diembroadhurst said:
Perhaps you need to write down why exactly you want to loose weight - and be really very specific on an emotional level what those reasons mean to you at the same time - write down exactly how you feel when you fail in your objective for the day, how do you feel about yourself, the diet, how do you think others view you? When you are looking down the barrel of the biscuit kind take a time out to sit with a glass of water, or a cup of tea/coffee and read through your lists. Don't allow yourself to succombe to the food you crave until you have sipped all your water or drunk your hot drink and read through your reasons for wanting to loose weight and how you feel when you fail to stick to the plan. Ensure when you wake up in the morning you tell yourself exactly what you are committing to do today. At the end of the day if you stuck to it congratulate yourself, congratulate yourself through the day for every meal you stick to and for every craving you battle against. If the craving gets too much, pack up yourself and any children and your water bottle and leave the house, go for a walk, go to the park anything to get away from the cupboards, do not take cash with you - just get out of the places that food is calling you.
For these first few days you are going to have to dig deep and stop sabotaging yourself. Just because you regained weight doesn't mean you are going to do it again - you didn't fail - you successfully lost weight and got to goal - you know you can do this. The only thing you failed to do was change the habits that put you overweight before you did your vlc diet - you have learn the hard way - but actually the vlc diet is the easy part - you proved that already. Now just focus on what will be different next time, after you have gotten to goal - how will you do things differently. You have to believe you can do this - if you always do what you always did you'll get the same result, so change things, do it - one day at a time for now.
I agree with diembroadhurst- good advice.
First be kind to yourself, this is tough, cooking for kids, living, being surround by food and advertising conspire to make this losing weight business a real challenge. But it can be done.
I am more and more convinced that this diet and losing weight generally is more about getting your head in the right place than anything else. So where do you want to be and why do you want to be there rather than where you are now?
And if you can endure some discomfort you can achieve any goal.
It's really worth being clear about what you want and why you want it. Be clear then spend some time thinking about what it will feel like when you have achieved it. And as advised above - how are you going to do today differently ? It might be just finding a better way to do 3-6pm?
Small bite size pieces are easier - can a goal be simply to do a week, get into ketosis and say good bye to hunger? When I started my goal was a week - amazingly I did it then tackled a goal of just four weeks. Then I had a lost a stone, felt amazing and the effects carried me on for the next eight months and beyond.
One thing I learnt quite early - it might help you, was that I could survive being hungry. Nothing terrible happened, it usually passed, a bottle of fizzy water cured nearly everything and then that was another day done. We are beautifully conditioned from birth to respond to hunger. If we don't respond - its fine but generally we have never learnt to take the risk. We have learnt to eat to avoid any risk of hunger, any time, any place.
Once you get in to it - three or four days but longer if you have overdosed on carbs, - it really does get easier. The hunger goes, remember? The focus becomes bowels, weight loss, changing fit of clothes and amazingly feeling so good because at last YOU are in control again, not the b****** food.
I think it takes two weeks to learn any new habit, Exante is a new habit. It does get much easier and it works.
So good luck
GSQ