight in my blog profile. I think that was posted a couple of months ago. Although I'm not gaining weight and I'm eating well (probably a little too well), I'm not losing weight.

I'll be honest, I don't like following Geneen Roth's eating guidelines. It's  a lot harder than it sounds. My least favorite guideline is #3. I find it almost impossible to just sit quietly and eat, without doing anything else. On Geneen's CD that I purchased at her workshop, she said you should try to do this once a day in the beginning, more often if possible, and at the very least a few times a week. It's not easy.

Geneen Roth's Eating Guidelines

1. Eat when you are hungry. (Truly hungry, body hungry not mind hungry)

2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.

3.Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspaper, books, intense or anxiety producing conversation and music.

4. Eat only what your body wants. (Big difference from what your MIND wants!)

5. Eat until you are satisfied. (This is different than full).

6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.

7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto and pleasure.
I've decided on a different route to get to my goal weight. It's a hybrid of the above eating guidelines AND Weight Watchers. I realize this doesn't sound possible, but it really is possible. I can still do the above eating guidelines but also attend Weight Watcher meetings and follow their eating plan.
 
My goal is by December 31, 2010, lose ten pounds. That's not a crazy amount of weight in ten weeks, but it is the holidays which makes it a tiny bit harder than normal. I feel more at peace with this idea than just doing it on my own. I also know at my current weight that my weight loss is pretty slow, unless I starve myself. I have no intention of starving myself. Been there, done that and it doesn't work in the long run.
 
The endless journey continues...