After 5 whole days, my diet is going swimmingly. I've cut down my calorie intake from something like 3,500 calories to something like 1500 calories. No kidding. I was consuming 1600 or more calories of sweets a day.
I also walked four miles yesterday.
As a result, the weight is coming off fast as it often does at the beginning of a diet. I've more than eight pounds. It's like traveling back through time. I've gotten rid of my Christmas weight that got me up to 243 is gone. So is the end of the semester binging to get papers graded weight that brought me up to 240 in the first place. I'm almost back down to my "normal" weight of the last three years--234.
But that brings me to my first temptation. I feel a little bit better. So there's a big temptation is to stop and reward myself, indulge myself, and go back to something like normality. That means ice cream, candy bars, cookies, sweet potato chips, crackers and cheddar cheese, and home-made biscuits--all of which are readily available around the Caric household. That's most of what happened last summer after I got down to 228. I was happy, rewarded myself and gained the weight back.
This time, I can face up to this first temptation pretty well. But the next temptation will be bigger. That will be the impulse to resume eating for comfort and tension release when I get back to the stress of teaching and writing. I'll have to overcome that temptation if I want to travel back to my summer low of 229.
Eventually though, I'll have to recross the Lake of Comfort Food. At some point about three years ago, I went quickly from 190 to 220 and it was mostly because I ate a lakeful of comfort food to give myself some form of release from the stress of fatherhood, teaching, writing, and university politics. Crossing that lake is what originally got me in the 200's. If I want to get back to 180, I have to give up all that food-born reassurance and lose the weight that came from it.
That's my goal--to get back across the Lake of Comfort Food.
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3 comments:
Ric,
I am also going through much of the same feelings as you through my weight-loss journey. Myself, my husband, and 2 of our friends are doing a 'Biggest Loser' challenge of sorts and have found that when we do anything of consequence (even breathing it seems!), we want to reward ourselves with food. So, at the end of every week, following our weigh-in, to treat ourselves we will either buy a movie/cd or a book that we want. This has helped a lot.
Also, I have recently come across a bit of stress. I found myself peering into the fridge and I caugh myself. I was so ashamed! --I turned on some mellow tunes and began to meditate and reflect on my own 'issues.'
I am quite sure that you will have success in this. --Let me know if you'd like any sort of support! It actually helps as lame as it sounds! :)
Give in to temptation, Ric. Keep shoveling food down your stubbly maw.
Thanks to Courtney for the support. Interestingly enough, I have a different issue with my spouse and family. Mrs. RSI has long been suspicious of my overly-developed capacity for self-control and likes to see me eat a lot as a way to "let my hair down." She herself lost 35 pounds over the last 6 months and she'd like me to lose weight, but I can still see the ambivalence.
Sorry I didn't get back to you about Hillary in December. I just had too many work-related traumas. I think Hillary Clinton is the best presidential candidate for these times and support her for that reason. You raised an interesting point about independent voters back then. Karl Rove believed that all but 7% of people who called themselves independent actually voted consistently for one party. That's a major reason why G. Bush has run such a partisan administration. But it now looks like independent/moderate voters are getting their type of candidates in McCain and Obama.
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